Page 8 of Nanny for My Billionaire

As I mount the stairs, I can still hear him chuckling in the background. What’s so funny, Adam? Let’s see if you’re still laughing when you find out who I am.

Chapter five

Adam

Itmightseemabit counter-intuitive to place a five-star restaurant ten miles away from a major city like Boston along what seems like a back road leading to a few outlying small towns, but in truth the placement of Rudolpho’s is absolute genius. It makes spring and summer the busiest part of the year, but there’s still a solid stream of customers even during the fall and winter and people have to book their tables in advance, at least for the weekend dinner service.

Even in July, when the Patriot Day traffic is long gone, dinner service is six hours long, and each of our table bookings allows a minimum of an hour and a half per party, so our twenty plus servers are still hopping, and the wine steward moves in and out of the wine cellar at a somewhat steady pace to ensure our Italian cuisine is enjoyed to perfection.

It feels great to be able to stand in the kitchen beside my best friend and sous-chef, Dale Kim, who was forced to run the kitchen during my absence. Fortunately, he is an excellent chef in his own right, and fully dedicated to providing the finest food possible at all times.

We also keep several station chefs who specialize in various types of foods, like a dessert station, an appetizer station, a main dish station, and a side-dish station. Most of the food prep is done each morning before the place opens by a staff of fifteen workers who chop and dice and cut and measure the ingredients to perfection so it will be easy to create the meals that have earned us a top-notch reputation.

As the executive chef, my job mostly consists of overseeing each of the cooking stations and creating the special-order menu item for the evening. Usually, it’s a main dish of some kind and we write up the item on a special-order board that we keep in the hosting area.

Tonight is my third night without my dad here, and I’m in a creative groove, so I decide on cheese-stuffed ravioli with bearnaise or marinara, or a combo platter that provides both sauces to the side. The platter is a generous enough portion to be shared by two people.

Dale and I are standing together near the cooking noodles. The ravioli, spaghetti, gnocchi, and other pasta-based foods are all boiled in pots on a heated surface set to a specific temperature, rather than a stove with a certain number of elements, while the sauces are heated on a similar surface nearby, but with a slightly lower temperature so they’ll cook more evenly. Both the pasta and the sauces do require periodic stirring, so I’m stirring the noodles while Dale stirs the sauces as we talk together.

“I don’t know, Adam, ever since you’ve managed to come back to the kitchen there’s just something different about you,” Dale tells me with a sly grin. “I can’t put a finger on whether you’re feeling elated, or if you’ve become grouchier than ever. Maybe you ought to get tested for being bipolar or something.”

I roll my eyes at him. “Dude, I’m as bipolar as they come, if you ask my ex. It’s one of the reasons she sent me packing. Never knew if I’d be glad or mad from one minute to the next. And maybe she has a point.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, take this new nanny I picked up a few days ago,” I admit. “I mean, I’m glad to have Anna on board because it allows me to come and deal with your ugly ass again, and get back to my passion, but she’s—I don’t know, different? I mean, she doesn’t seem like she has a subordinate bone in her body. She takes charge of every room she enters, but in such a way that I’m too impressed by her personality to be pissed that she hasn’t deferred any of that power to me, her employer. Does that even make sense?”

“Is she pushing you around or something?” he asks, confused.

“No, of course not,” I say, frowning slightly as I think of an example. “She just—I don’t know, takes charge? I brought her home from the airport and she immediately deemed that the boys had been cooped up too long and needed to go to the park to burn off some energy. She decided on their dinners the last few days in a row without even asking me what I thought. She takes over my kitchen like she owns it. She rearranged the refrigerator the way she likes it. But the thing is, all the changes she made work. They were excellent choices that I just can’t find a reason to argue with, you know?”

“She sounds more like a manager than a nanny,” Dale says with a chuckle. “Maybe you should hire her to run the restaurant now that your parents are about to retire and head off on their extended tour of Europe.”

“God, don’t I know it,” I say, snickering. “Except there’s no way the next manager I hire is going to be a woman I can’t decide if I should fire or fuck.”

Dale’s laughter is contagious. “Oh, so now we’re getting down to the crux of the matter. You really like this girl.”

I cringe. “Either that, or I can’t stand her. But there’s one thing for sure, and that is she’s absolutely gorgeous. The truth is, every time she enters a room, it’s not just my eyes that can’t ignore her, it’s also my dick. It’s like a perpetual case of the blue balls being around that woman.”

“Well, then firing her is out of the question,” Dale teases. “You may just have to go with the other option.”

“Are you serious? Dude, I could get slapped with a lawsuit if I tried that.”

“Well, if she were to go for it, at the very least you might instill a bit of loyalty into her otherwise controlling ass. Women want to please their lovers, not their employers. At least, not in most cases.”

“That’s probably about the dumbest thing I’ve heard out of your mouth since I’ve known you, Kim,” I scoff. “Do you know how hard it is to find a good nanny? The last thing I want to do is piss this woman off. I’ve been telling myself for the last few days since she got here that Anna is completely off limits, gorgeous curves and all.”

“Suit yourself, boss,” he says, smirking. “I’m sure you’ll figure something out.”

My parents’ retirement party was yesterday. Rudolpho’s was jamming with all the people who wanted to wish them well. They wanted to spend the weekend with the boys since they’ll be gone for a while. So I gave Anna two days off starting today. I have no idea where she is right now, only that she’ll be back tomorrow afternoon.

Again, it made me wonder if she’d been to Concord before. She’d been unimpressed by the monument in the square, she’d known the exact location of the park where she’s been taking the boys for a couple hours each afternoon, and now she is able to just take off and go spend the night somewhere without any mention of where she’d be sleeping or what she’d be doing while she was gone.

She obviously must have someplace specific to go, which she couldn’t have unless she’d been in this little town or had some sort of family member or friend living here.

Regardless of where she is tonight, there is one thing that’s certain. I’ll have the house all to myself. So, once the evening meal service is over, I go down into the wine cellar and grab a couple of bottles of my favorite wine. I sign off for them and head for the exit with thoughts of how I intend to spend my time alone.

As soon as I get home, I grab an ice bucket and fill it, then slip one bottle into the fridge while I settle the other into the bucket to chill. I grab a fat goblet and my bucket, along with a pint of ice cream and a spoon and carry everything up to my bedroom. Flicking through my cable channels, I find a movie I like, and press ‘start’ before I throw off all my clothes and settle on my king-size bed to get comfortable in nothing but my boxer briefs.

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