And with that, he slammed the door, startling Grace into tears again and leaving me with nothing but a bad taste in my mouth for Mr. Nico Allen.
Chapter Two
Nico
By the timeI got back to my office, the sound of that infernal crying had ceased to be the soundtrack of my day, instantly cheering me up. As I settled into my chair and closed my eyes to enjoy the beautiful sound of nothing in my home, I silently swore to let my sister know how much I hated her for saddling me with her kid while she gets to spend eighteen months in some white collar prison-like setting where she probably has more freedom than I do at this moment.
Leave it to Fiona to get caught up with insider trading. Who the hell does she think she is? Martha Stewart? All that intelligence and she pissed it away by getting sentenced to eighteen months in jail.
Talk about nearly knocking me over with a feather when that woman from social services came here that day with Grace in tow. First, Fiona has a child with some gigolo from God only knows where and then she’s stupid enough to get sent to prison.
If our father was alive today, he’d kill her. I thought about finding some way to sneak into her cell and strangle her, but I decided against it. I have too much to lose, and unlike her, I understand how to act like a goddamned responsible adult.
I smiled to myself as the wonderful silence surrounded me. I intentionally never had children, which is why my home used to be my sanctuary. Since that little girl showed up, it’s been nothing but chaos, a horror show full of wailing and dirty hands messing up the walls and furniture. I finally had to close her in that bedroom I keep for guests because all she did was cry.
She’s at the wrong house to do that. There’s no crying in my world. Not in my personal life, and certainly not in my professional life as a real estate magnate. I made others cry by buying and selling buildings. I didn’t cry, and I certainly didn’t need to hear some kid’s sobbing day and night.
I knew DeVille would have just the right person for the job. He’s always on top of things, like I preferred the people I pay to be. He tried to talk me into some other nonsense like he did with my friend Eric, but I wasn’t hearing any of it. Eric may have been gullible enough to let him send out a baker when he needed a housekeeper, but I put my foot down and demanded a nanny who could handle Fiona’s kid.
Now that Tia had arrived, I could finally get back to living my life the way I wanted to.
My phone tore me from my reverie of how happy things would be from now on, and I saw it was Charles calling. The last two bachelors left in our circle, he nearly had a heart attack when he found out I had a child staying with me. He probably ran out that night and bought a gross of condoms just to ensure that never happened to him.
“Charles, I’m talking to you from the silence of my office, and I can tell you, it’s perfect living in this house again,” I said into the phone, punctuating my statement with a chuckle.
“I was wondering if you fixed that problem. You’re not a man who should be around kids. Not that I am either, but Christ, whoever thought you were a good guardian must be out of their mind.”
I shook my head even as I agreed with that more than he could ever understand. “My sister, the felon who’s currently serving eighteen months upstate for insider trading. Clearly, good parenting skills do not run in my family.”
That got me a full-throated laugh. “You Allens sure do like to keep things interesting. So you finally got someone to take the kid off your hands? Good for you! That means we can get back to our Friday night poker games. I’m dying to get cards back in my hands after nearly two weeks.”
“You better believe it,” I said, practically salivating at the chance to take him for all he’s worth. “But the kid is still here. I just brought in a nanny to take care of her. From the sound of no crying, I’d say she’s working out fine.”
“A nanny? What are we talking here? Barely out of high school and totally fuckable, or warden from a German women’s prison?”
I shuddered at the thought of the latter and tried to find the right way to describe Tia Morton. “I didn’t really pay that much attention to her, but she smells nice. Like flowers.”
Charles let out a sigh of exasperation. “Man, is she old or young?”
“Young,” I said, trying to gauge her age in my mind. “Maybe early twenties.”
“Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. Pretty? You would have noticed if she was hideous, right? I mean, you’re all business all the time, but you do notice good looking women occasionally, right, Nico?”
I preferred when we were discussing poker and enjoying the idea of him losing his shirt to me. “I don’t know. She wasn’t hideous, no. I guess she might be pretty. I want to say she has reddish blond hair.”
“A strawberry blond?” Charles asked in a tone full of amazement.
“Yeah. That might be what color it is. Why do you say that like I have some rare gem in my possession here? Fuck, I don’t care what she looks like as long as she gets that kid to stop her goddamned crying.”
I really didn’t. She could have looked like that warden from a German women’s prison he mentioned for all I cared. Her looks had nothing to do with what I was paying her for.
“You know, Nico, my father used to say strawberry blonds were the sexiest women on earth,” Charles said in a dreamy voice. “We might have to set up the poker game at your house this week so I can catch a glimpse of this nanny of yours.”
“Your father was married six times, Charles. He thought every women he ever met was the sexiest thing in the world. Then he married them and they got unsexy really quick.”
My assessment of his father’s outlook on women made Charles laugh. “The old man sure did love being married. I swear he would have gone for a seventh time if he didn’t drop dead. Thankfully, he only had one child with each wife, so I only have five siblings. Can you imagine if he had a handful with each? Jesus, we could fill our own bus just with our family.”
The mere thought of that many children made me cringe. I’d had one in my house for less than a full week, and I was fairly certain a few more days of her racket and I would have gone straight out of my mind.