Page 45 of Nanny for the Mercenaries

“Dinner is ready whenever you guys are,” I said.

The guys went upstairs to shower, but not before Jordy darted into the kitchen and gave me a quick kiss before Kaylee could see. Archer was watching from the hallway, and gave a little smile at the sight.

When they came down ten minutes later, Harrison wasn’t with them. “He went right to bed,” Jordy explained as we sat down at the table.

“He doesn’t want dinner?” I asked.

Archer grabbed the serving spoon. “I trust Harrison to decide what order he wants to fulfill his basic needs. Don’t worry—he won’t starve.”

“Daddy says he’s like a bear,” Kaylee happily announced. “Sometimes he needs to hibernate when he’s really tired!”

“It was a long day,” Jordy told me.

We ate while Kaylee explained all the fun we had on our tour of Istanbul. “And you felt safe the whole time?” Archer asked.

I nodded. “Perfectly safe. And not just because Mehmet was with us the entire time. Although there was one moment where I felt like I was being watched. Probably paranoia.”

“If I was a local, I’d watch you too,” Jordy said with a secret little wink over Kaylee’s head.

After dinner, the guys took over playing with Kaylee, so I grabbed my Kindle and curled up on the couch. Archer eyed my eReader and teasingly rolled his eyes. I glared back at him; I wasn’t even reading Twilight right now.

A little bit later, Kaylee came over and tugged on my sleeve. “Want to play Dutch Blitz with us?”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“I’ll show you! It’sso much fun.”

I joined the three of them at the kitchen table, which had been cleaned away to make room for a special deck of cards. Kaylee explained how to play—with the help of her two dads. It was like a combination of Uno and Solitaire, where the objective was to stack cards together to gain points. Except it was done quickly and all at the same time, which made it a little chaotic.

Jordy and Archer played slowly for Kaylee’s benefit, and I mimicked their speed as well. The game was simple and fun, and each round only lasted a few minutes. After a few rounds, I felt my competitive nature kicking in, and I had to remind myself to slow down to give Kaylee a chance.

In one of the later rounds, I grabbed one of my cards—a red six—and quickly placed it on top of a red five in the middle of the table. Archer tried to do the same thing, but was half a second too slow, and slapped his own red six down on top of mine. We made eye contact and laughed, but his hand lingered on top of mine for a few seconds before he removed it.

Stop it, I told myself.It doesn’t matter if he had a crush on me at the gym. I slept with Jordy. I’ve made my choice.

But I couldn’t help but remember what Archer had said about the Twilight love triangle, and I wondered if he was trying to hint at something…

19

Trish

We tucked Kaylee into bed and came back downstairs to play a round of Dutch Blitz with just the adults. It was alotmore fast-paced with just the three of us, and I soon learned that Archer was very competitive.

“He hates losing,” Jordy whispered to me, although he said it loudly so the Englishman could hear. “Puts him in a terrible mood.”

“My mood is just fine,” Archer replied curtly while shuffling his cards between rounds.

“Hey, speaking of moods,” I said. “When we were texting today, you suddenly cut off. That wasn’t because of anything I said, right?”

Jordy sat up straighter. “You were texting? But you made us hand over our SIM cards!”

“I connected using WIFI and a VPN,” Archer replied.

“You see?” Jordy said to me. “How the rules only apply to us and not him?”

“I do not understand why you are complaining. You and Harrison spent the entire day training Ukrainians. There was no time for texting.”

“We had a few breaks!” Jordy complained.

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