You know when someone takes your head, sticks it in a blender, and turns the setting to frappé? I don’t either, but that’s how I feel the next day.

Try taking care of a baby who hates you while his father decides to stay home again and watch over every little thing you do? Then imagine that you and the baby’s father engaged in dirty monkey sex the night before. Then imagine that the baby’s father goes around all day pretending like it never happened, leaving you to wonder what the heck is going on, and you have my life.

I have no idea if it’ll ever happen again.

I have no idea if he even likes me, though I’m pretty sure he doesn’t.

And yet, there’s this unmistakable gravitational pull between us. I feel it every time we cross paths in the hallway, or when he takes the baby from my arms, brushing his muscular torso near me, or when he emerges from his room in a towel to fetch something from a closet, catches me holding my breath outside the nursery, then returns to his room.

Every moment feels breathless. Every moment feels like judgment, too. All I want to know is what he’s thinking, but every chance I get to ask him about us, about what’s going on, about whether or not this is a thing, whether the thing will be repeated, or whether said thing was just a fluke, he finds some excuse to change the subject.

Honestly, I wish he’d just go away. Go back to the ad agency and let me do my thing. I don’t understand why he hired a nanny if he was only going to supervise everything I do. Although I have to admit, I’m a pretty shitty nanny. I wish I could say that I get better with every passing day, but I don’t. Liam has his moments when he’s happy and playful, but something happens whenever Kase is around. Suddenly, Liam gets cranky with me, because he wants his dad.

Perfectly understandable.

I want his dad, too.

I don’t want to want him, but I do. It’s all I can think about—how he told me what to do last night, how he basically instructed me to perform for him, positioned me the way he wanted me. It must be nice to know exactly what you want sexually. Whereas me, I have no idea. When I’m with Kase, I’m thankful for his guidance. Otherwise, I’d stand there open-mouthed, not knowing what to do first. Some things just come with experience, and Kase definitely has it.

The crazy thing is, I want him to teach me.

But it’s over. He said it was, and this time, I believe him.

Because right now, he’s in SuperDad mode. In the kitchen, as I’m preparing Baby Liam’s lunch of baby carrots from a jar, banana compote, and juice, SuperDad comes waltzing in, having clearly been working out in his downstairs gym. He’s wearing a T-shirt that’s dark gray in the sweaty areas and his biceps have that awesome sheen when a guy’s been pumping iron. He must smell musky as fuck, but I don’t care. I have to will away the warmth growing between my legs, tell myself he’s not that same man right now. In fact, right now, he’s on a mission to make my life a veritable hell.

“What is that?” He points to the open jar on the counter next to Liam’s plate.

“It’s puréed carrots.”

“That’s not puréed carrots. That’s garbage, Alana. I thought I told you to make it fresh. Steam the carrots, drain, add water, purée in the processor.”

I nod and sigh at the same time, as I make a smiley face of the foods on Liam’s plate. “Yes, it’s Slide #13 on your PowerPoint. I know. But that’ll take at least twenty minutes to do, and he was hungry now,” I explain.

“I understand, but you have to plan ahead. Before he’s hungry, start the process so it’s all ready by lunchtime.”

Is he freakin’ kidding me right now? “Look, sometimes you just have to crack open a jar of baby food, you know?” Brand new parents, I swear. In a couple of years, he won’t act this way with his second child. If he ever has another one. I doubt it, because who will want to marry this guy? He’s so ultra-anal about everything.

Kase stares at me like I just flew in from Voyager 1. “That’s exactly the kind of lazy thinking I don’t want around my son.”

Wow, he actually said son instead of Liam. And wow again, an insult.

“That stuff has preservatives in it, too,” he adds, sneering at the offensive baby food jar. “When did you even have time to go out and buy it? I stocked the fridge with fresh veggies.”

“I ordered them from the app you mentioned,” I say. “On Slide #14b, Section 8, Paragraph 6. They got here in ten minutes from the corner store. If you know everything, though, why don’t you be the nanny?” Yikes. That was out of line.

But he looks at me in a new way, and it’s not really with disdain. Is it surprise? Respect? “Okay. Why don’t you be the employer then? All you have to do is pull in fifty-eight million a year. Think you can handle it?” Picking up his phone, he nonchalantly starts checking stuff, as though my reply isn’t worth eye contact over.

Whoa, how much? I swallow hard. And I was so excited to be starting at $60K at Lodwick Brothers. This nanny job pays close to that but doing stuff that doesn’t make use of my talents. “I could do it,” I reply. “Eventually.”

“Great, then let’s switch. I would love nothing more than to hang around a baby all day long.” He gives me a cheeky smile and struts off, all proud of himself.

Oh. I see. My job is easy. Okay, no problem.

I want to walk out. Leave this asshole right here to fend for himself—Kase, not Liam—but then I remember that I need that paycheck, the one coming to me in two days. I also like this kid, staring at me with big blue eyes, completely aware of the mini-fight that just happened. Smart Liam.

I don’t want to lose the apartment that took me so hard to find. I may be living here now, but once the market changes and I get my job in finance back, I’m going to need it. The location is prime. I also don’t want to go back to living with my parents, and honestly, dealing with Kase is hard, but living with my parents is harder. It represents failure, and I can’t. I just can’t.

I have to take higher ground. “Look, Kase, I’ll prepare a fresh, gourmet meal of steamed baby carrots next time, okay? I’m sorry. It’s just…it’s good to go easy sometimes. He’s a baby, not a science experiment.”

“He needs the best start in life,” Kase mutters. “He’s already lost enough.” He walks away and pauses at the end of the kitchen, thinking about what just came out of his mouth.

Great, now I feel bad. Yes, yes, Liam lost his mother, and Kase lost his wife. I have to remind myself more often that these two are going through hard times. If Kase is crabby and bossy, and Liam is fussy, it’s because they’re missing the most important woman in their lives.

And suddenly, I feel emptier than ever knowing I can never fill that spot for them.

Still, I can’t help but feel like a stupid employee when Kase is in the house, and it stirs up all kind of old emotions I had worked so hard to eradicate from my life. Do this, Mrs. Frasier, clean that, Mrs. Frasier… The Hollands treated us like we were nothing. We could never get anything right because we were too stupid or too poor. It was their way of keeping control, by judging us, and Kase is no different, only more subtle about it.

He’s lost control of his life, so he takes it out on me.

As I begin feeding Liam his offensive jar of carrots, Kase comes over, drops a kiss on the top of Liam’s head, then slips down the hall and out of sight. I let out the biggest sigh my lungs have ever seen.

Can we talk about last night for a second? I want to ask, but I know he wants it to go away. Pretend it never happened. And so I swallow my pride and go on feeling confused for the rest of the day. And the rest of the next, and the next, and the next. If there’s anything good to say about Kase, though, besides the fact that he knows how to run a tight company and can lick my pussy like a pro, is that he knows how to Dad. Kase loves Liam, hugs him, and wants him eating organic, fresh food. He holds him just right, tickles him just right, and he cares about his baby, and that’s not something I’ve yet seen from rich families, especially the fathers. At least not the ones my parents have worked for.

It’s sexy as hell. It occupies my brain more than I’m willing to admit. For an instant, I almost imagine him as the father of a child I might have. That we might be a veritable family in a parallel universe instead of boss, boss’s child, and employee. An employee both of them happen to hate. And just as soon as the fantasy comes, it dissipates, and I’m Alana Frasier, nanny by life circumstances, all over again.

Poof!