Naughty Nanny Series-Stay Read Free

couldn’t believe she’d overheard that stupid conversation! Hell, he couldn’t believe he opened his mouth to say those things! Cherie would never believe there had been more to the conversation. What she hadn’t heard was how much he depended on her and how she had finally brought laughter back into his house. She hadn’t heard him tell his friends that, all joking aside, he wanted to be with her so bad that if he had to fire her to do so, then he would risk it.
    Over the past three and a half years, he had fallen in love with the nanny. Damn, what a mess. Unfortunately, the situation was one of his own making and he was man enough to admit it.
    He knew she’d been pissed at him for something that had happened over the weekend. Idiot that he was, he’d thought it had been because there had been too many people at the house. The weekends were always reserved for them as a family and there weren’t many times he altered that routine.
    Tired of the cold shoulder from Cherie, he had come to her room to apologize. Not hearing her laughter or seeing her across from him at night when the kids fell asleep had bothered him. Until she stopped talking to him this week, he hadn’t realized how much he needed to hear her voice.
    There was no way she was leaving him and the kids. If she thought he was going to let her just walk away from them like this, she had another think coming. Rick knew how much she loved his kids; and if he were honest with himself, he knew she wasn’t immune to him, either.
    His heating bill had gone down considerably during the last three years since Cherie had come into his house. Cold showers were a regular occurrence now. Unfortunately, he experienced that special brand of hell at least two or three times a week. In all honesty, he was damn tired of it. He wanted Cherie in his bed, not a dream version of her.
    Thinking quickly, Rick shamelessly used the one thing—okay, maybe two things—he knew she couldn’t resist.
“Were you going to leave without telling Sean and Christina? Were you really going to leave like this without giving them an explanation? You’re the only mother they’ve had for more than three years, Cherie. Is this fair to them? To our family?”
He heard her gasp and knew he had hit a nerve. “Of course not! I wasn’t leaving tonight.” Cherie sat down heavily on the bed and his heart began to crack, taking pity on her. He knew how she must be feeling right now. How could she know he had been slowly building up the nerve to tell her how he felt? Never thinking the time was right, he’d continued to hold off, and now he was facing the very real possibility of losing her.
It was amazing it had come to this. Cherie was probably the only person who didn’t know how he felt about her. His parents knew, his closest friends knew, and all the household staff knew. Hell, even the kids probably knew. They called her Mama Cherie; and whenever they wanted to do anything, they made sure to ask them both. Before he left the house with them, they always told Cherie where they were going and always gave her a big hug and kiss before doing so. Yeah, she was part of the family. He only had to help her see she belonged with the three of them.
Sitting down next to her on the bed, Rick inhaled her unique scent of coconut and cream. “Cherie. You mean so much to me and the kids. You have to believe me when I say that you misunderstood my comment. Please don’t leave. The kids and I would be lost without you.”
Picking up her hand, he noticed how small it was compared to his. Far from dainty, she was the complete opposite of Susan; but Rick was okay with that. Cherie was what his friend Barry called “thick” and he loved every inch of her. Over the years, he had come to realize Cherie’s true beauty and the fact he loved her so much took nothing away from what he’d felt for Susan.
Rick never thought he would feel this way about a woman again. When Susan had died after giving birth to