The Au Pair Affair, page 1
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Announcement
About the Author
By Tessa Bailey
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter One
Tallulah Aydin had never seen blood droplets sail through the air quite so gracefully.
She turned the phone sideways and enlarged the hockey highlight to full-screen mode, tapping the volume button in order to hear the commentator’s voice.
Abraham with the vicious elbow to O’Hanlon’s nose. Oh mama. Somebody call the trainer. O’Hanlon just learned the hard way what we’ve known for years. Players risk bones and cartilage when they enter Sir Savage’s house as he’s just proven once again tonight . . .
Tallulah exited the video and set her phone down, queasiness rolling in her stomach.
This afternoon, she was scheduled to begin shacking up with the homicidal hockey player from that very SportsCenter highlight. Sir Savage. If the algorithm gods hadn’t creepily recognized her location as Boston and placed that nose-crunching clip from last night’s preseason game in her path, she would already have left the smoothie shop and entered the landmark doorman building across the street to begin her employment as an au pair for his tween daughter.
She’d agreed to the arrangement months ago. Back when the whole idea hadn’t seemed so unnerving. Now, however, the white plastic seat in which she’d been parked for over an hour was rapidly making lattice patterns on the backs of her legs. Blenders whirred in her ears. She’d been rendered unable to stand up and cross the road. Which was galling, considering she’d just spent a year in Antarctica studying the migration habits of the Adélie penguin.
A nanny job should be a cakewalk, right?
Thanks to a twist of fate, she’d landed a swanky place to live in Beacon Hill while she earned her master’s in marine biology at Boston University. In return, all she had to do was nanny for an already self-sufficient twelve-year-old girl while her daddy apparently went out and flattened perfectly good noses on the ice.
It was the latter that kept her glued to the uncomfortable chair.
Tallulah reached for the paper cup holding her peanut butter–espresso blast and noticed her hand was trembling oh-so-slightly. She gave herself an impatient eye roll and snatched up the cup, swigging what remained of her smoothie. The guy behind the counter obviously heard the empty vacuum sound coming from her paper straw and gave her the Boston eyebrow. Head cocked, impatient, one brow raised. Like, are you done here or would you like to lick the napkin dispenser, too?
She’d clearly overstayed her welcome at the Joyful Juicer.
Message received, Tallulah stood up, crossed to the trash can, and tossed her cup before returning to the table and gripping the handle of her suitcase. Staring through the picture window of the shop at the ten-story brick building on the other side of the road, her stomach sagged somewhere in the vicinity of her knees. On paper, she didn’t have any reason for the alarm weaving through her ribs.
After all, her best friends, Wells and Josephine, had vouched for the Boston Bearcats team captain, Burgess Abraham, also known as Sir Savage. He didn’t have any criminal history that she could find on the internet. In fact, he was known for being a terror on the ice, but stoic and reasonable once he entered the locker room. As evidenced by the time Tallulah had spent watching postgame interviews with his sweaty black hair plastered to his forehead, his denim-blue eyes intense as he considered every question like the answer was deeply important.
And no, she hadn’t purposefully searched for shirtless interviews, thank you very much.
They’d come up as a suggested Google search. She couldn’t simply ignore that kind of search engine divine providence. It would be irresponsible. Nor could she ignore shoulders thick enough with muscle to seat a couple of baby walruses—and those suckers had heft.
But right now, when she was an hour late to arrive at Burgess’s penthouse to view her new living space and go over the particulars of their arrangement, all she could see was that brutal elbow slicing through the air, the accompanying expression of malice.
Like a peek inside some hidden part of the man?
Accepting this job had seemed like a great idea when she’d met Burgess at that golf tournament in California last summer. But she shouldn’t have been so impulsive when it came to something so huge, like living with a man who she barely knew. One who could have all manner of lurking issues. In her experience, men could be mild mannered, charming even, on the surface. Easygoing, friendly.
They could also be dormant volcanos waiting for the right moment to erupt.
Ignoring the sigh from the dude behind the counter, Tallulah sat back down.
Moving in with this near stranger was a bad idea. An error in judgment.
Thankfully, she hadn’t moved in yet. If she was going to change her mind, it had to be now. Before she wasted valuable time Burgess could be using to find a new au pair. She could check into a hotel tonight and use tomorrow to view apartment share opportunities. With other women. The apartments probably—no, definitely—wouldn’t be in neighborhoods as nice as this, nor would they be penthouses, but at least she’d be able to sleep at night.
Decision made, Tallulah slipped the phone out of the front pocket of her windbreaker and prepared to call the Bearcats defenseman. Being so unprofessional about this rankled. She should break their deal in person. But what if he reacted badly? Got upset?
A phone call was better. Safer.
Before Tallulah could dial, a bell tinkled above the door.
And Burgess Abraham himself entered the smoothie shop.
Holy shit, she’d forgotten how . . . hulking he was. Six-three, give or take an inch. Broad as a barn. And grizzled. Sir Savage had entered the second half of his thirties and he already had a hint of salt and pepper buffering in his black beard, his temples. He walked with leashed confidence. It wasn’t the stride of a man who needed to be noticed. Or feared. It was a one hand in his pocket, the other loose at his side, eyes forward, unhurried but goal-oriented gait. He didn’t bother stopping at the register to order, just signaled the employee with a salute.
“Your usual, Savage?” The smoothie guy got working, tossing frozen fruit into the clear blender, adding juice and three heaping scoops of protein powder. “I live in hope that someday you’ll come in and try something new.”
“I like what I like,” Burgess muttered, frowning at the screen of his phone.
Was he checking to see if she’d called?
Probably. She was now sixty-seven minutes late.
With an inward wince, Tallulah tapped call and held the phone to her ear. When the device started to buzz in Burgess’s hand, a ripple went through his back. He dropped the phone to his side and looked straight ahead for a moment, then back at the phone, coughing. Rolling a shoulder. She could only see his profile, but his lips moved slightly like he was practicing his greeting—and that’s when Tallulah remembered why she’d agreed to take the live-in au pair job with someone she barely knew.
Time had obviously blurred the memory of Burgess.
There was something about his energy that read . . . safe.
Very safe.
Protective.
Along with her friends’ faith in Burgess, she’d trusted her gut.
It was going to be a shame to break the agreement. It was for the best, though. There was no guarantee he’d be civil off the ice one hundred percent of the time. Wells and Josephine might wholeheartedly believe in Burgess’s good character, but Tallulah had done the same with people throughout her life and gotten burned when their true selves were revealed.
You just never knew.
Tallulah watched as Burgess tapped the screen and held the phone to his ear, plugging the opposite one with his finger to drown out the screaming blender.
“Hello,” he said, staring intently at the floor. “Tallulah.”
Best to ignore that hot shiver that trekked up her inner thighs at the basement baritone version of her name. Blame it on her recent lack of anything resembling a sex life.
Watching penguins mate didn’t count.
“Hi, Burgess,” she responded, waiting for him to register the blender sounds in the background of her call, too. When he did, his gaze zipped to where Tallulah sat, a grunt brushing up against her eardrum.
They both ended the call, looking at each other across the smoothie shop.
It was very hard to tell what Burgess was thinking. But he was thinking. A lot. Intuitive blue eyes traveled between her and the suitcase, a slight wrinkle taking up residence between his brows, though the rest of his expression remained carved in stone.
Without taking his attention off Tallulah, Burgess reached out and accepted his smoothie over the counter, and that casual competence was . . . dangerously attractive. It was all coming back to her now. The hot spark of attraction she’d felt for this man all those months ago. She’d flown into California as a surprise for her best friend Josephine’s birthday. Burgess had been in attendance as a spectator at the same golf tournament where his friend, Wells Whitaker, had been competing with Josephine as his caddie. Brought his daughter, Lissa, along, too.
The five of them had unexpectedly had lunch—and when Burgess sat down beside her at the table, she’d been caught off guard by the ribbons of electricity that had only fluttered with more persistence every time his voice did that deep, boomy thing. There’d been no reason to question his outward calm while at lunch with other people, but she couldn’t discount her current apprehension at the prospect of being alone with him. In an apartment. Day in and day out. Knowing he was capable of breaking someone’s nose with all the fanfare of a sneeze.
As Burgess approached the table, the sound of his bootsteps was muffled, her palms growing soggy, but she also couldn’t help but notice the way his God of Thunder thighs were almost too robust for his jeans. He wore a loose navy sweater, like a man in the middle of a relaxing Sunday, and she wondered if he’d stretched out the neckline to show off the sharp cuts of his throat and collarbone.
Instinct told her no. That he’d just thrown it on.
But instincts weren’t always enough when it came to men, right?
When Burgess was five yards from the table, Tallulah shot to her feet with the brightest smile she could muster and held out her hand for a shake. “Burgess. It’s so nice to see you again.” She pressed her toes into the soles of her ankle boots when their hands connected, coarse into smooth, twisting the ball of her foot into the soft leather, because the clash of awareness and misgivings was so peculiar. And noisy. She could hear herself swallow.
Dang, he was tall. Mean appearance, collected demeanor. So confusing.
“I’m so sorry, but unfortunately I won’t be able to take the au pair position, after all.”
Chapter Two
“I’m so sorry, but unfortunately I won’t be able to take the au pair position, after all.”
Burgess was so busy trying to put a lid on his physical reaction to this woman those words almost didn’t reach his brain. That sentence had a lot of hurdles over which to leap, starting with the way her scent smacked him in the senses like a puck to the chin. A few years back, he’d been forced to attend the wedding of one of his teammates and they’d had a signature cocktail. He’d felt like an ogre holding the ridiculous crystal glass between his thumb and index finger for the toast, sort of how he’d used to feel having tea parties with Lissa, but the taste of the drink had been unusual enough to stick with him.
Blood orange and basil.
That’s what Tallulah smelled like. Fresh and sensual.
As they shook hands—and she apparently gave her notice to quit before she even started—he could taste the orange in the back of his throat. And speaking of throats, he couldn’t seem to take his eyes off hers, because she seemed to be having a very difficult time swallowing, if the visible knot below her chin was any indication. Her palm was a little damp, too, which didn’t bother Burgess, a man who spent hours every week surrounded by sweaty athletes and their, oftentimes, putrid stenches. Hell, their goalie had a good luck jockstrap that he didn’t wash during winning streaks. Sweaty palms were a pleasure.
But why did she have them?
Their meeting in California had gone in three stages.
One: he’d been caught off guard by her beauty. The almond shape of her bottomless brown eyes, framed by sweeping black brows and brimming with intelligence, inquisitiveness, kindness. The tan glow of her complexion, the way she wrinkled her nose to acknowledge someone’s point. All of her. Later, he’d found out about her Turkish heritage and that she was born in Istanbul, where her family still resided . . . and he’d Googled whether or not they played hockey in Turkey, immediately feeling like a jackass.
Two: he’d been further blown away by her sense of humor and ability to connect so easily with his daughter, which was no easy feat. He was considering hiring a parenting coach at this point. These days, the kid was either outright ignoring him or crying hysterically.
Three: he’d realized Tallulah was eleven years his junior, a future grad student who had plans to get plugged into the Boston social scene—thus, his polar opposite—and promptly categorized her as someone who would be inappropriate for him to pursue romantically.
Labeling her off-limits, however, hadn’t stopped him from offering her a room and a job in his apartment, but yeah. His uncharacteristic impulsiveness that afternoon was a discussion for a different day. The topic on the table was the fact that she’d already decided to quit—and after spending a week debating whether an aspiring marine biologist would prefer her pillows firm or floppy, he wanted to know why.
Burgess set down his Protein Avalanche smoothie and took a seat at Tallulah’s table, waiting for her to sit down across from him, which she did after a moment. He considered the stiff set to her shoulders, the way she continued to grip the handle of her suitcase, and decided he didn’t like any of it.
With a quick clear of his throat, he leaned forward, folding his hands on the table. “You packed and got all the way to my smoothie shop before deciding to quit. What happened?”
She slowly sat down, wet her lips, her eyes dropping briefly to her phone. “I’d prefer not to say.”
“Is it the neighborhood? You don’t like it?”
“The neighborhood is gorgeous,” she scoffed, looking out the window toward The Beacon, where he resided on the top floor. “The building is lovely, too. I’m starting to regret choosing marine biology over professional hockey.”
His grunt passed for a laugh. This was the person he remembered from lunch. Direct and clever. A little self-deprecating. Wildly unique. I should let her quit. It would be easier on my sanity to not have this beautiful girl sleeping under my roof.
Or would it be the opposite?
“Then what’s the problem?” Burgess asked. “You don’t want to be Lissa’s nanny?”
“Oh no, that’s not it at all. Lissa is a sweetheart and she’d barely need me, she’s such a little grown-up.” She waved a hand and his eyes caught on the simple silver bands that were such a contrast to the natural tan of her fingers. “You made me such a generous offer. And Wells and Josephine speak so highly of you. Really.”
Burgess took the lid off his smoothie, sipped and waited.
“I’d be happy to help you find someone else. I’m sure people would be trampling me to get this position. It’s kind of a dream come true,” she said, giving him a bright smile, a dimple appearing in the apple of her cheek. Damn, she was . . . a very disquieting combination of hot and cute. She had these long waves of black hair that almost reached her elbows where she propped them on the table, hugging them almost . . . nervously?
That hair acted as a shield for her body, which happened to be the hot part of the equation. So it was probably a good thing he couldn’t see a lot of it from across the table, because he was having a hard enough time concentrating with blood oranges juicing themselves on his brain and every downward sweep of her eyelashes making his thoughts fuzzy. This is how it had been in California. One measly lunch had led to months of staring off into space trying to remember the exact shade of her eyes.
Stay on track. “If a position as my nanny is such a coveted one, why don’t you want it?”
She took a breath, pulled her elbows in tighter. Watched him closely, as if weighing his reaction. “I’m nervous about living with a man I don’t know very well.”
While her answer caused an unpleasant shift in his stomach, he’d sensed a difficult explanation coming from the time he’d glimpsed her across the smoothie shop. Something in the way she’d braced as he approached had tipped him off. Was he insulted? No. Actually, he felt like kind of a moron for not considering before that she might be hesitant to live with a near stranger. Neither had Tallulah, apparently.
