The Nanny Bombshell. Michelle Celmer

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СКАЧАТЬ there, Sierra,” he said cheerfully from his wheelchair. He was dressed in dark brown pants and a Kelly-green cardigan sweater that were as old and tattered as their wearer.

      “How is Dad today?” she asked, dropping her purse in the chair and walking to his bedside. It broke her heart to see him so shriveled and lifeless. Nothing more than a shell of the man he used to be—the loving dad who single-handedly raised Sierra and her little sister Joy. Now he was wasting away.

      “It’s been a good day,” Lenny said.

      “Hi, Daddy,” she said, pressing a kiss to his papery cheek. He was awake, but he didn’t acknowledge her. On a good day he lay quietly, either sleeping or staring at the dappled sunshine through the dusty vertical blinds. On a bad day, he moaned. A low, tortured, unearthly sound. They didn’t know if he was in pain, or if it was just some random involuntary function. But on those days he was sedated.

      “How is that little boy of yours?” Lenny asked. “Must be reaching about school age by now.”

      She sighed softly to herself. Lenny’s memory wasn’t the best. He somehow managed to remember that she’d been pregnant, but he forgot the dozen or so times when she had explained that she’d given the girls up for adoption. And clearly he was confusing her with other people in his life because sometimes he thought she had an older boy and other times it was a baby girl. And rather than explain yet again, she just went with it.

      “Growing like a weed,” she told him, and before he could ask more questions they announced over the intercom that it was time for bingo in the community room.

      “Gotta go!” Lenny said, wheeling himself toward the door. “Can I bring you back a cookie?”

      “No thanks, Lenny.”

      When he was gone she sat on the edge of her dad’s bed and took his hand. It was cold and contracted into a stiff fist. “I had my job interview today,” she told him, even though she doubted his brain could process the sounds he was hearing as anything but gibberish. “It went really well, and I get to see the girls tomorrow. If the other applicants looked anything like the bimbo who interviewed right before me, I’m a shoo-in.”

      She brushed a few silvery strands of hair back from his forehead. “I know you’re probably thinking that I should stay out of this and trust Ash and Susan’s judgment, but I just can’t. The man is a train wreck just waiting to happen. I have to make sure the girls are okay. If I can’t do that as their mother, I can at least do it as their nanny.”

      And if that meant sacrificing her freedom and working for Cooper Landon until the girls no longer needed her, that was what she was prepared to do.

      Two

      The next afternoon at six minutes after one, Sierra knocked on the door of Cooper’s penthouse apartment, brimming with nervous excitement, her heart in her throat. She had barely slept last night in anticipation of this very moment. Though she had known that when she signed away her parental rights she might never see the girls again, she had still hoped. She just hadn’t expected it to happen until they were teenagers and old enough to make the decision to meet their birth mother. But here she was, barely five months later, just seconds away from the big moment.

      The door was opened by a woman. Sierra assumed it was the housekeeper, judging by the maid’s uniform. She was tall and lanky with a pinched face and steel-gray hair that was pulled back severely and twisted into a bun. Sierra placed her in her mid to late sixties.

      “Can I help you?” the woman asked in a gravely clipped tone.

      “I have an appointment with Mr. Landon.”

      “Are you Miss Evans?”

      “Yes, I am.” Which she must have already known, considering the doorman had called up to announce her about a minute ago.

      She looked Sierra up and down with scrutiny, pursed her lips and said, “I’m Ms. Densmore, Mr. Landon’s housekeeper. You’re late.”

      “Sorry. I had trouble getting a cab.”

      “I should warn you that if you do get the job, tardiness will not be tolerated.”

      Sierra failed to see how she could be tardy for a job she was at 24/7, but she didn’t push the issue. “It won’t happen again.”

      Ms. Densmore gave a resentful sniff and said, “Follow me.”

      Even the housekeeper’s chilly greeting wasn’t enough to smother Sierra’s excitement. Her hands trembled as she followed her through the foyer into an ultra-modern, open-concept living space. Near a row of ceiling-high windows that boasted a panoramic view of Central Park, with the afternoon sunshine washing over them like gold dust, were the twins. They sat side by side in identical ExerSaucers, babbling and swatting at the colorful toys.

      They were so big! And they had changed more than she could have imagined possible. If she had seen them on the street, she probably wouldn’t have recognized them. She was hit by a sense of longing so keen she had to bite down on her lip to keep from bursting into tears. She forced her feet to remain rooted to the deeply polished mahogany floor while she was announced, when what she wanted to do was fling herself into the room, drop down to her knees and gather her children in her arms.

      “The one on the left is Fern,” Ms. Densmore said, with not a hint of affection in her tone. “She’s the loud, demanding one. The other is Ivy. She’s the quiet, sneaky one.”

      Sneaky? At five months old? It sounded as if Ms. Densmore just didn’t like children. She was probably a spinster. She sure looked like one.

      Not only would Sierra have to deal with a partying, egomaniac athlete, but also an overbearing and critical housekeeper. How fun. And it frosted her that Cooper let this pinched, frigid, nasty old bat who clearly didn’t like children anywhere near the girls.

      “I’ll go get Mr. Landon,” she said, striding down a hall that Sierra assumed led to the bedrooms.

      Alone with her girls for the first time since their birth, she crossed the room and knelt down in front of them. “Look how big you are, and how beautiful,” she whispered.

      They gazed back at her with wide, inquisitive blue eyes. Though they weren’t identical, they looked very much alike. They both had her thick, pin-straight black hair and high cheekbones, but any other traces of the Chinese traits that had come from her great-grandmother on her mother’s side had skipped them. They had eyes just like their father and his long, slender fingers.

      Fern let out a squeal and reached for her. Sierra wanted so badly to hold her, but she wasn’t sure if she should wait for Cooper. Tears stinging her eyes, she took one of Fern’s chubby little hands in hers and held it. She had missed them so much, and the guilt she felt for leaving them, for putting them in this situation, sat like a stone in her belly. But she was here now, and she would never leave them again. She would see that they were raised properly.

      “She wants you to pick her up.”

      Sierra turned to see Cooper standing several feet behind her, big and burly, in bare feet with his slightly wrinkled shirt untucked and his hands wedged in the pockets of a pair of threadbare jeans. His dirty-blond hair was damp and a little messy, as if he’d towel-dried it and hadn’t bothered with a brush. No one could deny that he was attractive with his СКАЧАТЬ