Chapter 6 Amber
AMBER
It wasn’t until the twins’ things came that I could stop feeling like we were catching up.
The first week of being the nanny for Emily and Henry was a whirlwind of adjusting, like Roman anticipated.
I was finding my place, learning where everything was in his enormous home while also trying to get my grounding with two newborns.
Roman was figuring it out too. Not the being in a new place part, but how to incorporate me into his life.
And especially in how to incorporate having a son and a daughter that he hadn’t expected to show up—ever.
Between what his brother and cousin said when they visited, Roman hadn’t ever acted like the kind of man to settle down.
That couldn’t be true, though. I saw how he was with his family members and how he was with Owen and Rose, and Maisie too. He was a family man, but I interpreted their snide comments for what they were worth.
Roman hadn’t ever wanted to settle with a woman. He was a player. All I could see was him as a father to these two babies, though.
“Another delivery,” Lorne announced at the elevator as more men brought big boxes in.
I glanced up from the kitchen where I was washing bottles. “Another?” I asked, laughing lightly.
“Another,” Roman said as he came in around the guys bringing the boxes. He smirked at me. “I told you it’d be a lot of boxes.” He pulled his shirt up to wipe sweat off his face.
I bit back a smile at his teasing tone.
Yeah, he was definitely a player. A charmer. But I wondered why he wasted those silly smiles on me. I was just the hired help. The nanny. Not a woman he’d want.
He skirted around the delivery men and security guards who brought in more boxes of stuff for the twins.
All the sweat was from his time in his gym, located on the floor below.
I came to realize that he grew more frustrated at the littlest thing—not snapping or anything mean, but easier to become aggravated—when he didn’t work out.
My boss was a gym junkie, apparently, and once we reached a symbiosis here, of me handling the twins solo while they napped, he could have the chance to work out… and be more balanced because of it.
Watching him talk to the men and tell them where to put the boxes, I tried my best not to outright ogle him. All those lean muscles bunching. His short blond hair mussed and sweaty. The pure fire of being alive shining brightly in his eyes.
He was powerful, so strong and intimidating, like he could crush anything delicate, but he wasn’t the same as the others.
Mikhail, Andre, and especially Sergei. They were dangerous in an unspeakable way I heeded well.
They carried authority. They moved like the darkness.
Roman had that same strength, too, but as I acclimated to living with him and the twins, I saw the balance too.
His vulnerability, like when he smiled at the babies sleeping. Or when he made goofy faces for Owen or Rose. Maisie too. He was a family man, and I didn’t question how much he cared about them all.
Just… don’t get it in your head that you’re going to fit in like that too.
It was so tempting, cruelly intoxicating, to entertain this hope that I’d fit in and belong with this family. To finally feel like I’d be included as one of them. That was the fleeting wish each time I was up for adoption and met prospective parents or families. But all of them rejected me.
Except William.
The monster I ran from and had to hide from forever.
The boxes for the clothes and other accessories were taken to the room that would be the nursery.
Slipping my hands through the sudsy water to finish with the bottles, I looked forward to washing and sorting out all the purchases for Emily and Henry.
They’d been wearing hand-me-downs from Rose and Owen.
None of the onesies or garments fit well.
Their mother hadn’t purchased any clothes or toys or blankets or anything because it seemed that she had planned to not be alive after their births.
What a terrible thing.
Thinking back to how she’d only kept herself alive to have the babies, I hoped she was at peace now.
On one hand, I couldn’t imagine how severe depression and grief could be after losing a loved one, but on the other, I couldn’t comprehend how she wouldn’t want to fight harder for the sake of the twins.
I smiled at them sleeping in their portable crib.
But what a beautiful silver lining. I couldn’t try to stop myself from getting attached to them. I was already a sucker for them, enjoying the ups and downs of their first month of life.
“I’m going to shower,” Roman called out once the boxes of clothes, accessories, and the cribs were delivered and set in the babies’ room.
I shook my head, amused. “I thought I reported to you. Not the other way around,” I replied. Teasing him felt risky. But he made it so easy. So natural. He had a playful personality when he wasn’t sleep deprived and exhausted.
He doubled back from heading down the hall toward his room. With his shirt in hand, he taunted me with the view of his chest. His back. His shoulders. All that taut skin flexed and—
Why are arms so sexy? I struggled not to get caught checking him out again with this stupid attraction to his veiny, toned arms.
He grinned. “Wrong. They are the bosses of both of us,” he said with a nod of his head at the twins.
I lowered my gaze and smiled. “Yeah. Emily’s got you wrapped around her little finger already.”
“While Henry has figured out how to always get you to pick him up first,” he replied.
I lifted my head. “Hey. That’s not fair. I love them both…” I stopped, furrowing my brow. Love? I did. But it seemed like a weakness to admit that this wasn’t just a job to me. And it never was. Working here as a nanny was a chance at freedom and safety, a new life.
He caught my slip and smiled. “I know, Amber. It’s impossible not to love them both.”
I sighed in relief. I was only supposed to be here as a nanny, nothing more. “To love them both equally,” I corrected.
He nodded in agreement. “I was only giving you a head’s up that I’m showering so you don’t walk in and scream again.”
A furious heat stole up my cheeks and I bit my lip.
He laughed lightly. “Fair warning and all.”
I dismissed him with a wave, determined to look anywhere but at him.
Three days ago, I’d made the mistake of thinking he was still napping in his bedroom from a terrible night of the twins not sleeping well.
He wasn’t napping. He’d been walking out of his shower, with nothing but a towel slung low on his hips.
Almost crashing into him while looking for a used bottle to wash, one that I thought he’d set on his nightstand, I did scream.
I was shocked. Surprised. And more than a little bit embarrassed.
Unfortunately, I woke up Henry with my slight scream.
That was the trickier part of all of this. Getting used to living with him. Like a roommate, yet not? Like a helper, but maybe also a partner because he never dismissed my suggestions?
Playing it safe, I waited until he came out of the bedroom, fully dressed, to help sort through the purchases. He got Emily and Henry to set them out on a blanket on the floor while we opened everything.
“This makes it feel real,” he commented, sitting across from me as he opened more packages.
“Huh?” I set more clothes on the piles we were making.
“All this stuff. Clothes and blankets and towels and socks and hats and…” He huffed with a wry laugh at his list. “It makes it more real that I have kids now.”
I glanced at him. “They aren’t proof enough?” I asked, glancing at the twins seeming to stare at the ceiling fan.
“It’s more permanent now.” He looked around the room that they’d share. “They have their own space. Cribs. Whatever that space pod thing is supposed to be.” He pointed at a baby chair that Natalie swore by, a bouncer and rocker and whatnot.
I smiled, glad that he wasn’t so closed off from me that he felt comfortable enough to treat me like a friend and open up. To share and talk.
“The first week they were here, I was still processing that they existed. And I was hunting for you.”
I looked up sharply. Hunting for me? It could’ve sounded threatening. He didn’t mean it like that. I knew he didn’t. He hadn’t known me then. But with the ever-present fear lurking in the back of my mind that I could be hunted by William, I tensed.
He was looking down at the package he was opening, not noticing my reaction. With his legs spread out as he sat with me on the plush carpet, he seemed oblivious to my frown.
“Interviewing for the nanny position was hell. And then you and I were learning how to be a team last week…” He shrugged. “In hindsight, it seems dumb that I waited to buy all this stuff.”
“Not dumb,” I said. “You were taking things in stride.”
“How do you do that?”
I faced him, raising my brows. “What?”
“Make me feel better?” He shook his head. “You’re like this calming force of optimism. Are you ever negative?”
“I’m pretty sure when you tried to tell me how I was holding Henry wrong at three in the morning, I was negative.”
He smiled. “Fair enough. Anyway. I was just trying to point out that moving their things into this room feels like a big step. A permanent step that can’t be undone.
Another sign that I’m—we’re all—settling in, and I might have a glimpse of returning to what I thought was my normal life before they showed up. ”
“You mean going back to work?” I asked. I was kind of nervous about that, not wanting to lose this companionship with him.
He nodded. “I am never really off,” he replied, rubbing a spot between his shoulder and neck, massaging it. “But Mikhail will need me to resume more of my former duties eventually.”
“What, um, what do you do again?” I asked. “Or where do you go?”
He never talked about his job. The others didn’t either, and I understood now that Mikhail was the boss of their company. Investing and consultation was a vague combination.
“I have a few offices,” he said. “But I’m going to make the one here my main one.”
That was another shift. In choosing this former guest room as the nursery for the twins, he’d moved me to a room closer to them—and him. He also had painters prepare another room for an office.
All I could tell was that he had a position with power. With wealth. All of these Orlov men did. That power and wealth had to be the reason for all the guards and security.
Feeling closed off from the rest of the world went a long way toward making me feel safe and hidden up here in Roman’s penthouse with no expenses spared.
I wanted for nothing. Yet, as I tried to accept feeling safe and not stressing about surviving on my own for the first time, I couldn’t shake this fear that Willaim was still out there.
That he, too, had a life of wealth and power.
Not like Roman, though.
I couldn’t reconcile the two as the same.
Not all men could be bad, right? Not every rich guy was capable of cruelty.
I’d never be able to trust men easily. That fact would never change with what I’d lived through.
And I would struggle to ever fully lower my guard.
That had to be some side effect of being stuck in survival mode for too long, but the more that I grew accustomed to Roman and his tenderness, like when I heard him singing to Emily or Henry, I wanted to believe that I wasn’t the one making a dumb choice now.
That it wasn’t stupid when my heart stirred with affection at the fact that this strong man could be undone by fatherhood.
Despite every warning in my head, I wished I could give up all the fear and caution and believe that Roman couldn’t be cut from the same cloth as William.