I bite down on my tongue. I don’t want to talk about Serene. That conversation is off-limits. “No.” I can’t even imagine fucking Paige.
No, that’s not true. It’s easy to imagine hiking her skirt up and tearing her panties, fucking her in the hallway for the guards to watch as I make her scream my name.
But she’s my employee and my daughter’s nanny.
I have to keep it in my pants, if not for myself, then for Nova. She can’t lose another nanny, not again.
Neither can I.
We have cameras throughout the house, especially in the playroom. I pull up the feed to watch Paige with my daughter.
The two of them are playing tea party, immersed in a world of make-believe. At least Nova has a new friend to play with during the day when Luca is at school.
I yank out my phone and shoot a quick text to Paige.
The job is yours. Don’t screw this up. Nova is counting on you. We both are.
She glances down at her phone but doesn’t answer my text.
There’s a defiant streak in her. I can see it behind those glistening green eyes.
My cock twitches in my trousers.
Shit.
Hell no.
She’s my daughter’s nanny. Fucking her is not going to happen.
She runs a hand through her light brown hair, her long locks get slightly messy, and it makes her look that much more sexy and irresistible. She has natural streaks of blonde that frame her face, probably from being in the sun.
“Still watching the feed?” Dante chuckles as he glances over my shoulder.
I clear my throat.
Baseball. Soccer. Winter snowflakes.
I’m just throwing clean, non-sexual thoughts through my mind to shut down my desires. Does it work?
Hell, no.
Exhaling a loud sigh, I down that mug of coffee and grab a second cup. Why do I think caffeine will help me?
“What’s her story?” Dante asks. He perches himself at the edge of the table and folds his arms across his chest.
Dante’s a few years younger and gruffer. His eyes are always dark, even when he tries to soften his gaze at his son, Luca.
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Bullshit,” Dante says. “I know you did a background check on the pretty brunette. I would expect nothing less since you brought her into my home.”
“Never married. Her mother died of cancer recently. She sold the preschool she owned to take care of her mother. According to records, she’s neck deep in medical bills, sold her house, her belongings, everything to pay off the debt.”
Dante pushes himself from the table and nods for me to follow him out of the kitchen.
I take my cup of coffee and trail just a few steps behind him. He strolls into the study and slinks into the nearby armchair. There’s a built-in wood bookcase lined with hundreds of books that Nikki insisted on filling the shelves on one wall. Everything from children’s books to read to the kids to romance novels for her private escape.
“You’ve both lost someone close,” Dante says as he crosses his legs.
Are her wounds as raw as mine? It’s not a contest.
For once, he’s trying not to rip off the bloody bandage on a scar that he caused.
Serene died because Vance DeLuca ordered a hit on our family.