Page 15 of Nanny for the SEALs

7

Stan

I’d losta total of ten pounds in nearly three weeks. I’d avoided the scales like the plague. Too scared to know how much I weighed, but not anymore. The morning walks have given me a new meaning of life. I remembered from my training days that exercise helped not only with losing weight but with mental illness too, and Lord knows I need help with that. I’d been suffering in silence for far too long.

“Are you going to help me in the kitchen or just stare at me?” Katie asked, as she was busy preparing dinner. She said she was making a meatloaf and using her grandma’s recipe, one which had been passed from generation to generation.

There was something warm about watching a woman in the kitchen, especially in a penthouse in which only men lived. She’d bought little things, which had changed the whole place. It went from looking so sterile to looking like a home.

“Sorry.”

She shook her head. “No, I’m the one who should apologize. We had a deal; I was to do the cooking and you pretend you cooked it.”

When she said it out loud, it sounded weird, even if was the truth.

“Stan. Do you mind me asking you a question?”

I stood, waiting for her to instruct me to cut onions or help her cook. The twins were sleeping, Pete was out catching up with an old friend, and Rick was sleeping after suffering from insomnia and not being able to sleep.

I never suffered from that problem. Once I hit the sack, I slept like a damn baby most of the time. “What is it you want to know?”

“Why do you pretend to cook for them? I’ve seen you with your brothers, and it doesn't seem to be that bad. I mean, why lie?”

I couldn’t tell her the truth… that before she came, we didn’t ever have a meal together, not like now. But I had to tell her something, the question was what?

“No. Sorry, I had no right to ask. It’s like before I came here, I couldn’t remember the last time I cooked, let alone a home meal. It was something, I used to love doing it all the time.”

“What do you need me to do?”

“Chop onions. You know how, right?”

“Sure,” I lied. I didn’t know why I seemed to do it all the time with her, as if I was trying to impress her. Then I would get nervous that she would find out the truth, that she would know I was lying.

I searched in the fridge like a stranger in my own home.

“You don’t spend much time in the kitchen, do you?”

“Yes.”

Shit, there it was again, another lie. I hated myself for doing it. She winked at me, but didn’t respond. We had little time before the twins woke up, and so far, all I was doing was lying and I was in her way. I decided to go back to the stool and just watch her. It was true, I wasn’t watching her to figure out how to cook, but more because I loved watching her body. It was addiction—her butt was the type which curved at the right angle, and I always had the temptation to pinch it.

I noticed her shirt was tighter every week, as if she was putting on more weight. Not that we were in any competition in the weight department, but she was definitely getting more sun than she’d done before moving in with us. Even if she had been in L.A. for over three years, and not only did she have some color on her face, but the rest of her body, too.

I tried not to observe her, but I just couldn’t help myself, she was so addictive. I wondered if like my old obsession with pizza, my new one had converted into Katie.

Her oval lips parted, and then they closed. She wanted to tell me something but she was nervous, so I was going to encourage her, but I didn’t have to as it was clear she’d changed her mind.

“Ben said I shouldn’t cook, because not only did sometimes I cook well, and other times I didn’t, but too much cooking would result in me getting bigger… and he didn’t like big girls.”

“Why did you let him treat you like crap? Everything, you say about him was to make you feel bad about yourself, all the time.”

She shrugged. “At the time, I didn’t see anything wrong with it. I loved his honesty. Sounds nuts right? He would tell me I was fat and I would love it.”

“How could you love it?”

Before the question slipped my mouth, I knew what she was going to say, codependency, which was something I’d been accused of suffering back in the SEALs. When Rick and Pete joined, I’d joined, too. It had nothing to do with wanting to be in the marines, but just being wherever they were all the time. Even if I didn’t fit in and felt like I was the outsider.

She started to cry, “I was alone. Dad had died, and Ben was the only one who didn’t look at me how everyone else did. Poor Katie Baldson, the one who lost her dad. I hated the way people looked at me. Not only kids at school, neighbors, and everyone who knew him. I lost my name, no more was I Katie, but just the one whose dad died. Mom ignored his death as if he didn’t exist. Fine. That was her coping mechanism. But I needed more. So much more….”

She started to cry, and I jumped up to comfort her. I hated the idea that I had brought back the hurt and pain of her past. She didn’t hesitate in wrapping her arms around me. She didn’t hesitate as I wanted to take all her pain away. I cranked my neck and brought my mouth to meet hers. I could hear her heart racing faster and faster as my gentle kiss turned into more. I knew she had an ex, so she had a lot more experience than me. The most I’d done was kiss one girl at the prom, and she told me I was terrible, messy, and I remembered back then having the confidence to try and perfect my kissing. Back then, if someone said something negative to me, I tried to do better. Not like now. My confidence was completely out of the window, and was at an all time low. I knew I was a good kisser, but not perfect. Memories of the confident boy, I used to be entered my mind as I moved from taming my kiss to a soft one. Our bodies rocked back and forth against the workspace.

Then I moved my hand through her hair and down her back. No more was she sobbing, but gently moaning in my mouth. I moved away from her, as I knew I couldn’t contain myself and I would want to take her.

I pulled back, knowing I had to stop.

“Sorry,” I whispered as I walked away. I didn’t give her a chance to respond.

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