Page 117 of The Nanny Goal

Her smile is a thousand kilowatts bright. “Yep.”

“Feed it to me.”

“Alexei, let the poor girl finish her work,” my mother says.

And that’s when I remember we aren’t alone.

Emery’s cheeks turn pink as I pick up the delicate finger sandwich, topped with a few pickled onions.

It’s. Fucking. Amazing.

“Stop moaning,” she whispers. Then she lifts her voice. “Your borscht is ready.”

“Good. I’m starving.”

And then, because my mother has turned her attention back to her task at the table, I slap Emery on the ass.

She jumps and whirls around, and the bright eyes and pink cheeks are everything I’ve ever wanted in a response. “What was that for?”

“For making everything better. Just like sunshine.”

* * *

After sandwiches, they move on to decorating sugar cookies. I’m given the task of moving decorated cookies to drying racks—and also keeping Inessa’s icing-covered fingers away from the official cookies for the party.

She’s got her own little batch that she has free range to decorate as she wants, which is…lots of icing. All the colours.

But there are limits for little girls, and she tires of the project long before Emery and my mom are done.

“Is this a sign we need to go to the park?” I try to wipe her hands and face, but she has icing in her hair, and she needs a change of clothes, too. “Come on, little one. You’re a mess. We’ll get cleaned up, andthenwe’ll go to the park.”

Upstairs, I strip her down to her diaper, then go into the bathroom she now shares with Emery to get a damp washcloth.

Emery has made the space her own. Makeup, perfume, face cream, hair clips. So many hair clips.

A bright pink hair iron, probably the tool that makes those perfectly smooth waves, catches my eye on a high-up shelf.

And then my gaze slides to a small foil packet next to the iron. It’s something that I haven't seen in this washroom before, and I pick it up before my brain can stop my inappropriate curiosity.

Birth control pills.

I turn the packet over, blood pounding in my ears. Two pills are gone. Her period must have ended the day before yesterday.

I picture Emery standing at the sink, popping one in her mouth, swallowing it down with water before she brushes her teeth in the morning, taking care so that she doesn't accidentally end up a single parent like I have.

Something wild curls in my chest, a sharp, complicated feeling that I have no right to allow to foster.

She isn’tmine, exactly. Not yet. Every time we’re intimate, she makes it clear that she’s leaving. And we haven’t donethisyet. We haven’t neededtheseyet.

Her personal life is her own, I know that, but my fist clenches around the pack, crumpling it in an irrational reaction.

Fuck.

She’s taking these pills to avoid getting pregnant. She’s taking these so she can have a cock inside her and?—

I smooth it as much as I can and put it back on the shelf.

I didn’t miss her all fucking week to lose my mind to irrational jealousy.

---