Page 34 of Beneficial Misfortune

Chapter 11

Of all the people to walk into the kitchen as Addison’s new nanny,shewas not who I expected.

Why would I? I’d tried to track her down and had no luck. It was as if she’d vanished into thin air after that night. We kept track at the club, but she never went back, and despite owning the place and having access to everything, we had nothing. She hadn’t bought one drink that night. From the second she sat down at the bar, people were sending them to her, and while I can understand why, it was still frustrating. Not only because we couldn’t track her, but because the thought of her dealing with so many drunken fools like the one we chased away makes my blood boil.

I wasn’t the only one upset about it, either.

Des might not admit it, but he was hooked from the second he saw her at the bar. He doesn’t do relationships, not after the last one, but he would have for her. I could see it in the way he gravitated toward her, the gentle way he fucked her, and the smile that was damn near plastered on his face all night.

We took a hit a while back. It was the whole reason we used the pool house for our fun and kept everything simple and clean. But the very thing we used as a way to protect us proved to be our downfall when she was able to slip right through our fingers. We hadn’t wanted anything serious, so we’d made it easy to keep our pleasure separate from our daily lives. Maybe we’d done a little bit too good of a job.

Not this time, though.

I’m not sure how she ended up here, and I don’t believe in destiny or higher powers, but I’ll be damned if I don’t take this opportunity and treat it like the gift it is. I don’t even need to ask Des if he’s interested. I saw the way he looked at her at dinner tonight. That boy’s just as gone as he was that night, and it’s like a weight dropped off of him.

He’d been a bit distant for a while, spending more time out on his bike than at the office, and I knew it was annoying Nate. He was acting like a little lost puppy about a girl he spent one night with. It didn’t make sense to the others because they hadn’t been there, and no amount of us telling them about her would make him see.

We’d left her that morning to make breakfast with Addison. It was a tradition we had, making pancakes together on holidays. One we hadn’t missed once since Addison was born. While she ate, we filled Nate and Oliver in on our night. We might share, but we don’t usually sleep and tell. Oliver caught on right away, and while he didn’t seem happy about the idea of trying again, he remained quiet. Nate seemed minorly intrigued, if not a bit skeptical, but agreed to meet her and see for himself.

Which, of course, never fucking happened.

Until, apparently, it did. Somehow, she had met him all on her own, and she’d clearly made an impression, considering she was living in the house as Addison’s new nanny.

Rapping my knuckles on his office door, I push it open without giving him a chance to respond.

“Took you longer than I thought it would,” he says without looking up from his computer screen, and I huff a laugh before falling into the chair in front of him. He already has a glass of whiskey sitting on the edge of his desk for me, and I snatch it, knocking it back in one gulp.

Fuck, I needed that.

“Yes, well, my niece needed extra bedtime stories to make up for my absence,” I tell him, rolling my eyes, and he chuckles.

“Yes, god forbid she miss your ass.”

“Hey, my ass is very lovable!” I say in outrage that he ignores. I can talk a good game, but I’m just as wrapped around Addison’s finger as he is. I might not be her father, but she’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to a daughter, and I love her like my own.

We all do.

“Speaking of asses,” I say, leaning back in my chair and getting comfortable.

That gets his attention. His fingers that had just been flying along the keys without missing a beat freeze before he drags his eyes from the screen to me, meeting my gaze with a raised brow.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asks, but he’s not fooling me. Nate might seem like an unfeeling prick with a stick shoved up his ass, but I know him better than that.

There are a million things I could say and quite a few questions I want answered, but all of that can wait. I want to watch him squirm.

“Since when does the help live with us?”

Instead of answering, he rolls his eyes and turns back to the computer screen. But that’s as good as an admission in my book. My brother isn’t one to let things bother him unless it’s for good reason, and he’s more than used to me.

“She was out with us for ice cream. I’d offered her the position of nanny last week, but she had yet to accept it. We made an agreement while out, and then we dropped her off at her apartment.”

The disgust in his tone is clear, but I don’t understand why. We might be loaded now, but we didn’t grow up much better off than the average family. We weren’t poor exactly, but we also weren’t rolling in it. Sometimes, bills were tight, but our parents always made it work.

Clearly, I’m missing something.

“We’d only just made it back to the house when she called me…” he pauses, pushing back from his desk and completely disregarding his work.

Strange. My brother is nothing if not a workaholic.

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