Page 41 of The Nanny Goal

She tips her head back, her throat working on a silent cackle, and my smile falls away as I stare at the long, creamy expanse of her neck.

Intense, visceral need claws at the inside of my chest.

The microwave beeps.

“I’m going to move Inessa to her bed,” I say quickly, before striding into the living room, leaving my off-limits temptation behind me.

My daughter is curled up in the corner of the sectional, a favourite blanket tucked in all around her.

Her hair smells like shampoo, and she’s in clean PJs. The living room might look like a bomb went off in it, and they might not have made it back upstairs, but Emery did better than I would have on my own tonight.

“To bed we go,” I murmur in Russian.

Inessa rolls into my chest with ease and doesn’t wake up as I carry her upstairs, not even when I put her down in her little princess bed.

I leave her door open and close the baby gate at the top of the stairs before returning to the kitchen. I tell myself I don’t need the baby monitor. I’m just going to eat really quickly, maybe find out where Emery got that newfound confidence, and then crash in my own bed.

And perhaps leaving the monitor upstairs is a little insurance that I don’t do something stupid, like crowd her against the counter and kiss her neck until she laughs for me again.

But it’s not necessary.

When I get back to the kitchen, the meatballs are on the counter, my emergency back up babysitter is gone, and the basement door is firmly closed.

My pulse hammers thick and heavy in my neck.

I need to be careful here. Emery is the best childcare option I have, and step one here has to be convincing her to stay for the next few weeks. But if she says yes, then the last thing I can do is let any latent chemistry spark between us.

The way she split is almost definitely a sign that chemistry is one-sided, anyway.

Fuck.

I grab a fork.

The meatballs are fucking delicious.

She survived a day with my tiny hurricane of a child, and she cooks like a goddess. Nothing else matter. The more boundaries I build around my worst instincts the better.

CHAPTER14

EMERY

I expect to have a rough night of sleep, but to my surprise, I fall asleep quickly. Maybe having two locked doors between me and Alexei is enough to maintain the crucial distance I need to keep this relationship professional.

When I go upstairs in the morning, the house is still quiet.

I decide to make muffins for breakfast, because yesterday it was one of the pictures on Pinterest Inessa got excited about, and Maria has frozen bananas.

I set the oven to pre-heat, then dig out Alexei’s binder from the team with his nutrition plan. While I can’t read the Cyrillic writing on the Post-it notes Maria has added, I understand the basics of his needs. I have a lifetime of experience eating and cooking around and towards pro hockey players. This part, I can do with my eyes closed.

I pull the protein pancake batter I made out of the fridge and get a cast iron griddle heating up, too.

The muffins have just gone into the oven when I hear footsteps upstairs. Water runs. It stays on long enough that I picture Alexei in the shower—unhelpful.

After ten minutes, footsteps move from one end of the house to the other, and there’s low murmurs, off and on.

I hate how my heart rate picks up, anticipating seeing Alexei this early in the morning. I try not to imagine what his hair might look like fresh out of the shower, glinting like obsidian under the kitchen’s pot lights.

I have my professional private chef smile on when he finally shows up. He’s carrying a sleepy-looking Inessa, but he looks wide awake—and yes, freshly showered.

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