Page 2 of Nanny for the Mercenaries

“Oh, it’sopenall right,” Lisa whispered under her breath.

I shot her a look and said, “It’s all yours. We’re sharing this one.”

Brownie gave me a big smile that made his entire face light up. He had deep brown eyes to match his hair, intense and kind at the same time, and his hair was thick and luscious. I had never been so attracted to a man’s hair before meeting this guy. I wondered what it would feel like between my fingers.

Stop it,I told myself.We’re all here to workout. Not think dirty thoughts.

Three eighty?” Blondie said to his buddy in a smooth English accent. I didn’t know the individual kinds of English accents, but I did know that his was the sexy kind.

“Three eighty-five,” Brownie replied. “Going for a new five-rep max.”

It was impossible not to watch the two of them out of the corner of my eye as they gathered the iron plates and slid them onto the bar. When I picked up a thirty-five-pound plate, it took all of my strength and focus. But these guys hefted the forty-fives with one hand like they weighed nothing.

It’s okay to watch a little bit, I told myself.

“Sorry for getting distracted earlier,” Lisa told me while she did her next set of squats. Now that the guys were next to us, she looked like she was doing the squats extra slowly to make her ass stick out as long as possible. “I asked about your job. No long-term prospects?”

“Nothing. Not even a glimmer of hope,” I replied. “I’ve given up on my dream of becoming an au pair in France. I would be happy with a long-term nanny job anywhere in North Carolina. Or South Carolina. Or even Virginia.”

“Are you being too picky with your clients?” Lisa asked. She re-racked the weight and hung on the bar. “I know you prefer to take care of just one child at a time…”

I shook my head. “I’ve loosened all of my preferences. Still no prospects.”

“I might be able to get you a temp job at the shelter,” Lisa said. “There’s a surprising amount of administrative work involved. We usually hire grad students out of UNC Wilmington, but…”

“Thanks, but I’ll stick it out,” I said. “In the meantime, being a barista isn’t so bad.”

“That’s not what you said two days ago.”

“Two days ago was an especially bad day,” I replied defensively. “They’re not all like that.” The excuse sounded weak in my ears, and Lisa gave me a pitying look.

We stopped talking and focused on our workouts. Blondie and Brownie chatted about some international crisis in Venezuela. But eventually the subject changed to something that piqued my interest.

“Don’t know what we’re going to do about Kaylee,” Brownie said.

Kaylee, I thought with a pang of jealousy. My gym crush had a girlfriend, and that was absolutely unacceptable.

“Kaylee will learn to accept it,” Blondie said in his posh accent.

Brownie shook his head. “You know what happened last year. She says she likes the summer camp, but then she misses us after a few days. If we’re gone for longer, it will bebad. She’ll get kicked out in the first week. Then what?”

“We will cross that bridge when we come to it, won’t we?”

Summer camp. Kaylee wasn’t his girlfriend—it was the little girl! I stood up a little bit straighter knowing my crush might still be single.

Brownie ducked under the bar and began doing squats. The weight was so heavy that the bar seemed to bend a little bit from the plates. His legs engaged powerfully as he pushed the weight back up into the starting position, sweat glistening on his neck and shoulders as he re-racked the bar and rounded on the other man.

“You always have a hard-on for logistics. But you’re not worrying aboutthisproblem at all.”

“I have learned to only worry about that which I can control. You do not give her enough credit. She can be quite independent when she needs to be.”

“She needs her fathers,” Brownie insisted, lowering his voice a little bit.

Next to me, Lisa groaned softly. “Damnit.”

“What?” I whispered back.

She leaned close to me so they couldn’t hear. “Fathers,plural.They’re gay, Trish. Should’ve known they were too good to be true.”

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