Irresistible (Cloverleigh Farms #1)(7)
Millie and Felicity showered at night and laid their clothing out before going to bed, so all I had to do was make sure they were fully awake before rousing Winifred. She could be slow to wake up, so I always helped her get out of her pajamas and into her school outfit. Like her sisters, she set her clothes out the night before, so it was usually a pretty quick thing, especially since she’d stopped wetting the bed.
By six-forty-five, I was downstairs putting breakfast on the table and guzzling coffee. By seven, the girls were eating while I packed snacks, water bottles, and cut the crusts off sandwiches, one peanut butter and jelly on wheat, one almond butter and honey on gluten-free white. (Why Millie still insisted on eating gluten-free these days was beyond me—it had been her mother’s thing. Did it make her feel closer to her mom somehow?) Winnie would eat at home with the sitter after preschool.
By seven-fifteen, backpacks and boots were lined up by the door and the kids were upstairs brushing their teeth. By seven-thirty, we were bundled up at the bus stop. By seven-forty, I’d kissed them all good-bye, told them I loved them, and to have a good day. I could tell by the look on Millie’s face today that she wasn’t going to stand for such public displays of affection much longer, but I planned to torture her as long as I could. They had no mother around, no grandparents (since my folks had retired to Arizona years ago and Carla’s lived in Georgia), and my sister Jodie’s family lived two hours away in Petoskey. So it was up to me to make sure those girls knew how loved they were, and if I fucked up every other part of being a single parent, I was not going to fail at that. It wasn’t their fault their mother and I couldn’t make things work.
By eight, I was on my way to Cloverleigh, feeling pretty damn smug. No one had cried, fought, or spilled their juice this morning. No one had reminded me at the last minute about a permission slip I’d forgotten to sign or money I’d forgotten to send in or asked me to please chaperone a field trip I didn’t want to go on, and I was like ninety-nine percent sure all of them had brushed their teeth. I hadn’t managed to get Felicity new boots yet, but I had found Winifred’s missing mitten.
“Fuck yeah, I’m awesome,” I said to myself, sipping from a travel mug Felicity had gotten me for Christmas with a picture of a Petoskey stone on it that said Dad, You Rock.
Taking another sip from the mug, I remembered how surprised I’d been when each of the girls had handed me a gift perfectly wrapped with holiday paper I didn’t recognize. How had they gone shopping for presents without me?
Later, Felicity let it spill that Frannie Sawyer had helped them pick out a couple little gifts for me online one afternoon while she was watching them. She’d had them shipped to her, then brought them over to be wrapped and placed under the tree. Frannie was like that, quick to step in when someone needed something, and always with a smile on her face. It was Frannie who’d offered to cut back her hours at the inn last summer in order to help me out with childcare after Carla took off. I’d nearly fallen to my knees with gratitude. She’d been a godsend.
At Christmas, I’d had them pick out a box of chocolates for her, which they gave to her at the staff holiday party. That was the night she’d given me the small sewing kit, and I’d felt guilty I hadn’t put my name on the card with the chocolates.
She’d looked even prettier than usual that night, and she’d smelled good too. I remembered impulsively hugging her (after a couple beers, no doubt) and thinking how long it had been since I’d had my arms around a woman, or held one close enough to catch the scent of her neck as she hugged me back. I didn’t have any female friends outside work, and I certainly didn’t date. Being that close to Frannie had been a shock to my senses, and I’d let her go quickly before my body betrayed my thoughts, which were something along the lines of Hey, I know you’re the boss’s daughter and the nanny (also my kids are right over there), but you smell amazing and your body looks perfect in that dress and I haven’t gotten laid in a reallllly long time, so what do you say we sneak into my office and fuck? I promise it will be quick, probably shamefully so, and not at all awkward to see you at work on Monday. Thanks.
Later that evening, she’d had the idea to take the kids for a ride in Cloverleigh’s old-fashioned horse-drawn sleigh. It was a refurbished antique Portland, with a curved dash and one single, red velvet-lined seat onto which the five of us squeezed, our laps covered with thick wool blankets. Somehow she’d ended up wedged in right next to me, and the scent of her perfume as well as the feel of her leg alongside mine kept me warm even as our noses and fingers and toes grew numb from cold.
Long after I’d taken the kids home and said goodnight, I lay in my bed thinking about her. I could still hear her laughing right along with the girls, see the roses in her cheeks and the snowflakes clinging to her long, wavy hair. It had made me wish she was still there next to me. How long had it been since I’d had someone warm and soft and sexy to mess around with in the dark?
Before I could help it, I was frantically getting myself off to the thought of her naked body beneath mine. Her breath on my lips. Her gray-green eyes closing. Her hands clutching the sheets. Her moan in my ear. I felt so guilty about it, I could barely look her in the eye the next time I saw her.
Didn’t stop me from doing it again, of course. In fact, she’d sort of become my go-to fantasy. I shook my head and finished what was left in my mug. What a pathetic fucking cliché I was: Divorced Dad Lusting after the Babysitter. As if a girl like her wanted anything to do with a guy like me—one with three kids and a bitter ex-wife.