The Nanny Proposal. Joss Wood

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ Savannah asked, and Aaron tuned back into their conversation.

      “Sure thing, sweetheart. I just need to check in with Aaron to see if he has any work for me,” Kasey replied.

      Aaron saw the flash of disappointment cross Savannah’s face. With her dark brown hair and green eyes, she was going to be beautiful. Hell, if he discounted the fear and sadness, she already was.

      “Nothing that can’t wait. Maybe I’ll join you two,” Aaron said, resting his arms on the railing of the balcony. Savannah’s head shot up and she managed a small smile before running into the house. Kasey stood in place, her arms folded across the cotton fabric of her sleeveless sundress. He could see the concern in her eyes, could read her thoughts as easily as he could the stock market.

      “You don’t have to join us,” Kasey said.

      “It’s fine. I’m hot and I need a break.” Aaron knew she worried that shedding most of their clothes would crack open the door that kept their mutual attraction under lock and key.

      It was a swim, he wanted to tell Kasey. They’d have an almost-six-year-old to chaperone them. Aaron ran his hand across his face, reluctantly admitting that if he and Kasey found themselves in a pool alone, their clothes would be shed in world-record-breaking speed. They were that combustible.

      Despite it only being a couple of days, living together in the same house was torture. They shared his office. They shared their meals. They were constantly in close proximity and, when he went to bed, he was deeply conscious that Kasey was across the hall in the bedroom next to Savannah’s. Every night he needed to talk himself out of slipping into her bed, of losing himself in her for an hour or two or most of the night.

      He tried, he really did, not to think about her like that but at night, when the lights were off, he was ambushed by memories of how she felt...

      God. Boss of the Year he was not.

      Really, didn’t he have better things to do than fantasize about his employee? Aaron turned away and walked back into his cool study, dropping into his leather chair. He had too many responsibilities to allow himself to be distracted by Kasey with her endless curves and catlike amber eyes.

      First and foremost, he needed to find out what the hell had happened to Jason. His gaze drifted to the silver frame on his desk: two little boys held fish up to the camera, their toothy grins wide and free. He and Jason were only a year apart and nobody knew his brother better than he did. Yeah, they’d fought and they’d competed—girls, sports, business—but they were brothers, and blood always, always, came first. He’d been Jason’s best man at his wedding, had handed him cigars and gotten him drunk when he’d become a dad. He’d kept his hand on his back and been a pillar of strength for him when he’d buried Ruth.

      It had been more than two months since he’d heard from Jay and Aaron knew in his gut that something was wrong. Desperately wrong.

      His brother was work obsessed but he’d never neglected Savannah. He was a good dad and, if Savannah was staying with Aaron or with Megan while Jay traveled, he made it a point to connect with his daughter every day, morning and night. Something terrible had to have happened because Aaron knew Jason would move heaven and earth to speak to his child.

      Cole Sullivan, the PI his friend Will had hired, also believed that Jason was in deep crap. The note Megan had received—supposedly from Jason, stating he needed space to deal with Will’s death—had been proved, through handwriting analysis, not to be Jason’s.

      Aaron could’ve told them that. Jason was a Phillips. They didn’t run away from their responsibilities. His brother would never turn his back on his daughter. He wouldn’t ignore his family’s entreaties to get in touch just so he could wallow in his own pain.

      No, something was very, very wrong.

      Aaron heard the door to his study open and Kasey walked in, heading for her desk in the corner. Instead of taking a seat, she bent from the waist down to peer at her monitor, her sundress perfectly delineating her heart-shaped ass, the same ass he’d slid his hands under to haul her against him as he’d lost himself in her eight months ago. He couldn’t help his eyes traveling down as her short dress rode up in the back, allowing him a look at her slim, tanned thighs. Those spectacular legs had encircled his hips, had been draped over his shoulders as he’d—

      God, he needed to get laid. Eight months was far too damn long, but whenever he considered finding a date, Kasey’s face popped into his head. He didn’t want sex with some random female. He wanted Kasey. Which posed a problem, because the woman worked for him and was helping him, temporarily, to raise his niece. He couldn’t jeopardize either situation, or his honor, for sex. His neglected junk violently disagreed.

      There was something—damn, what was the word?—homey about having his house and life invaded by two intensely girlie girls. Savvie’s occasional visits didn’t carry the same punch as having them here 24/7. The dolls and smells and music were comforting, and hearing feminine voices and the occasional trill of laughter made his house feel more like a home than the huge tomb he usually inhabited.

      Aaron rubbed the back of his neck and reminded himself that this wasn’t normal. Normal was Jay back at home with Savvie, Kasey in her house, he in his. He couldn’t afford to get attached. All his relationships, romantic or not, tended to be messy and, as an added bonus, the people he loved tended to leave him. Sometimes both at the same time. No, it was better to stay emotionally detached.

      But that resolve didn’t help him with his need-to-get-laid problem.

      Kasey stood straight and Aaron quickly looked up, glad that his desk hid his arousal. There were certain things Kasey did not need to know and his craving for her was one of them. “Aaron, I’m falling behind.”

      “How can I help?”

      “Can you do Savvie’s ballet run? I could use that time to catch up here.”

      Aaron nodded. It would do him good to get out of the house, away from the monitors and making financial decisions involving hundreds of millions of dollars. That took its toll and he could feel a stress headache building between his eyes.

      Kasey opened the right-hand drawer to his desk and lobbed him a bottle of aspirin. “Take two and come for a swim, it’ll help you unwind.”

      Aaron opened the bottle, shook the pills into his hand and tossed them into his mouth. He dry-swallowed the pills and ignored Kasey’s wince. “How did Savvie do at day camp today?”

      Kasey picked up a pen and threaded it through her fingers, something she often did. “She was better, I think. She told me that some boy brought in his guinea pig and that some of the girls were scared of it, but she’d loved it.” Kasey sent him a look and he knew that something big was coming his way, something he might not like. “I think you should buy her a puppy.”

      Yep, there it was. “Kasey, do we not have enough on our hands without adding a puppy to the craziness?”

      “She loves animals, Aaron, and she needs something to love.”

      “She has me and Megan.”

      “Her mom and dad have both left her, so she doesn’t trust other adults not to do the same,” Kasey argued, stubbornness settling into her expression.

      She was not going to let this go. Damn, they were going to get a puppy, sometime soon.

СКАЧАТЬ