Page 92 of Beneficial Misfortune

He doesn’t say anything, instead looking at me with a slight tilt to his head as if he’s unsure how to respond.

Apparently, I’ve said the wrong thing, though, because, after a second, he shakes his head, his lip quirking up a bit.

“Do you want to move out?”

“No!” I shout in a rush to try to assure him, only to cringe when the sound of my voice bounces off the high ceilings around us and echoes back.

“This is why I thought this would be a good idea.”

Yeah, he might be right about that. I’m clearly lost as far as just about everything goes.

“First, I think you should quit your job at the school.” I’m not sure what I expected, but it sure as hell wasn’t that.

“I can’t quit my job!” I say in shocked disbelief. “It’s been my dream to be a teacher since I was a little girl, and this has been my dream school to teach at for years.” I try and fail to keep my voice level, but I can hear the almost harsh jump in pitch.

Apparently, he hears it, too, because he chuckles, and I kind of want to smack him. How can he be laughing right now? This is serious.

I’m serious!

“Dreams are wonderful, and I’m happy you got to work there, but it’s not like you won’t still be teaching. Hell, I’ll let you homeschool Addison if you really want, but it seems as though you might have a stalker, and that school clearly isn’t secure the way I thought it was.” His tone drops, making his already deep voice sound almost dangerous, and if this wasn’t such a serious conversation, I’d be seriously turned on by it.

Okay, I’m still turned on by it, but I’m going to ignore that for now.

I open my mouth to argue my point, but he cuts me off.

“When Alex asked you if you were interested in being more than just Addison’s nanny, you said yes, correct?” His gaze burns into mine, daring me to say he’s wrong, but I can’t.

I had agreed to that, and it’s still what I want. I nod, and he nods back; he knew as well as I did what I agreed to, maybe even more so since I was still in the dark on so much.

Nathan sits forward, invading my space, once again towering over me so that I have to crane my neck back to continue to meet his gaze.

“That makes you ours, Katherine. You might not understand this yet, but after tonight, you will.” He leans in closer so that I can feel the warmth of his body so close to my own, and I fight back a shiver at how nice it feels to have him this close. “Youareours. Ours to protect, ours to spoil, ours to fuck, and I’ll be damned if I keep letting you go back to that fucking school where someone might be putting your safety at risk,” he growls, and between the sound of that and what he just said, I’m pretty sure I’m dreaming.

Men don’t do this kind of thing. Possessive men are a red flag, but this isn’t what I think of when I think of possessive men. No, the toxic possessive is like Carter, where he used to make me change because he didn’t like how much skin I was showing in damn near modest clothes. Somehow, I can’t see Nathan or any of the rest of them being like that.

No, if anything, they would handle any man who might look too long. Much the same way Desmond and Alex handled the asshole at the bar the night we met.

Why does that make me feel warm and fuzzy? I shouldn’t be excited by the thought of violence, but here I am excited by not only that but by him being concerned as a whole.

When was the last time someone was worried about me, really?

I can’t remember.

“But why?” The question is out of my mouth before I can really think about it, but Nathan doesn’t seem put off by it; if anything, he looks like he might have been expecting that question.

“This is where part two comes in. I was taken with you from the moment I saw you. You’re beautiful, and despite my disbelief at the beginning, you didn’t treat my daughter in any special way because of her last name or how it might help you get closer to me.”

It’s my turn to growl. The thought of women trying to use Addison to get close to Nathan really pisses me off.

Nathan chuckles, and the sound catches me off guard. It’s not as if I’ve never heard it; Addison often has the guys smiling and laughing, but Nathan is usually a bit more reserved.

“That right there, you're not like other women, Kat, and something about you draws me in. I tried to keep it professional with you. You were Addison’s teacher, and it only took me a time or two to see you with her to know I wanted you to be her nanny, which would make you an employee. Everyone knows you don’t have those kinds of relationships at work. It’s bad for business and often ends poorly.” He can say that again. There are whole sayings about not mixing business and pleasure because it is so well known. It’s something I was afraid of in the beginning with my crush on him and why I thought for sure he would fire me when he found out about me sleeping with Alex and Desmond.

“You weren’t supposed to be in the house. I’d offered you housing the right way, despite how much I hadn’t wanted to. But then your apartment was broken into, and suddenly, no matter how safe I knew you would be here, I couldn’t bring myself to have you stay here. Not when the other option was with me.”

My mind is going about a million miles an hour, but somehow, I can’t seem to make anything come out of my mouth.

“Then I found out you’re Alex and Desmond’s lost fling. They were so torn up about you disappearing. At first, I thought it was because you got away and gave them the slip instead of vice versa. But even months later, they were still caught up on you, and I knew you had to be something special. My son and brother aren’t known to settle. They’re a little more loose, a little more okay with drowning their sorrows under someone else.”

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