One Week Nanny Read online

  One Week Nanny

  Shay Violet

  shayviolet.com

  Copyright © 2020 by Shay Violet

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  shayviolet.com

  Contents

  1. Matt

  2. Kendra

  3. Matt

  4. Kendra

  5. Matt

  6. Kendra

  7. Matt

  Also by Shay Violet

  1

  Matt

  “Are you ever at your own place?”

  I cracked open the beer I just pulled out of Dad’s fridge before slowly turning to face my brother, arching a brow.

  “I could ask you the same thing.” I offered him the bottle, but he shook his head.

  Ryan smirked, far from shamed by the rebuttal. “Can’t, got places to be. I actually have a reason to be out of my house.”

  “Where are you two going this time?” I assumed he was dropping off my nephew Hudson so he and his new lover could have some one-on-one time. Guy was barely divorced half a year before he was practically ready to get on one knee for some new girl.

  Freedom was wasted on him.

  He did seem happy, though. A lot happier than he’d ever been with his ex. I think we all tried to talk him out of getting serious with Katherine, but my brother’s always been hard-headed. He might complain about always being the leader in everything, having to take the responsibility, but it was a role he donned without hesitation. It wasn’t like there was no one else to step up when he decided to flip his life upside down.

  I honestly wasn’t sure how well Seth was handling being the big man in the boardroom. We didn’t hang out the way we used to. All five of us were still in the area, more or less, but we all had our own roles in the company -- or these days, other business interests -- that kept us apart from one another. All those other weirdos seemed to actually enjoy working. I was happy to keep my shares, show up for the big meetings, and fuck off the rest of the time. We busted our asses for all this money to enjoy it, right? I wasn’t going to make the mistake of waiting until I’d had my third heart attack to take time off. That would probably be Ben. Guy was more of a workaholic than my brother.

  I doubted we’d be able to get Ryan pinned down, but maybe I could plan something with the four of us. It’d been too long since we’d had a boys’ night. When was the last time anyone even heard from Cole? He still sent out regular patches and software updates, so he wasn’t dead in his basement, but when was the last time he’d left his little coding cave?

  “Taking the yacht out. It’s supposed to be a good night for stargazing and Jalisa’s never seen a shooting star,” Ryan said, a sappy dreamy look on his face.

  I could hurl.

  “Sounds romantic,” I said, making a face, drinking the beer.

  “Should be,” he answered, smiling even wider. I knew I should be happier for him, but the whole thing just made me feel sick. The kid, the school functions, dating a teacher? He was living some little nuclear family dream. It seemed like a fantasy. Like no one could really be happy with that kind of life and he was just lying to himself.

  Or maybe you’re just bitter and jealous.

  The mean little voice sprang up from nowhere in the back of my head and caught me off-guard.

  Jealous? Of Ryan’s “Leave it to Beaver” lifestyle? Hardly.

  “Is Hudson cool with all this time you’re spending with her?” I asked, but his expression didn’t deflate like I expected.

  “If you’d actually been around at Christmas, you would’ve seen that he’s just as crazy about her as I am. We had a board game night last night and they had so much fun teaming up against me. He understands we want grown-up alone time sometimes, and he loves hanging out with Dad.”

  “Yeah, never expected him to go whole-hog on the grandpa thing like he has. You know I found a ‘World’s Proudest Grandpa’ mug in his cabinet?”

  Ryan laughed, shaking his head. “Guess he feels like he needs to make up for all those years he avoided us.”

  “Guess so,” I muttered. After our mom died, Dad wasn’t the same. Ryan had more memories of the good times than I did. I just remembered the emotionally distant version of a dad who didn’t come to my little league games and was always introducing new mommies. At least he finally stopped getting married every three-to-five years.

  Once we were adults, our relationship with Dad improved some, but it wasn’t until we found success with our company that he was really able to open up and tell us how proud he was, how much he wished our mother could see what we’d accomplished.

  For a while, I thought it was shady that he only tried to repair our relationship once we had a shit-ton of money, but Dad wasn’t ever looking for a hand-out. This house was bought with his own retirement money. The only thing we’d ever really gotten him was the Rolls Royce he always dreamed of, and he never saw that one coming.

  Maybe it was like Ryan said, he really did feel guilty. Ryan would know, since he’d nearly pulled the same stunt with his own kid before realizing he was repeating the mistakes of our father. He thought he was doing better now, but hitching himself to a new girl so soon after a divorce is exactly what the old man would’ve done in his prime.

  “Take it easy,” Ryan said, impervious to my sour mood. He had the teflon coating of new love surrounding him and nothing could bring him down. “Don’t let those two get too wild,” he added, frowning towards the backyard where Dad and Hudson were playing football.

  “Dad joked about getting him a tattoo, but I don’t know how much of a joke it really was…”

  I rolled my eyes. “He’s trying to be a fun grandpa, not a cut-off one. Calm your tits.”

  “Yeah, but still… No sneaking him beer at dinner or anything, he’s seven.”

  “Think I probably got into worse trouble than that at his age.”

  Ryan made a face. “Because you were hanging out with me and my friends and we’re all five years older than you. Hudson doesn’t have that kind of bad influence and I’d like to keep it that way.”

  “Okay, okay, I’ll cancel the pole dancers.”

  He scoffed, shaking his head at me, finally a bit of a puncture wound in his buoyant mood. “One of these days something’s going to make you take life a bit more seriously,” he warned.

  “Not fucking likely. Enjoy your moonlit night of making wishes or what-the-fuck-ever.”

  “Oh, we will, don’t you worry,” Ryan said with enough suggestion in his tone to make me gag.

  I was all for taking hot girls out on the yacht for good times, but I typically had at least half a dozen of them and a cargo hold full of booze and sex toys. My definition of good times and Ryan’s were very different.

  The old man ordered in for dinner, Italian from a little place down the road that’d been there for thirty years at least. Hudson asked to taste Dad’s wine, and I didn’t say anything when Dad passed him the glass.

  Ryan said no beer, after all. Wine was harmless. Pretty sure they put it in baby bottles in Europe.

  Even though I was almost always around while Dad watched Hudson, I didn’t really spend much time with the kid. I’d never hung out with kids since I was one, and now it had been so long that I just felt awkward. Whenever I tried to make small talk with him, he looked at me like I was from another planet and he couldn’t understand what I was trying to communicate.

  Maybe I should’ve stuck around for Christmas and gotten to know him -- and Ryan’s new girlfriend -- better. Goodness knows I never wanted to sp
end any time with their family when Katherine was still in the picture.

  She hated me. I didn’t have such strong feelings for her, I mostly just wanted to avoid her, but I was sure she’d told Hudson nasty things about me and my lifestyle which she never approved of.

  It wasn’t like I was running drugs or fronting for a cartel. I just enjoyed the company of women. Normally a few at a time. If everyone’s consenting, what the hell’s the problem with that?

  She seemed to think that because the girls I spent time with were interested in the flashy cars and boats and gifts that they were no better than prostitutes. I didn’t even dignify that with any kind of response -- I’ve enjoyed the company of some very classy escorts who could put that frigid bitch to shame.

  Ryan was so much better off without her.

  This new girl I didn’t know anything about, but everyone else seemed smitten, so maybe she wasn’t so bad.

  Maybe I’d stick around for the next holiday to find out for myself.

  “All right, Dad, I’m gonna get out of here,” I said after helping him toss out the trash from the take-out.

  “You sure? Hudson’s going to show me his new digital reality--”

  “Virtual reality, Grandpa,” Hudson snickered.

  “Right, his new virtual reality gameboy--”

  “It’s not a gameboy, it’s an Oculus,” Hudson chimed in again.

  It would probably be entertaining to watch Dad fumble around with the technology two generations from his childhood. I remember one Christmas I got an etch-a-set from him. All my friends got gameboys. Yeah, it might be pretty funny but I was hitting the limit of my social interaction quota. If I stuck around much longer I’d just get grumpier and grumpier.

  “Maybe next time,” I told them. Dad seemed more disappointed than Hudson, who was already running off to the living room to set things up.

  “I’ll probably be around tomorrow,” I said to Dad, clapping him on the shoulder on my way out.

  It was a routine I never have expected for myself, but it worked for us. Dad was lonely when he was all alone in this big house -- way too big for one man, honestly -- and I didn’t have much else to do. Sitting home alone in my big penthouse apartment wasn’t any better, so we normally found excuses to hang out. Yardwork, home repairs, golf, whatever.

  I told myself it was to keep him from being lonely, but he wasn’t the only one.

  And if his place was too big for one person, mine definitely was. I lived in downtown Miami, atop one of the high-rise buildings. I had the top two floors of one half of the building all to myself. I’d renovated it to be a big open loft space, though it could’ve had probably four or five massive bedrooms, it only had one really. There was another ‘bedroom’ but it was more of a party room. A fun-times room. Not somewhere I’d let a guest sleep. Not that I ever had guests sleep over who weren’t naked and draped all over me.

  I’d kept the exterior walls as windows, giving me incredible views of the city and the water below. This was the tallest building around, so there was nothing to block my line of sight, though I still preferred looking down from the balcony than from the windows. Something about the salty breeze made the views even better.

  There were at least a dozen emails and calls I’d been ignoring for most of the day. None of them were work-related; it was all from my lawyer, a nervous little man who definitely earned his retainer by staying on top of my scandals and keeping them out of the press. I assumed that was what he was losing his marbles about now. He always reacted like this, like it was the end of the world, and yet every time he managed to pay off the appropriate people, do the requisite rug-sweeping, and let me go about my life.

  Like I said, worth every penny.

  But despite being my lawyer for years, and cleaning up dozens of scandals from minor to major, he still panicked with every new piece of gossip and needed me to reassure him that it wasn’t as bad as it seemed. I never did anything illegal. Immoral, maybe. Debaucherous, definitely. But I never crossed into the territory of breaking the law. As far as his job as a lawyer was concerned, I should be a dream client, a cakewalk.

  I didn’t hire him for his calm demeanor, though. I hired him because he was the best at this kind of work, thorough, and his prices were steep, but not exploitative.

  I should probably call him back.

  “Mr. Williams!” he answered, sounding breathless. Was he having a panic attack at this very moment? “I’ve been trying to reach you all day.”

  “Yeah, I know. What’s going on, Drew?”

  “Ah, well… You see… Could we perhaps speak in person?”

  “Is that necessary?” I asked, sitting back on my expensive designer couch, trying to find a good position. This thing was more about looks than comfort. I didn’t spend enough time here to care much about comfort.

  “Well… Not strictly, no, but I think it would be simpler to--”

  “Just spit it out already,” I grumbled, losing the little patience I’d had.

  “My office has been contacted about a rather delicate matter…” I loved the work this guy was able to do, but why did he always have to talk like a Victorian aristocrat?

  “What sort of delicate matter? Is this about my Christmas party?” The things I did on that boat with those girls… I could see a scandal coming from it.

  “About… What? What happened at your-- Nevermind,” he said quickly, his nerves making his voice tremble. “No, it’s about something that happened a little over a year ago, sir.”

  “Okay…” I waited for him to fill in the blanks. He couldn’t seriously expect me to remember something that happened over a year ago. “Whoever it is needing paid off, just do it,” I muttered, deciding I didn’t even care about the blanks.

  “It’s not that simple,” he said, still talking like he was barefoot on broken glass.

  “Then enlighten me, Drew.”

  “There is ah… Well, sir, there’s a child.”

  I snorted, a humorless laugh that was almost a bark. “Oh, come on, that’s not even original. What does she want? Child support? A new house? She’s not the first to try this scam. You know there’s no way.”

  I was always careful. I had people coming for my money left and right and with the number of women I spent time with, this wasn’t the first time someone cried ‘baby.’ Of course they never amounted to anything. I always used protection and last year I’d finally pulled the ripcord and gotten a vasectomy. Once the girls realized I wasn’t playing ball with their shenanigans, something always happened to the baby, or they just disappeared altogether. It was a song and dance I was pretty used to at this point.

  “Well… Yes, but it’s possible, sir. The date of conception was a mere two months after your, um, procedure, and it’s possible that--”

  “What does she want?” I growled, fists clenching. I was on my feet now, pacing back and forth like a caged lion in front of my huge windows. I’d gotten the vasectomy last year, but then the doctor told me it could take three months before it was fully effective. I had my sperm counted every week, hoping to beat the odds, and the first all-clear I got, I fell into bed with the nearest willing participant for some no-barriers nookie.

  But my check-up the next week showed it had been a false positive and the doctor told me that was why they recommended at least two sperm-free tests before calling it good. I didn’t make the same mistake twice, but what if it was only that one time?

  That was ridiculous, though. Who got pregnant on the first try? Didn’t most people have to try for a while to make it happen? Besides, I must’ve had a pretty low sperm count at that point. This was just someone with believable enough timing to set me on edge.

  “She uh… Well, sir, I don’t think she’ll be making any demands of you. She’s dead.”

  My heart stopped, confusion and shock chilling me from the inside.

  “She’s… what?”

  I only vaguely remembered the woman in question, and suddenly I felt guilty for that.
/>
  “Deceased, a medical condition. You were named on the child’s birth certificate, and she has no other relatives, so custody… falls to you.”

  “We don’t even know if this kid is mine, she could’ve named me hoping to extort me for money…”

  “We’ll certainly insist on a paternity test,” he assured me. It wasn’t really very reassuring, though. If this woman had wanted to extort me, why wouldn’t she have done it during the pregnancy? She could have afforded the best medical care in the world with a payoff from me if that was what she was after.

  “There’s no way this kid is mine,” I insisted, trying to convince myself more than him.

  “I’ll send you the address of a laboratory I work with regularly, they can collect the sample from you, and we’ll compare it to what the state has for the child. But sir, please consider what you’ll do if it comes back as a match.”

  “Sure,” I muttered, dropping back down onto my uncomfortable couch, ending the call.

  What would I do?

  How the hell should I know?

  I’d done everything to prevent this, and in my one moment of lapsed judgement, it all became futile.

  I couldn’t believe it. Not until we got the test results.

  What the hell was I supposed to do with a kid?

  No, not a kid -- a baby.

  This was going to be a disaster.

  Please be negative, I pleaded with whoever might be listening in on my thoughts. I doubted I’d won myself any favors with them, but if there was any mercy in the world for me or this kid, we wouldn’t be related.

  2

  Kendra

  “How’re your plans for Spring Break coming?” I asked Ashley, looking at her over the rim of my coffee cup.

  She huffed and rolled her eyes. “Bullshit. You know I got that great deal on a flight to New York so Gage could stay at my parents’ place, but the airline just said there was a mix-up and they’re not going to be able to honor that price on those days. Of course the alternatives they gave me are all during school days… Gage is gonna be so disappointed and I don’t know how to tell him--”