Chapter 6 Hat Tricking
Chapter Six
HAT TRICKING
Griffin
What part of my rules didn’t Jessa understand?
They were simple. I required the nanny to text me throughout the day about Theo.
Not a word came in until this afternoon when Jessa simply texted a photo as soon as Theo’s game started.
It was a shot of my boy all geared up and giving a thumbs up before hitting the ice.
I touched a fingertip to the screen along his goofy grin, the same he wore the day I took him ice skating when he was five at a birthday party for another little boy in his preschool class.
At first, he loved hanging onto a bar on wheels and zooming down the ice.
By the time we left that night, he was one of few kids not needing the assistive bar at all, like he was born to skate.
I gave the photo a ‘thumbs up’ emoji and tried to wrap up a few more things on my desk.
Outside my windows, the sky darkened in purples and blues, a dusky fall evening approaching.
I checked the time. If I left soon, given traffic, I could join them for the second period.
Theo always liked when I could make it to his games.
Of course, Sam—the best damn legal counsel I could have ever hired—moved into my office without knocking.
With a glance at my desk and everything I needed to get done yet today, though, I let out an aggravated, shaky breath.
“What’s going on with you? You seemed particularly on edge all afternoon,” he complained. He went straight for the Macallan M on my bar cart—my last bottle from the private cask.
“I’m fine,” I clipped. “Another day, another new nanny.”
“Jesus, Griffin. What happened to the last? What was her name—Theresa?”
My sheepish look was a dead giveaway.
“You fucked her?”
“No. It got to the point where her flirting became too much, so I fired her.”
He sighed down into the nearest chair. “Good. If we’re going to pull off this IPO, perception is everything. Investors want a family man, not a playboy CEO who can’t keep his hands off his nanny.”
My jaw tightened. “I need the agency to stop sending me young women fresh out of college who think they can bag a billionaire.”
Sam arched a brow. “Look, we’re heading into the biggest quarter of this company’s life. Media exposure, investor dinners, magazine profiles. You need a narrative investors can fall in love with, Griffin. Stability sells. People want someone they can trust with their money.”
If only they knew the nanny I’d hired this morning, that she’d once been naked with me in bed.
I forced a smile. “Thanks for the pep talk. I think I have it memorized now since this has become almost a daily conversation lately.”
“Okay. I was holding off on bringing this up unless absolutely necessary, but I can see a crisis coming if we don’t act now. Here.” He pulled a file out of his briefcase and slid it over to me.
I flipped through the contents, skimming several points of a contract, a list of ridiculous rules, and a prenup. My eyes snapped to his, brows furrowed. “A marriage of convenience? You must be joking. I’ve been down the aisle once, and it failed. Not going there again.”
“No, I’m talking about a fake arrangement for a man like you.
We find the right woman who could use a big payday, simply tell everyone and the media how you had dated years before and recently reunited and it became serious.
You do a little fake proposal in public for PR sake.
We include an ironclad contract, make it short-term to get you through the next few months, and add an extension clause just in case another six months is warranted.
A year max if the sex is good. At the end of the term, you pretend to divorce and pay her off. ”
“Jesus. Do we really have to stoop this low?”
“To get the IPO across the finish line? I’d do just about anything. You would too, for the payday it promises. Say the word and I’ll have a few discreet members of my team start interviewing potential female candidates.”
“Christ, Sam. What are you, my pimp now?” I huffed and pounded on the desktop. “I’m a single father. I can’t just introduce a woman into Theo’s life like that. What if he becomes attached? What happens when I have no more need for the woman, and I rip her from his life?”
“What if the IPO fails? Which would you rather have? Losing this, everything you’ve been working for, or your son’s heartbreak that he’ll probably get over someday soon?”
I scowled at him. “Who the hell are you right now? Oh, that’s right, you’re the man with two grown kids who hardly ever saw their dad growing up, and now can’t stand to be around him.”
“Watch it, Griffin,” he snarled. We’d worked closely together for years, so only with him could this heated conversation take place as both a friend and an esteemed colleague.
Anyone else I’d have fired on the spot. He pointed to the file, getting up to leave.
“Think about it. You know I’m right. You need this. ”
Once he shut the door, I slumped in my chair, expelling all the air, the tension out of every bone and muscle in my body.
Another text came in from Jessa, a photo, no words again. Theo made a goal ten minutes into the first period and was celebrating with a fist pump in the air on the ice. This was new. No other nanny ever sent photos. It was a glimpse of the life I was missing.
I quickly packed up, determined to make his game, when a phone call came in from my CFO. I hesitated. Gary was the long-winded sort, but he was crunching some numbers for me I needed like yesterday.
I took the call but texted Brock to come pick me up. An hour later, by the time I finished with Gary, another text had come from Jessa—this one included a video of Theo making a second goal.
I grabbed my Burberry trench coat and rushed out to the car. “Can we make it to the game before it ends, Brock?”
“I’ll try, sir.”
“Good man.”
He did his best, but given the traffic, I only made it for the last minute.
The hockey rink buzzed with energy—kids shouting, parents cheering, the crisp scent of ice, little-boy sweat, and popcorn in the air.
Theo’s team took a time-out. I held back, looking around and spotted Jessa immediately. She knelt beside the bench, helping tighten a strap on his glove. He must have said something that made her laugh with her head thrown back, eyes shining.
My son, the kid who’d terrorized every caretaker since he could walk, who’d driven three nannies to tears and one to early retirement, was smiling at her like he’d just won the Stanley Cup?
Ah, hell. I never expected he’d take to her like this so fast. But I knew firsthand how irresistible and easy to talk to she was.
I’d be right there with him, making her laugh too, only I didn’t have the luxury.
As Sam would say, I needed two hundred percent concentration on work right now, not on bedding a woman I couldn’t resist.
I should let her go before this gets much further. What was I thinking, hiring her as a nanny on the spot? I wasn’t usually so impulsive, except for that one night in Holly Creek when I’d invited her back to my place.
Jessa leaned close to Theo and whispered something, pointing toward the scoreboard. He nodded, determination lighting his face as he hit the ice again. The puck dropped, the young team scrambled, and seconds before the final buzzer, Theo got a breakaway and made a slap shot straight into the goal.
Three goals for the night. His first hat trick ever. The crowd erupted.
I yelled the loudest, elated and proud as could be, pounding on the glass. “Yeah, way to go, buddy!”
Jessa jumped up, cheering and clapping like she’d been there every game of his life. Clare and the other hockey moms grinned, giving her high-fives, welcoming her into their tough circle without question.
Theo’s nannies previously would sit at the top of the bleachers away from everyone, uninterested in the sport. They’d read or study a textbook. One even knitted the entire way through a game.
Not Jessa. She was right here in the middle of it.
Theo beamed at her like he could have taken over the sunshine and lit the earth with how excited he was. The guys all crowded around him, chanting over and over. Hat Trick! Hat Trick!
He went to her right away and gave her a bear hug, like he’d thirsted for a motherly figure for so long. And if Theo liked Jessa, what kind of dad would I be to get rid of her for my own selfish reasons?
I couldn’t move, staring at them, my mouth agape. Too many feelings started swarming up. Then a hand startled me, clapping me on the back.
“Quite the game for Theo. I don’t know where you found Jessa, but he seems crazy about her,” Atlas said. His observations were not needed. I wasn’t blind. “I talked with him between periods. He’s getting so big.”
“Do you want to come over? We can celebrate his hat trick.”
“Nah. I’m hooking up with an old girlfriend tonight.” He wiggled his brows.
“In private or on a date?”
“Private.” His shit-eating grin told me he’d be getting lucky way before I ever would.
I rolled my eyes. “Good. Right now I don’t need photos of you with various women surfacing in the society papers under the assumption that it’s me. Although with your beard, maybe they’d realize it wasn’t.”
“I’m shaving it off tonight before I see her. I don’t like to get it messy, if you know what I mean.” He winked.
“Asshole. Try to avoid anyone with a camera, okay?”
“It’s always about you, isn’t it? Why don’t you go celebrate with your son and stay out of my love life. See you soon.” He stalked off, shaking his head.
It wasn’t always about me. But this was my life he walked back into now and then, as if there were a revolving door nearby. I couldn’t just drop everything whenever he damn well decided to show up. If he’d stay a while, we could become close again.
I certainly couldn’t afford the time right now to worry about my relationships with my brothers.