The Orc's Nanny (Monster Daddies #1)

1. Hannah

Hannah

The better I was at my job, the sooner I had to leave it. That was the deal when I started live-in care work. I knew that going in. Yet I still somehow always felt a small pang of sadness when the job was over.

The morning my position with Marge Stevens ended, she was up and moving around the house, her hip working better than it had in years.

Six weeks ago, she’d come home from surgery, gray and frightened, gripping her walker like it might bolt out from under her.

Just a few hours before I’d started packing, I’d watched her carry a full teacup across the living room without spilling a drop on the shag carpet.

“You’re sure you’ve got everything, dear?

” Marge asked from the doorway of the guest room.

It had been my room since I arrived six weeks ago.

My suitcase sat on the freshly laundered chenille bedspread.

I folded a pair of jeans and tucked them on top of the pile.

Marge was wearing her lavender cardigan, the one with the pearl buttons she saved for special occasions.

“I’ve got it, Marge. You just worry about that follow-up appointment next week. I want you to call your doctor immediately if your swelling comes back. Don’t try to power through it.”

“I won’t.”

“Marge, you waited four days to tell me your incision was warm.”

Biscuit, Marge’s orange cat, scampered across the bed and sent my shears clattering to the floor.

Marge bent to pick them up, one hand on her knee, and was back up before I could move around to the other side of the bed.

Six weeks ago, that bend would have been impossible.

Now she was doing it like it was nothing. I smiled as she handed them over.

“There’s three days of dinners in the freezer,” I told her, grasping her papery hand.

“They’re labeled with the cooking directions on the tape.

The chicken and dumplings recipe you liked is the one with the green lid.

” Her eyes went watery at the mention of my mother’s chicken and dumplings recipe.

“I saved the number of your new pharmacy in your phone. It’s now your top favorite. ”

“You think of everything, Hannah.” She grasped my hand tighter. “You’ve been wonderful. An absolute angel. I told my daughter, ‘This one’s a keeper.’ I’m going to miss having you here. It gets so quiet with no one around.”

This was the hardest part about leaving, and I tried to hold back my concern. Marge would be back to tea and toast for supper as soon as my freezer meals ran out because her daughter visited her approximately never.

“I’ll call you next week to check in,” I said. “And I want you to promise you’ll tell me if you need anything.”

“I will.” Marge toddled out of the room.

I finished packing on autopilot. Scrubs, shoes, University of Texas sweatshirt, the literary novel I kept meaning to finish. I slid the shears Biscuit knocked over into the side pocket of my suitcase. I’d carried them through every ward I’d worked in and took them with me when I left the hospital.

After graduating with my BS in nursing, I worked as an RN at Dell Children’s Medical Center in Austin. I spent years in the NICU, where the patients were the size of my hands. I was then transferred to the cancer ward, where I sat with families on the worst days of their lives.

I was a good nurse. I loved my job caring for infants and children.

But the work took everything I had and then asked for whatever else was left over.

I gave until I couldn’t anymore. The burnout was real.

Which is why I stepped sideways into private care a year ago.

I told myself it was a breather. So I could get my footing under me again.

But the truth was, I’d been caring for others without a break for as long as I could remember.

It really started when my mother died of breast cancer when I was nine.

My brother Kyle was two at the time, and my sister Megan was five.

Our dad loved us as much as ever, but he checked out after it happened and he never quite came back.

He kept the lights on, but he stopped being the adult who noticed who needed what and when. I noticed. I packed lunches. I forged permission slips, which sounds worse than it was. I learned which cry meant scared, which meant hunger, and which meant it was a fever that needed to be taken seriously.

I was good at being the substitute mother, in the way a person becomes good at something they’re forced to learn to survive. Our relatives said I was very mature for my age. Which is what people say about a kid who doesn’t get to be one anymore.

I zipped my suitcase and sighed, thinking about what was coming next.

This was the reason I’d gone into live-in work.

For the variety. The adventure. Something new and different waiting right around the corner.

And when I’d started, I’d imagined it would give me time to breathe and read those books I kept meaning to read between gigs.

My agency would arrange a new position for me in a few days or a week. In the meantime, I had a short-term rental lined up near the medical district. As I finished packing up my things, the thought of going there felt dismal.

Not that it was any different than any other short-term rental I’d stayed in over the last year. But today was my twenty-ninth birthday. And tonight I’d be sleeping in a studio apartment with a stranger’s idea of décor… alone. That’s when I remembered the cake.

I hadn’t mentioned my birthday to Marge or to anyone else.

But yesterday, I’d gone down to the fancy bakery on Burnet and bought myself a mini strawberry birthday cake.

It was the kind that had multiple layers of jam, elaborate frosting, and spongy angel food cake.

The thought made me smile. It would certainly cheer up the evening in the cold drab studio across town.

I walked down the hallway that smelled slightly of cat litter and passed the living room where Marge was kicked back in her recliner.

She was watching Days of Our Lives on a thirty-inch flat screen that was resting on a flaking particleboard TV stand that had probably been in the house since it was built in the seventies.

The kitchen had the original, orange-toned cabinets and laminate counters, with a built-in wall oven. I grabbed the handle of the fridge, the one upgraded appliance in the room. It was covered in drawings from her grandkids and a couple of Christmas cards from last year.

Inside, I found the pink cake box where I’d left it, behind the applesauce and cottage cheese.

I grabbed it and was closing the door with the other hand when my phone rang.

After setting the box on the Formica table, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and looked at the screen.

The caller ID told me it was my dad. I swiped my finger across the screen and answered.

“Hey there, Hannah-banana.” His voice lifted and then sagged right after. “You busy? I’m not interrupting?”

“No. What’s going on?”

Nothing was actually going on, which was true of most of his calls these days.

It was fine, because it meant everything was fine.

He told me about the neighbor’s tree. The pharmacy moving his prescription to a different counter.

A long story about a man named Gordon I was fairly sure had died two years ago.

I listened with the quiet patience of an eldest daughter. My father had been on his own since my mother passed away twenty years ago. His children had all grown up and left home. Calling me was his way of filling the silence we all left behind.

His story finally wound down. “Anyway. Anyway, sweetheart, I won’t keep you. You take care of yourself, all right?”

“I always do, Dad.”

“That’s my girl.”

After I said my final goodbye to my father, I turned back to the cake on the table.

Except it was no longer on the table. Biscuit was sitting in its place like a twelve-pound orange menace, twitching his tail and looking at me with the flat lack of concern of a creature who’d already done the thing.

The thing being knocking my birthday cake on the floor. The cake box lid had fallen open, and it was face down on the floor. Jam was smeared in a little pink kiss across Marge’s linoleum.

I stared at it. Something inside me strained like it was going to break.

I felt hot tears rise behind my eyes. But I quickly sniffed them back and grabbed a roll of paper towels from the cabinet.

After making quick work of cleaning up my gift to myself, I started carrying my bags out to the car, mindful of not interrupting Marge’s show.

When I was loading my second suitcase, my phone buzzed with a text notification.

The phone rang before I could even read the message.

It was my little brother Kyle. The text-then-call-right-after was his typical communication style.

Urgency first, content later. I answered, half hoping someone would remember my birthday, especially after losing my cake.

“Henny. Hey. I’m glad I got a hold of you. I have something to ask you. But don’t freak out.”

Don’t freak out from my little brother usually had a dramatic story attached to it. This story was less dramatic than the last one. It involved his truck needing transmission work and a price tag that was not small.

“I’ll pay you back by Christmas,” he said. “I swear on Mom’s grave. It’s not like last time. I really need this. If I can’t fix the car, I can’t deliver pizza.”

“I understand, Kyle,” I said in a low voice, closing the back hatch of my Subaru. I quietly did the math, considering what was in my account, the cost of the rental, and the likelihood I’d get a new position soon. What was in savings and my 401(k).

“I’ll look into it tonight and get back to you. In-home care work doesn’t pay as well as the hospital. So I probably won’t be able to cover the whole thing. But I should be able to help with part of it.”

“You’re the best, Henny. Seriously. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

I walked back inside to say my final goodbyes to Marge. She was still in her recliner, and I bent down to give her a quick hug goodbye. “Don’t forget your medication, Margy. I set a reminder on your phone.”

“I’m going to miss you, Hannah,” she said, gripping my hand. “You’re the best nurse I’ve had.”

I left Marge’s house, walked down the sidewalk, past her garden gnomes, and climbed behind the wheel of my car.

I felt strangely empty and unsettled. I learned a long time ago that keeping a positive attitude was the best way to get through challenges in life.

But today, keeping my chin up was proving to be harder than usual.

I turned on the car, gripped the steering wheel, and tried to prepare myself for a night alone in the rental.

My phone buzzed again from the passenger seat.

I was proving to be very popular on my birthday for all the wrong reasons.

I was expecting to see a message from my sister Megan, but instead it was a notification from Austin Family Caregivers.

My employment agency had a new opening that met my criteria.

I quickly opened the app and read the entire description.

New Assignment Available—Live-In Caregiver/Nanny Client: Single father, one child (male, 18 months).

Location: Barton Creek. Start: Immediate.

Schedule: Live-in, room/board provided. Rate: Significantly above standard (details at interview).

Notes: Prior placement ended; family requesting urgent replacement.

Childcare experience required; comfort with nonhuman children a plus.

Discretion expected—NDA at placement. Please confirm interview availability at your earliest convenience.

Urgent replacement. That meant the previous nanny either walked out or was fired.

Which made me hesitate. But pay that was significantly above standard was something I needed right now.

The child was nonhuman, which meant he was what was colloquially called a “monster.” All nursing degrees required sections on crypto-terrestrials since they’d come out of hiding twenty years ago.

I’d worked with many crypto-terrestrial children at the hospital and as a nanny over my career. That didn’t bother me so much as the NDA. Which was a red flag. But the location was Barton Creek, a well-known affluent gated community. It was likely the father was a celebrity of some kind.

I thought about that poor toddler and his single father. It made me think of my own childhood. I tapped through the app to where I could accept the interview and hit send.