‘So,’ he asked, ‘you’re going to be looking after Ava?’
‘For a little while.’ She saw his frown. ‘I’m a maternity nanny.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I generally stay between six and eight weeks with a new family before the permanent nanny takes over. I try to allocate four weeks between jobs, but it never really works out. Babies come early, as we saw today.’
‘Do you go home between jobs?’
‘No, I generally have a holiday. Sometimes if there’s a decent gap I might house-sit.’
‘Where’s home?’
‘The next job.’
‘So you’re a nomadic nanny.’
‘I guess.’ That made her laugh, she’d never really thought of describing it like that. ‘Yes.’
‘And you only look after newborns?’
She nodded.
‘That sounds like constant hard work.’
‘Oh, it is,’ Naomi agreed. ‘But I completely love it.’
Or she had.
Naomi didn’t share that with him, of course. She didn’t tell him that she was tired in a way she’d never been before. Not just from lack of sleep but from the constant motion of her lifestyle.
There was one slice of pizza left and both their hands reached for it at the same time.
‘Go ahead,’ Abe said.
‘No, we’ll share it.’
And when he tore it and there was one half a bit bigger, instead of not noticing, she looked at him until he tore a piece off the bigger half. ‘That’s fair now,’ Abe said.
‘Hmm.’
She was so full it shouldn’t matter, but she had never, ever tasted something so delicious, Naomi thought. Or was it the open fire keeping them warm as the snow fluttered outside the window, or was it adult company in the middle of the night that made it all so nice?
‘Do you ever have,’ Abe asked, ‘er,issueswith the fathers?’
‘Gosh no.’ Naomi laughed. ‘I dress like this for work. I don’t think the mothers have anything to worry about.’
He begged to differ.
Scantily dressed Naomi wasn’t, but for Ethan there was no doubting her sensuality. It wasn’t just her curves or the very full mouth or ripple of dark hair and how it fell in her eyes, it was more subtle than that. Little things, like the way she covered herself when her robe gaped, and how she closed her eyes after each and every sip of cognac as she held it on her tongue for a moment, and the lick of her lips when she’d first glimpsed the pizza.
Yet, he mused, the mothers wouldn’t have anything to worry about.
She was nice.
Moral.
The sort you would trust your baby to.