Page 1 of The Au Pair Affair

Chapter One

Tallulah Aydin had never seen blood droplets sail through the air quite so gracefully.

She turned the phone sideways and enlarged the hockey highlight to full-screen mode, tapping the volume button in order to hear the commentator’s voice.

Abraham with the vicious elbow to O’Hanlon’s nose. Oh mama. Somebody call the trainer. O’Hanlon just learned the hard way what we’ve known for years. Players risk bones and cartilage when they enter Sir Savage’s house as he’s just proven once again tonight...

Tallulah exited the video and set her phone down, queasiness rolling in her stomach.

This afternoon, she was scheduled to begin shacking up with the homicidal hockey player from that very SportsCenter highlight. Sir Savage. If the algorithm gods hadn’t creepily recognized her location as Boston and placed that nose-crunching clip from last night’s preseason game in her path, she would already have left the smoothie shop and entered the landmark doorman building across the street to begin her employment as an au pair for his tween daughter.

She’d agreed to the arrangementmonthsago. Back when the whole idea hadn’t seemed so unnerving. Now, however, the white plastic seat in which she’d been parked for over an hour was rapidly making lattice patterns on the backs of her legs. Blenders whirred in her ears. She’d been rendered unable to stand up andcross the road. Which was galling, considering she’d just spent a year in Antarctica studying the migration habits of the Adélie penguin.

A nanny job should be a cakewalk, right?

Thanks to a twist of fate, she’d landed a swanky place to live in Beacon Hill while she earned her master’s in marine biology at Boston University. In return, all she had to do was nanny for an already self-sufficient twelve-year-old girl while her daddy apparently went out and flattened perfectly good noses on the ice.

It was the latter that kept her glued to the uncomfortable chair.

Tallulah reached for the paper cup holding her peanut butter–espresso blast and noticed her hand was trembling oh-so-slightly. She gave herself an impatient eye roll and snatched up the cup, swigging what remained of her smoothie. The guy behind the counter obviously heard the empty vacuum sound coming from her paper straw and gave her the Boston eyebrow. Head cocked, impatient, one brow raised. Like,are you done here or would you like to lick the napkin dispenser, too?

She’d clearly overstayed her welcome at the Joyful Juicer.

Message received, Tallulah stood up, crossed to the trash can, and tossed her cup before returning to the table and gripping the handle of her suitcase. Staring through the picture window of the shop at the ten-story brick building on the other side of the road, her stomach sagged somewhere in the vicinity of her knees. On paper, she didn’t have any reason for the alarm weaving through her ribs.

After all, her best friends, Wells and Josephine, had vouched for the Boston Bearcats team captain, Burgess Abraham, also known as Sir Savage. He didn’t have any criminal history that she could find on the internet. In fact, he was known for being a terror on the ice, but stoic and reasonable once he entered the locker room. As evidenced by the time Tallulah had spent watching postgame interviews with his sweaty black hair plastered tohis forehead, his denim-blue eyes intense as he considered every question like the answer was deeply important.

And no, she hadn’t purposefully searched for shirtless interviews, thank you very much.

They’d come up as asuggestedGoogle search. She couldn’t simply ignore that kind of search engine divine providence. It would be irresponsible. Nor could she ignore shoulders thick enough with muscle to seat a couple of baby walruses—and those suckers hadheft.

But right now, when she was an hour late to arrive at Burgess’s penthouse to view her new living space and go over the particulars of their arrangement, all she could see was that brutal elbow slicing through the air, the accompanying expression of malice.

Like a peek inside some hidden part of the man?

Accepting this job had seemed like a great idea when she’d met Burgess at that golf tournament in California last summer. But she shouldn’t have been so impulsive when it came to something so huge, like living with a man who she barely knew. One who could have all manner of lurking issues. In her experience, men could be mild mannered, charming even, on the surface. Easygoing, friendly.

They could also be dormant volcanos waiting for the right moment to erupt.

Ignoring the sigh from the dude behind the counter, Tallulah sat back down.

Moving in with this near stranger was a bad idea. An error in judgment.

Thankfully, she hadn’t moved inyet. If she was going to change her mind, it had to be now. Before she wasted valuable time Burgess could be using to find a new au pair. She could check into a hotel tonight and use tomorrow to view apartment share opportunities. With other women. The apartments probably—no,definitely—wouldn’t be in neighborhoods as nice as this, norwould they be penthouses, but at least she’d be able to sleep at night.

Decision made, Tallulah slipped the phone out of the front pocket of her windbreaker and prepared to call the Bearcats defenseman. Being so unprofessional about this rankled. She should break their deal in person. But what if he reacted badly? Got upset?

A phone call was better. Safer.

Before Tallulah could dial, a bell tinkled above the door.

And Burgess Abraham himself entered the smoothie shop.

Holy shit, she’d forgotten how... hulking he was. Six-three, give or take an inch. Broad as a barn. And grizzled. Sir Savage had entered the second half of his thirties and he already had a hint of salt and pepper buffering in his black beard, his temples. He walked with leashed confidence. It wasn’t the stride of a man who needed to be noticed. Or feared. It was a one hand in his pocket, the other loose at his side, eyes forward, unhurried but goal-oriented gait. He didn’t bother stopping at the register to order, just signaled the employee with a salute.

“Your usual, Savage?” The smoothie guy got working, tossing frozen fruit into the clear blender, adding juice and three heaping scoops of protein powder. “I live in hope that someday you’ll come in and try something new.”

“I like what I like,” Burgess muttered, frowning at the screen of his phone.

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