The Billionaire's Nanny: A BWWM Romantic Comedy (14 page)

When the pines open up to reveal the collection of cottages, Vanessa says, “Wow.” almost under her breath.

“Yeah, it’s nice. My great grandpa had the main house built and the family has kind of added on as needed. It lets us be together, but have our own space, too.”

“Just. Wow.”

I look at the spread with fresh eyes. The original building is only about 2500 square feet, but it’s made in that traditional Adirondack style, all big exposed logs and sweeping beams. The wide wrap-around porch makes it look bigger than it is. Scattered among the trees, going down to the lake, are five cottages, each about 1500 square feet. The idea was that if the cottages were no more than bedrooms and a kitchenette, everyone would be inclined to come back to the main house for meals and hanging out. Yeah, it’s pretty nice.

Our arrival brings two golden retrievers up from the lake. They’re dripping wet and excited to see us.

“Those must be Sarah and Bink’s dogs. I think the light one is Baxter and the dark one is Rusty? You might want to make sure they shake off the lake water before we get out of the car.”

After they shower sand and water all over the car, we get out. Maeve is beside herself trying to get to the dogs, bouncing in Vanessa’s arms crying “BA BA BA!”

“Yes, dogs!” Vanessa says, leaning down so Maeve can pat them. “Dogs!”

Maeve is grabbing handsful of fur, but the dogs don’t care, they just want to smell us all and lick Maeve’s face. Dogs know babies are often covered in food.

“BA!” she shrieks happily. I’m glad to see she hasn’t become frightened of dogs since we left Boston. Mom and Dad have labs, but it’s been a month since she’s seen them. That’s a long time when you’re a baby.

I open the trunk and see that my parents are headed down to greet us. My heart is beating faster, but I play it cool.

“Mom, Dad, this is Vanessa Franklin. Vanessa, this is Margaret Pierce, my mom.”

“Please call me Mitsy. It’s so nice to meet you Vanessa, Corbin speaks very highly of you.”

Vanessa’s lashes drop, I can see she’s embarrassed, but she smiles and shakes my mom’s hand.

My dad steps in to offer his hand, saying “Ed Pierce, welcome to camp.”

“Thanks, Mr. Pierce,” Vanessa says, shaking.

“Ed, please, I insist.”

“Okay Ed. Mitsy. Thanks for having me, this is just lovely!”

They help us carry our stuff to our cabin, chattering about the history of the camp. Vanessa makes all the right interested noises. They whisk Maeve away with them so that we can “get settled in.”

“Wow,” Vanessa says again. “I keep saying that, don’t I? But wow. I mean, I don’t know what I expected. Maybe like Downton Abbey, with the servants all lined up at the door? But this is so…normal. Again, if normal is a historic family compound.”

“Isn’t it?” I ask, laughing again.

We get the windows open for the breeze and unpack our things.

“She gave us a cabin with two bedrooms, do they know we’re sleeping together? Will they do a bunk check?”

“Well, it never came up, that’s not the sort of family we are. But no bunk checks. At least so far. Besides, the other beds are Maeve’s crib and a set of bunk beds. Like I said, you get the best bed, the one with me in it.” I pull her to me for a kiss.

When I feel her soft curves against my body, I want desperately to throw her down on that bed. I press against her to show her just that and she melts against me a little. A nice preview of the night to come…

But first we go to the main house to meet my parents for lunch. Sarah and Bink and their kids are in town and my other sisters aren’t here yet. Lunch is served with pleasantly idle chit chat–where are you from, how’s the weather in Napa, did Connie’s daughter have her baby? When my mother suggests I take Vanessa out on the boat so that she “can rebond with Maeve” I jump at the chance.

“We should wait a bit,” says Vanessa, ever weirdly conservative about water after a meal.

“I promise you’ll stay bone dry. It’ll be like going for a car ride after lunch. You don’t have to wait an hour for that, right?”

I take her in the row boat so that I can do all the work. I want her to just sit and look at the trees and the loons…and if she notices that I look really good rowing a boat, so much the better. I peel off my shirt on the dock.

“Shouldn’t you put on some sun block?” she asks.

“Pierce men do not burn,” I tell her. “We only allow in enough sun to burnish our torsos and we fling the rest back into the sky.”

“Uh-huh,” she says. “Just don’t expect sympathy from me when I have to rub aloe vera into your gross, peeling skin.”

I’m pleased by the image, but assure her it’ll never happen and I launch into the lake.

Of course, about 45 minutes into our trip, I can feel my shoulders burning. “Say, can you hand me my shirt,” I say, “I’m, um, chilly.” She just raises her eyebrows at me and hands the shirt over. Her eyes are dancing with laughter. “Phew, I had goosebumps!” I say, rubbing my arms before I go back to rowing.

“Uh-huh.”

It’s been a while since I rowed, and I’m sure my shoulders will be sore tomorrow–and not just from their…over-burnishing, but it’s worth it to go around the shore, showing Vanessa all the best picnic spots, the places where we found beaver dams, the place I caught Laura making out with her boyfriend in high school.

When we get back to shore, my mother is reading on the beach with Maeve asleep under an umbrella beside her. She smiles and waves, which I take to mean we are free to go. We head back to our cabin.

“Thanks for taking me out on the lake,” Vanessa says. “And for doing all the rowing. I like to kayak, but rowing is just too much work.” She steps closer and rubs her hands over my shoulders. “Nice to watch you do it, though.”

“I’m glad it wasn’t all for nothing, then,” I murmur and pull her to me. I finally get to throw her onto the bed. Luckily, there’s some strength left in my arms to peel off that bathing suit (hot, even though it is the more conservative one she brought to wear around my family). We come together in in a mixture of passion and muffled laughter. Through the open windows, I can hear people unpacking in the cabin closest to ours. No matter how old you get, you don’t want to think your siblings can hear you having sex. The strange furtiveness is cracking us up, to have sneaky sex as an adult is funny…and really hot.

I wake with a start to the sound of a dog barking and see that the sun is low in the sky. We’ve both dozed off after our shower.

“We’ve got to hurry, babe,” I say to Vanessa. “If we get to dinner late, we’ll have to sit at the kids’ table.”

“Is that a promise?” she asks groggily, sitting up.

“It’s not as fun as it sounds. And they won’t let you have wine.”

“I’m up, I’m up!”

“There they are!” Geoff says as we climb the porch steps. I can see through the screen that the gang’s all here now. The great room is full of light and chatter. The table is pulled out to its full length and at least one table has been added on so that there is no separate kids’ table. There seem to be children
everywhere
as the seating is sorted out.

Finally, like a very cooperative game of musical chairs everyone is seated.

“Who’s
that?”
asks Carrington, pointing at Vanessa like she wasn’t a person.

“This is my friend, Vanessa,” I say. “Vanessa, that is Carrington.” I hope she can read
you know, one of Laura’s monsters
in my gaze. I go around the table, introducing everyone. She’s clearly overwhelmed, but smiles genuinely and laughs when my father says, “There’ll be a quiz later,” like he does every time.

“So, Carrington,” asks Vanessa, “What grade are you going into?”

He looks at his mom for help and Laura says, “He goes to a school without grades, the children learn at the pace that best suits them. If he were in a traditional school, he’d be going into third grade.” She looks insufferably smug.

Vanessa just smiles at my nephew and says “I thought so. I teach third graders.”

“Do they have to sit at desks?” he asks.

“Sometimes, but not always,” she says. “Where do you like to sit at school?”

“Under the willow in the peace garden.”

“That sounds really nice.”

“I like to
chop down
the willow tree!” Dobson cuts in with near-rabid excitement. Only he still has that little-kid speech and it sounds like “I yike to chop down the wiwwow twee!” making it decidedly less violent than he’d hoped.

“Chop it DOWN!” shouts Pierce.

“Boys,” says Laura mildly, “Perhaps we can chop down a tree tomorrow.”

My mother is shooting daggers at her youngest daughter.

My father turns to Geoff and mutters something I can’t hear. Geoff shrugs.

Carrington, of course, is now furious at his little brothers and leaps into his chair so that he can loom over them. “You are a
fuck
!” he shouts, red in the face, “A stinky
fuck
!”’

“Oh for heaven’s sake, Laura, take them outside if they can’t be civilized at the table.” Mother is more annoyed than scandalized.

“It’s just a
word
, Mother. It only has the power you give it.”

“Perhaps he could say his
word
without putting his muddy shoes on the upholstery, then. I told Marita that they were still too young to join the big table. ‘Everyone is happier when there is a children’s table,’ I told her, but she said she’d promised you she’d talk me out of it. And so she did.”

Sarah’s kids are nudging one another and looking at their young cousins in disdain. Emily’s twins are happily munching on carrot sticks and watching the show like it was dinner theater.

“Hey Carrington,” says Vanessa, just loud enough for him to hear her over the tussle. He turns to see what she wants, his long sandy hair fallen over one eye. “Carrington, I’ve taken one thing off the table and hidden it. Bet you can’t figure out what it was.”

“I will!” shouts Dobson.

“No me!” chimes Pierce.

“Was it the salt dish?” Carrington asks studying the table.

“Nope.”

“You water glass!” says Pierce.

“Nope, that’s right here.”

“Your napkin!” exclaims Carrington, triumphantly.

“Yep!” she holds it up.

“My turn! Close your eyes!”

And suddenly, like magic, the feral Barker boys have become distracted and the game gradually includes their older Reynolds cousins and Vanessa is able to rejoin the adult conversation. I can see she’s impressed my parents and, to a lesser degree, my sisters. I want to hold her up like a sports trophy. See? I picked this one! And she’s
great
.

“I’m sure you love your work,” says my mother. “Have you been teaching long?”

“No, only two years. I hadn’t planned to become a teacher, I was just doing it to pay off loans, but I fell in love. Both with the job and the kids. And my strange little school. I hope it can survive.”

“What do you mean?” asks Sarah.

“It’s a charter school, so the funding is different. It was mismanaged at first, the founders meant well but didn’t have good business sense. There’s a meeting of the Board of Directors on Tuesday, actually. I’d planned to go, but I sent along a letter. A teacher friend of mine will read it out.”

I look at her, surprised. I’d forgotten that she had asked for Tuesday off to go to the meeting, I’d just sprung this trip on her without asking first.

“It’s okay,” she murmurs, patting my leg. But I don’t think it is, really.

She continues to talk about the school, and she’s lit up with her passion for it. She’s beautiful even when she’s grumpy, but when she’s excited about something like this, she’s magnetic. My noisy, prickly family is listening with rapt attention.

The cooks keep bringing food and the wine keeps flowing until the children have long since gone to sleep in their cabins and the babies are asleep in the middle of my parents’ big bed. Vanessa pats my leg and says “I know that in California, it’s only ten, but I’m exhausted. I’m going to bed. I’ll take Maeve as I go.”

“You’re so good with her, Vanessa,” says my mother. “Are you
sure
you haven’t been a nanny before?”

Vanessa laughs, “Oh believe me, I’m sure. I had to call my grandma for help a dozen times that first day. I tell you, I’m glad Maeve can’t talk because she’d tell you what a big faker I am.”

I’m surprised and touched to hear that she feels like a fraud, too. “I’ll get Maeve when I come to bed, I’ll join you soon. Good night.” I know she was going to just leave, but I stand and give her a chaste kiss anyway. Just in case anyone still thought she was just the nanny.

When she’s had time to go, my father says, “Vanessa seems like a lovely girl. You seem happy.”

“I am. And she is. Maeve loves her, it’s going to be hard when she goes back to teaching.” I pause. “I had an idea…”

By the time I pick up Maeve, heavy with sleep, and head back to our cabin, I’ve arranged a nice surprise for Vanessa. But I say nothing, and I’ve sworn my family to secrecy. At least until Tuesday.

“I contacted the Board of Directors and had them set up Skype so that you can participate in the meeting, too,” I tell Vanessa over breakfast on Tuesday morning. “My father has a nice fast connection in the main house. We’ll just go over a bit before three to get it all set up in time.”

“Wow, thanks, Corbin! That was thoughtful. It was eating at me, a little. I know I should have just reminded you about it, but you were so excited about coming here–and I wanted to come too, I swear! And I figured it wouldn’t really matter if I was at the meeting, but still…”

“If it’s important to you, it’s important to me. I thought we might put Maeve in the bike trailer and ride in to the petting zoo this morning.”

We spend a pleasant morning patting goats and trying to convince alpacas to let us come near them. Maeve is most delighted by the chickens. I’ll have to see about getting some for the kitchen garden.

The meeting time matches up well with Maeve’s still-on-West Coast-nap-time, so we get her settled down and go into my dad’s office. I manage to get everything working just as the video feed comes on. I angle my chair so that I can watch Vanessa’s face.