The Au Pair Affair, page 5
If only his attraction to the boss would stop pricking at him like a junkie’s needle, he’d be absolutely content.
Cara was facedown on her bed, sobbing, when Dan entered her room. He took a deep breath before sitting beside her and resting a hand on her back.
“Honey, what is it? What’s bothering you?”
“Pasha! I want Pasha.” The words were muffled by the pillow.
“Is that really it? Maybe there’s something else you’re upset about too.”
“I don’t like it here. I wanna go home.”
The words struck him like a fist to the gut. In the year since the divorce, Cara had been really good about accepting that Daddy lived someplace else now. She’d had her moments, of course, but overall she’d been so well-adjusted about the split, it was almost unnatural. Now Dan wondered how long she’d been burying her feelings.
“I’m sorry, Care Bear. It must be hard to bounce back and forth between Mommy’s house and here. I love having you over and spending time with you, but if it ever feels like too much, if you ever just want to stay home, we can talk about it—you and me and Mommy.”
“And Louis?”
“Um, well, Louis is your nanny. He’ll be with you whichever house you’re at.”
Cara rolled over and looked up at him through swollen eyes. “I like Louis. Do you think he’s mad at me now? ’Cause I told him I hated him when he wouldn’t go back for Pasha.”
“That was a mean thing to say, but I’m pretty sure Louis understands you’re having a bad day. If you go to him and say you’re sorry, I bet he’ll forgive you.”
“I don’t really hate Louis.” Cara took a shaky breath. “But I do hate school.”
“Why? Can you tell me about it?”
She shrugged. “There are mean girls. Two of ’em. I hate them.”
“Cara, please stop saying you hate people. You can say ‘they make me mad’ instead.”
Dan wasn’t sure he agreed with Crissi’s edict against saying “hate”. It was shorthand for disliking something or someone, just like “love” might equally be applied to chocolate cake or a person. He didn’t want to stifle Cara’s ability to express what she was feeling. But Crissi was pretty adamant, and probably she was right.
“They make me so mad, I hate them,” Cara said.
Dan dropped it. “What do they do?”
Cara took another deep breath and launched into a laundry list of complaints about Beth and Brianna, the two evil bees of the kindergarten class, according to her.
As he listened, Dan wondered when it was time to intervene and talk to the teacher and when it was best to let kids work out their own shit. It was impossible to know. Maybe all he really needed to do, for now, was listen, share what he’d learned with Crissi and then keep on top of the situation.
When Cara finally wound down, he leaned and kissed her hot, wet cheek.
“Sounds like you’ve been having a really bad time with those girls.”
“Yeah. Can you tell them to stop being mean to me?”
“Well, sometimes you have to just learn to get along with people you don’t like. It’s not easy, but that’s part of growing up.” He paused. “You keep telling me or your mom or Louis when you’re unhappy. If you aren’t able to work things out with those girls on your own, then maybe we can help. But sometimes enemies can become friends if you keep on being nice to them.”
He sounded like some stupid public service announcement about bullying. Was he setting his daughter up to get tormented some more by little snots? Damn, making decisions as a dad was hard.
He stood up and held out his hand. “Tell you what. Why don’t you put on your swimsuit while I get Liam changed, and we’ll join Louis in the pool.”
“Okay, Daddy.” She bounced off the bed and pounced on her pony-decorated overnight bag.
Dan went to get Liam from the living room, where he was happily stacking blocks and humming to himself. Dan watched his son for a few moments—so quiet, so introverted. Was that normal?
When Liam glanced up and saw him, he grinned from ear to ear and scrambled to his feet to run over and hold up his arms. Dan scooped him up, tossed him high, then took him to his room to get changed.
With both kids in tow, he headed to the pool. Louis was backstroking across the surface, arms cutting cleanly through the water, body glistening in the sunlight. One eyeful of that tan skin and that compact form and Dan’s cock began to harden. Damn it! His body seemed to react at its most primitive level to the sight of Louis, whether the man was clothed or half naked. What was it about the guy? In a club full of hot, hunky men, Dan’s attention had immediately been drawn to Louis. There was no reason for this sudden blaze of attraction. Louis was attractive enough but not exceptional. But, apparently, Dan’s cock thought he was.
Cara ran to the pool house to get her armbands and toys. Dan got his libido under control by not gaping at Louis and led Liam to the steps in the shallow end. They slowly descended into the cool water. Liam was tentative but not afraid of the water. He’d been swimming since before he could crawl. As soon as he’d submerged himself to the neck, the little boy started paddling around. Dan made sure he didn’t cross the line to the deep end.
Cara returned with her arm floats on—the only way Dan would allow her access to the entire pool, even though she could swim like a fish. She wasn’t happy about the flotation devices curbing her acrobatics but conceded the point in order to be able to jump off the diving board.
Louis splashed over to join him. “Your kids are great swimmers. Did they have lessons?”
“Yeah. I think maybe Cara’s ready to lose the armbands and learn to dive properly.” They watched her leap fearlessly off the board and go deep underwater before the devices brought her bobbing back to the surface.
“I never swam much growing up,” Louis said. “There was a city pool we used to go to sometimes, but it was always crowded, and the chlorine stung my eyes. I didn’t like it. Out here though, I’ve learned to love it.”
“You swim well.”
Crap. That made it sound as if he’d been watching, which he had been.
A moment of silence followed; then Louis said out of the blue, “It was kind of weird running into you the other night. I thought maybe we should, uh, clear the air about it. Or not.”
Dan snuck a glance at Louis, bobbing in the water and tossing a spongy fish to Liam. Was that a blush darkening his face? So, the nightclub meeting had been on his mind too. It made Dan feel better to know he wasn’t the only one who’d been taken aback by the unexpected meeting, or dwelled on it.
“It was a little awkward, but it’s not a big deal. We’re not likely to run into each other someplace like that again. Clubs aren’t really my thing.”
“What is your thing? I mean, where do you usually go to meet…new friends?”
If Louis was mildly blushing, Dan had no doubt his own face was flaming. He never talked about this sort of thing, certainly not with the babysitter, definitely not in front of his kids, even if they weren’t paying attention.
“I haven’t… I don’t have time to go out. I work a lot.”
Louis bit his lower lip and floated the fish back over to Liam. “Not much of a social life, then. I didn’t think you looked like you wanted to be dancing.”
“A friend set up a blind date. Look, I’m really not comfortable discussing this.” Dan turned his attention back to Cara, who was yelling for him to watch her jump.
“Sure. Sorry.”
Louis continued playing catch-the-fish with Liam while Dan watched Cara dogpaddling across the pool toward him.
“Great job, Kermit,” he said when she reached him, splashing and gasping.
“Can I take these off?” She stood on the bottom step and started pulling off her armbands. “I can swim without them now, and you can show me how to dive.”
“Sure. I guess so.” Dan helped her remove the offensive lifesaving devices and glanced over at Louis, now helping Liam float on his back.
The stupid thing was he actually did want to talk to Louis about subjects that weren’t appropriate for an employer and employee to discuss. Yes, he was undeniably attracted to the man, but even more than that, he would’ve liked to have a friend, someone experienced at living a gay lifestyle, someone he could really talk to about this new course he’d embarked on. But he’d never had a true friend like that in the past, so he supposed he’d carry on just fine without one now.
Dan worked with Cara on learning to submerge without pinching her nose closed, and then he taught her the proper form for diving rather than just jumping off the diving board. By the time even die-hard Cara was ready to leave the water, two hours had passed. Louis was lying on a lounge by the pool with Liam cuddled in his arms, half asleep. Such a cute picture, it tugged at Dan’s heart.
After drying and dressing the kids and parking them in front of the TV, Dan fired up the grill, and Louis helped him by setting the table and cutting vegetables.
The silence between them was a little strained. Dan felt bad about the abrupt way he’d shut Louis down when he’d tried to have a personal conversation. He broke the silence by talking about Cara.
“Found out what’s bothering Cara. Some girls at school are harassing her.” He placed chicken on the grill, and the dripping marinade set the flames sizzling.
“I figured it was something like that. Poor baby. Mean girls are the worst. How do you want to handle it?”
“It’s hard to know when to intervene. I’m going to suggest to Crissi we take a wait-and-watch approach for now, try to let Cara work out her issues on her own.”
“Sounds good. It’s not easy letting kids fight their own battles, but sometimes it’s the best thing.”
Louis came over with a plate of cut vegetables. He stood beside Dan and watched him add them to the grill.
“Did you ever have to deal with bullies growing up?” Dan asked.
“Oh hell yeah. My school was not a friendly place. I got double-barrel abuse for being a foster kid and for being gay. These kids weren’t tolerant of outsiders.”
“How’d you cope with that?” Dan poked at the meat but glanced sideways at Louis. He’d always felt like an outsider, though he’d camouflaged himself so well no one at school had ever caught on. He’d been athletic and popular and a complete fraud.
“Uh, let’s see. When I was little, I rolled up like a possum and played dead; then I hit puberty and got a little aggressive, got into a lot of fights, a lot of trouble. But suddenly around junior year, I got my shit together, learned how to handle people and became weirdly super popular. Hell, I was even prom king senior year. Stood there with the prettiest girl in the school on my arm.”
“How?”
“How did I go from zero to hero so fast?”
“Well…yeah. Did you change schools or something? How did you get those kids to accept you?” Dan couldn’t imagine his high school crowd ever embracing someone like Louis.
“By acting differently. I gained self-confidence, went at life with a balls-out attitude, but positive, not a negative ‘fuck you’ vibe like I’d had before. People respond to honest friendliness. They really do.” He laughed, a warm chuckle that ignited heat in the pit of Dan’s stomach. “Also it didn’t hurt that gay was suddenly ‘in’. The popular girls switched gears and took a shine to me like I was some new accessory. A purse pooch, maybe. That went a long way toward winning me the crown.”
“Huh.” Dan turned the vegetables and spritzed them with more oil.
“What about you, if it’s not too personal? What’s your story?”
Yes, it was too personal, yet Dan found himself suddenly eager to blurt it out.
“I, uh… I don’t really have a story.” It was harder to talk than he’d expected.
“Sure you do. Everybody does,” Louis coaxed.
“I guess I was a standard-issue jock. Probably did my share of being the bully, or at least laughing when my friends picked on people. I wasn’t a very nice guy.”
Louis nodded, accepting that. “Did you know you were gay?”
“I must have. A big clue was that I was more interested in watching the guys in the locker room than some cheerleader’s bouncing boobs. But I was deep in denial.”
Again Louis nodded. “I figured.”
Dan stopped pretending to tend the food on the grill. He glanced through the glass doors which framed the kids curled up on the couch, the light from the TV flickering on their sleepy faces. Then he turned to Louis and really looked at him for the first time.
“I imagine you can figure the rest too. I tried to deny how I felt, concentrated on my career and buried my real self even further by marrying Crissi. I can’t regret it, because if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have them.” He nodded at the kids. “But it was a terrible thing to do to Crissi.”
“That’s harsh,” Louis agreed. “But you couldn’t come to a realization until you were ready. So what finally brought you out?”
“I can’t pinpoint an exact event. It was more of a cumulative thing, years of pretending and then a couple of really bad months. One night, I looked at Crissi and realized I could hardly bear to touch her anymore—not even a simple hug—and I knew it was over. Then I had to muster up the courage to tell her the truth, and that took another few months.” He rubbed a hand over his face, remembering the pressure and mounting anxiety as he wrestled with the truth. “Jesus. Here’s the worst part. Brace yourself.”
“Okay.” A smile flickered over Louis’s face, golden in the light of the setting sun.
“I confessed on our anniversary. Our anniversary! Told her I wanted a divorce and then spilled everything I was feeling. God, it was horrible.”
“Ouch.” Louis winced.
Dan exhaled a deep breath that felt as if it had been stuck in his lungs for years. His chest ached as he let it go. “I’ve never talked about this to anyone besides Crissi. I don’t have friends I could discuss it with.”
“You don’t believe in therapists?”
“My family isn’t the type that believes in laying out its guts for some stranger to poke through, so I never even considered one.”
“Yeah, me neither. Even if I could afford it, I’d imagine my mom’s voice saying what a waste of good money it was.” Louis smiled again, another flash of pretty white teeth that made Dan feel hotter than the grill.
“Damn, I can’t believe I told you all this.” Dan’s euphoria began to evaporate as he realized what power he’d placed in this near stranger’s hands. “The reason for our divorce isn’t widely known, though there are plenty of rumors circulating. I prefer to keep my private life private as much as possible.”
“Got it. You can trust me. I’m not a gossip.” Louis touched his arm, a light pat of camaraderie. “Looks like everything’s almost ready. I’ll go get the kids.” He walked away, leaving a palpable vacuum in his absence.
Dan forked the food onto platters and carried it to the table, poured wine for himself and Louis, juice for the kids. Dusk had settled over the terrace, and the inside lights illuminated the living room like a stage. Dan watched Louis gently nudge Cara and Liam toward waking, then take their hands to lead them to the table. He was so good with them, so nurturing and kind.
A new kind of warmth filled Dan, different from the hot stabs of lust he usually experienced at the sight of Louis, something glowing and sweet. He could get used to having a friend to talk to, a partner in caring for the kids, although he’d had both of those things in Crissi. The difference was he could imagine Louis as a lover too, someone he’d reach for with true passion and desire. His cock jerked at the mere thought of Louis in his arms and in his bed.
But satisfying such urges was impossible. He’d have to settle for as platonic a relationship with Louis as he had with Crissi. An affair that blazed hot, then burned out could leave his kids without the best nanny they’d ever had.
Chapter Eight
Smooth sailing wasn’t a phenomenon Louis was familiar with. His life had been such a series of choppy waves that he couldn’t help expecting the calm to end and an unexpected current to drag him under. But for several weeks, he lived a pretty uneventful routine. He played with the kids, prepared meals for them, took them to and from play dates, the park, Cara’s school, Tiny Tumblers. He took them to meet Crissi on the set of her latest movie and tucked them in bed on the nights she couldn’t make it home for good-night kisses.
He transported them to their dad’s house and stayed there over long weekends, or sometimes weekdays, spending precious minutes with Dan while continuing to deny the sexual tension that percolated in the air between them. It was always there, though, a banked fire that threatened to flare up if they fanned it even a little. He no longer doubted Dan felt the same way. The man’s face was an open book—an erotic book just waiting to be enacted in real life, Louis imagined.
To vent the building head of steam, Louis hooked up with old friends for sex benefits on his days off. The act fulfilled its purpose of relieving his tension temporarily, yet every time he was close to Dan, desire returned stronger than ever.
Those dark, somber eyes. That serious mouth that offered rare glints of happiness usually directed at the children. The shock of dark brown hair, cut too close. Louis could see curls would bust loose if Dan ever let it grow a few extra inches. That lithe, lean body, hidden under well-tailored suits, or on full display in swimwear. Could he be blamed for staring when Dan wore nothing but loose-fitting trunks riding low on his hips?
After their one intimate conversation, Dan had never offered personal information again. They talked mostly about the kids’ schedules, the weather, LA traffic, current events, the film industry. Louis wanted to dig deeper, but Dan held him at arm’s length, and since Cara and Liam were ever-present chaperones, it was easy to keep things surface. Safe.
During one visit at Dan’s house, Louis had an unscheduled evening off.
“Go ahead,” Dan said. “Run errands. See your friends or whatever. I’ve got things under control. I won’t need you tonight.”
