Page 34 of Nanny for the Mercenaries

He stared off. “Ehh. I don’t really feel like talking about it, if that’s all right.”

“Yeah, no, of course.” I glanced over at him in the dark. His face was a dark outline against the window behind him. “Can I ask you something else?”

“Sure. Is it about Kaylee’s mom?”

“No, actually. I was going to ask if you made Harrison apologize to me yesterday.”

He snorted. “Harrison was a dick to you. That pisses me off. I chewed him out afterward. But no, I didn’t make him apologize. He’s about as soft as a bowling ball, but sometimes he does realize when he’s fucked up.”

“That’s good,” I said. “I was surprised when he did it. But I appreciated the gesture, whether you made him do it or not.”

“Nope, that was all him.”

We fell silent for a few moments.

“Can I ask you something else?” I said.

“Hit me.”

“It’s about Kaylee’s mom.”

Jordy chuckled. “I knew you were wondering about that.”

“I wasn’t going to ask, but you brought it up. Where’s her mom? I know she calls all of you daddy, but which one of you is her biological father?”

“None of us, actually.”

I gave a start. “Really?”

“Back it 2014, Harrison and I were stationed just outside Sevastopol. Big port city on the Crimean Peninsula. The US, Great Britain, and Ukraine were holding joint training exercises. Nothing official, most of it under the table to keep from upsetting certain powers in the region. We were in the middle of a training run when Russia decided to invade.”

“Oh no.”

“Mmm hmm. Big time oh no. Invasions are, to put it in technical terms, giant clusterfucks. For the first four hours, nobody knew what was going on. We were attached to a Ukrainian unit that was redeployed to protect the port. It would create an international incident if anyone from NATO were involved in any direct combat against Russian troops, so we had to quickly break off and go our own way once night fell. The city was chaotic as we tried to make our way to our extraction point. The power grid failed. Rockets were landing throughout the city. Whole city blocks just wiped out, nothing but rubble. And we’re passing one of those blocks when we hear a baby crying inside a shop. This thing is screaming its head off. Horrible sound. Made my bones ache. Harrison and I run inside and find it all alone in a basket. Half the shop has collapsed, and the other half looks like it’s about to. So Harrison grabs the baby and carries her the rest of the way to the extraction zone.

“We get there,” he continued, “and it’s an RAF helicopter. British. We’re the last ones on. And the unit commander is this posh asshole who tells us to leave the baby behind.”

I put my hand over my mouth. “Oh my God.”

Jordy gave a wry chuckle. “Harrison didnotlike that. He drew his sidearm and threatened to smoke the commander right there. Big standoff happened, neither of them would back down. Rockets are landing in the city while this is going on, explosions so powerful they made my teeth hurt, even from miles away. Finally, the helicopter pilot turns around and tells his commander that he’s not taking off unless the baby is on board. The commander relented, and we flew back to a base in Romania.”

“And the baby was Kaylee? What happened after that?”

“The baby was indeed Kaylee,” he said. “And when the helicopter landed, the commander had the MPs—Military Police—take all three of us into custody. Me, Harrison, and the pilot. NATO forces weren’t really supposed to be in Crimea at the time, so Harrison and I were given phony medical discharges. That kept everything under the table. And as part of it, they found a way to create a fake birth certificate for her. I don’t really know all the details of how it works, but I’m her adoptive father on paper. Harrison and I moved back to Wilmington and got a place together, and for a while we just focused on raising Kaylee. Figuring out what to do.”

I giggled. “I bet that was an experience.”

“You have no idea.” He laughed with me. “Harrison’s sister came to visit and helped show us the ropes. After a few months, we got the hang of things. And then one day we got a call from the RAF helicopter pilot who stood up to the commander. A guy named Archibald Caspian. He was discharged for the whole thing, too, and wanted to visit to see the little girl he had tanked his career for. He was only supposed to stay for a day, but he couldn’t leave. He fell in love with that little girl, like Harrison and I had. That’s when he told us about an opportunity with the Mathos Company, working as mercenaries. We signed up that very week, and the rest is history.”

“I’ll be honest,” I said, “when I was wondering about Kaylee’s situation, I never in a million years would have guessed all ofthat. I just assumed one of you was the father, and the mom was out of the picture.”

I couldn’t see him in the darkness, but I could hear the smile in his voice. “Yep, it’s a complicated situation. But eight years later, I’m happier than I ever thought I could be. I wouldn’t change anything for the world. Even though I’m the guy with the name on her birth certificate, Harrison and Archer are her father just as much as me. None of us more than any other. We’re our own weird little mercenary family.”

He trailed off, and I thought about how sweet that all was. They were the most unconventional family I’d ever heard of, but it made me so happy that they had found a way to make it work.

“Granted, it’s tough to have normal lives,” Jordy added. “Having a daughter makes it tough to date. Or at least,tougher. Lots of women don’t want to get involved with a man who already had a child, to say nothing of the complications of adding two other men into the mix. Archer dated a woman a few years ago who was madly in love with him, but didn’t like the idea of him sharing a daughter with us. In the end, Archer chose us over her, but it stung for a while.” The bed shifted as he shook his head. “Kaylee keeps us grounded, though. We rarely select dangerous missions because of her. It feels different when we’re potentially leaving behind a daughter if anything bad happens. That’s tough, because the highest-paying jobs are always the most dangerous ones. That’s why we’re doing these three jobs back-to-back. To fill our accounts for several years and give us some breathing room to be more selective with missions. Maybe we’ll have the flexibility to quit altogether.”

He let out a long sigh. “I’ve talked your ear off. Sorry about that.”

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