The Nanny Next Door (The Forbidden Reverse Harem Collection)

6. Aaron

6

AARON

I t was rare for me to feel uncertain about anything, but I was not sure what to make of Lila Dawson, and that fact was bothering me to no end as I watched her leave the café, her wide hips swinging to and fro.

On the one hand, the young woman had handled my questions with surprising grace for someone who seemed so young, so innocently naive. Even under her veneer of professionality, I could easily sense the squishy underbelly of her fear. It was the primal kind of anxiety based on survival, the kind that I’d grown up experiencing, so part of me felt a squeeze of concern in my heart on her behalf, a hope that she’d find her way in this world, pull herself back up on her feet by her proverbial bootstraps the way I did, regardless of whether she stayed on as the nanny to my nephew or not.

If I were honest with myself, though, it wasn’t just a kindred vulnerability that made me want to protect her. It was something more based in my masculinity, too—rooted in the softness of her plump, curvy body and the pretty face that made her hard not to like straight away. I knew the feeling was attraction, even as I bade goodbye to Felipe and Miles and headed out to the New York City streets and wanted nothing more than to deny it. Something about Lila’s sweetness, unblemished by the cruelty of the world, made me long to corrupt her in some way, teach her the ways of the flesh I had a feeling she’d never experienced before. It had been too long since I’d buried myself in a woman’s warm heat, and I’d never been with someone quite so… untouched. Someone I’d delight in deflowering for hours until she screamed my name. It may make me a monster, but I knew the sin would be worth it.

Christ, I had to get my brain back in the lane where it belonged. Business was always a safer place to dwell than matters of the heart—or the body.

“Felipe, you’re a meddling bastard, but I appreciate you,” I said to the shorter man to my right, breaking the short silence between us the second Lila left, taking all of the lightness with her. The green-eyed man looked at me with a satisfied smirk. Miles piped up from Felipe’s other side to agree with me.

“That sums up Felipe in a nutshell. You’ll see once you’ve worked with him as long as I have.”

“I’ll take this as a compliment, my dreary amigos.” Felipe kept grinning. “And a thanks, at that.”

“Thank you,” Miles said then, and I echoed the sentiment.

“Ah, it’s nothing. It’s my life’s work to help those in need, and I saw the need you both shared, so I had to fix it. Besides, we’re going to be in business together soon, and I take care of my own.”

I could see again how it would be nice to have someone like Felipe in my corner—someone like Miles, too, whose more subdued personality meshed more with my own. Felipe had certainly taken care of me by bringing Lila into my life when I needed her. In more way than one, the lustful creature at the back of my mind wanted to say. It seemed a voracious predator, licking its chops in anticipation of succulent new prey.

Those dark, sensuous thoughts carried me out of the restaurant and down the sidewalk to the sleek black car that was waiting for me. “Penthouse, Raster,” I barked to the driver I’d had for years once I was inside, and after his simple, “Of course, Mr. Pierce,” I settled back into the dark leather seats and tried not to think about how sweet Lila Dawson’s pussy must taste.

Considering her in such a sexual light just felt… wrong. Taboo, even. She was an adult, no matter how young she seemed with those cherubic blonde curls and doll-like eyes. I Knew that from the way she spoke, even before glancing over her emailed resume and seeing that she was at least old enough to have (almost) finished college a couple of years ago. She had to be twenty-two, maybe twenty-three. Someone that young and sexy should be enjoying the pleasures their body could provide. An unbidden image of Lila’s cheeks flushed, her head thrown back as she moaned in ecstasy, had my cock hardening in my pants. Christ, Pierce. Pull yourself together.

I was too close to forty to feel comfortable lusting after someone as young as Lila. Besides that, now she was under my employ, and I’d never, ever cross the line into sexually harassing someone who worked for me. I prided myself on creating a safe work environment for all of my employees, even the ones for whom I didn’t feel a desire to shield them from the world like I did for my nephew’s new nanny. There were too many powerful men in this world who abused that power at the expense of the innocents who helped them succeed. I refused to be one of them.

Long before she’d dropped her kid in my arms like he was a sack of potatoes, I’d even witnessed my sister Whitney suffering at the hands of older, influential men who hoped to tarnish her. No part of me had any desire to be like those scumbags. So, Lila Dawson was officially off limits, and that was the end of the discussion, no matter how badly that sex-crazed part of me wanted to throw caution to the wind. Besides, I got a sense that I wasn’t the only one who was attracted to the girl. Felipe’s eyes were practically hearts when he looked at her, and even the more stoic Miles Kramer had seemed almost awed in her presence. They were both younger than me—maybe one of them would be better for her.

Or maybe she’d just do her fucking job . That would be enough.

Raster pulled the sleek vehicle up in front of my building and let me out at the door. As I rode the elevator up to my penthouse apartment, I answered work emails on my phone, falling back into my regular routine as if today were a normal day.

The second I stepped through the door of my apartment, though, I was reminded that today wasn’t normal in the slightest. In fact, my entire life wasn’t likely to be normal again anytime soon. I had a baby to deal with.

The first clue was that my usually-pristine, neutral-toned home was covered in plastic baby toys, various plastic doodads in bright, primary colors that clashed with the decor I’d paid an interior designer a hefty fee to curate. Second, I could hear a child’s distraught fussing, not quite a scream but still a grating sound that seemed too loud to come from Jamie’s small lungs, from the other room. And my poor assistant was frazzled to the point of coming apart at the seams, standing at the center of my foyer like a woman who’d lost a long, tiresome battle.

She’d been my only option for temporary childcare in the past day before Felipe had found Lila, but I knew she was no more comfortable with babies than I was. Good thing Holly was probably the highest paid personal assistant in the tristate area. Her usually-sleek hair was frizzing as if she’d stuck her finger in an electrical socket, her eyes rimmed in darkness that was a mixture of smudged mascara and pure exhaustion. “Mr. Pierce! Thank God you’re back.”

“Thank you for your hard work, Holly,” I told her with genuine gratitude. “How… uh, how is he?” I wasn’t really sure how to ask after an infant. Or if he was even still considered an infant at his age.

“He’s, um, fine? I really don’t know a thing about babies,” she admitted with a wince. “But he ate, and he napped, and he hasn’t screamed quite so loud the past half hour or?—”

As if on cue, a blood-curdling shriek cut through the air. Holly and I both winced as she finished with a halfhearted, “... so.”

"That sounds like my cue, then," I sighed, rolling up my sleeves. I tried to steel my nerves, tell myself this couldn’t be harder than an intense board meeting or acquiring a new company to fuel the Pierce empire. But I wanted nothing more than to beg for help with baby Jamie as I told my assistant, "You can go now, Holly. Get some rest. You've earned it."

Holly didn’t need to be told twice. She practically sprinted out of the apartment, murmuring a hasty “good luck” as she went. I couldn’t blame her. My place, usually a sanctuary of calm and order, had transformed into something out of my own personal worst nightmare.

I followed the sound of the cries to the guest room, where Jamie lay in a newly-purchased playpen, red-faced and wailing. He looked so small, his tiny fists waving in the air as if protesting the injustice of the world. Something thudded painfully in my chest.

"Alright, Jamie," I muttered, reaching in to scoop him up. "Let's see what the problem is."

He quieted slightly as I held him, his large blue eyes locking onto mine with a mixture of confusion and expectation. This was uncharted territory for me. Handling multi-million-dollar deals was one thing, but comforting a baby? That was a whole different ball game. I hadn’t even been around someone this young since I was just a kid myself, when Whitney had been born. I tried to bounce Jamie the way I’d sometimes done with his mother when she was small, but Jamie started to fuss again, squirming uncomfortably in my arms.

Child rearing, it turned out, was not like riding a bike.

“What’s the matter, buddy?” I asked him quietly as if he’d answer me, bouncing him more gently and trying to find a better rhythm. “Hungry? Wet? Bored?” I could relate to the last one. Jamie responded with a hiccup and a renewed bout of crying that had a headache forming between my eyes.

"Okay, let’s approach this logically," I muttered, more to myself than to my crying nephew. "First, we rule out hunger." I scanned the room, locating a bottle of formula that Holly had prepared. With an awkwardness that felt almost comical, I positioned Jamie in the crook of my arm and offered him the bottle.

To my relief, he latched on immediately and began sucking greedily. I felt a small surge of triumph. "See, this isn't so bad," I said a bit more confidently. "You and me, Jamie, we're going to get through this."

As he drank, I watched him, thinking back over the day. "You know, I had a very interesting meeting today," I began telling the little guy, more to fill the sudden silence than anything else. "A lunch meeting, in fact. You should know now, Jamie, that I despise lunch meetings—not productive in the slightest. A complete waste of everyone’s time. But Felipe Rojas is a good man, and I figured I should hear him out.”

Jamie grunted, his small fists coming up to grip either side of the bottle as if he needed more. I changed the angle at which I held it, and he seemed pleased with it. Maybe he liked hearing me talk, too.

“Anyway, this one wasn’t bad. I met your new nanny. Her name is Lila. She seems competent, sweet… and very, very pretty."

Jamie’s eyes found mine as he continued eating. Did he understand what I’d said? That I was breaking my own rules of professionalism by thinking of Lila Dawson this way?

Of course, it was absurd to discuss this with an infant, much less to feel judged by his unknowing stare, but it felt oddly therapeutic. I continued, "Not that her looks matter, of course. Business and pleasure don’t mix. Another important lesson for you from your Uncle Aaron. You should really be writing these down."

Jamie’s eyes started to droop, his tiny body relaxing against mine, and I carried him over to a leather chair at the side of the room, lowering myself into it carefully. For some godforsaken reason, I kept talking. My attempt at giving the little guy a bedtime story, maybe.

"Speaking of business, you wouldn't believe the kind of mergers we’re looking at this quarter at my company. It’s really big stuff, Jamie, especially if this deal with Rojas and Kramer works out as well as I’ve hoped. This is the kind of thing that could change the entire landscape of the industry. Hell, the world." I worried for a second that I shouldn’t have sworn, even in a tame way, in front of the baby. But when he gurgled in response, I took that as encouragement to continue. "We're talking about strategic acquisitions, leveraging assets… real fascinating stuff."

Soon, Jamie finished the bottle, and despite my ineptitude and his clear fight against sleep, I placed him over my shoulder to burp him. I remembered enough to know that was the next step, at least.

"But enough about that. You’ve got your own milestones to hit, don't you? Crawling, talking... I bet you'll be running the world in no time." It was practically gibberish at this point, but I could have sworn the quiet words were soothing him, and it had to be good for language acquisition, right? I recalled Lila mentioning something about that in one of her perfect interview answers, and a sudden thought hit me that I wished she were here already, fulfilling this role for my nephew so I could get back to work. She’d do a better job than me, that was for sure.

I gently patted Jamie’s back until he let out a small burp, then settled him back in my arms. Again, he looked up at me, his eyes wide and curious. In that moment, I felt a strange connection, a sense of responsibility that went beyond anything I’d experienced in the boardroom. The same flicker of familial loyalty that had led me to where I was in my career—I’d first started wanting to make money to care for myself, to care for Whitney, to care for our poor mother who’d never had a chance in this world. Inconvenient as he was, this little guy, Jamie, was family, too. The next generation of Pierces.

“Maybe I’ve got some sort of paternal instincts after all,” I muttered. For a second, I could have sworn Jamie’s tiny mouth opened into a wide smile. But just as I was starting to feel confident, a faint sound came from his other end, along with a distinct, unpleasant smell.

Oh, Christ.

"Alright, Aaron, don’t get too cocky," I muttered, heading toward the changing table Holly had paid for with my credit card.

Changing a diaper was a lot more complicated than it looked. By the time I was done and it seemed like damn near an hour had passed, both Jamie and I were covered in baby powder, and I had a newfound respect for anyone who did this on a daily basis. At least I’d avoided being covered in bodily fluids—this time, at least. Once Lila was here, she could deal with all of that mess.

"There," I said, securing the last tape on the diaper at last. "Good as new."

By some miracle, Jamie was out like a light the second I laid him down on his brand-new, high-end baby mattress. I lingered by his crib at first out of fear that he’d wake and start screaming again, and then out of something like determination. As I watched his tiny chest move up and down, up and down with slow, sleepy breaths, I ruminated on his childhood. The ways in which history was repeating itself—brought into the world by an unstable, too-young mother who had no business birthing a child and clearly lacked the love and safety such a small creature needed to thrive. At least he had his uncle’s money to fall back on. All of the state-of-the-art equipment at his disposal. He’d never want for anything, at least materially.

And with the help of his new nanny, Lila Dawson, lover of children and human ray of sunshine sweetness, maybe the rest would fall into place.