7. Nelly

Chapter 7

Nelly

S ebastian’s home was… large. Just like him.

My truck idled in the long driveway, his white house taking up almost the entirety of my view from the windshield. It was Southern-inspired but modern, all angular with a flat roof and harsh sides, but complete with wood shutters on the outsides of the windows that likely doubled as hurricane protection. Manicured hedges lined the sides of the home, with a pristinely laid cement walkway leading straight to the front door. An all-black convertible sports car sat beside my out-of-place truck in the driveway, and I had a brief recollection of seeing it parked in one of the front spots at Peach Arena.

My phone buzzed in my hand.

Sebastian: You planning to just sit in that heap of junk all afternoon? You’ll cook yourself alive.

I scowled at his message. My truck might be a heap of junk, but it was my heap of junk, and no one else was allowed to think that. Even if it was unreasonable.

Me: Don’t insult my truck.

Sebastian: Drive something nicer, then.

Cursing him, I shoved the door open and hopped out of the truck, nearly catching the cuff of my jeans on the broken bit of plastic that used to be a step beneath the door. I slammed it shut and walked up the fancy concrete path, spotting a little handprint baked into the corner of one of the slabs along with a poorly written Matty beside it, and for a moment, the cuteness of that was enough to cut through the irritation.

Just for a moment.

The door opened before I could knock. Sebastian stood there, the stubble from earlier gone, fully clean and wearing a pair of black joggers and a white shirt that hugged the muscles of his arms. “If my truck is an eye-sore for you, you could buy me something different,” I said by way of greeting. “You clearly can afford to.”

He rolled his eyes and stepped aside, motioning for me to come in. “Believe me, I’m already tempting. I could hear you coming down the road. Exhaust pipe fall off?”

“Shut up,” I grumbled, crossing the threshold into his immaculately clean and decorated house. Stained wood flooring ran throughout, with dark grey painted walls curving around every corner. At first glance, I’d have no idea that a child lived here, but the longer I stared, the more evidence I found. A handful of childish drawings were stuck to the fridge in the kitchen at the other end of the foyer, a single plastic building brick was sticking out of a plant pot, and the unmistakable sound of cartoons slowly filtered into my ears.

“Matty! Nelly’s here!” He shut the door behind me with a soft click.

“You sure you want me to do this?” I offered, eying him warily as he stepped around me. “I can still leave before he sees me. ”

“No point,” he said. “Pretty sure he’d hear your truck leave.”

The temptation to grind my teeth struck me just before a boy, who was no more than four feet tall, poked his head around the corner.

He looked like a miniature version of his dad.

Brown wavy hair, just a little bit longer than Sebastian’s, fell around the apples of his cheeks. Bright blue eyes watched me warily, a hint of curiosity twinkling in them. His skin was a touch paler than his father’s, but he had the same build, the same long torso and legs. He was slightly taller than I’d expect for a five-year-old, but then his dad must have been somewhere north of six feet, so it wasn’t surprising.

“Hi, Matty,” I beamed, giving him a small wave. I wouldn’t approach him — that wasn’t how I rolled. I wanted to wait until he felt comfortable enough to come to me to bridge that gap. “I’m Nelly.”

“She’s nice,” Sebastian said, but the look on his face told me he didn’t fully believe that. Thankfully, Matty wasn’t watching his dad and instead had his eyes locked on me. “She won’t bite, Mat.”

“Are you gonna fire her too?” Matty asked.

Sebastian sucked air in through his teeth as he squatted down. He took Matty’s hand in his, his thumb rubbing back and forth across his little hand, and every feature of Sebastian’s face smoothed as he looked at his kid.

It was almost… humanizing. Almost.

“I know you liked Angela, bud, I’m sorry,” he sighed. “But Angela did a bad thing, and that meant we couldn’t keep her around.”

Matty’s lower lip jutted out. “It was just a watch.”

Sebastian bit back a scowl. “It was a Rolex. ”

His last nanny tried to steal a Rolex? My God.

“So?”

“ So , that’s very, very expensive, and it meant that we couldn’t trust her anymore,” Sebastian explained, pulling his son’s hand until the boy stumbled into his waiting embrace. “I’m sorry. But I promise, Nelly is just as fun and a lot nicer.”

“Pinky promise?” Matty asked, pulling back his arm to hold up a single pinky. His gaze shifted to me briefly, a little blush spreading across his cheeks.

Before Sebastian could offer up his pinky, I broke my silence, squatting down beside the door despite Matty being a good fifteen feet from me. “I’ll do you one better, squirt,” I said, offering out my pinky. “ I’ll pinky promise you. And if you take it, I’ll give you the treat I brought for you.”

His eyes let up, almost twinkling under the rays of sunlight streaking through the window, and the moment Sebastian released him, he ran at me, slotting his pinky into mine and biting down on his thumb. I glanced over at his dad, a look of utter surprise painting his features, and he raised his thumb to his mouth to bite down, too, a silent instruction for me to follow along.

I did.

Matty giggled and released his thumb, his grin spreading wide and revealing a single missing tooth along the bottom row. He was positively adorable. “You brought me a treat?”

“I did!” I adjusted my footing to keep my balance in my squat and opened up my bag, pulling out a single, carefully wrapped cookie from the bakery I’d stopped at on my way over. Matty squealed in excitement.

Sebastian shot up to his full height, his face falling as he took a hasty few steps toward me, his mouth open like he was about to speak.

“There’s no peanuts,” I said to Sebastian. “Don’t worry.”

He paused halfway between where he’d been and where his son and I were, his brows knitting.

“It was in the paperwork you filled out for Rosie,” I said, answering his unasked question and slipping the cookie into Matty’s eagerly awaiting hands.

“I…” He hesitated, folding his arms across his chest. “Sorry, I just assumed I’d need to fill you in on that. Thank you for checking it.”

I raised a single brow at him as I helped Matty unwrap the treat, little chunks of chocolate dotting the top of the cookie. I’d already eaten two cookies of my own in the car. “Of course I’d check it,” I said. Surely, that was an obvious thing to do. “I always check. Snacks are an easy way in with kids, and I don’t want to accidentally send one into anaphylaxis.”

“Right,” Sebastian mumbled. “Matty, how about you eat that while you watch your show, and I’ll give Nelly a tour around the house. Sound good?”

“Okie dokie!” Matty chirped, and a second later, he took off back into the room he’d come from.

————

The house was three stories. On the ground floor, there was the living room, a sitting room, a kitchen, a powder bath, and a pool bathroom with a door on both the inside and the outside. On the second floor were Matty’s room, Sebastian’s room, three bathrooms, and two guest rooms large enough to fit at least half of my apartment inside of them. And the third floor, spanning across almost the entirety of the footprint of the home, was a home gym with every kind of equipment one could think of. There was also a small office and a bathroom on the third floor.

The house itself was gorgeous — white trim ran along the tops of the walls, and plain but decorative rugs ran along the stairs and some of the walkways. Each room came complete with deep black leather furniture and dark marble countertops. It was a drastic difference from the stark white exterior, and it made it almost more cozy and inviting than I’d been expecting.

Sebastian made minimal small talk with me as he showed me around, and I didn’t dare push him on that. I knew I’d either get a snarky response or a comment about my truck or another accusation that I’d been stalking him.

By the time we’d finished the house tour, Matty had finished his cookie, and Sebastian sat down beside him on the sofa and pulled him into his lap. “ You , sir, need to get your shoes on so we can go show Nelly the guest house together.”

God, he was so much nicer to Matty than I expected after what had happened earlier. I’d worried that the side I’d seen of him last week was some kind of blip, but his genuine side slipped out so easily around his kid, even if it immediately went away the moment he spoke to me.

Matty’s little eyes widened with excitement as he kicked his feet. “Can I show her my goalie?”

Sebastian snorted. “If you want to give her nightmares, sure.” Matty squealed and went to move, but Sebastian kept his hold on him. “Hold your horses, bud, shoes .”

Maneuvering around his son, he leaned over the edge of the sofa, grasping the little red sneakers sitting on the ground near them. He popped them onto Matty’s feet.

“Remember how to tie them?” Sebastian prompted, holding up the laces for Matty to reach toward. He grasped them in his little hands, putting one over the other and looping it through before tightening it down, and then staring hard at the laces as if they’d unlock the memory of what to do next. “You’ve got to make the little loop, remember? Then around and through and pull—no, not like that.”

“Do you know the rhyme?” I offered, moving closer on instinct. I sat down beside them on the leather. Matty shook his head.

“There’s a rhyme?” Sebastian asked, his brows coming together as he turned to look at me.

“Yeah! It’s super easy. Watch.” I offered my hands for Matty to give me the laces, and the moment he did, I undid his work and set us back to square one. “Bunny ears, bunny ears, playing by a tree. Criss-crossed the tree, trying to catch me.”

I made the motions as I half-sang the rhyme, tying the first bit that Matty had nailed. Then, I made two little loops on either side.

“Bunny ears, bunny ears, jumped into the hole,” I continued, looping one over the other and pulling through. “Popped out the other side, beautiful and bold!” Tightening it down, I motioned with both hands toward the perfect little lace tie. “See? Easy! You want to try? I’ll say it with you.”

Matty nodded excitedly and picked up the laces on his other shoe as his father eyed me over his head. “Bunny ears, bunny ears, playing by a tree. Criss-crossed the tree, trying to catch me,” Matty and I said in unison while he performed the first tie perfectly yet again. “Bunny ears, bunny ears, jumped into the hole…”

Matty struggled to make the two little loops and we both paused while he maneuvered it. He stared at them, but it was like something clicked, and he put one through the crossover like I had before, and pulled them tight.

“Popped out the other side, beautiful and bold!” We finished together, and Matty’s grin spread across his cheeks like wildfire as he kicked excitedly.

“I did it!”

“You did! See? It isn’t hard, you just have to remember it,” I said. “Sometimes I still have to sing it to myself, you know.”

“ Really ?”

“That’s the first time he’s managed to do it completely on his own,” Sebastian said, cutting through the elation and leveling a stare at me that I couldn’t quite read. It made a shiver run up my spine. “Wild.”

I tried to laugh it off, tried to hide the minor discomfort he made me feel, but he just kept watching me, just kept picking me apart beneath his gaze. I couldn’t tell if he was actually happy I’d helped his kid with something or annoyed that I’d intervened.

“I did it, Dad,” Matty said again, this time leaning back in his father’s embrace and peeking up at him upside-down.

“I know! Good job, bud.” Sebastian grinned, his hands moving to either side of his son’s abdomen and squeezing just enough to get a squeal out of the kid.

Matty was so cute it actually hurt, like when you see a baby bunny and just want to squeeze it close to your chest and never let a single thing harm it. The thought raised questions in me that I normally didn’t think about with single parents — like where his mom was, if she was in the picture at all, if the last nanny’s departure had hit him so hard because maybe he didn’t have a mom. I’d looked at a handful of photos up on the walls as Sebastian had walked me through the house, and not a single one included anyone other than him and Matty and a woman who looked so much like Sebastian that the only logical conclusion was that she was a sister.

“Right, let’s show her the guesthouse and your goalie so that Nelly can decide if she wants to work for us sometime before the sun goes down,” Sebastian chuckled.

I’d already decided, but I wanted to see it all regardless, so I kept my mouth shut.

Together, the three of us went through the sliding glass door in the kitchen, stepping out onto the deck. A massive in-ground pool spanned part of the yard, with a small white fence around it to keep Matty safe. Beside it, under the cover of the roof, was a hot tub with a cover on top. A pathway led from the deck to a building that looked like a full-on little house.

But before we could get halfway there, Matty took off running into the grass, right up to…

I cackled. Full, belly-breaking cackled.

A scarecrow, of all things, sat between a smattering of hedges and plants, a helmet on its head and a hockey stick somehow secured to its hand. It wore a blue and gold jersey with Atlanta Fire written across it, and beneath that were mounds of what I could only assume were shoulder pads and other protective gear.

“Ah, I see you’ve met Carl, the house goalie,” Sebastian said, coming up behind me.

“Carl?” I laughed.

He shrugged. “I don’t know, Matty named it.”

“Why did you put a scarecrow up? This isn’t a farm.” I chuckled, trying to keep my laughter at bay as Matty ran circles around it excitedly.

“I took Matty to Home Depot and he wouldn’t let me leave without it. He insisted we needed it for protection,” Sebastian said, stuffing his hands in his pockets. But that corner of his mouth quirked up again, and I could tell I’d hit on a soft spot for him. He also thought it was funny enough to break through his composure, at least a little . “I swear, sometimes I look out my window at night and think there’s a person out here. Scares the shit out of me.”

Something in what he said clicked — he’d left my apartment hastily last week and said he needed to get home. That made far more sense now that I knew he had a kid, and for a second, my guard dropped, that overwhelming feeling of being inadequate abating just a hair. But there was still the question of why he hadn’t bothered to call me, and why he was acting so differently now. Could I genuinely handle being around someone this much again who made those shitty feelings flare?

“At least it keeps the crows at bay,” I offered, snickering to myself.

“It doesn’t. They just perch on the helmet,” Sebastian chuckled, and I had to do a double take — he was actually chuckling while speaking to me again. Okay, this is an improvement, even if he is an asshole.

“Nelly! Meet Carl!” Matty chirped, nearly tripping over himself.

“Hi, Carl!” I called, waving at the scarecrow enthusiastically.

Sebastian shoved a key into the glass doors of the guesthouse, turning it and sliding them open. “Come on,” he said, motioning for me to follow without looking back.

I entered after him. The space was large, larger even than my apartment. It was decorated exactly like the main house — stained wood flooring, dark grey walls, and black leather furniture made up the living room. The kitchen was finished with black marble countertops and dark wood cabinetry, and the fact that it was a full kitchen with an oven, dishwasher, fridge, and cooktop was a dream. I only had a microwave and convection oven back in my apartment.

The bedroom had an en-suite bathroom with a full walk-in shower and a luxurious jet-filled tub, and the four-poster bed made me wonder if there was a similar one in Sebastian’s room. He hadn’t taken me in when we’d passed it, only motioned toward it vaguely and said that one’s mine .

On the other side of the guesthouse, a little office jutted off the living room, and behind it, was a smaller home gym.

“So, there’s a pathway that runs behind Carl and goes around to the fence on the side of the house. On your days off, if you want to stay here, you’re welcome to use that to come and go if you don’t want to go through the house. Otherwise, you’d be welcome to go between the main house and this one whenever you want,” Sebastian explained, his eyes locked on Matty out the glass doors as he did cartwheels in the yard.

“That sounds great,” I said carefully, my gaze flicking between him and the view he was watching.

“Sounds like there’s a but coming.”

I sighed. “ But … are you sure you’re happy about me working for you?”

His gaze snapped to mine instantly, his nostrils flaring out. “Why would you say that?”

“I just mean that it could be… I don’t know, awkward for you,” I explained, fidgeting with the bracelet around my wrist. “I don’t want you worrying that I’m some kind of… what did that guy call it? Puck bunny?”

His mouth formed a hard line. “I can handle a bit of awkwardness, Penelope. It’s fine. I just need someone to reliably watch my son, and if you can do that, then we shouldn’t have any problems. ”

I rolled my lip between my teeth, tempted to bring up what had happened as a thing to point to and say this probably wasn’t a good idea . But I didn’t. I needed the money, even if we ended up hating each other. I could laugh and joke my way through it and be a good nanny for Matty. “And you’re serious about the pay?”

“I am.”

“Then I’ll take the job,” I said.

Sebastian held my gaze, his eyes flicking between mine. “You’re happy with the hours?”

“Yes.”

“And you like Matty?”

I grinned up at him. “How could I not? He’s adorable.”

He nodded slightly, letting out a breath I didn’t know he was holding. “All right,” he sighed. “You’re hired.”

“Oh, there is one thing I should tell you, but you’ve already hired me, so I guess it’s fine,” I smirked, pushing the glass door back open and letting in the sounds of Matty’s idle chatter to Carl the Goalie. Sebastion’s eyes narrowed.

“What? What is it?”

“I’ve stolen, like, a thousand Rolex watches,” I said, stifling a laugh at my own joke as I stepped through the door.

He rolled his eyes at me. “If I have to live with bad jokes, then so be it.”