Page 58 of Sexy Bad Daddy

The kids are hopefully not screwed in the head after what their father has put them through. The oldest would be fourteen now, the youngest, twelve. Terrible ages to try to figure out this big, bad world under the best of circumstances.

“Teenagers don’t need a nanny. They need their parents.”

“No. They need you. They ask about you all the time.”

I doubt that. “If they do, it’s because you still talk about me.” Which is disturbing, frankly.

“I do. I tell them all about you. Well, when I can find you. Sometimes you make it difficult, going to work for people who like their private lives to remain private. It was so nice when you went to work for this golf pro. Your life is an open book. I know everything about you now.”

Holy shit. I press back against the wall, the bottle in one hand, the other splayed against the painted brick, as my chest rises and falls in rapid succession. Is he for real? He sure as hell looks serious.

“What you need is therapy,” I mutter, not really caring if he hears me.

But he does, and his face contorts like he’s suddenly furious, while he wags a finger in my face. “Don’t you dare say that. I don’t fucking care what anybody says. I do not need therapy.”

I whip my head from side to side. I have nowhere to go to get away from him. He’s trapped me at the end of this hall. He might actually, physically harm me.

“I—I—”

“My stupid ex-wife,” he spits out. “Her mother. My own parents. Even the kids tell me that. Why does everyone think there’s something wrong with me?”

“Uh, maybe because there is? I mean, come off it. I left eight years ago and you haven’t been able to move on? Who does that?”

“It’s you, Erin.” He steps closer, so close I can smell the whiskey on his breath. Guess I’m not the only one who’s overindulged tonight. “You do this to me.”

I lift my arm, press my palm into his chest, which is still as rock hard as it always was. “Blaming someone else for your problems isn’t going to solve them, you know.”

“My only problem is you won’t come back to me. You’re my nanny. No one else’s.”

Geez, when Garrett gets this overbearing and protective over his daughter, it’s heart-warming—and admittedly, sexy as hell. But when Peter does it over a woman who left him years ago, who now feels nothing but a great deal of regret and a healthy dose of fear, it’s damned creepy.

“Look, Peter, I need to go. I need to—” I try to move around him so I can head down the hall to return to the party—even Fiona’s questions are preferable to this—but he won’t let me. He grabs my arm and I instantly lift the champagne bottle and swing, connecting with his shoulder. His body flings backward from the impact, and I skate around him, rushing to the nearest door, which takes me into the kitchen.

Darting past stainless steel tables piled with plates of filet mignon, around which a bevy of people all wearing those paper chef hats work their food-prep magic, I hurry toward another door. Outside, there’s a golf cart, one the kitchen uses to carry supplies between the clubhouse and the snack shack on the ninth hole. I leap into the driver’s seat, even though I have no idea how to drive one of these things. It can’t be that hard, though. I see kids do it all the time.

But it is, or maybe that’s the champagne and my fear. Either way, after several false starts, I manage to convince the machine to lurch forward, and I’m puttering away from the party.

I hear a shout and glance over my shoulder at Peter, who’s chasing after me, calling out something about women and nannies. I turn back around, and a white rock that’s actually a duck jumps to life, waddling along in front of me, flapping its wings and quacking up a storm. I jerk the wheel to the left.

At this point, I sure as hell can’t stop, not with the entire freaking party clamoring from French doors, pouring onto the patio to watch me make a complete and utter fool of myself, so I aim for a narrow path between two ponds, my champagne-soaked brain convinced I can disappear behind the draping branches of that cluster of weeping willow trees on the other side.

I hear more shouting. I swear that sounds like Garrett—and is that Danny’s voice, too? Oh God, Garrett’s going to hate me, and Danny’s never going to let me live this down. I press the gas pedal to the floor, but that does nothing at all as the cart zips along at a top speed of probably five miles per hour.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Garrett running toward me, but he’s on the other side of the pond, and I’m not sure how he’s going to get to me. Danny’s right behind him, and he veers left, like he’s going around behind the golf cart, but Garrett keeps going, and without breaking stride, he splashes into the pond in his Armani suit, wading through the thigh deep, murky water with his gaze locked onto me. I slam my foot against the brake and the cart lurches to a stop seconds before I attempt to cross between the two ponds and probably submerge myself, too.

Garrett stops and drops his hands to his knees in the water while he catches his breath for a minute. “What the hell are you doing?” he finally manages to ask.

“Trying to get away from you,” another voice answers before I can open my mouth.

“Holy shit. Is that who I think it is?” Danny says. He’s standing a few feet away from Peter, who’s behind me, inching closer while keeping an eye on Garrett.

“I’m not the one who was chasing her, asshole,” Garrett says. His words are punctuated by a quack and flutter of wings, and then the white duck I’d nearly decapitated lands on the seat next to me.

“I was chasing her because I was worried,” Peter says. “She doesn’t drive very well, you know.”

What? I’m a perfectly fine driver.

“How the hell do you know that?” Garrett asks, but he’s looking at me.

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