Page 1 of Her Christmas Harem

Chapter One

“EMALEE, COULD YOU COME into my office, please?” Alexander Bartholomew called to her as he stopped in the doorway of the massive playroom.

Em paused from where she was clearing away the clutter from the children’s afternoon craft session. “Sure. Just give me ten minutes to finish cleaning up,” she replied to her boss - well, one of her three bosses - with a nod as she scrubbed glue off of the table.

The weather was frigid and icy but without any of the charm of snow. Just a miserable sleet that had started cold and slushy, then frozen and turned the roads into ice rinks, so nobody had wanted to go out.

That was fine with her though. Em and the children had just as much fun doing Christmas crafts.

Kira, Axel and Alex junior, and little Nicky loved having the opportunity to make special gifts for their billionaire fathers who already had everything money could possibly buy.

Well, to be fair, that was mostly Kira, since the boys, aged five and three were really too young to understand. They just liked to make a mess.

Kira though, apart from being the only girl in the group, was eleven - very nearly twelve - and she was as sharp as a tack. Understanding, Em suspected, very much more than her father gave her credit for.

Standing up, Em took one last look around the playroom before heading towards Alexander’s office.

Although she may technically be nanny to three sets of children, and their fathers were generous enough to pay her three sets of wages, it was in this house, with Axel and Alex, that she’d started, when the twins had been newborn.

Of course, Rebecca had been alive then, and Em’s role had been a very different one; solely to support the couple with their double handful while they were finding their feet as new parents, and while Rebecca went through the delayed treatment for non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

It was never even supposed to be a permanent position. Just a stop gap while Em procrastinated on what she wanted to do with her life after she’d received her diploma in Health and Social Care.

But as Rebecca’s health had deteriorated, Emalee had taken on more and more of their care. Not just the twins, but Rebecca’s as she slipped into the torturous decline of the aggressive blood cancer for which she had chosen to forego treatment whilst pregnant because of the danger to her babies.

But the truth was, Em had never been more grateful that her chosen route of education allowed her to be there for her friend during such a difficult period.

At the same time, Alexander was trying his best to juggle his company, the twins, and his wife’s illness.

It had been then that he’d asked his good friend, Kyros Kamaras, and his cousin, Coll Neversen to help out with the business, so Xander had more time.

But time and tide waited for no man, and no amount of money was enough to stop the disease from ravaging Rebecca’s body. Before Alex and Axel were a year old, Emalee’s old school friend had lost her fight.

Of course, there was no way Em could abandon Xander when he was grieving his wife and still had eight-month-old twin boys to care for. So, while he threw himself into his business to help cope with his grief, as well as to claw back the time he’d been away from it, Em had become both Nanny and housekeeper.

When Kyros’s wife, Selene, decided she wanted to return to Greece, but didn’t want the responsibility of a child and had suggested boarding school for the little girl, something Kira had been understandably upset about, it had seemed only natural that Em look after the then seven-year-old Kira. And it wasn’t long after that Ky moved into the west wing of Xander’s huge mansion house to make things easier for everyone.

Coll had joined them most recently. The playboy billionaire had his life turned upside down when one of his many conquests left a two-week-old baby on his doorstep - almost literally!

She’d been a one-night stand Coll didn’t even remember the name of, but a paternity test proved he was the baby boy’s father and Coll had stepped up to the role.

Which meant Emalee had stepped in as Nanny.

Not immediately. Coll had gone through at least three others before Xander had broached the subject with Em, and as it happened, she’d been about to offer regardless.

The first two nannies had just had their eyes on nabbing a rich man and thought Coll’s baby was the ideal way to get close to him. Em could live with that, even though it upset her that the poor child didn’t have the stability he deserved.

But the final one...

When the secret nanny-cams Coll hid after a drastic change in little Nicky’s behavior showed that the latest nanny - a guy Coll had hired to avoid the same issues as the previous two - was neglecting the poor mite; leaving him to scream for hours without being fed or changed while he enjoyed the finer things in Coll’s home like the spa pool, sauna, state of the art gym, or the home cinema, Em couldn’t take any more.

So, when Xander had asked if she was up to being nanny to a fourth child, Em agreed without pause, even though it meant the addition of a six-month-old baby to the three-year-old twins who were already a lot of work. Thankfully Kira was almost ten and she liked to help in her own little way. Although Emalee strongly suspected Kira liked to make herself indispensable in an effort to avoid the threat of boarding school in Greece which Selene continued to hold over the poor child whenever she visited.

And that was how Emalee Timber had accumulated four children whom she loved like they were her own. And, especially in the case of the boys, was the closest thing they’d ever known to a mother.

She was paid handsomely for her work, far more than any regular nanny, even though it was really no work at all. She’d have done it at a fraction of the income too, because to Em, there really were things that were more important in life than money, and for her it was the children.

And right now, approaching Christmas, was the very best time of year. A time for fun and family.

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