It’d been a year and a half since Bailey had shown up on our doorstep, hoping to become Max’s live-in nanny, and I still wasn’t used to her. I hadn’t quite figured out how to get rid of that punch to my stomach whenever I looked at her. That jolt to my chest when she’d turn her gaze my way and smile. That tightness to my cock whenever that husky laugh of hers left her lips.
Since it was obvious it wasn’t anything that was going away, I’d functioned by ignoring it. Or I’d attempted to anyway. It wasn’t exactly easy to do when the subject of your infatuation lived in your house, occupying the bedroom next to your own.
Even worse than the pull I felt toward her was how easy it was for me to pretend this whole thing was real. That I wasn’t looking at Bailey, my nanny, waving from across the street while holding my son’s hand. But that I was looking at my family. It wasn’t hard to picture—Max shared her coloring, his fair skin matching hers and his dark brown hair only a shade or two lighter than hers. Besides that, though, it was obvious how much she loved him. On the handful of times we’d taken trips to the mainland, she’d gotten mistaken for his mom more than once.
That was something that never happened in Temperance Falls, of course. Everyone knew of the tragic car accident that had taken Max’s mom—my wife—away. We’d been the talk of the island in the time since then. As much as I loved this place, loved it for Max, sometimes I wished we had the anonymity of a larger city. Where no one knew our business. Where I didn’t get asked at the grocery store almost two years later how everything was going at home, if I was handling things okay. Trouble was, everyone on the island still saw me as one-half of a whole that would never be again.
But I’d moved on. I’d loved my wife more than anything, had thought I’d spend the rest of my life with her while raising a family. But it had been almost two years since she’d died. I’d mourned her death, and I’d mourned the loss of the life I’d pictured us having together. I’d had to, because I had Max to think about. I couldn’t spend my days wishing for something that would never be when I had a sad three-year-old who didn’t understand why his mom wasn’t coming back. I’d had to make things normal for him again, and I’d done that by grieving and moving on. It was a healthy step in the right direction, yet with every question from a well-meaning neighbor or friend or relative, it made me feel like I’d done something wrong in getting on with my life.
Or attempting to.
I’d come to the point where I’d contemplated dating again. Trouble was, it seemed the only person I had the capacity to feel any sort of attraction to was my too-young nanny. Wasn’t that just a kick to the nuts?
I crossed Main Street after saying goodbye to my cousin Brandon, attempting to discard the words he’d said to me. How he’d said Max and Bailey were my beautiful family. The gossip train had been going a mile a minute since Brandon and Genesis, his daughter’s best friend, had gotten together. It was all I’d heard for the past week in the hospital cafeteria. I knew what that was like—had been living it for far too long—but his situation was something completely different. He’d changed his whole life for a girl. Attraction or not, that wasn’t something I was willing to do again.
Bailey stood with a tight grip on Max’s hand as he bounced at her heels, waiting for me to get across the street, dancing like he had ants in his pants. I knew he wanted to drop her hand and run to me, but after a scary near-miss with a car speeding through a crosswalk when we’d visited Chicago one weekend, the rule was no letting go of hands without permission. Even while we were on the island where the speed limit topped twenty-five in most places, we didn’t take chances.
“Daddy!” Max looked up at Bailey, silently asking for permission to let go of her hand once I was close enough. She gave him a quick nod and released her hold, which was all the notice I had before thirty-five pounds of excitable five-year-old jumped into my arms.
“Hey, buddy. How was the park?”
“So fun. Bee went down the slide with me!”
“Bailey tried to go down the slide with you.” She rolled her eyes as she fell into step next to me. With a wry smile directed my way, she said, “Bailey got stuck.”
I couldn’t help the laugh that broke free, picturing her getting stuck on the twisty slide. “How’d you get down?”
“With a bucket of mortification dumped over me and a whole heck of a lot of wiggling.” She reached over and tugged on one of Max’s legs. “But it made Max laugh, and that’s all that matters.”
Like always, I was so grateful we’d found Bailey. The search for a nanny had been a long and arduous one, and then Bailey had shown up, and it had been like they’d both fallen in love with each other right then and there. Max had clicked with her instantly, and I’d known immediately she’d be the one. And the connection the two shared hadn’t waned at all—if anything, it had only grown.
Max pushed away from my chest, wanting to be let down, so I obliged, setting him carefully between Bailey and me. Without hesitation, he grabbed both of our hands and began swinging them back and forth. Having done this a hundred times before, Bailey and I knew the score and lifted him off the ground by silent agreement, swinging him into the air as we walked.
After a few swings in the air, he rushed ahead of us, tugging us along behind him. “Daddy and Bee, we gotta hurry ’cause Nana’s comin’ to get me!”
“Do you even know the way home?” I shook his hand, getting his attention. “I think you might be taking us in the wrong direction,” I teased.
“Nuh-uh, Daddy.” He lifted his chin in the direction of the too-colorful monstrosity on the corner. “We turn at the playhouse.”
“The playhouse, huh? That’s a nice name for it.”
“I figured Victorian nightmare might not be appropriate,” Bailey whispered to me.
I looked down at her, and that was a mistake. Her coffee-colored eyes were sparkling as she stared up at me, the wind blowing strands of her dark hair across her face. One piece got stuck on her bottom lip, which only managed to draw my gaze. Her lips were always a distraction—pink and luscious and full, brushed in some kind of shiny gloss. I wanted to lick it off and see what it tasted like. See what she tasted like under it.
Clearing my throat and hoping to God my jeans hid my erection, I turned away from her. “Good call,” I said, my voice scratchy and rough. Christ, I sounded like I’d just fucked my way through half the island.
Thankfully, Bailey didn’t seem to notice as she chatted with Max, asking him what he planned to do with his grandparents this week during their special time. I should’ve been paying attention to what he was saying, but all I could think about were those lips. What they’d feel like under mine, what they’d taste like against my tongue, what they’d look like wrapped around my cock.
As soon as we walked in the front door of our house, Max was off, Bailey following behind as she called out orders for him to grab his suitcase and not to forget Bear, his stuffed puppy. What I wanted—needed—to do was either jack off or go for a grueling run to work out my frustration. Sadly, neither was an option right then, so I recalled the last surgical procedure I’d performed, going through each step in my mind, until my hard-as-steel cock was at half-mast. Honestly, that was as good as it was going to get when I could smell Bailey everywhere I turned.
A knock came at the door, followed by the sound of my mother’s voice. “Josh? Max? Anybody home?”
I didn’t have time to answer before Max’s booming greeting came down the stairs. Knowing I had about two minutes to say my goodbyes before he dragged my mom out the door, I hurried to the entryway, finding the three of them engaged in conversation.
“And then Bee got stuck on the curler slide!” Max said before he doubled over in laughter.
“Maxwell,” my mom said in a stern voice. “That’s not nice to laugh at Bailey.”
His laughter abruptly cut off, and he looked up at Bailey with worried eyes. “Did I make you sad, Bee?”
She squatted down to his height and rested her hands on his hips. “Never. Now give me a big hug to get me through the week without you. I’m gonna miss my Max cuddles.”
With a toothless smile, he wrapped his arms around her neck and squeezed.
Pulling away, she said, “Don’t forget about your dad.”
I scooped him up and held him close to my chest. “What’re the rules?”
“Listen to Nana and Grandpa, no throwing balls in the house, mind my manners,” he rattled off with a nod of his head.
“Nice job.” I pressed a kiss to his cheek, then set him down. “Be good and have fun. I’ll miss you.”
Too excited to get to his alone time with his grandparents, he pushed away from me and headed out the door with nothing more than a wave over his shoulder.
“Love you!” I shouted to his retreating form.
My mom laughed and came to give me a hug. “Daddy’s old news. He gets the good stuff at Nana’s.”
“Don’t I know it,” I said with an eye roll as I returned her embrace. “I’ll call tomorrow and check in.”
“Sounds good, honey. You two enjoy your time off.” She waved before closing the door behind her.
And then it was just Bailey and me, standing in the entryway. Did she feel the sexual tension thick between us, or was it only one-sided?
Running a hand through my hair, I asked, “Have any plans this week? You going home to visit your family or anything?”
“Not this time. My mom’s on a cruise with her best friend, so I figured I’d hang out on the island for the week.”
I nodded, trying not to think about just the two of us in this house without Max as a buffer. Last year when my parents had taken him, she’d gone back home to visit her family. We’d never had more than an hour or two by ourselves. And I had no fucking idea how this week was going to go.
Still, it wasn’t like we should act like strangers. We were adults. There was no reason we couldn’t sit down and have dinner together without the conversation of a five-year-old going on around us.
“I’m probably just going to order a pizza for dinner if you want to join me.” I shrugged, like it was no big deal. “That is, if you don’t already have plans.”
She stared at me for a minute, her lips parted in shock before they turned down at the corners. “Oh, well…I sort of have a date tonight.”
If I ever wanted to know what it felt like to get knocked out by a heavyweight boxer, apparently I just needed to have Bailey tell me she was going out with another man. Anger and frustration crept over me, red clouding my vision as I thought of her out with someone else, laughing for him, parting her lips for him, kissing him. I clenched my jaw once, twice, attempting to get my jealousy under control. I had no right to feel any kind of claim for her. She wasn’t mine, no matter what my fantasies said.
“I see,” I finally said. “Is he a friend?”
She shifted on her feet, plucking at the hem of her sleeveless shirt. “No. Not at all. He’s…it’s a blind date thing. I don’t… He’s from the mainland.”
I couldn’t even focus on how quiet and unsure her voice was—so unlike her usual self. All I heard was mainland and stranger, and my anger increased tenfold. “You’re going to the mainland to meet up with a guy you’ve never met before?”
She shook her head. “Oh, no. He’s coming over here. We’re meeting down at Rosie’s Place for an early dinner is all.”
What kind of schmuck took a girl like Bailey to a diner on a first date? Bailey was the kind of girl you went all out for—the kind you tried to impress, no matter what sort of budget you were working with. I bet he didn’t know she would have preferred a picnic in the park to some generic chitchat while sitting across from each other in a ripped booth at the local diner. Fucking amateur.
An amateur she was in no way bringing home to my house.
I knew she was aware of the rules—they’d been in place since she started and had been something I’d decided on before I’d even met Bailey. No bringing dates to the house. When I’d made that rule, it had been because I hadn’t wanted Max to feel unsafe in his own home. Now, it seemed, it was serving as the lifeline for my sanity.
Or whatever shred of it I had left.
I cleared my throat, knowing I needed to leave before I acted like any more of an unprofessional dick around her. She was my nanny, nothing more. It didn’t concern me if she went out on a date or if the guy she went with took her to a fucking rodeo. She could do whatever she wanted with her life without regard to me.
“Well, I hope you have a good night,” I said as I headed upstairs toward my bedroom. I had some frustration to get out, and a run wasn’t going to cut it.
“You too, Josh,” she called from the entryway, her voice barely reaching me as I walked away from her.