Chapter 15
Carly
Eleven Weeks
Boulder Canyon Cafe is only a five-minute drive from Pen’s school, and I have almost an hour to kill before I have to be at work since Grayson’s been overly cautious with my start time. The decision is too easy, too safe, and too tempting to pass up.
The bell over the door jingles when I walk in, and the smell hits me first — espresso, cinnamon, toasted bread, that buttery-sweet scent from the pastry case.
I should love this, have loved this in the past, but my god, all it does is make my pulse tick up and my throat close.
Too many mornings getting ready in here have soured what would normally feel like a treat.
The café’s warmer than the frigid temperatures outside, but it’s loud.
Milk hisses in metal jugs, dishes clink together, a toddler screeches in her stroller, a business man talks too loudly into his phone.
It’s chaotic, and I hate it now, but it’s worth it to pop in for a quick drink and my best friend.
Zoe looks up from the espresso machine and clocks me instantly.
“Oh, no,” she says as I approach the counter. “What happened?”
I blink at her, wondering what the hell she saw on my face that has her questioning me already. “Good morning to you too. What do you mean?”
“Don’t good morning me with that expression. You look like you’ve been through the wars.”
“The wars?”
“Mhm.” She wipes her hands on a towel and leans in. “Large cappuccino or medium?”
“Large.”
I slide onto my usual stool at the far end of the counter while she makes my drink, quiet while she chats with a regular customer, and when Zoe sets a cappuccino in front of me with a leaf in the foam, it’s so pretty I feel guilty touching it.
As soon as the regular is gone, she folds her arms over her chest and gives me a look that clearly says start talking.
“Okay, so things are complicated,” I admit.
“With billionaire nanny life?”
I wince. “Yes.”
She snorts as she starts working on another drink. “Complicated how? From what you said, there’s a heated pool, a kitchen bigger than my apartment, a bathtub with jets attached to your room, and you’re making fucking insane money. What, exactly, could the catch be?”
“The catch,” I say, “is that my boss has two entirely different personalities and I am unfortunately way too attracted to both of them.”
Her lips twitch up at the corner, a smirk forming. “I told you this would be a problem.”
“Shut up.” I take another sip. “It’s like he can’t decide if he wants to keep his distance or be casual with me.”
“Explain.”
“At work, he’s stoic and barely talks to me.
” I huff a breath through my nose. “And then he comes home, and he’s in total dad-mode, calmer.
He’ll come in wearing one of those stupid suits, looking like a man in a cologne ad, and then turn right around and make her dinosaur-shaped toast while grinning at me over his shoulder.
It’s disgusting and it’s so fucking hot, Zoe, I’m going insane. ”
Zoe presses a fist to her mouth. “Oh, you are in danger.”
“You have no idea.”
Her eyes narrow. “Why do you say that like there’s more?”
I shouldn’t say it. I know I shouldn’t say it, shouldn’t talk about it, shouldn’t make the situation worse by telling people or warping the memory in my head. But keeping it inside hasn’t exactly made me any more sane. “He, uh... He kissed me.”
Zoe’s jaw drops. “Holy fucking shit, what? You were just gonna leave that out?”
“It just, I don’t know, it happened when he was giving me the tour of his house and then everything got weird because I didn’t know how to react, and then he got weird and was like, ’I’d prefer to keep things professional,’ and then there was the whole issue of him pretending to date me for Aaron’s wedding and I…
forgot to mention it to you sooner. It’s been a long couple of weeks. ”
She abandons the counter entirely, asks one of the other members of staff to cover her, and comes around to my side, planting both elbows on the bar as she takes the stool next to me. “Tell me everything. Now.”
I tell her about him stepping in at the restaurant, about Aaron’s reaction, about Grayson putting an arm around me like it belonged there.
I’d only given her the barest rundown over text before, but I drop everything on her this time, talking quickly, checking my phone every few sentences to keep track of the time.
Then I tell her about the kiss, and Zoe listens with enough focus that it’s almost unnerving. When I finish, she just stares at me, and I can almost see the wheels turning behind her eyes.
“You’re telling me he isn’t interested? After that?”
“Yes.”
“Carly.”
“He literally gave me the whole professionalism speech afterward. He probably got his wires crossed and then realized the position he put me in.”
“No, that just sounds like he’s trying not to be interested. That is not the same thing.”
* * *
By the time dinner is finished and eaten that night, I’m tired down to my bones.
Penelope is curled into one corner of the couch in pink pajamas, watching some animated movie about a singing rabbit while picking at the last of her dino-nuggets. I’m clicking the tupperware container of Penny’s lunch for tomorrow closed when I hear Grayson’s voice behind me.
“Carly.”
He’s leaning one shoulder against the kitchen doorway like he’s been there for longer than a second, hands in the pockets of a pair of dark lounge pants, T-shirt stretched across his chest in a way that is deeply unhelpful for the way my thoughts have been spiraling lately.
“Yeah?” I say, trying to keep my voice level instead of that pitched-up version it wants to shift into.
“Can you come to the office for a minute when you’re done?”
It shouldn’t make my stomach flip. It’s a normal question. But he’s asking me to be alone with him, and it feels like the worst idea possible. “Uh. Sure.”
He pushes off the wall and nods toward the stairs. “Meet me in there when you’re done.”
It takes me approximately two minutes to finish packing a juice box, write out a little note for her, and seal up her lunchbox before chucking it in the fridge for tomorrow.
When I get up to his office, he’s already inside, sitting in his chair with his ankles crossed up on the side of his desk, slippers on, looking so unfairly comfortable in his own skin that it shouldn’t be allowed.
The overhead light is off, just the desk lamp and a floor lamp in the corner.
His laptop is open, papers scattered to one side, and when he looks up at me, there’s none of the distance he wears so easily at work.
There’s just a quiet ease that I have no idea what to do with.
“Come here,” he says, tilting his head toward the stool beside him. “I need to go over some things with you.”
I circle around the desk and carefully sit in the stool next to his chair, close enough that I can catch a hint of his cologne, can see the way the silver in his hair catches the light, can feel the warmth coming off of him.
He turns the laptop slightly so I can see the screen. “Legal sent over the revised terms this afternoon. The NFL wants preliminary designs for the rollout by Friday. I know that’s aggressive, but they’re trying to move while the momentum’s there.”
His forearm rests on the desk between us, bare, a little veiny from his post-work work-out, dark hair peppering it like it’s taunting me.
“Okay.”
“I printed off those sketches you sent earlier,” he says, flipping open a folder in front of me. “Thought we could go through them together and figure out what to keep and what to axe for now.”
Two weeks ago, I didn’t expect to be going through my sketches in my bosses home office with us both wearing pajamas, but here we are.
I walk him through the ones I’d sent, the ideas behind each, the ways I think they could be marketed, the ones I think will land the hardest. There aren’t enough for a full collection, but it’s enough for the initial pitch.
He goes quiet while I talk, but it’s not the kind I’m used to, not the kind Aaron used to give me when I tried to show him ideas after dinner.
He’s fully locked in, which, weirdly, is so much worse.
Every time I glance at him, he’s looking right at me, his dark green eyes boring a hole past every mask I try to keep in place around him. He’s barely looking at the drawings.
“Are you... uh, happy with them?” I ask, cringing internally at my own desperation for approval.
His gaze moves, sliding down me until it rests on the sketch I stopped on. “This one,” he says, tapping one of the pages, the veins beneath his skin shifting. “This is strong. More elevated than your usual work, and your usual work is already elevated. This is exactly what I wanted.”
My cheeks heat as I shift in my stool. “That’s what I was going for. Wearable, but could appeal to both fans at games and the average soccer mom.”
“I can tell. It’s fantastic.”
The praise sinks into me, settling warm in my stomach, and I realize far too quickly that I enjoy being praised by him far too much. I want to hear it again, and again, and again. “Thank you,” I murmur, keeping my voice low on the off chance it decides to waver.
He leans back a little, eyes moving over the pages again. “You’re good at this.”
Fuck. He can’t keep complimenting me. It’s unfair. I lean one elbow on the desk, trying to cover my cheeks with my hands, knowing damn well they’re betraying me right now. “I’m trying to live up to the promotion you gave me,” I say, covering the words with a breathy chuckle, trying to sound normal.
He’s quiet for a second before he speaks again. “You’re far surpassing my expectations already. Both here and at the office.”
It’s not the compliment this time. No, it’s far worse than that — it’s the way he looks at me like he genuinely believes the words he’s saying and wants to say them to me. My throat closes in just a little, threatening to make me choke.