Bad Nanny (The Bad Nanny Trilogy #1)(5)

“Chihuahuas are not cats, Rob. Chihuahuas are smelly, annoying, ugly, yipping rat creatures. And it kind of freaks me out that you're just saying chihuahuas in the plural. How many of them do you have?”

“We have three,” Kinzie states proudly, apparently over her temper tantrum in some sort of miraculous mood shift. I'm confused. Ten seconds ago she was shouting that she hated me, and now she's sniffling and smiling and staring at me with squinty eyes. “Can I see your cat?”

“Um, sure.”

I don't know what to do with the baby, so I follow my brother outside and try to hand the car seat over. Thankfully, he takes it and starts strapping the kid in.

“Pay attention, so you know how to do this,” he barks, and I have to really clench my teeth to keep from screaming. When I said I hadn't slept in days, I meant it. Tack on a fourteen hour drive to the end of that? Not to mention the fact that I was so stressed-out I couldn't even get off before I left. Now I have blue balls, an aching back from the shitty seat in my car, and a pounding headache. I can't have my brother bossing me around right now. I dealt with that for years, and it's not gonna fly.

“I think I can figure out a f*cking baby seat,” I snap and Kinzie gasps. Rob turns a look on me like I've never seen, nostrils flared and green eyes wide.

“Don't you dare use that language in front of my kids,” he snaps, waving his hand dismissively. “And don't just stand there. Do something productive.”

I flip him off behind his back and Kinzie gasps again. Holy mother of f*cking shit. I'm not going to make it two days here, let alone two freaking weeks. Yeah, two weeks. Two weeks. Why, how, I got roped into this, I can't even remember. It's been a long drive.

Did you know that cats make shitty passengers on long road trips? Hubert yowled and screamed and attacked the bars on the cage. He even pissed on himself, despite the litter box I shoved into the kennel. Now I've got a hairless cat whose sweater is soaked in pee. Today really couldn't get any worse.

And then Mercedes wakes the twins up from their naps, just about at the same time I realize Kinzie has disappeared.

Ten seconds later, a herd of freaking chihuahuas comes yowling and skittering down the stairs.

I wonder what my face looks like in that moment.

If someone were to try and interpret it, I think it'd be: please f*cking end me.





My crap day starts off much like my crap night ended.

First off, I have no phone. Don't ask how I got the waterlogged ruins of it out of the toilet; I don't want to talk about it. Second, I spent an hour looking for that damn dog and I never did find him. But that's okay because the shelter called at the crack of dawn this morning and said they'd picked him up last night. All I have to do is drive twenty minutes out of my way and pay a fine to pick him up.

“Okay,” I say as I pull over again and smooth out the directions I printed off the computer. I know, I know: nobody uses printed directions anymore. But my phone got fried with poop water last night, so GPS is kind of off the menu. “This shouldn't be too hard. I can figure this out.”

I glance up and wrinkle my face. I grew up in this town, but as soon as I graduated high school, I moved as far away as I could, settling in So Cal for school. Since I figured I'd never be back here, I sort of … obliterated any directional memories of this place.

I am so lost right now, I think as I look up and Bella starts to whine from the backseat.

“I'm gonna be late, Brooke,” she says, dropping the word 'auntie' altogether. “I hate being late.”

“Yeah, I got it, baby,” I say as I look around and stare at the quiet roads and the towering trees. I am so out of my element here. Somewhere in this dew drenched forest is Bella's school. It's a different one than I went to as a kid, so I have literally no clue where it is. Once I get her successfully dropped off, I get to search for Grace's preschool and then I get to go to my first class at Humboldt State.

At this point, I'd settle for any one of those things going my way.

“It's not even that hard to get there,” Bella says snootily, a dramatic sigh interrupting the snores of her dozing sister. At least one of us is having a good time here. How much would a full-time babysitter cost? I wonder. A nanny? A governess? At this point, I'll take what I can get. Although I'm sure my new job at the strip club won't cover it. I'll be lucky if I can afford gas, the rent on my sister's house, and food for the kids.

My heart starts to flutter with panic, but I clamp down on it. One thing at a time.

I throw the directions on the passenger seat and pull back onto the road. With a little luck and some snippy directions from Bella, I manage to find the school, dropping her off with a narrow eyed attendant who looks about as pissed as the kid is at me for making her late.

With no time to worry about that, I head off in search of the preschool. That one's a lot easier to find … but waking Grace up from her nap?

Holy hell.

Grace screams when I gently nudge her awake, flailing around and burying her face in the puffy pink coat I dressed her in. When I try to unhook her from the car seat, the straps start to look like tangled snakes and I can't figure the damn thing out. By the time I manage to get her free, she's in a real mood, red-faced and screaming.

I rush her up to the front door and try to pass her into the arms of the teacher.