Page 4 of The Nanny is Off Limits

“I have cheer practice at three.” She sniffles before she starts moving toward the stairs.

“There and back and turn your location on. If you turn it off again, I’m taking your keys,” I call after her.

Christ, I need a drink.

“DADDY!!!” I hear her scream, followed by the closing of the front door and then my six-year-old is busting through my office door even though she knows she should knock before entering. Luckily, I’m not on a call but I still give her a look as she skips around my desk and hops into my lap. “You forgot me at school!” Isla is six going on sixteen, unfortunately, and takes picking out her clothes very seriously and everything—everything—has to match the sunglasses she’s wearing that day. It’s somewhat of a new thing, I think, in response to her mother’s death, but the therapist says it’s a healthy form of personal expression and it’s nothing to be concerned withyet. Today she’s wearing light blue and white with accents of yellow and light blue sunglasses that are way too big for her face.

I pull her sunglasses off so I can see her eyes. “I didnotforget you,” I tell her before pressing a kiss to her forehead and tightening one of her loose pigtails.

“You picked Sawyer up and not me!” Her brown eyes narrow and give me a scolding look.

“Sawyer got sent home.”

“Yeah, and why is that? Some hot mom at pick-up said there was a fire today. Does that have my nephew’s name all over it?” My younger brother, River, comes strolling through my office door. Three times a week he picks them both up from school for me before he has to be at football practice. He is the head football coach for one of the high schools in the county, and my house just happens to be on the way there.

“A fire?” Isla’s eyes widen and her mouth forms an o-shape.

“He’s not going to be in school for a few days, alright?” I tell her so she knows not to panic if she’s unable to find him.

Isla shakes her head and hops off my lap. “SAWYER!” she screams as she runs out of my office.

“I am this close to losing my shit,” I tell River as I hold my thumb and index finger close together. “Then we get home and Margot is in the horizontal position making out on the couch with her boyfriend.”

River’s eyes go from shock to anger in the span of a second as he closes the door to my office. “Uhhh what?! I’ll kill him. Did you already kill him? Where’s the body?” he asks before sitting down on my couch. He rolls up the sleeves of his sweatshirt revealing all the tattoos he has on both of his arms. “You didn’t know she was home?”

My head falls into my hands before I run one through my hair, trying my best not to pull it out. “She turned off her location and disarmed the alarm, so no.”

“Shit, dude.”

I drop my head into my hands. “Needless to say, they are both grounded.”

“SJ’s suspended?”

I nod and pinch the bridge of my nose as I think about what I’m going to do about him for the next three days.I could bring him to the office, but that could be a disaster.“Three days. They were considering expulsion but it was nothing fifteen grand and a recurring weekly meeting with the school shrink couldn’t fix,” I say sarcastically while rubbing my forehead.

He chuckles and scratches his jaw. “Fuck, and knowing him he’s probably pumped to be out for three days.”

“I’m giving him every chore in the world until he goes back. You want your car washed?” I ask, and he chuckles.

“Man, I’ve been telling you this since Bianca died; you need help.” His brown eyes are sincere but a little scolding.

“I have help. I have you.”

“No, you need real, live-in help. Like a nanny, bro. At least until SJ is a little older. You’re doing your best, and anyone can see that, but you’re not present enough and the lack of supervision is the reason behind some of this. The days I pick them up, I stay with them until five when Margot gets home from practice, and yes, she feeds them and makes sure they take baths and showers, but Isla and SJ barely see you those days because they’re asleep by the time you get home. I think they would do well with more adult presence.”

“A live-in nanny though? Isn’t that a bit much? My kids aren’t babies.”

“Isla is six and SJ is ten. They are still kids and you need someone to keep an eye on Margot before you have a baby in the form of a grandchild in the mix too.”

His words set in and I shift uncomfortably in my chair thinking about my baby having a baby. I still remember every second of the day she was born and sometimes it feels unfathomable that it was sixteen years ago. “How would I even go about that? How does one even find a nanny?”

“How do you think? Contact an agency, obviously. Or ask someone at that hoity-toity school you send SJ and Isles to. They probably all have nannies.”

The sound of a bunch of boxes hitting the floor turns my attention down the aisle at the grocery store and I see a little girl climbing up the shelf right where there are about fifteen boxes of cookies on the ground beneath her. I blink a few times while I watch this little girl act out a scene from the cartoonRugrats. I push my cart a little closer to her before darting my eyes around the empty aisle in search of her parents or anyone that might be responsible for her.

“Do you need some help?” I ask her.

She turns her head in my direction and looks at me from over the top of pink heart-shaped sunglasses.“No, I got it!” she says with a tiny strain in her voice as she climbs up another shelf in her quest for a box at the top.

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