Little Charmer

Ash

That damn People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive cover is ruining my life every second it’s on the sales rack. I don’t even know why I was considered, let alone chosen for the cover, with all of the famous movie stars and singers in the world. I’m a cattle rancher from Montana for God’s sake. I ride horses, step in shit, and sweat through my clothes for a living. My life is as unglamorous as they come.

Sure, the paparazzi follow me around when I go out on the town, which is often, but only because drama is my siren song. Dad hates my unsolicited fame, he says I inherited it from my mother, a woman he hates, and maybe I did. I’ll never know for sure since she took off when I was a baby.

And this woman, Stella, I think that’s what she said her name is, where did she come from? What kind of magic or voodoo does she possess? No one, and I mean no one, has ever gotten Cannon to shut up and stop one of his crying jags with a few simple words. I can’t say I don’t understand why he likes her, she’s stunning, but still, Cannon is Cannon and he pretty much hates everybody.

“Back here, I know the general manager, we can go up the service elevator,” I say to Stella as we enter an area labeled Authorized Personnel Only. She murmurs something into Cannon’s ear, and my curiosity is piqued.

Cannon is quiet as he clings to the sexy curves that make up Stella’s body. I take full advantage of the fact that she is holding my son by wrapping my arm around her and guiding them with my hand on her curvy hip.

Mr. Valentino steps out of an elevator into the private hallway where we are. “Mr. Pride, I'm happy to see you. I’m sorry about the fuss in the lobby. I should have had you come in the back entrance to avoid all of that.”

“Yes, you should have. Take us to our room.” I don’t like bullshit, and Mr. Valentino is frequently full of it. He knew my checking in would cause a frenzy and bring attention to his hotel. He purposely didn’t arrange for us to come in a back way.

His fake ass smile falls into a straight line when I’m short with him, and he steps aside allowing us to enter the elevator.

When we are inside, and the doors are closing, Mr. Valentino turns to smile at Stella holding out his hand, “I don’t think I have had the pleasure, my name is Mr. Valentino. I’m the general manager here at the Crimson Haven Hotel and Spa.”

I step between the slimy predator and Stella causing him to drop his hand, and if I'm lucky, his act. Cannon straightens up with strands of Stella’s hair stuck to his face to see who’s speaking to Stella. He looks almost as protective as I feel. Stella leans forward and gives Valentino an apologetic smile.

“I’m Stella, it’s nice to meet you, too, and this is Cannon. Thank you for helping us.”

“Ah, Stella Deardon?”

I roll my eyes. I’ll bet this guy investigated every woman attending this convention to make each one of them feel at home, preferably in his bed underneath him, a different one every night for a week.

I feel her glance at me. I’m sure she noticed my eye roll from the irritated tone in her voice when she responds. “Yes, how did you know that?”

“It’s my job to know everyone attending the convention and make sure they have the most comfortable stay possible.”

The way he says this makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I do not like this man, and I can’t get us out of this elevator soon enough.

“You talk funny,” Cannon says. For once I’m not embarrassed by my son’s direct and innocent manner. This guy does talk funny, like he has a fake Italian accent or something. Even a four-year-old recognizes it.

Valentino’s eyebrows shoot up, and he stumbles to answer. I'm so loving this, but Stella has to go and spoil my fun.

“That’s not nice, Cannon honey. He has an accent; some people are from other places where they speak differently than we do.

Valentino glances at Cannon and smiles quick and short.

“Oh,” Cannon says, unsure of what exactly that means, but for some reason accepting it since it came from this new woman named Stella.

The elevator dings and the doors slide open on the 28th floor where the Presidential Suite is located. I step out, and Stella follows still holding Cannon.

“Will you be staying with Mr. Pride, Miss Stella?”

“Oh, no. I was just helping out. I have a single room reserved,” she glances at the open atrium, and I see her jaw clench right before she steps away from it, “downstairs. I, uh, I don’t care for heights.”

“I see, alright, well, let me show you to your suite, Mr. Pride, and then I’ll find out where your room is, Miss Stella.” Valentino looks like the fucking cat that swallowed the canary and a muscle twitches in my jaw. That asshole thinks he just won the Stella jackpot and for some reason, I don’t fucking like it one bit.

“She will be staying with us,” I announce and place my hand on the small of Stella’s back to guide her down the hall, making sure to stay on her right so she doesn’t have to see how high up we are.

It takes her a couple of steps before she stops short. “What? No, I have a room reserved, and I don’t even know you.”

“He’s daddy, and he’s the sexest man live,” Cannon says, smiling ear to ear.

“The sexiest man alive,” I correct him. We all knew what he meant to say, but right now I feel like rubbing it in Valentino’s face.

She smiles down at Cannon, and his little face lights up, like the morning sun over the Montana Beartooth Mountains. “I think you had it right the first time buddy,” she says, and Cannon giggles not because he understands but because Stella said it.

I am not sexest. What the hell? Protective, dominant, overbearing and bossy, yes, but sexest, no.

“You’ll be more comfortable in the Presidential Suite with us.”

“Peeeze,” Cannon begs, and I know she’s done for. Nobody can resist this kid when he decides to be sweet, which isn’t often.

Her eyes dart between Cannon, Valentino, and me settling on Cannon. “Okay, I’ll come with you for a little bit, but then I have to go downstairs to my room.”

Good enough.

“Yay!” Cannon throws his arms in the air, and I stare stunned at the two of them for a moment, before continuing to guide her down the hall. Valentino follows us, sulking, with his hands stuffed in the front pockets of his expensive Italian suit pants.

When we arrive in front of door number 1, Valentino hands me a small envelope with two key cards. “Enjoy your stay, Mr. Pride,” he says and leans to the side to speak to Stella, who I have positioned behind me. “Miss Stella, you can call the front desk when you’re ready to go to your room. I’ll bring you your key cards.”

“Oh, thank…”

“That won’t be necessary.” I turn my back on Valentino, open my door and hook my arm around Stella’s waist to move her inside in one swift move.

When the door closes on Valentino’s face, I turn and find a frowning Stella, who incidentally is almost as gorgeous as the bright smiling Stella, but in a salty way. I’m pretty sure she would be giving me a piece of her mind if it weren’t for my son in her arms.

“Hungry? I’ll order room service.” I ignore the irritation knitted between her brows and stroll into the extravagant living room area removing my jacket and tossing it on the closest chair.

“Hungry, hungry, hungry,” Cannon chants wiggling out of Stella’s arms.

I sit down on the edge of the ridiculously white couch that I am sure I will be replacing when we check out. Cannon and white do not go together, at all.

“What do you want to eat, buddy?”

“Ice cream!” he yells, and I see Stella jump out of the corner of my eye.

“Keep it down. You don’t want to scare Stella away.” Worry clouds his face, and he looks at Stella who has her arms wrapped around her small waist.

“Ice cream," he says, in a loud whisper.

She smiles and glances at the door like she’s planning her escape. I gently pull Cannon by the hem of his shirt until he is between my legs and whisper in his ear, “Go get Stella and help her sit down so we can eat.”

I don’t even have to look at him to know he is glowing. Happiness radiates off of him filling the area around us with a calm, warm vibe.

Cannon is not a calm, warm vibe kind of kid; he’s more like a firenado whipping out of control, destroying everything in his path with scorching heat and fierce wind. He’s like me when I was a kid, a teenager, and would still be if he hadn’t come along and semi-sorted out my life.

I watch him pull away and tiptoe to Stella. He takes her long delicate fingers in his small hand and leads her to the chair next to the couch. “Let's sit here.” He smiles and crawls into her lap. This being the second time in thirty minutes he has initiated physical contact with another person that is not hitting, smacking, or punching. Fucking amazing.

When he has made himself comfortable, and I’m 90% sure she’s not going to get up and leave, I start throwing out lunch suggestions. “I’ll call room service. Do you want a burger? Or pizza, maybe grilled cheese?”

Stella holds up a hand to her chest in mock surprise, “Oh, do I get to choose my own food? Just checking since I’m pretty sure I got bullied into coming to your room.”

“I’ll assure you I don’t have to bully women into my hotel suite.”

“Oh yes, that’s right, People’s sexest man alive, how could I forget?” Oh my God, she’s such a smart ass. She makes me want to take her over my knee and… No, I need to stop thinking of her like that.

Women I sleep with don’t get to know my son and Stella has gotten to know him better than his last ten nannies in less than thirty minutes. I’m not fucking this up, he likes her, and he doesn’t like anyone. I’m willing to keep my hands to myself to see where this might go.

“That’s sexiest, I thought we had that straightened out. And yes, of course, you have a choice. Burgers, pizza, or grilled cheese?”

The fire in her eyes is hot. It's the come and get me hot. The I'm challenging you hot, the hot I'm not supposed to be thinking about. Cannon twists in her lap to look up at her when she grips him tight.

“I wanna burger,” he says. Her muscles relax and her eyes calm when she looks at him. “Sure, burgers sound great.”

“Then maybe later we can go for ice cream. I’m sure Stella would like some ice cream, wouldn’t you?”

I wonder how far she will let me go with this before she demands a private talk away from Cannon. If the heat in her eyes is any indicator, I’m pretty sure she’s close.

“I really need to get checked into my room; there’s a dinner party tonight that I need to get ready for. I’ll stay for lunch, but I don’t have time for dessert.”

She’s right, we do have a dinner party tonight and thanks to my latest nanny ditching us a few days ago, I will not be attending. Cannon doesn’t do dinner parties unless they are outside where he can be hosed off.

“Lunch it is then. A burger for you,” I say pointing at Cannon, “And what will you have?”

“I’ll have a burger, too, hold the onions, though, I’m allergic.” Note to self, Stella is allergic to onions. “Any other allergies?”

“Well, Sulfa and Penicillin but I’m pretty sure they don’t have that in the kitchen.”

“I think you’re right about that, at least I hope you are.”

“Cannon, how about we get cleaned up?”

His face squints into a tinier version of himself. “Aw, why? I like bein dirty.”

“You do?” I ask, and he nods vigorously.

“I like being clean,” she says, and then I witness the impossible. Cannon considers her for a moment and slides off her lap. She stands, he takes her hand, and they walk toward a hall off the living room that looks like it leads to the bedrooms and more importantly, a bathroom.

Four words, I like being clean, and he’s putty in her hands. My son has an aversion to soap and all things that smell good. I have to put on my bossiest face and raise my voice multiple times every night to get him in the tub. I have to steer him in the direction of the bathroom when he comes in the house after playing to get him to wash his hands before we eat.

And it’s a hundred times worse with the nannies. He tricks them, hides forever until they are sure he’s been kidnapped. One or two even called the cops, who weren’t happy to drive from town all the way to the Silversage Ranch to follow up on a call they knew had been instigated by a four-year-old who hates his nannies.

He’s been known to put insects in their beds and once tried to put a salamander in a nanny’s sandwich. Thank God, she saw it moving. She might have sued me for that one.

If he didn’t like a nanny’s cooking, he stuffed it under furniture or into heat vents until the house smelled so bad it was uninhabitable. He screamed every word he said instead of talking, he spread paint all over the TV screen and living room floor, threw food at them, cried when they sang to him, ate one nanny’s lipstick and pooped pink for days, but his favorite thing to do was letting animals out of their pens.

There were two kinds of nannies, one who ran in horror from the animals and another who ran around trying to catch the animals to return them to the pen. The ones who chased the animals usually lasted longer with us. Cannon thought it was funnier to watch them chase than being chased.

Needless to say, we are without a nanny. Caroline was our last, and she quit yesterday, but it wasn’t Cannon’s fault, it was mine. I’d say 90% of the nannies who apply for the job are looking for an in with me, and when they don’t find it, they’re out. That was Caroline. She was interested in sharing a bed with People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive, not eating bugs and chasing chickens.

I call the kitchen and order three burgers with everything on the side and fries, and so that Stella will think my kid eats healthy occasionally, I order some fruit. He won’t touch it, but at least I tried.

There’s a knock on the door as soon as I hang up the phone. It’s the bellman bringing up our luggage, Stella’s included. Old Valentino must have given up on his quest for Miss Stella, and that’s a good thing. If I had to listen to any more of his pathetic attempts at flirting I may have had to set him straight, and nobody wants that.

“Hope you didn’t pay too much for this suite, the soap smells like dog dootie,” Stella says when she returns.

“She said dootie!” Cannon yells and starts laughing hysterically. I can’t help but smile when Stella looks at me with a is this kid okay kind of expression.

By pure coincidence, his last nanny told him that dootie was a naughty word. Cannon and I did not agree, and this irritated her to no end, which made Cannon say it all the more.

“Ya gotta admit, dootie is a pretty funny word.”

“Maybe, but when your soap smells like it, it’s gross.”

I lean back and stretch my arms out resting them along the back of the couch to take her in. Her long, lean legs are powerful and fit, not like Caroline’s anorexic twigs. Stella has the legs of a woman who’s spent a lot of time in the saddle working the land. I’d like to settle between those legs and lick her front to back until she… fucking hell, I have to stop that. She recognizes the lust in my eyes and squirms under my stare lowering her gaze to my son, who is still rolling around on the floor laughing.

“I’ll have the maid look into it right away.”

With her hands tucked into the back pockets of her tighter than tight jeans she asks, “Who was at the door?”

“The bellman brought our bags.”

“Oh great, now I have to haul them down to my room.”

“Not necessarily.”

“I cannot stay here with you, Ash, is it?”

I smile at this, she knows my name, and after that magazine article, the whole world does, too. “Yes.”

“How would that look, you being here with your son and a strange woman staying in your room? I didn’t even know you had a son. I thought you were a lady-killer who spent his weekends prowling the big city clubs.”

“We’ve already been spotted together in the lobby. I’m sure the rumors about us have already started circulating. I became a father four years and nine months ago and, yes, I do frequent clubs on my time off, but I am by no means a lady-killer.”

“But…” She wants to ask why I didn’t mention having a son in my People magazine interview, but she won’t do that in front of Cannon, for which she earns a lot of points in my book.

“Later.” She narrows her eyes but has no choice but to accept my answer.

Cannon has started to investigate the suite, roaming from room to room yelling when he finds something of interest.

“Daddy, look at dis tub!”

Stella and I follow his voice down the hall to the en suite bathroom where we find Cannon fully clothed, thank God, standing in the middle of an enormous deep tub equipped with jets and a rain shower overhead.

“Wow, that’s some tub,” Stella says sitting on the edge. My mind takes another wrong turn down I wanna fuck Stella street, and I have to slam on the brakes.

Cannon gazes at Stella and like his father, he is also smitten, although, in a very different way.

“I wanna take a bath.”

I cross my arms over my chest and feel my eyebrows somewhere in the vicinity of my hairline. “You have no idea how out of character that statement is.”

“So I gathered. Your jaw nearly came unhinged when he went with me to wash his hands.”

“He isn’t a fan of hygiene for sure. I can’t believe I’m going to tell him no.”

“Aw,” Cannon whines.

“How about a bubble bath later before bed?”

“You gonna be here?” he asks Stella.

I wait and mentally cross my fingers that she says yes.

“I have that dinner, remember?” she answers in a soothing tone as if she knows his protest could get ugly.

“I can run you a bath, buddy.”

“No, I want Tella!” he yells at the top of his lungs. I already braced for it, but poor Stella gets taken off guard. She shoots off the edge of the tub like she’s been zapped with a cattle prod.

This is my son, the kid I’m used to dealing with, the defiant yet adorable, almost five-year-old, who chases nannies far and wide.

“Cannon, you can’t yell like that. You’ll make me wet my pants, and I don’t have any dry ones, I haven’t unpacked yet.”

The shock on his face is priceless as the redness in his cheeks fades. He holds out his hand to her, “Sorry.”

I roll my eyes and drop my arms to my sides turning to leave Romeo and Juliet alone to discuss Romeo’s bath.

When I’m out of sight, I smile to myself. Way to go, little charmer, way to go.

There’s another knock at the door. “Foods here,” I call over my shoulder.

“Yay!” Cannon yells and passes me running to the door to open it before I can.

“Cannon, you should always wait for a grownup to open the door. You don’t know who’s there.”

“But you said food.” His little eyebrows squish together, and I realize I can't adequately explain at this point. The door is open, and he sees the waiter with the food.

“You got me there, buddy. Next time, though, I answer the door, okay?”

“Okay.” He shrugs his little shoulders, and I step aside to let the waiter pass.

“Would you like this in the dining room, sir?” he asks.

“No, put it on the coffee table.”

“Please,” Stella interjects widening her eyes at me, but I refuse to adjust my statement. As I said, I’m bossy, that’s just how it is.

Cannon sits down cross-legged on the floor at the end of the coffee table and swipes a french fry off of one of the plates.

“That’s yours now,” Stella says.

“Okay.” He smiles up at her while chewing with his mouth open.

I tip the waiter and move the coffee table closer to the couch for Stella and I. As soon as the door closes, she sits down and turns to me. “You pay extra money for a suite with a formal dining room, but you eat in the living room on the coffee table?”

“I pay extra money for this to feel more like home for Cannon. He doesn’t like to travel so when we do, I keep his routine as close to normal as I can, and we eat at the coffee table at home.”

“You don’t like to travel, Cannon?”

He takes a gigantic bite of his burger and shakes his head back and forth.

“When you’re done chewing tell me why not.”

He smiles again with hamburger and lettuce sticking out of his teeth thoroughly grossing me out, and I don’t get grossed out easily.

“Cannon, she said when you’re done chewing, that’s bad manners.”

“But I didn’t talk,” he mumbles around the food. Stella is stifling a laugh next to me.

“What?”

“He’s right. He didn’t talk, he smiled.”

“You’re an adult. You’re supposed to side with me.”

“I stick with my friends and Cannon is my good friend, so I side with him. Not to mention, he’s right.”

“You two are ganging up on me, aren’t you?”

“Nope, just stating the facts, right, Cannon?”

“Yep.”

Cannon is smiling like a wild man now knowing that he has an adult who will stick up for him, and for the first time since I met Stella, a tinge of worry sparks in my mind.

I’m usually very particular about who I let around Cannon. He doesn’t know my party friends, and I never introduce him to the women I sleep with. I learned the hard way a long time ago that women dip out when things get hard, and I vowed never to let my kid be subject to that shit.

But this situation with Stella wasn’t planned. I didn’t bring her home after a night at the clubs or hire her to be Cannon’s nanny. She just fell into my life unexpectedly and calmed the storm that is my son by simply being herself.

My aunt Fran always said the best things in life happen when you’re not looking for them and for the first time I think that may be true.