Page 4 of Falling for the Nanny

I couldn’t argue with that, as much as I wanted to. And if I were Mrs. Barnes’ daughter, I’d pull rank, too. You couldn’t find a better person to take care of your child. I would never be able to replace her.

Mrs. Barnes said she’d help me find someone to fill her role. I told her it would be impossible, but she was welcome to try.

“I’ll find someone,” she said determinedly, wiping away the last of her tears. “Lily needs someone young anyway. Someone who can help her navigate social situations and has enough energy to keep up with her now that she’s in second grade. Not an old lady like me.”

“I want an old lady exactly like you,” I corrected. I didn’t like the idea of some teenybopper twentysomething taking care of Lily. I wanted someone solid, staid, and grandmotherly.

“She needs a mother figure.” Mrs. Barnes rose to her feet, nodding as if she was agreeing with herself.

She certainly wasn’t agreeing with me. She didn’t even seem to hear me when I said again, louder this time. “I don’t want someone young. Lily has a mother.”

Mrs. Barnes had never said a bad word against my ex. She’d just taken up the slack when Chloe left, going from full time to live-in as if that had been the plan all along. I’d heard her murmur, just once, “Who could leave a precious thing like you?” into Lily’s hair when Lily had fallen asleep in her lap. Mrs. Barnes sniffed now though, then she said with sudden seriousness, “Mr. King, Lily is going to need you more than ever once I move to California.

“Me?” I repeated, my eyebrows lowering. “She has me.”

Mrs. Barnes leveled an uncharacteristically stern look at me, like I was Lily and I was telling her that I definitely had not eaten a cookie without permission and I didn’t know how I’d gotten chocolate smeared across my face. I squelched the urge to swipe my hand guiltily across my mouth to make sure there was no evidence. I was a grown man for fucks sake. I paid this woman’s salary. She couldn’t intimidate me.

“She’s going to need more of you,” Mrs. Barnes said sternly. “She has to become your priority.”

“She is my priority,” I snapped. No one on the planet was more important to me than my daughter. I worked my ass off to give her the life she deserved.

Mrs. Barnes’ gaze didn’t soften. “Lily doesn’t need you to make another million-dollar bonus, David. She needs you to make her breakfast in the morning and help her with her homework after dinner.”

“I can do both.”

“Maybe. But if you have to choose…” she trailed off meaningfully.

“Then obviously I’ll choose her.” I could hear the snap still in my voice, and I was impressed by Mrs. Barnes’ ability to stare me down. I’d broken the gazes of a dozen hard bitten characters with that tone of voice.

“See that you do,” she said finally, and swept from the room.

I stared after her, wondering if I had just lost a stare down for the first time in my life. Then, unwillingly, her message trickled deeper into my brain.

Had I always chosen Lily?

I contemplated it for an uncomfortable minute, then shoved it away. Hell yes I’d always chosen her. I’d done so by making sure she had the best damn nanny in the country, and now I’d make sure she had the second best.

Another nice grandmotherly figure like Mrs. Barnes.

CHAPTER 3

CAT

On Saturday morning, I sat at my dining room table with an Excel sheet open on the computer in front of me and the calculator app open on my phone and realized that I was screwed. I didn’t need Parker to tell me that there was no way to make the numbers add up.

If I got a place alone with the jobs I had now, I’d have to work at least ten more hours a week. More in the winter months when business slowed down at the bar. If I got a new roommate, it would have to be a random off Craigslist, so I’d have to factor in the cost of being murdered. If I moved back home, I’d have to cash in my dignity. And if I followed my mom’s advice and just became a teacher already, well, same price. Plus, I’d probably still need my bartending job to make ends meet.

Defeated, I pushed my computer back and dropped my forehead onto the table. Alyssa found me like that twenty minutes later when she came out of her room. I was grateful that Parker hadn’t spent the night last night. If he came out with his smug, I’m-a-morning-person smirk, I’d have had to kill him, and I definitely couldn’t afford a decent lawyer.

Still, I raised my head to say tetchily, “What, no Parker? I thought you guys were inseparable now.”

Alyssa rolled her eyes and flicked me on the forehead as she passed. “You’re clearly up too early, Cat.” She paused to look at what I was doing on my laptop and the corners of her mouth tucked down. “Is that seriously all you make at Tiny Tykes?”

“Little Tykes,” I corrected, “and yes. It is.”

“That’s…” Alyssa searched for a nice way to say it as she pulled the blender out from the cabinet.

“Pennies, I know.” I dropped my head back to the wood composite IKEA table we’d gotten when we were both poor. Before Alyssa’s degree had translated into six figures and great benefits and mine had translated into…I wasn’t sure. Satisfaction?

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