Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
MADDOX
“Hey.” Heath strolled into my office. Without knocking. Did he not see me on the phone?
I held up a finger as he plopped into a leather chair in the corner of the room.
“Let me know after you talk to the owner,” I told my assistant. “I’m willing to sign a seven-year lease, but I’d prefer five. Push for that.”
“You got it.”
“Thanks, John. Have a merry Christmas.”
“Same to you, Maddox.”
I ended the call and pinched the bridge of my nose. This headache wasn’t going away, even after two aspirin and a jug of water. The throb had bloomed beneath my temples at exactly the same time I’d found Violet in the kitchen.
With a goddamn knife.
After hours of endless calls and back-to-back meetings, the pain had only grown. It was rare that I came to Montana, and the last thing I wanted to do was spend my vacation working. But there were tasks to be done. Too much work to finish if I was actually going to move here.
I was in the middle of determining where and when I could set up a satellite office for my company. The employees who’d been open to a move to Montana would need a work space. Then there was building a house for Violet and me.
If it all came together, soon, Montana wouldn’t just be a vacation destination. It would be home.
And instead of bothering me with endless texts and phone calls, my brothers would be able to interrupt my day in person.
“What do you want?” I barked at Heath.
“Someone’s in the holiday spirit.”
I shot him a glare. “Seriously. I have a million things to do before I’m done today. State your business.”
“Did you ask him?” Tobias strolled into the room with a stack of cookies in his hand. Again, without a knock.
“Give me one of those.”
“Say please.”
“Please.” I snapped my fingers. “Now.”
“You’re in a mood today.” Tobias crossed the room and handed over a chocolate crinkle.
“I have a headache, and today’s been a train wreck.” I sighed, taking a bite of the cookie, hoping some sugar would improve my outlook. Was it too early for a drink? One o’clock was, well... one o’clock. Technically, I was on vacation.
“What’s going on?” Heath asked.
“I’m having a hell of a time finding office space that’s big enough, nice enough and an owner who doesn’t think that because he googled my net worth, I’m willing to pay LA prices in Montana.”
I’d made the initial calls myself, but after the third property owner had quoted me an exorbitant price, I’d delegated the task to John .
“The nanny I’d brought with me from LA decided to quit and enjoy a nice holiday vacation this week. After I flew her up here in my jet. Oh, and this morning I found my daughter in the kitchen with a knife.”
“That’s why we’re here.” Tobias took the matching leather chair beside Heath’s. The look the twins shared had me sitting straighter.
“What?”
“When did you hire Natalie Buchanan?”
I blinked. “The nanny?”
“Told you he didn’t recognize her.” Heath swiped a cookie from Tobias’s hand, chomping on the gingersnap. “Natalie Buchanan. She was in our class. Nice but sort of nerdy back then.”
She had looked familiar, with blue eyes that had instantly drawn me in. But I’d been too busy trying not to stare at her long, slender legs to place her face.
“Definitely not nerdy now,” Tobias said. “I haven’t seen her in ages. She looks good.”
Good was one word. Beautiful was another. But she was my employee and there was no way I would make that comment aloud.
“Leave her alone,” I ordered. “She’s here to watch Violet. I’m out of options so unless you want to be saddled with babysitting your niece for the next week, don’t bother Natalie.”
“Babysit Violet? Oh, hell no.” Heath shot out of his chair and, as quickly as he’d come into the office, he disappeared.
“What was that supposed to mean?”
Tobias’s gaze dropped to the floor. Then, like Heath, Tobias scurried away too.
So maybe Violet wasn’t exactly an easygoing child. She wasn’t a typical girl either, one who played with dollhouses and Barbies and makeup—assuming that’s what other seven-year- old girls did. Besides Violet, I didn’t have experience with other children.
Hence the nannies.
A whole fucking string of nannies.
Not even professionals seemed to have the capacity to handle my daughter. If Natalie survived the week, I’d be impressed.
In the past year, I’d had thirty-two nannies. The longest had stayed with us for seven weeks, probably because I’d scaled down her duties significantly. All she’d had to do was walk Violet to school in the morning, pick her up each afternoon, then spend three hours with her until I’d come home at six.
Apparently, three hours had been too much because on the day she’d quit, the woman had filled twenty minutes telling me everything that was wrong with my child.
Spoiled.
Unruly.
Naughty.
Not a single nanny out of thirty-two had enjoyed spending time with my daughter. It was like taking that goddamn butcher’s knife she’d had this morning to the heart.
Violet was... difficult. The divorce had taken its toll. She acted out more often than normal. I wasn’t blind or deaf to her antics. I just didn’t know how to fix it.
Hopefully moving to Montana would be part of the answer.
But we weren’t here yet. And at the moment, I simply wanted to survive Christmas unscathed. With any luck, Natalie could stick it out with Violet, at least through Mom and Dad’s party. Once the party was over on Christmas Eve, Mom would have more free time to pitch in. At this point, if Natalie made it through today before she quit, I’d take it.
She was probably going to quit .
Natalie Buchanan.
Huh. Out of context, I hadn’t recognized her name. She’d been the nanny from the agency, nothing more. I preferred using agencies because they did all the necessary background checks to vet caregivers before they came into my home, and after thirty-two nannies, the names had begun to blur.
But now that Heath and Tobias had pointed out who she was, I felt like a fool for missing it. Why hadn’t she told me?
I shoved away from my desk, knowing I didn’t have time for anything but work and Violet, but I took a minute anyway. Mom kept all our old yearbooks in this office, organized by year on the bottom row of a bookshelf. I plucked my senior yearbook out and brought it back to my desk.
The spine cracked as I flipped it open. The pages smelled like my senior year—football fields and keggers and sweet anticipation for the future. As I scanned the pages, I let myself be eighteen again. I forgot the burdens of a thirty-two-year-old single father and escaped to a time when my biggest worries were next week’s game and my upcoming calculus exam.
The pages turned heavily, clinging to each other like magnets. The stupid smile on my face spread as I got deeper into the book, seeing group photos and club activities, all captured on the pages.
Then there she was. Standing in the back row of a group photo for the ten-person swim team. Natalie Buchanan.
Yeah, I definitely should have remembered her. She was a woman now, but her blond hair was the same, and so were her eyes. The pretty blues stood out from the photo, an electric color like the bulbs Mom had strung on the mini-Christmas tree in my bedroom.
Every room in the house had a tree, each with varying colors of lights and decorations. It would take her a month to stow it away. Each year she’d cuss and promise never to do so much decorating, but each year after Thanksgiving, she’d send me pictures of the trees, one by one as she put them up.
Tonight when I went to sleep, that tree’s glow would make me think of Natalie.
Exactly the wrong person to think of when I was in bed.
Natalie Buchanan.
Damn, but she did look good. As a teenager, she’d been cute. As a grown woman, she was a stunner. I took another long look at her smile in the club photo, then flipped to the sophomore section and found her picture.
She was wearing a black turtleneck, the exact opposite of what the girls I’d dated had worn back then. They’d all pushed the boundaries of the school’s dress code, seeing just how low those V-necks could stretch before getting called into the principal’s office.
Natalie’s hair was different in this picture than in the swim-team photo. She had bangs that nearly covered her eyebrows and were chopped in a harsh, straight line. Her smile looked wobbly and her eyes were squinted.
Bless those school photographers. They had a true talent for bringing out every teenager’s inner awkward.
My phone rang, pulling me away from the yearbook. I set it aside and fit my earbuds into my ears before diving back into my workday. Jumping from call to call, I spent the next few hours giving my team rapid-fire instructions and hoping that if I delegated enough, I could take at least one day off during this trip. At the very least, not spend my evenings answering emails.
My mother would string me up with my blue Christmas tree lights if I missed a dinner. Not just because Violet was the world’s pickiest eater, but because I hadn’t seen my parents enough these past seven years. Once we moved here, we’d be making up for lost time .
For all of us. I’d missed my parents and my brothers. And I wanted them to have a stronger bond with my daughter.
But first, I needed a place to live.
Yesterday, I’d put an offer on a lot outside of town. It was fifty acres, giving me plenty of space between neighbors and lots of room for Violet to roam. There was a pond and direct access to a secluded mountain hiking trail.
The moment I’d seen it, even covered in snow, I’d jumped.
Dad and I had stayed up late last night discussing possibilities for a floor plan. As soon as I had the property, he’d pull some strings to get a crew over and break ground.
“What did they counter with?” I asked my realtor. This was our second conversation today.
“They want full ask.”
“Of course, they do,” I grumbled.
Dollar signs had likely flashed in their eyes at my name. But I hadn’t made over a billion dollars by letting people push me into unfair prices. “Offer it. Remind their realtor this is a cash offer with a short close. If they squabble about anything, I’ll walk. There are plenty of parcels in the Gallatin Valley these days.”
Even though this was the one I wanted.
“Exactly,” she said. “This is a smart move, Maddox. Really brilliant.”
I rolled my eyes. She worked for Mom’s company and had been a major kiss ass. But she was getting the job done so I’d been ignoring her over-the-top compliments. If not for the super-sweet sugary tone, her compliment probably wouldn’t have bothered me at all. I was used to it.
Cece had perfected that tone years ago. She’d use it right before dropping a bomb in my lap.
“Email me a list of other options, just in case.”
“Of course. ”
“Thanks.” I ended the call and set my phone aside.
My stomach growled and another cookie beckoned.
Time for a break. I rubbed the nape of my neck, trying to work out what felt like a permanent knot, then picked up the yearbook and returned it to Mom’s shelf. But before I walked away, curiosity got the better of me. I pulled out Heath and Tobias’s senior year album, flipping through the pages.
And there she was again, on another swim-team photo.
Natalie’s bangs had disappeared on her journey from freshman to senior. She was in the back row, standing amongst the boys. She was taller than the other girls, something I’d noticed earlier.
I was six-three, and most women I knew, other than Mom, had to crane their necks to meet my gaze. Not Natalie.
She wore a simple one-piece suit in the photo. In the freshman team picture, they’d all been in matching sweats and hoodies. But this swimsuit...
It all clicked into place.
“Damn.” I chuckled. Yeah, I remembered Natalie.
I hadn’t spent a lot of time by the pool at our high school, but for a few weeks during senior year, the normal entrance to our locker rooms had been closed. Before football practice, we’d had to use the swim side entrance.
One day when I’d gone through, Natalie had been in the pool. As I’d walked by, she’d shoved up and out of the water and no straight seventeen-year-old boy would have passed her without a double take.
Trim figure. Lush breasts. Taut nipples from the cold air. She’d been in a black swim cap, probably to protect those bangs from turning green. Why I remembered that cap I wasn’t sure. Maybe because it shouldn’t have been hot. But it was. She was.
And now she was basically an employee.
I slammed the book closed and shoved it back in the shelf. Then I squeezed my eyes shut to brandish the image of Natalie, my new nanny, out of my head.
Employee. Off-limits.
And this was not the time nor place to get twisted up by a woman. Dealing with Cece was enough of a migraine.
“Hey.” Heath strode into the office, again without a knock. “What are you doing? You looked her up, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.” I stood and moved away from the bookshelf. “What are you doing?”
He lifted a shoulder. “Nothing today.”
“Don’t you have to work?”
“It’s called vacation. V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N. Ever heard of it?”
“Vaguely.” I sighed and took one of the leather chairs.
Heath took the seat next to mine, bringing the coffee mug he’d brought to his lips. “The chef made Tom and Jerrys.”
“Later. Still have some work to do.” My phone vibrated in my pocket and I took it out to see a text from the realtor. The sellers had accepted my offer on the lot. “Looks like I’ve got property in Montana.”
“Nice. That place with the pond?”
“Yeah. Cost a fortune.”
“You can afford it. Dad and I talked today. I’m going to run lead on your build, if that’s okay with you.”
I nodded. “You bet.”
Both Heath and Tobias worked for Dad’s company. Heath oversaw the actual builds. Tobias was an architect. The twins had inherited our father’s talent for design and management, and one day, they’d take over as owners of Holiday Homes.
“Mom was gossiping earlier about Cece,” he said.
“Oh, hell.” I groaned. “What now?”
My mother hated my ex-wife, something she didn’t try to hide from anyone but Violet.
“Cece posted some selfie on Instagram from a beach. ”
“Sounds like Cece.” I’d had to unfollow my ex because seeing her jaunting around the globe on my dime while missing weekends with Violet had made me homicidal.
Part of what made this move to Montana so appealing was that Bozeman was thousands of miles away from the city and Cece.
After the divorce three years ago, I’d stayed in LA. Partly for work. Partly with hope that Cece would decide to become a mother. Clearly, I’d been delusional.
Cece cared about Cece and Cece alone.
Violet needed more than me and a parade of nannies. She needed family. My family. She needed consistent affection from grandparents. Teasing and horsing around with her uncles.
Mom and Dad were over the moon that we were moving home. My brothers were wary of Violet at the moment, but eventually they’d warm up to her. If I was raising Violet alone, I was doing it in Montana, and Cece couldn’t do a damn thing about it. Not anymore.
She cared more about her divorce settlement than our daughter.
The two of us had married young, a couple months after I’d graduated from college. When I’d made the announcement, Dad had pulled me aside and begged me to get a prenup. Luckily, I’d agreed.
When Keith Maddox gave advice, you were smart to listen.
Maybe he’d known I’d been destined for success. Maybe he’d seen Cece’s true colors. Maybe both. Whatever the reason, we’d had one drawn up before our wedding. Cece hadn’t liked it but she’d signed—something my attorney had reminded hers during the divorce negotiation.
I’d earned billions of dollars, and she hadn’t been able to touch a penny .
But the prenup hadn’t mattered. She’d had leverage. Violet.
What should have been a simple divorce had turned into a long, painful argument because I’d refused to give her part-time custody of our daughter. Cece had been a part-time parent to Violet, at best, while we’d been married. She’d also had the help of nannies, chefs and housekeepers. She didn’t have the skill or the desire to care for our child.
But in the end, she’d won.
I agreed to pay her a ridiculous lump sum if she agreed to giving me full custody.
From that moment on, the divorce had moved like a hot knife through butter. Once the papers were signed, I’d said goodbye to my wife. And Violet had watched her mother disappear.
The nannies I’d hired couldn’t fill a mother’s shoes. I knew that. It had just been a bandage over a gushing wound, and it was time to get out the gauze and staunch the flow.
Mom would help. Montana would help too.
“Is Violet excited to move?” Heath asked.
“Not really. She’s angry that she has to make new friends. She’s mad that she has to start at a new school. Honestly, I don’t blame her. But every damn time Cece lets her down, it gets harder. We have to get out of LA.”
“She’ll adjust. It’s only second grade.”
“Try telling that to Violet.”
“Ha. I don’t think so. No offense, Maddox, but your kid scares the shit out of me.”
I chuckled. “When I brought Natalie in and gave her the quick tour, Violet was in the kitchen. She’d accidentally spilled a bowl of cake batter, and she’d gone for the chef’s butcher knife so she could cut herself a piece of apple pie.”
“I’m surprised Natalie didn’t run for the door.”
“Me too,” I admitted .
Instead, she’d calmly crossed the room with a smile and taken the knife from Violet’s hand, all while the chef had been ranting about his cake batter and I’d been struck dumbfounded.
“It’s my fault,” I told Heath. “I am sucking at this father gig.”
“You’ve got a lot on your plate.”
“Too much.” I couldn’t run my company in LA and be the full-time father Violet needed at the same time. It was time to offload some responsibilities to my staff. They could handle it.
The team I was hoping to bring to Montana were my elite. Each would get a considerable moving bonus and annual salary bump. They might have to tear some tasks out of my grasp—I’d warned them as such—but they were extremely capable.
Violet needed me more than Madcast.
We still had to return to LA after the holidays. I’d lined up a new nanny to start once we got back to LA. Hopefully my vivacious, beautiful daughter wouldn’t send her racing for the door. But maybe once we actually moved to Bozeman, I wouldn’t find a replacement. Maybe it could just be the two of us for a change.
Plus a chef because I was hopeless in the kitchen.
“Maybe I will have a Tom and Jerry. Are they good?” I asked my brother.
Heath answered by handing over his mug.
I took a sip, coughing at the burn. “Damn. That’s got a kick.”
“I already called dibs on a downstairs guest room tonight. No way I’m driving home after a few of these.”
I stood, ready to hit the kitchen for a cocktail and another cookie, when a loud crash echoed through the house.
Heath shot to his feet.
I froze, waiting for the inevitable.
A loud gasp. A scream. A string of expletives .
Nothing came.
The house went eerily quiet, which only made my terror spike.
“Uh . . .” Heath looked to me.
I bolted out of the office, with Heath not far behind, rushing toward the balcony that overlooked the living room.
And there she was.
My beautiful girl.
Violet stood on top of the coffee table. Her arms were crossed over her chest. There was a scowl twisting her lips and the glare in her eyes was one I hoped she would use to keep boys away when she turned sixteen.
At the moment, that angry stare was aimed at the nanny.
Natalie’s blond hair and blue sweater were dripping with water. Shards of a shattered white vase were at her feet along with two dozen red roses.
Flowers that I’d ordered for my mother yesterday.
I didn’t need to ask what had happened. My guess was that Violet had accidentally tipped that vase over Natalie’s head.
“Violet,” I hissed.
My daughter’s eyes snapped up to mine. The scowl didn’t disappear. She didn’t even look sorry.
“See? She’s terrifying,” Heath whispered, putting his hand on my shoulder. “I’m locking my bedroom door tonight.”
“You’re not helping.” I brushed off his touch and stormed down the stairs, unsure whether I was more embarrassed or furious. Mortification won out.
“Dad—”
“I’ll discuss this with you later,” I told my daughter, then focused on Natalie. “I’m so sorry. I’ll pay you for the entire week. I’ll contact the agency and make sure they understand that the reason this didn’t work out was in no way your fault.”
Natalie, who had been staring at Violet as I spoke, finally shifted her gaze. Those blue eyes met mine and the air rushed from my lungs. Not from the beauty of her face, but the smile that stretched across her mouth.
Though breathtaking, that smile was laced with malice. With revenge.
A wolf in a sexy nanny’s body.
“Oh, I’m not leaving,” she said, arching an eyebrow.
“You’re not?”
“Nope.” Natalie locked her own glare with Violet’s, and in the space that separated them, the battle line was drawn.
Natalie reached for the hem of her sweater, dragging the soaked top off her body. Underneath she wore a thin white tank top that molded to her breasts and flat stomach. It was nearly as skintight as the wet swimsuit I’d seen her in years ago.
“Violet and I were just getting to know each other. Weren’t we, Violet?”
Before my daughter could answer, Natalie rolled up her sweater, twisting it into a rope.
Then she raised her arms and wrung it out.
Over my daughter’s head.