Except...
She had the feeling that if she’d had her wits about her, she could have gotten a million dollars out of him, he was so desperate. But that felt wrong, too.
She’d gone in there for the money, but she didn’t want to take advantage of him. Not after watching him struggle to keep his composure as he talked about his family.
Damn her helpful nature. As bad an idea as this was, she couldn’t say no and leave him and that poor girl in such obvious distress. Mixing milk in with the formula? Good lord. That baby had probably only been a day or two away from a visit to the emergency room.
Rosita was waiting for the cab. She hurried down the wide stairs and rushed through the gate as Trish unloaded all of her worldly possessions. “Oh, good—you’ve come back,” she said as she handed over a credit card to the cabbie.
“I promised I would.”
“They’re still sleeping,” Rosita went on. “Ay mia, this is the most quiet we’ve had in weeks.”
“Will you help me unload? I don’t even know where I’m going to be sleeping.”
“I made you up a bed. This way, please.”
Hefting one of her duffels over her shoulder, Trish followed the maid inside. She paused to peek into the parlor. The man and the baby hadn’t moved. Nate still had a firm hold of Jane. The little girl was curled against him, breathing regularly. And Nate?
God, it wasn’t fair that he should look so good, so sweet, sleeping like that. It almost made Trish’s heart hurt. She’d helped raise nine other babies—and she couldn’t remember seeing any father in her house holding his child. She liked to think that, once upon a time, her father had held her before he pulled up stakes and came to San Francisco.
She knew that many men cared for their children. But Jane wasn’t even Nate’s child—and he was still trying his hardest.
No. She was not going to crush on him. This was not about her attraction to Nate Longmire, no matter how wealthy and good-looking and easy to talk to he was. This was about funding her charity for the foreseeable future and making sure that little girl was well cared for. Trish had too much to do to allow an infatuation to creep into her life and that was final. They’d both agreed to the plan and she would stick by that plan come hell or high water.
She followed Rosita up the stairs. This time, she was able to actually look around. The staircase was a magnificent creation that, at the landing, broke into two sets of stairs, one on each side of the wall. The whole place was so clean it almost glowed in the early evening light. Expensive-looking art—some of it old-looking oil paintings, some of it framed movie posters from schlocky old movies she’d never heard of—decorated the walls in coordinating frames. The walls were a pale green, cool and refreshing, with coordinating chairs in the landing.
Oh, yeah, this was much fancier than anything she’d ever lived in before. This was even fancier than the hotel she’d stayed in for the Glamour award in New York. That’d been a very nice hotel—a Marriott—but this? This was officially the lap of luxury. And it was Nate’s.
Rosita took the staircase to the right and Trish followed. She wondered if she might go up to the attic—she’d be out of the way there—but Rosita led her down the hall on the second floor.
“That is Señor Nate’s room,” Rosita said, pointing to the other side of the hallway. “It runs the length of the house. The nursery and the guest room are on this side. Here we are.” Rosita opened the first door on her right.
Wait—what? She was going to be right across the hall from him? That felt...close. Too close. He would be too accessible.
But that flash of panic was quickly overridden by the room Rosita led her into. “Oh, my,” Trish breathed. A huge, beautiful room awaited her. She’d never had a beautiful room before. The wallpaper was a deep blue-and-cream floral pattern. An actual chandelier hung in the middle. The room had a small bay window that held two sitting chairs and a small table. To one side was a fireplace with deep blue glazed tiles. A flat-screen television hung over the mantel, which was decorated with small vases and figurines. And on the other... “That’s an amazing bed.”
“Yes. Señor Nate’s mother prefers this room when she is able to visit.”
The bed was huge. At least a queen-size with four posts that reached up almost to the level of the chandelier, the whole thing was draped with gauzy fabric. The bed was made up with color-coordinating pillows and a down comforter that looked so light and fluffy Trish couldn’t wait until she could sleep in it.
Alone. She would be sleeping in that bed alone. That was the plan.
Except all the dreams she’d been having for the past two weeks came crashing back down on her head. Nate would be right across the hall, no longer a fantasy, but a flesh-and-blood man who had, in no uncertain terms, said he needed her.
Oh, this was going to be a long, hard month.
“The bathroom, miss,” Rosita said. “It connects with the nursery.”
“Okay, good.” That way, she wouldn’t have to walk into the hall in the middle of the night in her T-shirt and boxer shorts and run the risk of stumbling into Nate Longmire. Because that would be terrible. Awful. She was just sure of it.
Her head began to spin. This was too much. Too much money. Not her life. She didn’t get paid this kind of cash to watch a billionaire’s baby while sleeping in a guest room that was far bigger and cleaner than any other place she’d ever lived.
Her knees wobbled and she sat heavily on the bed. Of course it was soft and comfortable. And it was hers. Hers for the month.
“Tell me about him,” she said to Rosita. The maid’s eyebrows jumped. “I just agreed to move into his house and I really don’t know...anything.” She’d done her homework a few weeks ago and yes, he’d shared that little moment down in the parlor. But suddenly that wasn’t enough.
Because there’d been huge holes in his biography online. The lawsuits he’d filed—and won. He’d sued a woman named Diana Carter because she’d claimed that half of SnAppShot was hers and had tried to sell it. They’d been old college friends, according to the filings. There were rumors that they’d been more, but that was it—just rumors. And Nate had run her into the ground.
But those were dry legal texts. Anything else that might have provided context about what went on between “old college friends” was simply not there. The information was conspicuous in its absence.
“Señor Nate? He is a good man. Quiet, not messy. Does not make me uncomfortable. Very polite.”
“Okay, good.” That was mostly how he’d come across during their meeting at the coffee shop. Well, maybe except the messy part.
“He likes to sleep late and he drinks maybe too much coffee,” Rosita added in an entirely motherly sounding voice. “But I do not mind. He pays me very well and the work is not too hard. Mostly cooking, cleaning and laundry. It is a very good job.”
“Does he...I mean to say, will there be other guests? Who spend the night?” She didn’t know why she’d asked that question, but it was out there and there was nothing she could do about it now. She felt her cheeks flush.
It was a matter of self-preservation, that was all. If other people were going to be in and out of this house, that was something she needed to know for Jane’s sake. She’d have to lock both her and Jane’s doors to make sure no “guests” accidentally wandered into the wrong room. It had nothing to do with not wanting to see Nate going into his bedroom with someone else and closing the door behind them.
“Ay, no! Señor Nate keeps to himself. His helper—Stanley,” she said, drawing the name out in an unflattering way, “he will sleep on the couch sometimes, down in the media room. That is only when they are working on a project. But no. No other guests.”
“Stanley—does he have a lot of tattoos, a horrible sense of fashion and big holes in his ears?”
Rosita nodde
d. “I do not like him. He is loud and messy and rude. But Señor Nate says he is a good man, so I cook for him when he comes over.”
Yeah, that pretty much summed up the man Trish had talked to at the office. Loud, messy and rude. “Anything else you think I should know?”
Rosita stepped back and gave Trish the once-over. “No, miss. Just that I’m glad you’ve taken the position. I...” her voice dropped to a whisper. “I do not care for children. Never had one of my own. They make me nervous,” she admitted with an awkward laugh. “That is why this was such a good job. Other people, they want you to look after the children and I...I am no good at it. And it is far too late for me to suddenly become good at it. You understand? It would be hard to find another position as good as this one and I am getting too old to start over.”
Trish patted Rosita’s arm. Being a woman who currently had no desire to have children, she understood. Some people just didn’t like babies. Oftentimes, Trish had to wonder if that included her own mother. Why else would she have left her oldest to care for each new infant?
“No worries. I’m going to unpack a little and then check on them.” She looked at the clock beside the bed. Even the clock was fancy—a built-in dock for smartphones and more plugs than she recognized. If only she had a smartphone to dock there. “They’ve probably got another forty minutes or so before they wake up.”
Rosita started to leave but paused at the door. “Miss? I do all the cooking. Anything special you like?”
Trish blinked at her. She was not a gourmet cook. She existed on the cheapest groceries she could afford, and those usually came from corner markets and little shops that carried ethnic foods. Her big splurge was, once a week, buying a nice cup of coffee. If she got really wild, she might eat two whole packets of ramen noodles for dinner. She did not dine at nice restaurants. She didn’t even dine at bad ones.
The prospect of this nice woman cooking her food was beyond Trish’s comprehension. “I’ll eat anything.”
Rosita nodded and closed the door behind her.
Trish flopped back onto the bed and stared up at the gauzy canopy. This was, hands down, the craziest thing she’d ever done. Moving in with a billionaire. What the hell?
But already it was hard to think of Nate as just the Boy Billionaire, not when she’d seen him so upset over his family and napping with his niece. She hadn’t just moved in with a billionaire. She’d moved in with Nate.
She forced herself to stop thinking about the way his very nice arm muscles had tightened under her touch and the way certain parts of her own body had tightened in response. If she allowed herself to dwell on those moments—and that was a pretty darned big if—well, those thoughts were best kept for after everyone had gone to bed in their separate bedrooms, with all doors safely shut.
Right now, she had things to do. Moving quickly, she unpacked her meager wardrobe. The room had a closet that was almost as big as her kitchen/bathroom in the basement of Mrs. Chan’s house, and all the hangers were those fancy padded ones wrapped in satin. Her second-hand clothes looked jarringly out of place on them.
She put her laptop on the table in the window—the little nook would be a wonderful place to do her work—and lined up her books on a built-in bookshelf on the far side of the canopy bed. Finally, she was unpacked.
Time to get down to business. She pulled off her boots and considered her options. Baby duty required wash-and-wear clothes and her professional outfit wasn’t it.
As she stripped down to her underwear, she thought about what Rosita had said. Nate was quiet, kept to himself.
He didn’t bring women home with him. And, aside from Stanley, who slept on the couch, he didn’t bring men home with him, either.
Trish threw on the Wonder Woman T-shirt and a pair of jeans, and then removed her earrings and braided her hair back so that it couldn’t be yanked by small hands. She was not going to think about Nate and whom he did or did not bring home with him. It was none of her business whom he slept with, as long as he didn’t—what had Rosita said? As long as Nate didn’t make Trish “uncomfortable.”
He’d promised. No sex.
During the month.
Which left what might happen after the month as something of an open question.
Trish shook her head and forced herself to think about the real reason she was here—Jane, the baby. The poor girl.
God, Trish didn’t want to be a mother again so soon, not to someone else’s child, but...Jane needed her and Nate needed her. And Trish—she needed a well-funded charity that could make a huge difference in her people’s lives.
Just a month. She was a temporary nanny. That was the plan.
She opened her door and, barefoot, peeked into the nursery. Rosita had done an admirable job in the hour and a half since Trish had last seen the nursery, but the place was still a mess. Boxes and suitcases were stacked against the walls, baby things spilling out of them. The playpen was almost in the middle of the room and—wait. She stepped around it. A pair of formal sitting chairs—much like the ones in her room, only in a deep rose color—sat in the bay window. That, in itself, wasn’t that remarkable.
But one of the chairs had a suitcase that had clearly been used as a footstool. A used coffee cup sat on the little table and a phone—she assumed it was Nate’s—was next to it. The whole area looked rumpled, much like Nate had when she’d showed up.
Oh, dear God—no wonder that man was so tired. He’d been sleeping in the chair to be closer to Jane.
She shook her head. He had no idea what he was doing, but he was doing his best. She’d work on the nursery tomorrow. There wasn’t even a changing table. She’d have to ask if Nate could afford to get a crib, a table and another dresser...
She caught herself. Of course Nate could afford that. Hello, Boy Billionaire who’d just thrown close to three hundred thousand dollars at her. A couple of thousand on some furniture wasn’t anything to him.
She left the mess behind and went downstairs to the parlor. She studied the room. For being a tech billionaire, there was very little actual tech in this room. Instead, old toys were artfully arranged on the built-in bookcases around a fireplace with an elegant floral pattern done in bright blue tiles. The mantel that went over it was hand-carved and polished to a high shine. And there, in a place of honor, was Superman #1 in a glass case.
Earlier, when she’d seen the distress Jane was in, Trish had acted without thinking. Her instincts were to get the baby changed and clothed and fed and napping in quick succession.
There was a distinctive possibility that she might have been bossing a billionaire around.
But now the situation was not as dire. The baby was resting. Nate was asleep. She didn’t know if she could walk in there and pluck Jane off his chest or if that would be crossing a line she shouldn’t cross. She really shouldn’t touch him. Not like she’d already touched him. No more touching. Touching was not part of the plan.
As she was debating doing that or going back and showing Rosita how to make the formula properly, Nate’s eyes fluttered open. He saw her standing there and blinked a few times.
“Hey, Wonder Woman,” he mumbled as his long legs stretched out.
“I’m not really a superhero,” she felt obligated to remind him.
That got her a sleepy grin. Oh, my. Yes, Nate Longmire could be quite attractive. “You came back.”
“I keep my word.” She paused. “Listen, about the money...”
His eyes widened. “What about it? Not enough?”
“No—no—it’s just—that’s an insane amount of money. You don’t have to pay me that much. Really. I hadn’t even considered the room and board as part of the agreement. And the room—it’s really nice. I mean, that alone is worth—”
“Don’t worry about it,” he sighed as his eyelids drifted shut again. “We agreed. I
keep my word, too.”
He couldn’t be serious. She hadn’t been negotiating, not really. She’d just been too stunned to tell him no earlier. “But—”
“The deal is done.” His voice was harder now—the same voice he’d used when he had refused to take no for an answer. “Not open to renegotiation, Trish.”
She tried very hard not to glare at him. “Fine. I have a favor to ask.”
One eyelid opened back up. She could almost see him thinking, another favor? “Yes?”
“I need to borrow a phone so I can call my family and tell them where I’m at and I haven’t seen a landline in here.”
“I don’t have a landline,” he said as if she’d observed that he didn’t have any woolly mammoths in the closets. Both lids swung up in a look of total confusion. “You don’t have a phone?”
“Nope.” Shame burned her cheeks. She lived in the most technologically advanced city in quite possibly the entire world—and didn’t even own a cell phone. “I have a laptop,” she said, desperate not to sound pathetic. “I assume you have Wi-Fi or something I can log into, to finish my classwork?”
He regarded her for a minute. She got the feeling he was fully awake now.
“You need a phone.”
“I’m fine, it’s just that—”
“No, you need a phone,” he said with more force. “In case of an emergency. I’ll have Stanley get you one. I’ve cleared most of my schedule, but I have a few events I need to attend and you need to be able to get ahold of me.”
“Nate...”
She was going to tell him he absolutely could not buy her a phone. She had existed for twenty-five years without a mobile device just fine. He was already giving her too much.
But when she said his name, something in his eyes changed—deepened. And all those things she was going to tell him floated away like the fog.
“You are too generous,” she said, unable to make her voice sound like a normal version of herself. She could never pay him back, not in a million years. “You’re giving me too much. I’m not...” worth it.
The Nanny Plan Page 6