Page 6 of Billionaire Babysitter

“Okay,” I say. I have to reassert dominance here. I need them to respect me or at the very least listen. “Look. So, I live alone,okay? And I am very rich. And that means I never have to make my own food.”

“Make food!” babbles Ava. It’s like something from a horror film as she comes up to me, arms outstretched before she plops down at my feet and rams her hand into her mouth. Around her drool-covered fingers she mumbles something else but I can’t even begin to guess what.

Chloe gives her sister a dagger-filled stare, sending her the kind of psychic message only siblings can understand. “Uncle Lucas, can you make pancakes?” she asks sweetly, and the tonal whiplash tricks me into agreeing.

This kid could go far in business. If she wasn’t literally ten, I’d hire her on the spot.

I set them to work finding the ingredients, hoping that they’ll know what they’re looking for as I pull out my phone and stabeasy quick pancake recipeinto a search engine. About a million results come up, so I click the first one and skim over it. Flour, eggs, milk, butter, syrup. The first three, I’m sure I have. How important can butter be, anyway?

“Uncle Lucas,” says Chloe, echoed in nonsense from her sister. “The flour’s up there. I can’t reach.” She points up at a high cupboard that Noah has managed to open by climbing up onto the counter.

He protests as I lift him down but Jason would never forgive me if I broke his children. There is a bag of flour exactly where Chloe said it was, on the top shelf at the back of the cabinet. Weird. I don’t remember putting it there and Yolanda is barely five foot tall. There’s no way she could reach.

I don’t have any more time to ponder it, though, because the fridge door slams shut to be quickly followed by the sound of an egg breaking on the floor.

“Hey!” I snap, maybe a little too sharply because as I turn to look, Noah’s eyes are filling with tears. “Look,” I say, panicking. I throw the flour onto the counter and reach down to grab the eggs from him. “It’s fine, okay? We’ll clean up later.”

Chloe passes me the milk, and I put it on the counter with the flour, which has split and leaked everywhere. I groan. We haven’t even started yet.

“Uncle!” warbles Ava, or at least I’m pretty sure that’s the word she’s aiming for as she wraps her sticky hands around my leg. “Up!”

Her big eyes are the height of coercion and so I cave again, hoisting her up onto the island counter along with the cooking stuff. Chloe taps me on the hip and hands me a mixing bowl, which I put down very slowly. Everyone looks at me expectantly. The recipe just said “combine ingredients,” so I guess that can’t be too hard.

“So, who wants to help?” I ask mildly.

“I want to mix!” says Noah, waving a wooden spoon around that I didn’t know I owned. He slams it into my leg and I wince.

“Great,” I say. “And Chloe, you can measure, yeah?”

She folds her arms. “I couldn’t find any measuring cups.”

“Well… we don’t really need that, do we?”

“Daddy usually uses three eggs,” she says smugly. I guess that’s a start.

I put my phone down on the counter and slam three eggs into the bowl. Considering my lack of practice, I don’t get that much shell in there. Grimacing, I try and pick it out, which is an activity Ava decides she can do too. With all the precision of a missile, she thrusts both palms into the bowl, splashing egg everywhere.

To be safe, I crack another into the bowl.

“Give me a spoon,” I say, not to anyone in particular.

Noah frowns. “But I wanted to stir…”

“Yeah, whatever, you still can. But I need something for the flour.”

I don’t dare turn away from Ava who still has a mischievous glint in her eye. The second I turn my back, chaos is going to unfold. A spoon gets tossed onto the counter but when I pick up the paper bag, it splits more and a heavy dusting of flour pours everywhere except into the bowl.

Finally, I manage to scoop a few spoons into the bowl and give it a small stir. It’s still really sloppy which feels wrong, so I put more flour in and splash in some milk too. “Look, come here,” I say to Noah. “Let me lift you up.”

I deposit him onto the counter and watch as he sets to work with his spoon, slopping what can barely be called a mixture onto the counter where it drips down onto the floor. I share a look with Chloe and for the first time we agree on something. This is a disaster.

Then someone hammers on the door and Chloe isn’t the only one who screams.

CHAPTER 5

SOPHIE

It takes me a moment to recognize Lucas when he answers the door — his bedraggled bed-hair-and-pajamas look making him seem so different that I almost worry I’ve got the wrong place. We stare at each other for a long moment, both clearly having some revelation about the other until finally he sighs in relief. “Sophie, thank God you’re here.”

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