Nanny with Benefits

I grinned and pretended I hadn’t heard what she’d said.

Damon gave a warm smile as he looked at his gorgeous daughter. “Okay. I’ll keep that in mind.”

“So then K-K-Karly,” he said as he chuckled, “what experience do you have?” He was trying to make me lighten up a bit.

I dragged my eyes from his biceps, which twitched as he clutched his hands together. “To be honest, the only experience I have is babysitting my cousins back home. I have quite a few cousins, though,” I answered. Damon’s expression change.

God, I’d already blown it. Great.

“Now you’ve surprised me. Alexis is normally quite reserved with strangers”—he put his hand up to block his mouth and lowered his voice—“and she never reveals that Clara has spoken to her.” Alexis, singing a song about sunshine, didn’t pick up on anything. “But with you, she seems totally at ease,” Damon continued.

“I was told by a close friend that I should’ve worked with children before now. I always seem to connect with them.”

Alexis sat in the large brown armchair with her ragdoll dancing on her lap. She pulled it to her ear and nodded before hanging it by its arms again. She looked up and smiled. “Well, we—that is, Clara and I—we go to kindergarten. I’m halfway through, so I’ll be in big school soon. We get home for lunch. Can you make lunch?” she asked.

I giggled and flashed a glance at Damon, whose eyes ran up my legs, making me feel what I’d felt when the front door had opened earlier. I crossed them. “I can cook lunch. I’m an excellent cook. What does Clara like to eat?” I asked.

“Dada, she’s so funny. She thinks Clara can eat,” Alexis said. “She’s a doll and doesn’t have a real mouth. Look.” She jumped up from the chair and walked over to me. She held her doll up for me to look at and pointed to the stitches that made up her mouth.

I smiled at her cuteness. It was like watching sunshine bringing dawn to a new day. “She talks to you, though. Isn’t that right?”

Alexis stepped back and looked around. She pushed her finger against her mouth and shushed Damon and me. “That’s our secret. Dada, she knows the secret. We must keep her now.”

“Is that so?” Damon asked, beaming another one of his priceless smiles. For an interview, there weren’t many questions for me. Alexis filled in the gaps and guided the entire conversation. “You can’t just keep people. You need to interview them and see if they’re good enough to take care of you.”

“Dada, I don’t see what your problem is,” Alexis said. She yanked Clara up under her arm and hugged her with her stitched mouth close to her ear. “Tell her she has to take care of me. I see you telling other people what to do, and they do it. Karly doesn’t mind.”

Damon glanced in my direction with humble yet mesmerizing eyes. Alexis had made him out to be a bossy man who demanded things and ordered people around. “It’s nothing like that, I promise you,” he said. “Work stuff and kids in the office don’t mix.”

Alexis sat on the rug in front of the fire and placed her ragdoll in a sitting position. She walked off and returned with a plastic tea set and started filling the cups with imaginary tea. She chatted away as we sat and watched. Smiles filled both our faces.

Alexis looked up at Damon. She stood and walked to him and attempted to whisper behind her hand again. “Dada, you don’t have a drink, and Karla-good-girl might be thirsty.”

“Karly. It’s Karly,” he said with a smile that caught my attention. Alexis walked back to the rug and muttered to Clara that my name was, in fact, Karly and not Karla. Damon smiled at me. “She’s right again, though. Would you like a drink?”

“Anything. Tea or coffee is fine,” I replied.

I stood when Damon said to join him in the kitchen while he made us some freshly brewed coffee. He was out of tea but said if it was a drink I liked, he could get some in for me should I be the chosen candidate for the position.

I sat at the kitchen counter as Damon filled a sugar bowl and a cream pot. He slid it across the counter and then filled two mugs with hot, black, gorgeously strong coffee. And with that smile, he pushed one toward me.

“Why do you want this job?” he asked.

Oh brother. The interview question nobody wanted. I looked nervously into his eyes. There was no way I could lie about it. “I want this j—”

“Me, Dada. She wants to be with me.” Alexis had walked through the door and saved the day. She was adorable.

“Exactly. I couldn’t have put it any better myself,” I said, ignoring my own money reason and focusing on the little ray of sunshine that stood before me in all her glory.