The CEO's Nanny Affair

by Joss Wood

  “Reame’s going to be pissed at doing that again,” Sage commented before asking Tate if she could pick up Ellie. When Tate nodded, Sage took the little girl from Linc’s lap. Ellie’s hand immediately curled into Sage’s long black hair, fascinated.

  Linc quietly instructed Shaw to run upstairs to brush his teeth. When his son left the room, he turned his still-annoyed eyes back to his siblings. “Jo has thrown a monkey wrench into those plans.”

  Tate looked down at the table, shocked to see that the massive pile of pancakes had all but disappeared. Obviously Jo had advance warning that Linc’s siblings were coming over; either that or she’d invited them. Tate suspected that they were very aware of Jo’s plans and, worse, approved of them. “What’s she done now?” Sage asked, rocking from side to side, her cheek on Ellie’s head.

  “Left me high and dry.” Linc placed his forearms on the table and closed his eyes. “She’s taking off to the Bahamas with Gary at noon, leaving me without anyone to watch Shaw. And I have a crazy afternoon.”

  “She didn’t provide you with an alternate solution?” Beck asked, draining the rest of Shaw’s orange juice, his smile hidden by the rim of the glass. Oh, hell, yeah, his siblings knew about Jo’s plan. Tate leaned back in her chair and folded her arms, trying to make sense of Jo’s machinations, but all she could think about was the Ballantynes’ reactions to her. She’d expected them to hate her, to transfer their animosity about Kari to her. But they seemed to want her to stay with Linc, live in this house and act as Shaw’s nanny?

  Why? What was their agenda?

  Jo could offer her the moon to stay, but Tate knew that, while Jo had conned Linc into letting her stay for a night, he wouldn’t be steamrollered a second time. No, this would be Linc’s decision...

  And hers, obviously. So, what did she want to do? Stay here or go? It would be easy to stay, Tate admitted. On a practical level, if she remained at The Den, there was a fully equipped nursery full of baby equipment for her to use, and she could save the expense of buying equipment she’d only need for a month of two, because, really, how long would it take an experienced PI to track Kari down?

  Practicalities aside, she did want to spend some time with Shaw; he was Kari’s son, and she adored the blond dynamo. She wanted to make up for all the birthdays and Christmases she’d missed with him, maybe do some fun activities with the little guy. And maybe if he came to care for her as much as she cared for him, Linc would let her spend some time with him when she returned to the Untied States during shooting breaks.

  But if she stayed in this house, she would be living with Linc, and the chances of finding herself naked with him were stratospherically high. The guy just had to step into the room, and the urge to jump him was strong. Tate closed her eyes, remembering the feel of his lips on hers, his broad, hard hands on her bare skin. She just had to look at him to turn into a raging inferno. Why Linc? Why now? And why, dear God, did he have to be Kari’s ex? Why was she even attracted to him? She’d never been a fan of the Mr. Traditional type of guy, the type who expected his woman to run the household and take care of the kids, ending the day by cooking a gourmet dinner. She was not that woman.

  “Linc, concentrate!” Beck snapped.

  Tate jerked her attention back to the present and saw that Linc was staring at her mouth, his fists resting on his thighs, clenching and unclenching.

  “Big Brother is rattled,” Beck said, amused.

  “What was Jo’s suggestion, Linc?” Sage asked, her eyes darting from Linc’s face to Tate’s and back again.

  When Linc spoke, his voice sounded weary. “Well, she suggested that Tate take over as Shaw’s nanny until I find someone else, someone suitable.”

  Sage tipped her head to the side. “Why isn’t Tate suitable?”

  Linc glared up at his sister. “I don’t know her.”

  “You won’t know anyone an agency sends, either,” Beck pointed out, standing up to head for the coffee machine. He pulled cups from the cupboard, took milk from the fridge.

  “Yeah, but they would’ve done background checks, have references from other parents,” Linc said, glaring at her. “Tate arrived on my doorstep yesterday!”

  “Some would call that fate,” Sage suggested.

  “Fate, my ass,” Linc growled.

  “You do know that I am sitting here, listening to you talk about me?” Tate interjected, feeling her temper start to bubble.

  “You need a nanny, Linc,” Beck told him, ignoring Tate’s protest. “Unless you plan to take some time off.”

  “I am not leaving my son with a stranger,” Linc said, his jaw rock hard.

  The new nanny would be a stranger, too, but that pertinent fact seemed to have escaped Linc’s steel-trap mind. Tate’s hand gripped her coffee cup, reminding herself that throwing the object would accomplish nothing. Unless the cup hit his head and knocked some sense into him.

  “No, what you are really saying is that you won’t leave Shaw with a Harper,” Tate said, pushing herself to her feet.

  Their eyes clashed and Linc nodded. “Yeah, I won’t leave him with Kari’s sister. Just like I wouldn’t leave him with your mother.

  “Not that she’s ever asked to see him,” Linc added, his voice bitter. To Linc, who obviously valued family so highly, her mother’s lack of interest had to be a knife to his heart. Tate wanted to tell him that her mother was dead, she wanted to put him in his place, but those words died when she opened her mouth to retaliate.

  “Stop comparing me to Kari.” It took all her effort to keep her voice calm. “I’m not my sister.”

  “If it walks like a duck...” Linc said, his words deliberately careless.

  Tate heard Jaeger’s groan. “Dammit, Linc. Stop being an asshat.”

  Linc threw up his hands, his handsome face dark with suppressed anger. “It’s not like I’m making assumptions here, Tate. Kari spoke about you. You never went to college, wanting to travel instead. You missed countless family events because you had something better to do. You can’t wrap your head around commitment, and you’d rather have your freedom than stay in one place. You make a habit of quitting jobs and ending relationships on a whim. Knowing all this, how can I trust that you won’t ditch my kid if you have something better to do?” Linc linked his hands behind his head as his chest rose and fell in agitation. “He’s my life. I’d never forgive myself if something happened to him on your watch!”

  This was why she’d kept her distance from her family, why she’d worked so very hard to create another identity. All her life comparisons had been drawn between her and Kari. Linc was just another in a long, long line of people who’d assumed she was just like Kari and condemned her for it.

  She sighed. She’d lived most of her life feeling trapped between two worlds—her family’s perceptions of who she was and who they thought she should be.

  Now, far away from the life she’d left behind, she felt free, like she could finally be who she really was. People either liked her, or didn’t, for who she was without reference to Kari. She made it a point to not worry about what people thought about her, to try to live her life on her own terms according to her own truth.

  But, unfortunately, Linc’s assumptions about her hurt, and feeling hurt annoyed her. She’d known him for a few hours; his opinion shouldn’t matter to her.

  But, dammit, it did.

  Tate, feeling as if she was fighting a riptide, took Ellie from Sage’s arms and dropped a kiss on her silken head. Determined not to let Linc, or his siblings, see how upset she was, she tossed her head and gritted out, “You got all your information about me from Kari, yet here I stand, holding her child, the second one she’s dumped. I think there’s something wrong with that picture.”

  Tate walked toward the stairs, feeling the acid burn of tears in the back of her throat. At the door, she made herself
turn, to look at Linc once more, probably for the last time. “I’ll call for a cab, and I’ll be gone in an hour. Good luck in your search for a perfect nanny.”

  Five

  As Ellie played at her feet with plastic toys, Tate looked out her bedroom window to the tree-lined street below. Tate watched as Beck swung Shaw up onto his shoulders, the little boy laughing with delight. Sage was walking alongside Beck, and Jaeger stopped to close the wrought iron gate behind him. They were taking Shaw to his pre-K, Tate surmised. The Ballantyne siblings were a close-knit unit, something she and Kari had never managed to be.

  She was, once again, alone. Tate looked down at Ellie’s dark head and smiled. Well, she wasn’t completely alone; for the next few weeks or so she had this precious little girl for company. Tate bit her lip, wondering if she’d ever see Shaw again. She wanted to be part of his life, but whether Linc would allow that was a tenuous possibility at best. However, there was one thing she did know beyond a shadow of a doubt. When she restored Ellie to Kari she’d be a constant and consistent presence throughout Ellie’s life, whether Kari wanted her to be or not.

  Well, as constant and consistent as her travels and job allowed. Shaw and Ellie were her nephew and niece, the only family, apart from Kari, she had. She wanted a better, healthier relationship with them than she had with her sister and her mother.

  The Ballantyne crew turned the corner, and Tate realized that it was a bit of a shock to realize how envious she was of them, of the deep love they shared. A part of her wanted to know what unconditional love felt like—how it felt to be supported, to have a backstop, a soft place to fall. Tate shoved her hands into her hair, frustrated with herself. These thoughts were dangerous and counterproductive. Besides, love’s favorite sport was to push her heart through a grinder.

  “I handled that badly.”

  Linc’s words danced over her skin, and her stomach quivered. As angry and hurt as she was, he still made her feel like she’d been plugged into a source of pure energy. Unable to face him, Tate sat down on the seat built into the window and watched the road below.

  “I’m sorry. I was rude and dismissive and judgmental,” Linc stated.

  Tate lifted her hand to rub the back of her neck and closed her eyes, wishing that he’d just go away. It would be so much easier if she could just wait for the cab in peace, if she could slip out of the door and avoid this confrontation. She realized that she’d hardly spent any time with him, but she was already so sick of him looking at her and seeing Kari.

  Hell, he’d probably thought that he was kissing Kari. It was highly possible that his attraction to her had nothing to do with who she was and everything to do with him taking a walk down memory lane.

  Out of the corner of her eye Tate watched as he walked past Ellie to sit beside her on the bench, lifting his ankle up onto his knee. “God, I’m exhausted.”

  Tate felt his broad, warm hand on the back of her neck and turned her head to look at him. She wanted to pull away from his touch but his fingers pressing into the knots in her neck felt amazing. Not going anywhere, not going to pull away, her body told her stubborn brain.

  “You must be exhausted, too.” Linc dug his fingers into the tight cords of her neck, and it took every ounce of determination she had not to moan from sheer pleasure. “Did you sleep last night?”

  “Not much, no.”

  “‘Me, either,” Linc admitted. “Let’s talk, Tate. And this time, let’s try not to kiss or yell at each other.”

  They could try, but she didn’t know if they’d succeed. Because she still wanted that mouth on hers. If he tried to kiss her she didn’t think she could resist him. Embarrassingly, her brain had lost all control over her body...

  “Okay.”

  Linc dropped his hand and pulled his thigh up on the bench so that he could look at her. “I am sorry for earlier. As Jaeger pointed out after you left, I acted like an ass because I don’t like change.”

  “And you don’t know me so you don’t feel comfortable leaving Shaw with me. It’s okay, I get it. It’s a big, bad world—I’ve seen most of it—and I’m thankful that you are a protective dad.”

  “I appreciate that. It’s been just Shaw and me since Kari left.”

  “Shaw and you and Jo,” Tate corrected.

  Linc rolled his eyes. “At this moment she’s on my hit list, so I’m not talking about her. She did tell me, yesterday, that I should start looking for a new nanny, that she wanted to be a grandmother, not Shaw’s caregiver. I never thought that she’d pull this, though. Blackmailer.”

  Tate heard the love under his frustration, but his anger was gone. Not sure what to say, she looked down at Ellie, who was babbling to a doll she’d found in the box of toys. “I’ve called a cab. It should be here soon. We’ll get out of your hair.”

  “I think you should stay.”

  Tate’s jerked, completely astonished. “You want me to stay?” She frowned. “To look after Shaw?”

  Linc shrugged. “Maybe.” He held up his hand when she opened her mouth to protest. “Just listen, okay? I need a nanny and you need a place to stay. As you said, I don’t know you, and when it comes to Shaw, I’m very slow to trust. Your sister—”

  “Messed with your head,” Tate finished his sentence for him. She shrugged. “I get it, she’s been messing with mine all my life. What else did she say about me?”

  Tate saw his hesitation and waited for him to speak. “Nothing much more than what I already mentioned. She didn’t speak much about you except to say that you were jealous of her.”

  Tate rolled her eyes. “As if.” She looked him in the eye, desperate to get her point across. “I am not my sister. I didn’t go to college, but, over the years, I managed to study part-time to get a degree in world history. I did miss many family events, but I also wasn’t invited to many. I like being free to do my own thing. That’s why having Ellie to look after is a shock. Kari was flat out lying when she said that I quit jobs and end relationships on a whim—I’ve had the same job for the past six years, and I haven’t had a significant relationship to quit, on a whim or not.”

  Tate just stopped herself from telling him that keeping her distance and remaining independent were essential to her. Too much information, Harper.

  “Oh, and my mom didn’t contact you because Kari told her that you threatened to have her arrested if any of her family tried to reach out. She convinced my mom that you had the power and money to do that.”

  Linc gripped the bridge of his nose and shook his head. “God, she’s a piece of work. I did offer to let Kari have visitation rights with Shaw, but she wasn’t interested. But if your mom wanted to meet Shaw, I’d make that happen. Supervised, but it could happen.”

  Tate’s heart bumped against her rib cage at his generosity. “Thank you, but she died a couple of years ago.”

  Linc squeezed her knee. “I’m sorry, Tate. I wish I’d known...” His voice trailed off. “Anyway, I was wrong to judge you by your sister’s actions but she...” Linc rubbed the back of his head, looking uncomfortable. “She ripped the rug out from under me.”

  “You really loved her,” she stated, the familiar mixture of regret, guilt and sadness rolling around in her belly.

  “I loved what thought I was getting,” Linc gruffly admitted.

  “Which was?”

  “A complete family, my family within a family. She told me that she wanted to be a mom, a wife, my partner. I thought she would be the person I could come home to, normality after a crazy day.”

  Tate raised her eyebrows. “You associated Kari with normality?”

  Linc grimaced. “Very briefly. Anyway,” he said, moving the conversation off Kari and the past, “getting back to what we were discussing, you moving in...” He took a deep breath. “Stay for a week, and I’ll work from home. I’ll help you with Ellie, and
you can spend some time with Shaw. If, at the end of the week, I feel comfortable handing Shaw over to you to look after, I’ll go back to work and we’ll do a trade. I’ll feed and house you and pay for the PI, if you look after Shaw until I find a full-time nanny.”

  Tate considered his offer, quickly running through her options. It was a fair offer, she acknowledged, except for... “I want to see Shaw in the future, I don’t want to walk away and never see him again.”

  Linc’s expression softened. “I can make that happen.”

  Tate nodded her thanks. “Feed and house Ellie and me, and I’ll pay for the PI myself.”

  “He’s expensive, Tate,” Linc protested.

  “I have money, Linc, and nothing is more important to me than restoring Ellie to Kari,” she replied, her tone firm.

  “Okay, deal. But what if you find Kari, and she refuses to take Ellie back?”

  Her heart lurched. God, she couldn’t think about that. Not now. “She will. I’ll make her.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Linc said. “But, because we are talking about Kari, maybe you should have a plan B.”

  Tate heard the insistent horn of a taxi and looked out of the window, seeing the yellow cab outside. She took a deep breath and nodded. “Okay, deal. One week and we’ll reevaluate.”

  Linc placed a hand on her shoulder as he stood up, squeezing gently. “Thanks, Tate. I’ll go down and tell the taxi he’s not needed, and I’ll bring your bags back up.”

  She pulled her knees up to her chest, thinking that she shouldn’t ask the question burning her brain. But she couldn’t stop the words. She had to know. “Linc...?”

  He placed his hand on the doorjamb and turned. “Yeah?”

  “When you kissed me last night. Were you thinking about Kari?”

  Linc released a sound that sounded like a half snort, a half laugh. “No, that was all you, Tate Harper.” His dark gray eyes dropped from her face to her chest, and back up to her face again. Then his gaze lingered on her mouth, and his eyes heated as his hands curled into fists. Tate thought that he might be trying to stop himself from reaching for her.