Nanny for the Billionaire Daddy

1. Chapter 1

Graham

My voice is too loud.

It echoes off the bare studs and plastic sheets of the half-finished hallway. Harsh. Jagged. It does nothing but widen the distance between me and the bathroom door.

Silence. Then a small sob from behind the wood.

That sound compresses my chest like a hydraulic press. I can't out-muscle it. Can't out-earn it.

I lean my forehead against the doorframe.

"Iris. Sweetheart. I'm sorry I raised my voice."

Nothing. Just the careful, controlled sound of her breathing on the other side of the wood. The kind she does when she's trying not to cry harder.

The wood smells like fresh primer and sawdust. The scent of a house that isn't a home yet.

I have closed a four-hundred-million-dollar acquisition over a single phone call. I have stared down a hostile board and walked out with my company intact.

I cannot get my own daughter to open a door.

The doorbell rings.

I storm to the front door and yank it open, wearing the look I've spent fifteen years perfecting. The one that makes grown men reconsider their career choices.

Instead, I'm staring at a woman who looks like a sunbeam with a switchblade.

Curvy. Bright yellow cardigan. Dark riotous curls that have given up on being tamed. The kind of mouth that has already decided what to do with me, and the decision is not flattering.

The gray afternoon looks dull by comparison.

"I'm Jade Alvarez," she says. "The agency sent me."

The agency. Pierce told me to say yes. The custody hearing is in eleven weeks. The judge wants stable domestic infrastructure, as if a child is a load-bearing wall.

She doesn't wait for an invitation. She steps past me, her shoulder brushing my arm in a way that registers more than it should. Her eyes scan the mess of crates, half-installed flooring, and power tools piled in the foyer.

"Where is she?" Jade asks.

Her voice isn't soft. It has a resonance to it, a lack of fear that catches me off guard. Most people flinch when I'm in this state. She doesn't even blink.

"Locked in the bathroom," I mutter.

I follow her toward the sound of crying. Her heels click on the subflooring. I trail behind, feeling strangely small in my own house.

She isn't tall, but she takes up all the air in the room anyway.

She drops to her knees in front of the bathroom door. No knock. No demand. She just sits on the dusty floor, her cardigan pooling around her like a spill of paint.

"You know," Jade says, voice smooth and playful. "I heard there was a very brave girl in here being guarded by a very grumpy giant."

The sobbing stops.

I stand three feet behind her, arms crossed, feeling like the giant in question.

She reaches into a large, colorful bag and pulls out a fuzzy hand puppet. A bright green monster with googly eyes and a wide, ridiculous mouth. She slips it on with practiced ease.

"Barnaby is very hungry," she tells the door, making the puppet's mouth move. "He heard a rumor that someone in here knows where the crackers are hidden. He once tried to eat a shoe thinking it was a giant Triscuit."

A tiny, wet sniffle from behind the wood. Then the lock clicks.

The door creaks open. Just an inch.

Iris's face appears in the gap. Tear-streaked. Tiny. She's clutching Judge, her stuffed owl, so tightly her knuckles have gone white. Her eyes, the same hazel as her mother's, fix on the green monster.

"He ate a shoe?" Iris whispers.

"A left sneaker," Jade says solemnly. "He said it was chewy and lacked salt. I'm Jade. And Barnaby needs a partner who can find crackers. Are you a partner?"

Iris looks from the puppet to the woman. There's a gravity to my daughter, a weight of grief that shouldn't belong to someone her age. As she looks at Jade, something shifts in her posture. Microscopic. I've been trying to trigger it for months.

"I'm Iris." She steps out of the bathroom, ignoring me completely. "I have goldfish crackers in the kitchen. But Daddy says we can't have them before dinner."

Jade glances up at me.

Her eyes are deep, observant brown. For a second the playful nanny persona drops. She sees the tension in my jaw, the way I'm holding my breath. She sees the mess of my life and doesn't look away.

The contact lasts a beat too long. I feel it in the back of my throat.

"Well," Jade says, turning back to Iris. "Barnaby thinks that since it's a special occasion, we could negotiate a cracker-based compromise."

Iris giggles.

Small. Fragile. It cracks the dead air of the house wide open.

She reaches out and touches the green fur of the puppet. Jade lets her lead the way toward the kitchen, leaving me standing in the hallway alone.

The crisis is over. The nanny is here. Instead of relief, I feel a prickling unease I haven't earned a name for yet. Jade Alvarez doesn't fit into the boxes I've built. She's too bright for this gray house. Too loud for a man who built the silence on purpose.

I follow them into the kitchen and stop in the doorway.

Jade is already moving through the space like she owns it. Finding cups, pouring juice, keeping up a steady stream of chatter with Iris. Efficient. But there's a warmth to it that feels calculated to disarm.

The sleeves of her cardigan are pushed up to her elbows now, exposing forearms dusted with freckles.

I notice. I shouldn't.

She catches me staring. Pauses, a box of crackers in one hand. The sunshine dims, replaced by something sharper.

"You're Graham Sterling," she says.

Not a question. A statement layered with a foreboding she can't quite hide.

"I am," I say, stepping into the light. "And you're late."

A reflex. I lean on the cold, demanding executive. Easier than acknowledging that ten minutes ago I nearly broke down a door because I didn't know how to talk to my own child.

Jade doesn't apologize. She sets the crackers on the counter and crosses her arms over the cardigan. Looks me up and down with a slow, deliberate assessment that puts heat in my collar.

"I took the bus from the city, then walked three miles because the local taxi service thinks Linden Lake ends at the town line," she says.

"If you want punctuality over results, call the agency back.

But I think we both know Barnaby is the only thing standing between you and another bathroom lockdown. "

I grind my teeth. She's right. That makes the irritation worse.

I look at Iris, who is happily feeding a cracker to Barnaby. Then back at Jade. A vibrant, inconvenient force that has just crashed into my carefully controlled world.

"The carriage house is ready," I say. "Your bags?"

"On the porch. I'll get them once Iris and Barnaby finish their meeting." A beat. "Unless the grumpy giant wants to be helpful?"

She's testing me. I can see it in the tilt of her head, the slight smirk at the corners of her mouth. She isn't afraid of the billionaire or the reputation. She's looking at the man beneath the suit, who at this moment is having trouble looking away from her mouth.

"I'll get them," I mutter, turning away.

Her eyes follow me to the door. I feel it like a hand between my shoulder blades.

Outside, the air is damp with lake air and coming rain. Her bags are sitting by the door. A worn duffel bag and a backpack. Small against the sprawling, half-finished grandeur of the house.

I pick them up. They're heavier than they look.

She's brought her whole life here.

I start toward the carriage house, gravel crunching under my shoes. Then I stop.

A figure crouched at the tree line. A long lens pointed at the house. A camera, and behind it a man in a dark jacket who has been there long enough that the pine needles around his boots are pressed flat.

Press. Has to be.

No one has found this property before today. The deed is buried under three shell companies. The driveway isn't on any map that matters.

Someone gave them the address.

My first thought isn't the merger. It isn't the board or the headline.

My first thought is that my daughter is inside that house, and a stranger with a telephoto lens has spent the afternoon watching her windows.

I shift the duffel higher on my shoulder. Keep walking. I don't give him the satisfaction of seeing me see him.

I drop the bags inside the carriage house and pull out my phone before the door is fully closed behind me. The text to Voss is short.

Photographer at the south tree line. Get him gone before dark. Trace him to the source. I want to know who handed out my address.

The reply comes back within thirty seconds.

On it.

I pocket the phone. The lake outside the carriage house window is the color of old pewter, flat and patient. The kind of water that doesn't tell you what it knows.

Someone inside my orbit gave up this address. Not someone who guessed it. Someone who had it.

That narrows the list to a number I can count on one hand. Pierce. Two assistants. Three executives on the senior floor. The lawyer who handled the shell paperwork. The contractor.

One of them.

I file the names without writing them down. The instinct to write them down is the instinct that loses you the war before it starts. The man who put a camera on my daughter's window today thinks he's already gotten away with something. He has not.

Inside the house, a woman in a yellow cardigan is feeding goldfish crackers to a green puppet, and a little girl is laughing for the first time in months.

Whoever sent that photographer just made the list of people I am willing to ruin.