Bad Nanny (The Bad Nanny Trilogy #1)(20)

I drive the whole kit and f*cking caboodle over to Brooke's house and pull into the driveway, my heart constricting at the empty swath of pavement where her ugly ass Subaru was sitting this morning.

I'm really on my own here. Really, seriously, truly alone with six children and four dogs and a hairless cat named Hubert.

My life is so over.

“Alright, guys, let's do this shit with military precision, shall we?” Nobody's listening to me, so I just start unloading demons from the seats and making sure they get in the front door. Once I think I've got everyone, I start counting and realize I've lost that hideous hairless gray dog thing. You'd think Hubert's hairlessness would endear me to that rat, but all it does is make me realize how much I despise little dogs.

Seriously.

Get a cat. Get a large dog.

What's with this in-between shit?

A quick search of the vehicle and I find the creature eating a dirty diaper under one of the seats.

Don't cringe away from that. Reread it. I had to live it, okay? And it's f*cking gross.

As I'm dragging the rat-thing in by its harness, I find my phone on the cement outside the front door. When I pick it up, I see the screen is cracked.

My mouth twitches.

“Who did it?” I ask as the rat-thing attaches itself to my leg and starts to death shake my pants, growling and snarling and … is it hissing at me? No, that's Hubert. Who's out of his kennel. Shit. I shake the dog off and try to ease forward toward my cat. “Come on, Hub. Don't do this to me, man.” The cat takes off up the stairs, the chihuahuas on his ass like white on rice.

Great.

“Best day of my goddamn life,” I grumble as I hunt down the herd of wild dogs and corral them in an upstairs bathroom. I feel bad for the things, but what am I supposed to do with them? They're not my dogs, and these aren't my kids. The only thing here that's mine is the damn cat, and he wasn't even mine to begin with.

Vegas, Vegas, Vegas, I think as I tromp back down the stairs and into the kitchen to make snacks or whatever. It takes me a while to come up with something, and I start slapping together PB&Js for the whole lot of them. That's what our parents fed us. My brother and I had stupid peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch at least five times a week. All kids like 'em, right?

“I have a gluten allergy,” Kinzie barks as I toss the plate of sandwiches on the coffee table and let the kids go at it like animals.

“You have a … what?” I ask as I shove bread and jelly and peanuts into my mouth.

“A gluten allergy, stupid.” I narrow my eyes at Kinzie and then point with the whole of my sandwich.

“Okay, that's it. Last warning, kid. Next time, it's a time-out.” She scoffs at me, but I'm not playing around here. Seriously. My niece has slapped and kicked and punched and spit at me. I'm finished with the attitude.

“I don't like time-outs,” she says, picking up one of the sandwiches and tossing it onto the floor for the gray rat-dog thing. I watch as it gobbles it up and then set my own food down on the table.

“Well, you've just earned yourself one. Get up. Let's go. You're going to sit in this downstairs bathroom for …” I brainstorm time periods and decide that since she's seven, we'll go with that. “Seven minutes. Get in here and I'll start timing you.”

Kinzie makes about … zero moves to get up and listen to my directions. In fact, she looks right at me, hauls back her head … and spits.

The projectile lands harmlessly on the floor between us, but I've had just about enough of that shit. I move around the couch, lean down and haul my niece over my shoulder while she screams and flails and kicks. I'm not hurting her, but she acts like I'm in the process of beating her to a bloody pulp, wailing and punching and … f*ck, did she just bite me?

I sit Kinzie down on the closed lid of the toilet with its fuzzy pink cover and kneel down in front of her.

“I'm done with the attitude, okay? I've been nothing but nice to you. Until you have a change in attitude, you're sitting here until I say otherwise, got it?” Kinzie kicks and yells, but I'm not here to argue. I get up and leave the room only to have her burst out of it fifteen seconds later. With an eye roll, I follow her up the stairs and into the master bedroom where Brooke and I almost f*cked yesterday. Part of me wishes I'd just gone through with it, let myself see what that soft, curvy body of hers would feel like wrapped around mine. The other parts knows I made the right decision.

Last night, Brooke Overland was angry and desperate and hurting.

Today, she … well, it was hard to say exactly what she was, but it wasn't all that much better.

Clearly, the girl has issues. I'm not saying she's not hot and that I wouldn't mind spending the rest of my time here tangled up in her sheets, but … it ain't gonna happen.

Brooke is too fragile, too sensitive; she's clearly got issues up the wazoo.

Kinzie dives underneath the bed and I follow after her, carefully wrapping an arm around her waist as she screams at me, and dragging her out from under the bed.

This time, when I put her back on that fuzzy toilet seat cover, she sits there for a good two minute before she makes another run for it.

This is gonna be a seriously long goddamn day.



When Brooke gets back to her sister's place later that night, her long brunette hair is tangled and her lips are pulled down into a permanent frown. The makeup she put on so carefully this morning is gone, replaced with black smudges around the eyes, purple circles underneath them, and a dab of red along the side of her chin that I think used to be her lipstick.