Page 2 of Nanny for the Wolf Daddy

“The footprints,” Roland said, “the paw prints disappear, and in their place are tire tracks.”

Nox, at his desk, gave up on a happy Violet who was using his flat screen as a canvas.

“What is your assessment, Roland?” he said sharply.

“It’s clear they’ve been taken,” he replied. “We found their phones, as well, tossed near the tire tracks.”

Why didn’t you fucking say that first?

Nox heaved out a sigh, his heart surging more with frustration than fear. He loved his brother and sister-in-law dearly, but they were strong shifters and could take care of themselves.

He looked at Violet, laughing hysterically as she circled the room on her wobbly legs, smearing snot on the spines of books on the lower shelves. He couldn’t deal with this for a longer period of time.

“Sniff around a bit,” Nox finally said. “Then report back to me. I’ll have to make some calls in the morning.”

“Yes, sir,” Roland said.

That night, after attempting to feed Violet a dinner of buttered bread and water, Nox cleaned off her sticky fingers and laid her on his bed beside him. He had guest rooms, of course, but he figured she was entirely too young to sleep alone. Plus, he could keep an eye on her all night if he needed to.

That proved to also be a colossal mistake as Violet ... still hyped from the cookies ... rolled around and jumped on his mattress like it was a bouncy castle. He tried to calm her multiple times, then resorted to turning on the TV to help her doze away the sugar.

He woke to her sticky hands patting his face and yelling, “morning!” in a cheerful squeal. He didn’t want to know what made them sticky.

“Good god,” Nox muttered.

He begged his maid Ramona to watch the child while he ran errands. She cringed but accepted begrudgingly.

Nox planned to visit the nanny agency in town, where he would demand someone be hired ASAP. He couldn’t have the little girl harassing him while hunting down his brother and sister-in-law. Even worse was the idea of having her around while he worked or maybe even when he entertained women.

The latter wasn’t something he had done much of anyway, but he needed quiet to run his business. Thus he needed his mansion to be childfree.

When he entered the agency, he demanded without cordiality that they send him someone, anyone, to his address as his situation was urgent and as grim as they came.

TWO

KELLI

Kelli Wells owned the Loving Care Nanny Agency, and she adored working there, also. She didn’t have children of her own, so her clients were surrogates. She often thought of her company as a dating agency; she set up the right nannies with the right children whose lives would be enhanced by the presence and loyalty of the caregiver.

But today, as she waited for her coffee, she gazed out the window of the one cafe in the little town she resided in. She adored her job and the career she’d constructed for herself, but sometimes, she thirsted for adventure. Something that got her blood pumping. Something that would make her feelalive.

Lost in a dream world, she was startled when her cell phone rang. Kelli frowned when she saw the area code of the call was from the Smoky Mountains ... wolf shifter territory. Her company didn’t advertise to that region, so who was calling from there?

She pressed the button and heard the gruff, inpatient snarl on the other end of the phone.

“Hello,” Kelli said pleasantly.

“Yeah, yeah, is this Kelli Wells?” the shifter huffed.

“It indeed is.”

“I got your number from Loving Care something or the other,” he said, speaking a mile a minute. “They said no nannies are available right now. That simply won’t do.”

Kelli hadn’t known many shifters in her life, but what she had learned from others was that they were aggressive as the hellfire they’d emerged from. Kelli prided herself on being the polite, flexible employer that she was, but she also could be firm and stern when the situation required it.

She arched her back against the seat as she prepared herself for a sugared reply.

“That is correct,” Kelli said. “We don’t take clients on the spot, Mister …”

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