“It’ll get easier,” she says. “Liam taught Dylan how to swim and now look at him. You have a great teacher.” I force a smile and look toward the clear path of the staircase. “I better squeeze in a shower real quick so I can get Dylan settled when he wakes up.”
“Of course,” Samantha says.
“I’m just making my rounds at the local parking lots today, so I’ll be home around four,” Daniel says between sips of his coffee. I’m not sure why he’s offering this information, though, especially since I have no clue what he does for a living. All I know is, Samantha said one of them would be home between four and six every day. It was one of the first things she mentioned when I was interviewing.
“Parking lots? If you don’t mind me asking, what do you there?” In other words, how the hell do you two have so much freaking money running a yoga studio in a beach town and skipping from parking lot to parking lot? I’m kind of confused, and curious at the same time. Clearly, I need to be doing whatever they’re doing so I can have a sweet lifestyle like they have.
“Oh, I figured Sam would have told you. I—ah—own—“ He looks down at his fingers, counting across both hands. “I think I’m up to about twelve lots now. Between that and my investment consulting biz, it’s not the worst way to live, if you know what I mean?”
Parking lots. He owns parking lots. I just went to school for four years and destroyed my brain so I could acquire a career worth more than fifty thousand a year, and this man is making bank by owning parking lots. I’m twenty-two, and I’ve already made poor life decisions.
“Wow, that’s impressive,” I offer quietly. “Well, I’m going to—“ I awkwardly point upstairs, “shower, so, I’ll see you guys later.”
Hiking up the stairs, I hear a muttering of aggravated words exchanged between Samantha and Daniel, but I can’t make out what they’re saying. All I know is, I make it inside my bedroom just as I hear the front door open and close again.
I hit the light switch in the bathroom, and of course, the first thing I notice is the missing bowl of condoms. Okay, awesome. What the hell? Clearly, Liam is the king of all mind games, and I’m obviously not putting up a very good fight.
My towel drops to the floor as I peer into the mirror at my frizzy hair, seeing my unthawed nipples still standing at attention. I glance into the mirror a little closer, studying the . . . ohhh—way thinner than I thought—material of my bathing suit. I’m always so careful about white, and this is exactly why. You can see my freaking nipples right through the damn thing. No wonder I’m getting so much unwarranted attention. Crap. It’s a good thing I had a towel on when I came into the house just now.
I open the frosted glass door of the shower and crank the hot water up before stripping out of my skankilicious bikini. I believe that was the brand name, which now explains it all. This stupid thing was expensive too. Don’t they test the material in water before selling it? Plus, I’m blonde. My nipples aren’t even that dark. I can’t even imagine what it would have looked like if that were the case. I would chance being arrested for indecent exposure in public. That could only add to the amazingness of this summer so far.
Inside the shower, I revisit the spa-like bench I didn’t take advantage of yesterday during my five-minute shower. I was in and out and didn’t take the time to notice the variety of shower spouts protruding from the wall. I turn a knob that I didn’t touch yesterday, and the water shoots out from different directions. How fancy. At home, I was lucky to have high enough water pressure to rinse the shampoo from my hair.
I drop down and rest my head against the tiled wall, sucking in the hot steam with the hope that it’ll loosen some of the tension in my chest.
I can’t believe he took Shermanator. Who does that?
Opening one eye to look around the shower again, I spot a detachable shower hose with a massage dial. Oh, there is a sex god. Tugging it away from the wall, I turn the dial to a medium level and hold it between my legs, relaxing at first, then quickly welcome flashing images of Sterling and Liam, but Liam’s boner-looking non-boner from last night is one of the clearer images I’m focused on. I can’t help but wonder . . .
A sudden burst of cold water shoots up my penis fly trap, and I almost let out a loud scream, but instead, my body convulses, enjoying the drastic temperature change. Even the pipes are groaning behind me, followed by the loud percussion of pressure storms returning the hot water. It’s about all it takes to finish me off quicker than I would have liked. The fulfillment is so intense that I feel the need to cup my hand over my mouth to prevent any noise from escaping my throat.
A door slams in the vicinity, and I can’t tell if it’s in the hall or closer. Whatever the case, it better not be in my room. Now that my O-factor has zeroed out and my pulse is left racing as I fall off the beautiful ledge made of orgasms, I just want to know what that noise was. Holy paranoia.
I wash up quickly and shut the shower off, grabbing the towel from the nearby rack before stepping out onto the fluffed bath mat. My focus goes to the door first, which is still closed. Then I glance over to the mirror, finding a smiley face drawn into the fog with a blinked eye and the words, “Don’t forget the vent switch” beside it.
I stomp over to the door and whip it open, somewhat assuming I’d find Liam standing in the middle of my bedroom, but my door is closed, just not locked anymore. Enraged once again, I towel dry my hair and slip into a pair of jean shorts and a black tank-top—all materials fit for hiding body parts.
There are weird noises coming from Dylan’s room when I open my door, so I head down there first, finding him and Liam both playing a video game together. They’re perched on the edge of his bed, making similar tongue-in-cheek faces while concentrating so hard it’s like there is no option other than beating each other out of whatever game they’re playing.
Since they don’t notice me, I head downstairs to put Dylan’s breakfast together. Liam is beginning to strike me as some big kid who wants to live vicariously through Dylan because I’ve never met any guy around my age who wants to spend so much time with a kid almost a third of his age. It is sweet, and I feel awful for what Dylan has been through, so I guess it’s nice he has Liam, though I wish Liam would just focus on his manservant tasks here and let me do my job with Dylan. I’m starting to feel like a houseguest more than a nanny. It’s weird.
After I put Dylan’s breakfast together and pour him a glass of juice, I head to the bottom of the stairwell. “Dylan, your breakfast is ready.” After a minute, he comes downstairs, covering his mouth, laughing silently. Let me guess, Liam has filled your head with some kind of crap information about me? “What is so funny? Did you beat Liam at your game?”
“No, it’s nothing,” he says. “But, yeah, I whipped his butt.”
“Good, keep doing that. He needs a good butt whipping,” I say, joking around while roughing up Dylan’s hair.
“Huh, is that true?” Liam asks, appearing in the entryway of the kitchen. “Just like those movies you watch, right?”
Dylan laughs again. “You watch butt-whipping movies!” Thankfully Dylan has no clue what Liam means, but I want to slap him for even mentioning it around Dylan. What the hell is he thinking?
“You forgot—“ Liam begins.
“No, no, no, no,” Dylan whines, holding his hands up to the sides of his face. “You forgot.”
“What, what? What did I forget? It’s cereal, just like you want in the mornings?”
I look up at Liam, watching him mouth the word, “Strawberries.” Oh. I did forget. I race to the refrigerator and whip out the container of already sliced strawberries, bringing it to his bowl.
“Do you want to do it, or should I?” I ask Dylan, feeling nervous, but doing my best to hide it from him.
“You, you, you!”
“How many?” I ask.
“Ten,” Liam spits out as if we’re on a tight schedule.
I count them out carefully and drop ten into his bowl. Immediately, Dylan drop
s his hands and lifts his spoon as if none of this happened.
How is Samantha so put together and calm? I feel like my heart might explode right now, not knowing what else I’m going to mess up with him today. The last thing I want to do is hurt this poor kid.
I head over to the pantry and grab the binder. I’m trying to memorize this thing as quickly as I can, but it’s obviously not fast enough. As I open it to re-read her notes, Liam sits down with Dylan at the table and scrolls through his phone.
I know Samantha isn’t going to ride my butt about not having this binder memorized yet, but there’s something inside me that pains for Dylan. I don’t want to be just another failed nanny experience for him, which I’ve already set off to do by almost drowning when he needed me yesterday.
I lean over the counter, keeping my back to Dylan and Liam as I drag my finger slowly down the pages, trying not to miss any of the bullet points—such as: he needs pineapple juice at three o’clock each afternoon. Ech. What kid likes pineapple juice?
I glance over my shoulder to check on Dylan, and not so surprisingly, I find Liam staring directly at my ass. I was going to ask about the pineapple juice, but to get his attention, I would need to clear my throat or think of some other way to distract him from his staring issue. I hold my stare, waiting for him to notice that I’ve noticed him, but I’m sure it’s only been like thirty solid seconds. This is becoming uncomfortable for me, and I’m not the one staring at an ass.
He emits an exaggerated sigh and looks back down at his phone as if he didn’t notice I caught him staring. Ohhh, we’re still playing. How could I forget when I’m losing this game?
“Done,” Dylan says, dropping his spoon down onto the wooden table. He looks up at the clock and over at Liam. “Can I play for ten minutes before I have to get ready?”
“No, no more video games this morning. You’re only supposed to be playing for an hour a day, which means you’ll burn your time for later if you do that.” That’s what the book says.
“It’s ten minutes,” Liam argues.
“I’m following Samantha’s rules,” I retort.
Liam rolls his eyes at me and looks back at his phone. No wonder Dylan loves him so much. He’s the king of breaking the rules, I gather.
“You suck,” Dylan tells me as he pushes away from the table. The scraping of his chair against the floor sends a chill up my spine. Geez. Easy, kid. Just to drive his point home, he slams the chair against the table before storming out of the room. “You suck. You suck. You suck.” He continues all the way up the stairs until I hear his door slam.
“My God, it’s ten minutes,” I shout after him. “And, I don’t think you should be using that language.” I realize I’m yelling up the stairs to him, and he’s either ignoring me or I can’t hear me. Either way, I’m wasting my breath.
“Yeah, it’s ten minutes,” Liam reminds me. “Not worth the fight you’re about to endure.”
“I don’t think I’m going to endure any fight,” I tell him. “He just stormed off to his room. It seems like the fight is over to me.”
Liam snickers, but holds his gaze firm on the screen of his phone. “Okay.”
The snicker kind of says it all, though. Dylan is totally upstairs playing the stupid game.
I storm up to his bedroom and give Dylan the decency of knocking once before opening the door. Sure enough, he’s setting up the game. “I just told you no,” I say, calmly. “You need to listen to me when your parents aren’t here.”
“Parent,” he corrects me. “Daniel isn’t anyone’s parent.”
“He loves you, though,” I tell him, immediately regretting my words because I don’t know if that’s true or not.
“No, he doesn’t. He loves my mom, sometimes.” That’s a little heavy for a ten-year-old.
“Okay, fine, play the game for ten minutes,” I tell him. I hate giving in, but Liam might be right about picking my battles with Dylan. I want him to like me, but at the same time, I don’t want him to walk all over me.
He doesn’t say thank you or seem to appreciate me giving in, so I leave him to his game and head back downstairs, feeling like I have an “L” stamped on my forehead.
“Told you,” Liam says as I walk back into the kitchen.
“Shut up.” I open the fridge and grab an orange.
“Why did you change out of your bathing suit? You know Dylan has training in an hour, right?” Liam asks.
“I’m letting it dry off so I don’t get a chapped ass like you probably have right now. As if I answered my longing question about Liam and his assiness, I widen my gaze and lean toward him. “Ohhhh, is that what your problem is?”
Liam stands up from the table with a smirk and makes his way across the kitchen, retrieving a coffee mug from one of the cabinets. “There is absolutely nothing wrong with my ass, sunshine.” Yeah, I know that. Ugh. “So I couldn’t help but notice the brutal tension between you and Sterling this morning.”
“There’s no tension,” I reply.
“Well, clearly he’s not a good kisser. I mean, if he was, would you have been groping me this morning?”
I’m peeling my orange as if I were skinning an animal, trying to breathe through my anger. “Grope you? More like I was trying to give a quick swing of my fist to your junk in retaliation for groping me.” I laugh, but it’s forced, and it sounds that way. “Can we just talk about the fact that you somehow had a boner in ice-cold water?”
“Oh, sunshine, that wasn’t a boner.” Shit! It was like hard and stuff . . . I think. I don’t know. It happened so quickly. I thought it was impossible, but it was hard?
“Sterling was an amazing kisser, by the way. Since you’re so concerned with it, I figured you should know that there might be some validity to all those rumors you’ve heard about him.”
“Aw,” he coos. “Was it breathtaking while you were staring out into the ocean under the starlit sky? Did he tell you how beautiful you are and how long it’s been since a girl has given him any attention?” His question makes me think back to last night, replaying the order in which everything happened. The bottle of wine clearly didn’t help me hang on to most of what Sterling said, but I don’t recall him telling me I was beautiful or mentioning how long it’s been since he’s been with another woman. “I know.” Suddenly, Liam is all-knowing and versed on Sterling’s perpetual dating behavior. “You see, the first part is accurate but the second part isn’t. Except, he doesn’t tell women they’re beautiful, and he definitely doesn’t talk about how long it’s been since his last kiss.”
Did he just backhandedly call me beautiful, or am I confused by what he’s trying to say? The first part is true, and he asked me if—he was totally sneaking in a compliment. Nice play, Liam. Nice play. “How exactly do you know all of this?”
“I’ve been friends with the guy for a few years. You come to learn these things.”
“Well, you can’t phone in a kiss like that, so, I don’t know.” I swear his cheeks are turning red, which tells me I’m getting under his skin. It’s the only way I guess. There must be some history between Sterling and Liam that I don’t know about, and if there is, I definitely want to find out what it is.
“Maybe you just haven’t been kissed well enough to know the difference,” he says, pouring the carafe of coffee into his mug. “Coffee?”
“Yes, please,” I say, realizing I haven’t even had one cup yet. No wonder I’m feeling a bit short-tempered. I have to have my coffee in the morning.
“No, I didn’t mean I’d show you the difference between the two types of kisses.”
“What?”
“Never mind,” he chuckles.
“Coffee. That’s all I agreed to.” God, he doesn’t give up.
“Okay.”
That’s it. I’m bringing in the big guns. I look out into the living room to make sure Dylan is nowhere in sight before I stride over to where Liam is pouring the coffee. As soon as he places the carafe down, I run my hand up the ripple
d muscles of his back, probably torturing myself more than him, but I continue, squeezing his shoulder a bit. I press up on my toes, bringing my lips closer to his ear and pull the only card I think I have right now. “I know you want me, but you’re going about this all wrong,” I whisper in his ear.
He releases a loud breath. “Oh, I don’t know,” he says, not as affirmatively as I expected, though. “You see, I figured if I hid your little friend, you’d eventually become desperate enough to come find me in a time of need.” Bastard. I knew he took Shermanator. Who does that? Why do I keep asking that? Clearly, Liam has no boundaries and does everything I would never expect another person to do. This is why I can’t stay one step ahead of him.
“Keep it,” I tell him. “My shower is just fine.” That’s not going to do the trick. I need a better weapon.
“I’m aware,” he says with a grin. “The massage setting on that thing vibrates the entire house. So, I’m sure I was of some assistance with that blast of cold water this morning at justtttt—Ohhhh yeahhhh—the right moment.” I fall slowly from the tips of my toes down to my heels, feeling a heat rush through my cheeks. He knew what I was doing. I was in the shower, in private, doing the nasty to myself, and everyone who was in this house knew . . . except for Dylan, thankfully. God help him if he’s aware of that shit already.
Here I was, almost letting him get to me. I can’t forget how big of an asshole he is. That’s never going to change, and everything about him, sexy or not, is a horrible idea.
“You know, you may just end up running me right into Sterling’s bed,” I tell him.
“Good. Go.” If he doesn’t care, why put in all this effort to drive me crazy?
I take the mug of coffee and leave the kitchen, feeling a little hurt when I should not be feeling a thing after what’s been going on between us. He is the exact reason why I made my rule about staying away from good-looking men. It shouldn’t be that hard of a rule to follow when I already know the outcome.
There’s nothing quite like sitting in a wet bathing suit on a rock under a cloudy sky. Plus, the whole deja vu thing that’s going on with Liam sitting next to me, and Sterling twenty feet in front of us, talking to the group of kids. Liam and I are the only ones sitting so close to the class. The parents of the other kids are spread out, but I guess Dylan tends to interrupt a lot so we—I need to be close by in case I need to take him away from the class for a minute. In any case, here we are again.
The Man Cave Collection: Manservant, Man Flu, Man Handler, and Man Buns Page 16