Page 12 of Whatever Whispers
Or two.
I thought that once I sat down to have lunch with her, I could bring up the glaring topics for discussion, or at least steer her in the direction of bringing them up herself.
Nope.
I don’t remember any part of anything we talked about aside fromlet me feed you because apparently I’m a caveman nowandhey, be my nanny.
Everything else is white noise in my brain outside of helping her with her assignment. I immediately felt bad for the shitty response I initially gave her, but Sienna had been climbing me like a spider monkey while I graded work and responded to emails that evening.
I spent the other forty-five minutes at the coffeehouse forcing myself to not say any of the things I really wanted to.
Let me drop the kid off at Grammy’s real quick and we can go for a walk. We could maybe sit too close to one another on a park bench? Talk about forensic assessment and the intricacies of eyewitness testimony? I could take you for drinks after? Go back to my place and strap you to my headboard with my favorite belt?
And god,her skin.
So flawless and taut, it was practically begging me to fuck it up.
I've always had the urge to mark my partners, but the feeling has never been as intense as it is with her. The only person I've ever confided in about this is my best friend, Ezra, who happens to be a psychologist. Naturally, he's tried to analyze what kind of damage might have caused me to feel this way, but I’m not sure there actuallyisany damage.
A person can have non-typical kinks without being fucked in the head.
I don’t know what I am right now other than inexplicablygonefor this woman.
Sienna splashes water in my face from the sink where I’m giving her her nightly bath, pulling me from the thoughts that have been playing on repeat in my mind since yesterday afternoon. At almost nine months old, she’s almost too big for sink baths, and I don’t like the feeling I get in the pit of my stomach when I think about how much she’s grown.
I’ve gone through the interview process with more potential nannies than I care to discuss, and not a single fucking one of them did I feel comfortable leaving my kid with for any extended amount of time.
I know it’s a fat chance that anyone I hire will compare to my mom, but every time I come home from work, I find her more exhausted than the day before. Neither of us want to admit it, but she’s a little beyond her prime. While it’s fine for her to babysit occasionally, acting as a full time nanny just isn’t in the cards for her for much longer.
Sienna squeezes her rubber ducky, squeaking it twice before chucking it at my head and hitting me square between the eyes.
“Oh-kay, bedtime for you, little bear.” I drain the water and wrap her up in the towel I sat aside on the counter, and shemakes the growly noise that prompted me to give her that nickname in the first place.
She kicks like a little maniac as I carry her up the stairs to her room where I dress her for bed and settle in to rock her to sleep.
Her eyes are growing heavy when my phone buzzes. I take it out of my pocket, expecting it to be another email from a student asking some stupid question that they’d know the answer to if they bothered opening their syllabus.Maybe I am the dick Quinn thinks I am.
Instead, it’s my friend Stu, which causes me to roll my eyes just as hard.
Stu:Did you ask her out yet?
I haven’t admitted to him that I have the hots for my potential new nanny, but somehow he knows anyway.
Jack:No I haven’t asked her out.
Jack:And I’m not going to so feel free to give it a rest.
Stu:Can I ask her out, then?
Resounding no.
He’s fully aware of how attractive she is since he and the other third of our trio—my best friend Ezra—have both helped me stalk the shit out of her the last few days to make sure she’s the safest fit for our girl. Just because she makes my dick hard doesn’t mean I would ever blindly trust her or anyone else with Sienna.
Fuck that.
All we found was that she has a pristine background check aside from a few parking tickets. She’s nannied for multiple of my former colleagues who all sing her praises, and she’s CPR certified. She spends most of her free time either with her dog or in the school library, often with her best friend Kruz.
The only red flag is that she majors in forensic psychology and still has a habit of walking alone at night, particularly through the cemetery, as if she’s completely unaware andunafraid of the potential danger in that—especially after all this shit with her dad.
