Bad Nanny (The Bad Nanny Trilogy #1)(19)

“When you put it like that,” he starts, but then he just shakes his head a little, reaching up to run his fingers through the thick hair on the left side of his head. I can still feel a tingle in my fingertips from when I touched it. “Do you know what I think?” he asks and I shake my head, cheek rubbing against the dog pee cushion.

Zay reaches out and pokes me in the center of my forehead with a tattooed finger.

“I think you got off lucky. Don't do something if it's going to break you like that. You've got a right to your own body, you know?”

“What else am I supposed to do?” I ask, trying not to cry again. The last thing this poor guy needs is to see me cry. Haven't I done that enough already? I mean, seriously. We really don't know each other at all. Honestly, if I was being straight with myself, I should wonder how I ever thought to leave him with the kids. Or how I'm totally cool with laying in a dark living room next to him.

He could be crazy. He could be a murderer. He could be … all sorts of things.

I should kick him out of my sister's house.

“I have no clue,” he says with a loose, exaggerated shrug, lifting up his palms for emphasis. “I've always been pretty shitty when it comes to adulting.”

“Adulting?”

“Yup. Adulting. The act of being a boring, tightwad with no personality and nothing to do but bitch.”

“That's adulting?” I ask with a raised brow. “I thought adulting was when you, you know, paid bills and took care of the kids and did what you had to do to survive?”

“Naw. Stop being so practical, Smarty-pants. Seriously. For somebody with a degree in math, you sure seem a little dumb.”

I smile, but it's a crooked, loose smile. It fades as soon as I see the dog pissing on the bricks of the fireplace. I should've left that f*cking rat at the shelter.

“I'm sorry about your money,” I whisper, realizing that we've never actually agreed on a price. The thought gives me chills. “I'll get it to you as soon as I can.”

Zay sits there for a long while looking at me.

“Look, like I said, I don't exactly need the money right now, okay?” There's another long pause as he leans back against the coffee table. “All I'm doing for the next week and a half is watching these monsters.” Zayden jerks his head toward the stairs. “I mean, what are two more?”

I sit up suddenly and glance away, hair falling over my face. I sweep it back over my shoulder with a quick motion.

“What are you talking about?” I ask as I glance his way and try to take him in. He's still a Tattooed God, but … he looks a little human right now. “You'll be our nanny for free?”

“Why not? You can spend all day pounding the pavement, looking for another job or something.”

“Why would you do that?” I ask as I stare in his beautiful, pierced face. When he smiles, it's almost magical.

“Because … why the hell not?”





No more pretty girls.

Seriously. No more pretty girls ever.

Brooke takes her kids to school the next morning, and I manage to wrangle my monsters into their appropriate pens, but after that … I get back to my brother's place and flop down on the bed. The enormity of what I promised in the quiet dark last night is seriously pinching my nipples.

I just agreed to be a … a f*cking nanny? I mean, who the f*ck has a f*cking nanny in this day and age? I mean, might as well have a larder and a chambermaid, too, huh?

So now, I get a mere four hours of alone time a day before I have to start picking up kids like pinballs, bouncing from one school to another in this weird awkward stretch of time between one and three. Why do they all have different times?! Why can't all the damn kids go to school at the same damn time? Maybe that's what nannies are for because I don't know how any normal human motherf*cker gets around to all these places without Hermione's time-turner from Harry Potter.

The baby starts to fuss a few moments later and the pot dealer neighbor starts his wall banging.

I lay there for all of two minutes before I throw myself out of bed and jam the monitor in my pocket, taking the stairs three at a time before I jump down to the main floor and explode out the back door.

I have just about f*cking had it with this son of a bitch.

I head into the backyard, climb up onto the small cement area where Mercedes grows an organic f*cking garden, and gaze over the fence. There's a big ass rottie back here, and the dog growls at me, but what's he gonna do from there?

I reach down and grab the wooden handle of Mercedes' clippers. They have about a four foot reach, and she says she uses them to cut blackberry clusters off the thorny vines that peek above her fence.

I use them to reach into the neighbor's yard and snip his weed plants off at their bases. It takes me about two minutes, and then it's done.

“Eat shit, you cocksucker.”

I drop back into the yard and head inside. Twenty minutes later when that son of a bitch finds his prized crop, there ain't none of it left.

His scream is enough to lull me into a soft, melodic sleep.



Six kids. One car. Nightmare from hell.

Kinzie and Bella are screaming and fighting over one of those dead dolls with the weird eyes and the freaky body proportions while the twins kick and yell and argue over possession of my phone. I have a blinding headache, and I kind of want to … die right now. My cat's stuffed in a kennel in the front seat, and the horrifyingly putrid little chihuahuas are trapped in the back, yipping and growling and fighting with each other. Suddenly, there are like, three of them. I thought there were only two? Did they multiply? I can't remember how many goddamn chihuahuas I'm supposed to have.