Page 22 of The Nanny is Off Limits

“Dinner was great. Thank you. How’d you learn to cook like…that?” I narrow my eyes at her because, from two dishes alone, I can tell that she didn’t learn from only a cookbook. It was the kind of cooking that came more from instinct than words on paper.

“My mom and grandma wereand areboth great cooks. They both kind of taught me and when my mom got sick, she would walk me through a lot of dishes so I could learn how to do it. She could have written them down, but that wasn’t how she learned and she used to say cooking was all about feeling. After she died, I still had my grandma who taught me a lot and I’ll still call her if I’m stuck.” She smiles but then her smile falls slightly. “Sorry, I guess that was kind of the long way to say family.” She giggles and I only allow myself a minute to fixate on how she glows when she talks about her family.

“I’m happy to hear the long way. Does your grandma still live in Ohio?”

“She does, strong as a bull. Fairly certain she’ll outlive me.”

I smile at her joke though I see through her attempt at humor tailing after her comment about her mother’s death. “I’m sorry about your mom. I don’t think I said that when you first mentioned it in your interview, but I am…sorry.”

“Oh.” Her eyes widen and she averts her gaze back to the television. I notice that she blinks her eyes a few times before turning back to me. “It was a long time ago.”

“Doesn’t make it any less sad or me any less sorry.”

I don’t stay in the living room for long. I didn’t want to encroach on Elianna’s private time and I did still have some work to do. So, after changing out of my clothes and checking on the kids, I’m sitting in my office when Elianna walks by on the way to her room.

“Did you…clean in here?” I ask her, having noticed the vacuum lines and the faint smells of Lysol and Windex. She hadn’t touched anything on my desk but I did notice the shiny glass of my sliding glass door and the mirror in the corner. Not to mention the shininess of my mahogany coffee table.

“Oh yes, would you prefer I not come in here? The door was open and I was vacuuming…” she winces. “I’m sorry, I should have asked.”

“Please don’t apologize,” I tell her, wishing she’d stop explaining herself for everything. “Thank you.” I look down at my desk. “And for not moving anything around on my desk. If there’s ever a time I don’t want anyone in here, the door will be locked.”

“Got it.”

“Should I even bother keeping my housekeeper twice a week?” I ask her.

She takes a tentative step inside my office. “Well, it’s just, with everyone in school…” She lets out a breath and puts her hands on her hips. “I’ve never nannied full-time during the school year. It’s always been during the summer when the kids are always around so I always had something to keep me busy. I didn’t…really have anything to do after I prepared for dinner.”

“Don’t you have homework? For your class?”

“I already did that,” she tells me, and although I shouldn’t be surprised based on what I know about her, I am shocked at her ability to balance so many things with ease.

“Are you always so on top of everything? All the time?”

Her lips form a straight line and she nods. “Yeah, kinda.” She shrugs, “I’ve always had to be. Just with my sisters and my dad and…everything. Then when I started taking care of other people’s children…it just stuck.”

“What do you do to relax? Do you know how to relax?” I chuckle and she crosses her arms over her chest.

“Don’t you work like eighty hours a week?” she retorts.

I chuckle at the fact that she doesn’t exactly have a filter and says whatever is on her mind.

“Not when I was twenty-five.” I snort. “No, when I was twenty-five…” I trail off, trying to remember what I was doing at her age. “Well, I was about to be a father, but Bianca and I had fun before that. Probably too much of it.”

“I have fun,” she counters. “I go out with my friends sometimes, but it’s hard to do that when you’re a full-time nanny.”

“You can have time off for yourself, Elianna. I don’t expect you to be on call twenty-four hours a day seven days a week.”

“I know. You’ve given me two weekends off a month and every Wednesday evening when I have to go to campus. Trust me, that’s more than I usually get.”

“You can have more than that if you need it. Trustme, you’re already helping me out a lot.”

She shakes her head as if the idea is ridiculous. “It’s my job.”

“I know,” I tell her. “I can still appreciate it.”

She chuckles and rolls her eyes. “You really are a first-timer with the whole nanny thing. Talk to me the next time you hire one. I bet you’ll be much tougher.”

“Next time? Planning your exit already?” I ask, my eyes wide and a bit terrified that she’s already thinking of leaving.

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