Page 5 of Nanny for the Wolf Daddy

She made a steaming bowl of mashed carrots and peas for Violet while she and Nox ate potatoes, cooked carrots, and chicken thighs. Everything had a lovely seasoning to it, though Nox wished he was biting into an entirely different set of thighs.

Quit it! I need to focus!

Violet ate her dinner happily and seemed to be responding to Kelli even more than earlier. Kelli would encourage Violet to try some veggies, and the child would do her disco moves to dodge the spoon, but Kelli was firm and got the bit into the mouth of the wiggling wonder. Nox watched them interact, feeling not only his wolf grunting with desire for her carnal touch but for something else too. Something else that made his heart glow.

“Do you have kids of your own?” Nox nearly blurted out the question to distract himself from the surging rumination inside his mind. She smiled at him after giving Violet the final spoonful of her dinner.

It was a sarcastic, knowing smile, a show of attitude that only made Nox want her even more acutely.

“No, actually,” she said. “I love kids, though, as you may have guessed. I started the company so I can set up the proper people to give the right kind of care my clients need.”

She wiped Violet’s mouth of orange and green stains, the little girl’s eyes dropping with fatigue from the day’s events.

“Boyfriend? Girlfriend?” Nox said, jamming chicken into his gob.

Kelli let out a cute snicker, that signature smirk never leaving her bewitching face.

“No, neither of those,” she said, looking away from him. “My work is pretty much my life. I love it so much I don’t think there is much that I would put before it.”

Nox continued to jam food into his gullet in an attempt to stop himself from saying anything stupid. He didn’t want to drive her away. He also wasn’t used to the idea of a woman being driven away by him at all. Usually, money spoke louder than manners, in his world at least.

Kelli handed Violet a toy block that she had enjoyed playing with earlier, and the child snatched it away from her with excitement. Kelli laughed again, that chorus of angels singing from the ether.

“You used to do this full-time, right?” Nox asked.

Kelli turned to him, those deep irises making his heart skip a bit.

“Yes, I did it for a while before creating my own company. I often felt like there was a personal element missing from the match-ups that I wanted to introduce to the business.”

Nox had finished his meal, and Kelli picked at hers, one hand always glued to Violet. It was clear that the woman had a way with children and genuinely enjoyed being around them.

“Would you want your own someday?” Nox asked.

“Of course,” Kelli said without hesitation. “That’s something that has always been a dream of mine.”

A silence took over the kitchen, the only sound a hushed breathing from Violet’s tiny nose. They both looked over to see that she had fallen asleep in the highchair, her toy block pinned between the nape of her neck and the chair back.

“What a sweetheart,” Kelli crooned. “I’m going to get her to bed.”

Nox launched upward, nearly knocking over the chair he had been sitting in. “I will do that,” he proclaimed. “You finish eating.”

Kelli cocked an eyebrow at him, which was inadvertently sexy. “Are you sure you can do that?”

Nox pursed his lips at her, then delicately lifted Violet out of the chair like he was picking up a feather. She rested against his chest without a peep.

“You’ve taught me a thing or two already,” Nox whispered.

At that moment, Kelli looked up at him from the table, her strong legs crossed, and let out that heavenly laugh that told Nox he was in deep trouble.

FOUR

KELLI

Kelli figured out quite quickly that Nox had become taken with her. She was a woman, after all, and knowing whether a man was attracted to her had been a sixth sense obtained through years of disrespect and misunderstandings. She was a woman with a generous body who also happened to run her own business and had a brain in her skull.

She spent the next few days taking care of Violet, who was initially shy but came around to her quickly while waiting on another nanny to replace her. She had her business to run, and although she was enjoying the change of pace (it had been years since she’d done any nanny-ing herself), the agency needed her, and only her, to keep the cogs running smoothly.

Kelli spent most of her time taking care of the little girl, which turned out to be rather easy and rewarding. She would feed her in the morning, have some playtime, a snack, lunch, nap time (when she would usually speak to Nox), more playtime, dinner, a bit of TV if she wanted, then time for bed. It was all very structured in her mind, but having Nox there turned out to be a bit of a monkey wrench thrown into her standard work methods.

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