“I mean, I was a kid, and you are a full-grown man, but I guess you can still relate.” She lets out a soft giggle, and the tension eases between us as I watch her with downcast eyes.
“Awkward what?” I frown and watch her curiously, wanting to know more about her.
“City. Awkward City.” The teasing smirk on her face makes it hard to keep scowling.
I click my tongue and sigh, trying to figure out the best way to resolve this. Giving up, I gesture awkwardly toward her chest, trying hard not to look at it. “Well…I am sorry about that.”
“It’s fine. My tits get in the way a lot.” She closes her eyes and shakes her head. “I shouldn’t have said that. Can we stop talking about my breasts now?”
“Please,” I agree because now I can’t stop looking at them and recalling how the weight of them felt in my hands. Fucking hell…Awkward City indeed.
“Okay then.” She pulls her shirt away from her chest as if she’s trying to conceal her completely un-concealable breasts. “So are you saying I’m not fired?”
I force myself to lift my eyes to hers, holding her gaze as I push away my indecent thoughts. “Correct.”
“Yes!” She thrusts a fist up into the air. “That is good news.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. Cassandra Barlow is unlike anyone I’ve ever met before.
“I should probably go check on Everly.” She gestures toward the door.
“Yes, you do that,” I confirm, my brows furrowing as I try to refocus my thoughts away from the nanny. I lower myself back into my chair.
She pauses at my door. “Thank you, Mr. Fletcher. I promise I will be extremely careful from now on whenever we’re at the pool.”
I nod and smile. “Call me Max.”
“Max?” She looks unsure. “You sure about that?”
“Anything but Big Daddy,” I reply with a grimace.
She snorts out a laugh. “That kind of slipped out.”
“It would have had to.”
She bites her lip and waggles her eyebrows. “Does this mean you’ll start calling me Cozy?”
I wrinkle my nose. “I think I prefer Cassandra.”
“Fair enough.” She taps the wall beside her. “I’ll let you get back to work. Thank you again…Max.”
I nod and turn back to my desk, hating how much I like the way my name sounds on her lips.
“Hello, Zaddy,” I murmur to myself the next morning as I stare slack-jawed at Max from the grass as he hoists himself out of the swimming pool. Sluices of water ripple down his washboard abs and disappear into his low-slung swimming trunks.
“Morning,” he says crisply as he notices me walking over to him. He grabs a towel off the nearby lounge chair and wipes it over his head, mussing his dirty-blond locks.
“Heyo.” I swallow the knot in my throat and rip my eyes off his very erect nipples as I stand before him. “You’re up early.”
“I like to swim laps in the mornings.” He wipes his pecs next. My eyes follow his movements for far longer than is appropriate. If there’s any length of time that would ever be appropriate for a nanny to look at her boss’s big, fat pecs.
Can pecs be fat? Probably man boobs are fat. Max definitely doesn’t have man boobs. They are mounds of firm muscle that I would really like to poke my finger into one to see what they feel like. I bet they feel like pound cake.
What is with me wanting to touch various body parts of this man? I am unwell!
“Swimming is nice,” I reply, hesitating awkwardly in front of him because it’s hard to walk away from such a fine specimen.
“For those of us who can swim.” The corner of his mouth pulls up into a teasing smirk like it did yesterday. It might be my favorite expression he makes, and I don’t even care that it was at my expense.
I bite my lip and smirk right back. “Maybe I’ll learn more than a weak doggy paddle one of these days.” Especially if it would give me a body like his.
Mirth dances in Max’s eyes as he tilts his head and reads the text on my loose-fitting graphic tank. It reads: ‘Whatever. I’ll just date myself’
“Nice shirt,” he says with a small laugh.
“Thanks! I got it from my friend’s T-shirt shop downtown. She has a lot of cool stuff. I was hoping to take Everly there for one of her tie-dye classes.”
Max nods. “I’m sure Everly would love that.”
“Cool.” I pause awkwardly, clutching my Kindle, and am unsure what else to say. “Guess I’ll just head inside then to read while I wait for Everly to wake up.”