Nanny with Benefits

“Where’ve you been?” I asked curiously.

“I was going to get an icebreaker,” she replied. She smiled and stepped away from the door. She kicked off her running shoes and dropped the front door key into the colorful glass fruit bowl.

“Icebreaker?”

“Yeah.” Karly twirled her hand in front of her head. “It’s been a bit of a whirlwind since yesterday,” she said. “Rather than cooking breakfast, I thought I’d go to the coffee shop and get doughnuts and coffee for a change.”

She wasn’t holding doughnuts or coffee. I guessed she never made it that far. “Is the media outside? Is that it?” I asked, wishing she’d tell me what was going on.

Karly pulled her lips back as she grimaced. She shook her head as she explained. For her, it was worse than the media, much worse.

“Keith’s on the street. As I went out, he caught up with me and followed me back here,” she said. “I came back so as not to make a scene, but he ranted and raved about how he told me so and all the pretentious crap he normally spouts from his mouth.”

I held her hand as I spoke. “He’ll make more trouble for us. Wait here. I’ll go and sort him out.”

Karly tried to say be careful. I sensed she was past caring what happened. Keith was the last of her worries. “A few people are hanging around out there. They aren’t the press, but you never know if they’ll arrive at the wrong moment,” she muttered, wiping her tears.

Karly’s sanity was more important than a few media personnel watching me argue with Keith. He’d appear as the jilted ex who now stalked Karly. He’d already done a number on her apartment, so a quick call to the cops and he’d have a restraining order well and truly pinned to his stupid ass.

“Wait here and don’t come outside. It’ll aggravate the hell out of Keith if he sees you.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere.”

I pulled on my shoes and headed outside. I took the elevator and then strode down the steps. I looked up and down the street. There was no sign of dickhead Keith. I noticed the chill in the air as plumes of breath formed in front of me. I glanced over toward the park. Clouds of smoke blew from behind a large tree. I walked across the road as a cigarette butt landed on the edge of the sidewalk. Keith exhaled his last lungful of smoke as his eyes fell on me.

“Karly’s sent you out, has she?” Keith asked.

“Not a chance. This was my choice,” I replied. “Don’t you think you’ve done enough damage?”

“It seems you don’t know the meaning of the word,” Keith replied, standing straight and lifting his khaki jacket from the bark of the tree.

He stepped onto the sidewalk, pulling his free hand out of his pocket, and stood with clenched fists. Half squinting, he looked me up and down. I was maybe a few years his senior, but I’d bet I was way faster, way fitter, and way smarter than good old Keith, the pissed-off, jilted ex-boyfriend.

God only knew what Karly saw in him.

Keith took the offensive and stepped forward. The tone of his voice attracted the attention of passers-by. They stopped, and I already saw cell phones held up and recording everything.

I’d let Keith do all the work. He obligingly did, drawing his fist back.

Rather loudly, to make sure it was picked up on the videos, I said, “Keith, there’s no need to get violent.” I held my hands up in a nonaggressive manner. I wanted all the videos to show I had attempted to calm the situation.

I just hoped his first punch didn’t knock me out.

The first punch he threw hit me square in the jaw. It didn’t knock me out, and it didn’t hurt that much. Keith sensed he was on the winning side and went to throw another. His miscalculation resulted in my swift uppercut counterpunch—I’d learned a lot from watching boxing and MMA on TV—which landed firmly under his jaw. His head flew back, and he took wobbly baby steps back toward the tree. He shook his head and ran through a full sentence of profanities that would have made Alexis’s bad-word box burst at the seams after he’d finished. He swung again. He was still dazed, and another punch to the side of the head felt satisfying and sent him in the other direction.

Keith let out primal grunts as he charged me. He flung his arms around my waist and attempted to wrestle me to the ground. The crowd grew, and it’d be a matter of minutes before the cops or the media arrived.

I needed to end the scuffle, and I needed to make sure I was the victor. The maiden’s hand wasn’t at stake, although reputation and making sure this didn’t happen again was as well. I raised my knee in a swift jerk. Keith’s breath rushed from his lungs as his balls made a speedy exit and vanished inside his body—metaphorically speaking.