11. Alex

Chapter 11

O f all the people to walk into the kitchen as Addison’s new nanny, she was not who I expected.

Why would I? I’d tried to track her down and had no luck. It was as if she’d vanished into thin air after that night. We kept track at the club, but she never went back, and despite owning the place and having access to everything, we had nothing. She hadn’t bought one drink that night. From the second she sat down at the bar, people were sending them to her, and while I can understand why, it was still frustrating. Not only because we couldn’t track her, but because the thought of her dealing with so many drunken fools like the one we chased away makes my blood boil.

I wasn’t the only one upset about it, either.

Des might not admit it, but he was hooked from the second he saw her at the bar. He doesn’t do relationships, not after the last one, but he would have for her. I could see it in the way he gravitated toward her, the gentle way he fucked her, and the smile that was damn near plastered on his face all night.

We took a hit a while back. It was the whole reason we used the pool house for our fun and kept everything simple and clean. But the very thing we used as a way to protect us proved to be our downfall when she was able to slip right through our fingers. We hadn’t wanted anything serious, so we’d made it easy to keep our pleasure separate from our daily lives. Maybe we’d done a little bit too good of a job.

Not this time, though.

I’m not sure how she ended up here, and I don’t believe in destiny or higher powers, but I’ll be damned if I don’t take this opportunity and treat it like the gift it is. I don’t even need to ask Des if he’s interested. I saw the way he looked at her at dinner tonight. That boy’s just as gone as he was that night, and it’s like a weight dropped off of him.

He’d been a bit distant for a while, spending more time out on his bike than at the office, and I knew it was annoying Nate. He was acting like a little lost puppy about a girl he spent one night with. It didn’t make sense to the others because they hadn’t been there, and no amount of us telling them about her would make him see.

We’d left her that morning to make breakfast with Addison. It was a tradition we had, making pancakes together on holidays. One we hadn’t missed once since Addison was born. While she ate, we filled Nate and Oliver in on our night. We might share, but we don’t usually sleep and tell. Oliver caught on right away, and while he didn’t seem happy about the idea of trying again, he remained quiet. Nate seemed minorly intrigued, if not a bit skeptical, but agreed to meet her and see for himself.

Which, of course, never fucking happened.

Until, apparently, it did. Somehow, she had met him all on her own, and she’d clearly made an impression, considering she was living in the house as Addison’s new nanny.

Rapping my knuckles on his office door, I push it open without giving him a chance to respond.

“Took you longer than I thought it would,” he says without looking up from his computer screen, and I huff a laugh before falling into the chair in front of him. He already has a glass of whiskey sitting on the edge of his desk for me, and I snatch it, knocking it back in one gulp.

Fuck, I needed that.

“Yes, well, my niece needed extra bedtime stories to make up for my absence,” I tell him, rolling my eyes, and he chuckles.

“Yes, god forbid she miss your ass.”

“Hey, my ass is very lovable!” I say in outrage that he ignores. I can talk a good game, but I’m just as wrapped around Addison’s finger as he is. I might not be her father, but she’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to a daughter, and I love her like my own.

We all do.

“Speaking of asses,” I say, leaning back in my chair and getting comfortable.

That gets his attention. His fingers that had just been flying along the keys without missing a beat freeze before he drags his eyes from the screen to me, meeting my gaze with a raised brow.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asks, but he’s not fooling me. Nate might seem like an unfeeling prick with a stick shoved up his ass, but I know him better than that.

There are a million things I could say and quite a few questions I want answered, but all of that can wait. I want to watch him squirm.

“Since when does the help live with us?”

Instead of answering, he rolls his eyes and turns back to the computer screen. But that’s as good as an admission in my book. My brother isn’t one to let things bother him unless it’s for good reason, and he’s more than used to me.

“She was out with us for ice cream. I’d offered her the position of nanny last week, but she had yet to accept it. We made an agreement while out, and then we dropped her off at her apartment.”

The disgust in his tone is clear, but I don’t understand why. We might be loaded now, but we didn’t grow up much better off than the average family. We weren’t poor exactly, but we also weren’t rolling in it. Sometimes, bills were tight, but our parents always made it work.

Clearly, I’m missing something.

“We’d only just made it back to the house when she called me…” he pauses, pushing back from his desk and completely disregarding his work.

Strange. My brother is nothing if not a workaholic.

“She was freaking out. It took me a second to understand, but I left Vince with Addison and went back. I wasn’t sure what was wrong. All she managed to tell me on the phone was that she needed help and didn’t have anyone else to call. I found her crying in the hallway.”

“What the fuck?” I shout, bolting upright from my chair.

Of all the things I expected him to say, this hadn’t been it. I thought maybe she’d caught his attention the way she had ours, and maybe she still had, but fuck me if this doesn’t make me see red.

“Someone had broken into her apartment, busted the door down, and ransacked the place. I couldn’t just leave her there.”

I’m mad, damn near seeing red. But also grateful that he didn’t leave her and happy she called him.

Slumping back in the chair, I let myself seethe for a second before I let it go, for now.

“Did she file a police report?” I ask, and he nods.

Shit, well, we can still work with that.

“We’ll come back to that later, all of us. But that still doesn’t really answer my question. We own six houses on this street just for staff. So pray tell, brother, why she’s in our house instead of the one intended for the nanny.”

His jaw ticks, but he knows as well as I do that I’ve got him. Nate bringing her in isn’t strange. As I said, we have housing for that. But we made a deal after Natasha. We don’t bring women into the house. It’s the whole reason we have the pool house.

A smile pulls at my lips as I watch him struggle to find an answer to appease me, and he comes up blank.

“So tell me, dear brother, how did you two meet?”

And he does.

Apparently, they met a few months ago, and just like Des and myself, he was taken by her beauty at first, which was only made sweeter by the fact that she had no idea who we were. Seeing Katherine with Addison is what sold him, though. I can see it in his eyes when he talks about seeing them together.

Finding a nanny for Addison has been a fucking challenge. She’s got a lot of energy, she’s smart, and stubborn, but more than anything, most of the ones we hire seem to only be doing it to try to get into our good graces for one reason or another. Some think they can be the one to tie us down, while others have sold our personal information to tabloids and other bullshit places.

It’s not fair to Addison, but there's nothing we can really do about it.

“I told you, you’d like her,” I say, unable to help myself once he’s finally done catching me up.

“Yes, well, that’s not what I think we need to be discussing right now,” he says, not even bothering to try and deny it.

Good, because we both know it would be a lie.

“No, you're right, it’s not. Though it’s still true.”

He waves me off, but before we can continue our conversation, the door flies open and Des strolls in with a smile on his face and a pep in his step.

Yeah, we have a lot to talk about because there’s no way I’m letting her get away again.