8. Sebastian

Chapter 8

Sebastian

N elly turned up at my front door at seven in the morning exactly .

The goal was a trial run — two days of her coming and going without moving in, just in case this didn’t work out for some reason. At least then, she wouldn’t have to move all of her things out immediately.

I’d spent the night going over in my head all of the reasons this was a horrible idea. The main one, the one that flared wildly every time I saw her and still burned annoyingly bright when she wasn’t around, was the unending temptation to bend her over my kitchen counter and fill her with my cock instead of my fingers.

Why did she have to be so fucking sexy?

Matty ate his bowl of cereal quietly in the living room as he watched cartoons, already dressed for his day of school, as I poured myself and Nelly a cup of coffee each.

“School starts at eight, but if you need to get him there early for any reason, they can be dropped off from seven onward,” I explained, sliding a mug across the breakfast island for Nelly. She stared down at it with a strange expression, her mouth tightening. “What?”

“Uh, do you have any… creamer? Or even milk, maybe? And sugar?”

I groaned in exasperation as I took her mug back. I pulled out the gallon of milk from the fridge and started rummaging through the cabinets, looking for the bag of sugar I kept somewhere .

“Do you have a spare car seat so I can install it in the truck? I have one at home, but I think Matty’s a little too big for it.”

I snorted as I pulled the bag of sugar down from the cabinet. “You’re not driving my kid to school in that death trap. You can take my Porsche for now. I’ll take the Audi.”

“It’s not a death trap,” she snapped. “It’s perfectly reliable.”

“It sounds like it’s about to explode,” I deadpanned, dropping a spoonful of sugar into the coffee. I raised a brow at her, challenging her to ask for a second, but she shook her head. “I’ve already gotten complaints about it from two of my neighbors.”

“You have not,” she grumbled, watching with precision as I tipped milk into her cup. “Stop! Yeah, that’s enough.”

“I have,” I said. I set her cup back in front of her, noting the lack of a thank you in the bad-idea column. “You’ll take the Porsche. No exceptions.”

“Fine. What time does he finish school?”

“Three on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. Two on Wednesdays,” I explained. I watched as she flicked open a little notebook she’d brought with her and clicked her pen, jotting down notes. “Believe me when I say the lunches at his school are better than the things I could make here, so you don’t need to worry about packing him food. And if you need to pick him up late at any point, they have an after-school club until four every day. You’ll just need to call ahead and tell them, or he’ll be waiting outside.”

“Am I cleared to do that? I won’t need to today, but just so I know ahead of time.”

I nodded. “I called them yesterday after you left. You’re on file.”

She hummed softly as she jotted something else down, underlining it a few times while she sipped her coffee. “Okay. So, we’ve gone over Matty’s schedule, unless there’s anything else I need to know with that. But I don’t know yours.”

I scrunched my mouth up to one side as I mulled over her words. “Mine changes pretty frequently depending on practice schedules, if I need to stay late, days before games, and the games themselves. This Sunday, for example, we have an important game, and I won’t be home for half of Saturday and most of Sunday. But that’s not every weekend.”

“Okay… and I get days off?” she chuckled, clicking the pen against her lip.

“Of course,” I clarified. “Two, at a minimum, per week. My sister can watch Matty if something urgent comes up, but ideally, they’ll be taken on the days when I can move my schedule to handle Matty. But if you have special requests, we can always figure it out if I know in advance,” I explained. My coffee burned my tongue as I sipped at it. “I’ll add you to my calendar so you can see my schedule, and I’ll be as transparent as I can about anything that deviates from it.”

She set her mug down and leaned back in her chair, the fabric of her loose black tee conforming around her breasts. Still, she played with that fucking pen, clicking it incessantly against her lower lip and staring at the paper before her. I wanted to take it from her to stop the clicking, but I wanted to put it in her mouth even more, wanted to watch the way her tongue curled around it, wanted to see what she was capable of.

“Can you not?” I grumbled.

“What?”

“The clicking.” And everything else.

“Oh, sorry,” she said, flipping the pen between her fingers. “I was just thinking.”

Me too. “About?”

“Does Matty ever get to go to the rink?”

I blinked at her. “Yeah, of course,” I said, setting my coffee aside and deciding that it was, actually, too hot to drink and I wasn’t just weak for not wanting to scald my tongue. “Most of my on-ice time is when he’s at school, but occasionally we’ll have later practice sessions. You’re welcome to bring him whenever you want, just keep a handle on him and make sure he doesn’t try to get on the ice.”

Her nose scrunched up in confusion. “Obviously. Why would I let him do that?”

“One of my previous nannies let it happen once. Thank fuck someone noticed before I did and got him off the ice. I had my back to that entrance, and had I seen it at the time and not just been told after…” I shook my head, irritation bubbling in my veins, but all she did was look at me with wide eyes and a slightly open mouth.

That fucking mouth .

“Anyway, yes, he’s welcome to come to the rink. He loves coming to games, so I usually let him if it’s not a school night since they run late,” I said, talking mostly to keep myself from picturing her on her back. “And you don’t need to worry about cleaning. I like doing most of that, and I occasionally get a cleaner in when I’m too busy to make time for it.”

She let out a breathy chuckle as she leaned forward, tucking her hands somewhere in her lap, but the counter obscured it. I tried not to let my imagination run wild and quickly made a mental note to take a shower the moment she left so I could relieve myself. “You like to clean?”

“Is that weird?” I challenged, crossing my arms over my chest.

“No, it’s just… most men have to be asked.” She held my gaze, her lips pursing together and parting again, and fuck , I needed a shower now , not later. I told myself it was just because it was the morning and I hadn’t had the chance to take care of myself yet, but I’d folded the moment I clocked her in Smokey’s. “What’s your schedule for today, then?”

“I’ve got to be at the rink at nine. Practice starts at eleven, and then I’ll need to do drills and my post-workout, so I’ll probably be home around three. Normally, on days like today, I’d take Matty to school and pick him up, but if you’re happy to, it would be good for you to familiarize yourself with all of that. And since he’ll be at school most of today, you can hang around until after dinner if you’d like to spend some one-on-one time with him.”

We went back and forth for a while longer, me explaining the ins and outs and the importance of making sure that if she did anything with him outside of school that involved food, it didn’t have peanuts in it. By the time I’d finally gotten around to starting on my coffee, she was helping Matty finish packing up for his day at school. My eyes were glued to the two of them like a hawk.

By the time I was passing her my car keys and sending them off, I was fucking desperate for a shower.

She was only gone for about thirty minutes, but in that time, I managed to finish my coffee, get upstairs, and douse myself in water hot enough to scald my skin.

With one hand on the tile wall and the other wrapped around the base of my throbbing, aching length, I did everything in my goddamn power not to think of her , of the way she’d sounded when I touched her, of the way her pretty fucking mouth parted and begged me to fuck her, of the way she smelled of lilies and sunflowers and whiskey .

I didn’t succeed.

As the evidence of yet another desperate attempt to get her out of my head washed down the drain, my phone chimed with the sound I’d set to let me know when the front door of my house was opened.

————

“When you set me up with the nanny, were there any others who had availability?”

Coach looked me square in the face as he stood beside the Zamboni, his silver hair swooped to one side and gelled in place. “What do you mean?”

“Is there someone else that I can swap to?” I pressed, shifting from foot to foot in my skates.

The moment I had seen her when I’d come down the stairs to leave for practice, I’d known. I’d known far too well that this wasn’t going away, not even after taking care of myself. No amount of touching could cancel out how fucking sexy she looked in a T-shirt and a pair of jeans, and nothing, nothing would stop me wanting to reach out and grab her.

It was stupid, and it was primal, and I didn’t know what the fuck to do about it.

“It’s been less than a day,” Coach said, crossing his arms across his chest as those lines on his forehead deepened. “You can’t be serious. What has she done wrong?”

I steeled my jaw, my pride too high to tell the truth. “Nothing.”

Coach rolled his eyes as he took a step back from me, leaning onto the side of the Zamboni. “Whatever it is, unless she does something that is a serious issue, you can’t swap her out willy-nilly. There’s no one else at the company who had the hours, and your contract with her runs through the team. Give it time and you’ll be fine.”

Fuck.

The temptation gnawed at me to manufacture a situation that would lead to a serious issue, but I couldn’t, wouldn’t , stoop that low.

I’d just have to keep my distance from her, emotionally and physically, as much as I could.

Which was just fucking perfect when she was going to be living in my fucking house.