3. Casey #2
Not a smile.
Not quite, but almost.
I look away before I stare at his mouth.
The conversation settles into an easier rhythm after that, though I remain aware of the man at the head of the table in a way that irritates me.
Letty asks questions with the relentlessness of someone who’s never been told curiosity is impolite.
Do I like horses? Do I know how to braid hair?
Can I draw dragons? Do I believe unicorns bite?
Have I ever seen a real castle? Do I snore?
“My teacher snores,” she adds confidentially, leaning toward me.
“Does she?” I ask, lowering my voice to match hers.
“Mmmm. I heard her.”
“Were you meant to be napping?”
Letty scrunches her nose and grins. “I was almost napping. My eyes were napping, but my brain was dancing.”
“That doesn’t count.”
“It does.”
I press my lips together and lose the battle against a smile.
Across from us, Adriano watches the exchange without contributing much. He eats neatly, answers when Letty pulls him in, corrects her manners with a single look when she reaches across the table, and somehow manages to keep the entire evening balanced without seeming to try.
It should make him easier to understand.
It doesn’t. The man is an enigma.
The version of him who stood in the doorway and told me I was early felt clear enough. Controlled. Unwelcoming. A man with rules and walls and no patience for anything that touched them.
This version is harder.
This version wipes sauce from Letty’s chin with his thumb and listens when she explains the social hierarchy of crayons without dismissing it.
This version notices when her glass is empty and refills it without interrupting her.
This version is still exacting, still distant, but not cold in the places that matter to his daughter.
That makes him inconveniently difficult to dislike.
I prefer disliking men right now.
It feels safer.
When dinner ends, I stand automatically, reaching for my bowl.
“You don’t need to do that,” Adriano says.
The words are polite, and his tone isn’t quite a request.
I pause with the bowl in my hand. “I don’t mind.”
“You’re not working until tomorrow, and your job is looking after my daughter, not being my slave.”
I feel the rush of heat to my cheeks as the word slave instantly sends my imagination down a very erotic route. “I still ate,” I manage to whisper out.
Adriano looks at me as if I’ve presented an argument he didn’t expect to have to answer.
“It’s fine,” I say, softer this time, because I can feel myself edging toward defensiveness and I don’t want to. “I’m used to helping.”
Something passes over his face too quickly for me to name. “Leave them by the sink,” he says.
A compromise.
I take it, because not all battles can be won on day one.
Letty climbs down from her chair, pasta sauce on one sleeve and triumph on her face. “Can Casey see bedtime?”
Adriano’s expression changes immediately. Not much, just enough to show he’s not happy with this. “No.”
The answer is quiet and final.
Letty’s face falls.
He crouches in front of her before she can argue, lowering himself to her level with a patience that makes my chest ache again. “Not tonight,” he says. “Casey starts tomorrow. Tonight, she needs to settle in.”
Letty’s lip pushes out. “But she can see.”
“She will. Tomorrow.”
“That’s far.”
“It’s one sleep.”
“One sleep is far when you’re waiting.”
“I know. Come on,” he says, quieter now. “Bed.”
“I’m not tired.”
“You are.”
“I’m not.”
He doesn’t argue. Just waits her out.
She looks up at him, trying to win on sheer will alone, then huffs and leans into his side. “Fine,” she mutters, which very clearly means she’s lost.
He brushes his thumb absently over her shoulder, already turning her toward the stairs before she can change her mind.
“Good night, Casey,” she calls over her shoulder.
“Good night, Letty.”
“Practice the voice.”
“I will.”
She narrows her eyes like she doesn’t entirely trust me, then lets herself be guided away.
Adriano pauses just long enough to glance back at me. “Dinner’s usually at six,” he says. “Tomorrow we’ll keep to schedule.”
“Understood.”
A beat passes, like there’s something else he could say.
He doesn’t.
Then he turns and takes the stairs. Letty is already talking again before they reach the top. The house shifts as they disappear, her voice softening with distance, his answering murmur lower still.
And just like that, I’m alone in the kitchen.
The kitchen feels different without them in it. Larger. Less certain. I rinse my bowl despite being told not to work, then stop myself before I begin cleaning everything else. Boundaries. I need to learn the ones in this house before I accidentally trip over them.
From somewhere above me, Letty’s voice rises, muffled through the ceiling.
“No, the other pajamas.”
A lower answer. Adriano’s.
Then Letty again, indignant. “They are not the same. Those are sleepy cats. I want the angry cats.”
I stand by the sink with my hands damp and listen before I can stop myself.
There’s something disarming about hearing a powerful man negotiate with a tiny tyrant over pajamas.
Something almost indecently intimate about it.
I shouldn’t be listening, but the house carries sound softly, and I’m only human, despite recent evidence suggesting I might be turning into something colder.
Footsteps cross above. A drawer opens. Letty laughs. Then there’s quiet for a while, broken by the low murmur of his voice.
Reading, maybe.
I picture him sitting on the edge of her bed, sleeves still rolled, one hand holding a book too small for him, his voice stripped down to something only she gets.
My throat tightens.
I turn the faucet on to cover the silence and rinse my hands again even though they’re already clean.
By the time he comes downstairs, I’m in the living room, standing near the edge of a bookshelf, pretending I haven’t been staring at family photos.
There aren’t many.
Letty at the beach, laughing so hard her eyes are closed. Nico holding her upside down while Isabella looks both horrified and delighted. Matteo wearing a paper crown too small for his head. Adriano in the background of several pictures rather than the center, always present, rarely posed.
And one photo of a woman I don’t know. Dark hair. Soft smile. Letty’s eyes.
I look away before he reaches the room.
“Casey.”
My name in his voice lands differently when the house is quiet. I turn.
He stands at the entrance to the living room. “Do you have a minute?”
“Of course.”
“I’d like to go over expectations before tomorrow.”
There it is.
Ground rules.
The word doesn’t leave his mouth, but it settles between us anyway. I nod. “That would be helpful.”
He gestures toward the kitchen table rather than the sofa.
Of course.
The sofa would be too comfortable. Too informal. Too easy to mistake for something human.
I sit across from him at the table, hands folded loosely in my lap. He doesn’t sit immediately. He takes a folder from the counter first, sets it down between us, then lowers himself into the chair opposite mine.
Everything about him is economical.
No wasted movement.
No nervous energy.
No attempt to make this easier than it is.
“I value consistency,” he begins.
“I gathered.”
His eyes lift.
For half a second, I think I’ve misstepped, but his expression doesn’t change.
“Letty does better when routines are predictable,” he continues. “Preschool drop-off is at eight thirty. Pick-up is at three. Snack when she gets home. One cartoon before dinner, not two, regardless of what she tells you I allow.”
“She negotiates?”
“She attempts to.”
I almost smile. “Noted.”
“She doesn’t like bananas, despite asking for them. She’ll eat half and leave the rest somewhere inconvenient.”
“That feels very specific.”
“It’s happened more than once.”
“She likes strawberries.”
His gaze pauses on me, as if he didn’t expect me to know that already. “She does.”
“And blue crayons.”
“She likes all crayons. She has opinions about the blue ones.”
“She explained that in detail earlier,” I say with a small smile.
Adriano huffs a semblance of a laugh. “I’m sure she did.”
The faintest shift softens his mouth and disappears.
I shouldn’t notice, but he isn’t the kind of man it’s easy to look away from. Even when I was with Jasper, I noticed him and flirted—even though it was harmless fun to push his buttons. Now it doesn’t feel so safe, but nothing does. Everything feels dangerous.
He opens the folder. “Emergency contacts are here. Pediatrician. Allergies. Schedule. House numbers. Elena’s number. Isabella’s. Both of my brothers. Mine.”
I glance down at the neat pages. Everything typed. Labeled. Cross-referenced, of course. He’s used to contracts and efficiency. “This is thorough,” I say.
“It avoids confusion.”
I run my fingers lightly along the edge of the paper, careful not to wrinkle it. “I appreciate that.”
His gaze holds on my hand for a brief second before returning to my face. “Privacy matters here,” he says.
The words land differently as he pushes an NDA toward me. I’m not surprised; I’ve signed plenty in my time as a nanny. We see everything, and most rich people don’t want their private lives to become public fodder.
Yet I still, because this one feels different. I’m going from a friend of his sister-in-law to an employee. It feels backward.
He notices. Of course he notices.
“I don’t discuss family matters outside the house,” I say evenly.
“I’m aware Isabella trusts you.”
“But you don’t.”
A pause. It’s not long enough to be rude; it is long enough to be honest.
“I don’t know you,” he says.