Crazy Hot (The Au Pairs 4)

Jacqui's skin prickled in warning. What was going on here?

"Uh, hi," she addressed the group, closing the door behind her and shoving the front door key back into her purse.

"Hello, dear, are you here about the position?" one of the women asked in a cheerful British accent. She looked Jacqui up and down. "What part of London are you from? You don't look like a local."

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"London?" Jacqui echoed, a foreboding feeling rising in her chest. "No, I--where's Anna?" She didn't wait for an answer and instead strode purposefully through the room and toward the heart of the house. William, twelve and already almost as tall as she was, rolled down the marble hallway on his skateboard. He looked more like his big brother, Ryan, every day. "Hey, Bill-where's Anna?"

William gestured toward the kitchen as he kept rolling by.

Jacqui quickened her steps, practically running into Madison as she turned the corner. Madison looked trim in her tennis whites, swinging a Dunlop racket. Her face lit up when she saw Jacqui. "Hey! I'm leaving for Sydney tonight, but I hope you come visit!"

"To Sydney?" Jacqui winked. "How about I see you when you get back."

"When I get back?" Madison's brow furrowed. She strummed a finger along the taut strings of her tennis racket. "Anna hasn't told you?"

"Told me what?" The anxious feeling in Jacqui's chest began to expand.

"That's just like her and Dad. Ugh!" Madison leaned in and gave Jacqui a quick, close hug. "But anyway, don't forget--e-mail me!" With that she trotted off, swinging her racket lightly as she went.

Jacqui shook her shoulders and continued to the kitchen, where she found Anna looking flustered, holding her phone close

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to her ear and scribbling notes on a yellow legal pad. Baby Eloise sat in her high chair, cheerfully throwing rice cereal everywhere, but Anna didn't seem to notice.

Anna held up a manicured fingernail when she saw Jacqui, mouthing, "One second." Jacqui immediately went to work, wiping Eloise's mouth and tray and scooping the baby up as she began to cry. She was bouncing her on her hip when Anna finally snapped her phone shut.

"Jacqui, you're here. Thank God. It's been such a horrid morning. Of course everything has to happen at the last minute." Anna rubbed her temples and took a gulp of coffee from the mug in front of her.

"What's going on? Who are all those people in the foyer?" Jacqui was both dying to know and totally afraid to hear the answer.

"Oh, right--they're candidates. Of course I have to find a baby nurse and a nanny in less than twenty-four hours!" Anna sighed in her usual melodramatic fashion.

"Excuse me?" Jacqui started. A nanny? Wasn't that pretty much her job?

"Didn't we tell you--oh, of course not. You weren't here last week," Anna said a bit peevishly.

Last week Jacqui had gone to Brazil to visit her family, a belated graduation gift from the Perrys. She'd spent the week bonding with her grandmother in Sao Paulo and her family in Campinas, getting reacquainted with her younger brothers--

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whom, she thought sadly, she knew less about than Cody and William. It was great of the Perrys to pay for her ticket, but why was it that every time they did something nice for her, there was a catch?

Anna took out her bottle of Vicodin and popped two pills. She'd scheduled a C-section to deliver Eloise and then had liposuction and a tummy tuck (apparently standard procedure with Upper East Side deliveries), but that had been nine months ago and she was still hoovering painkillers. "The fact is, we're moving to London," Anna said crisply, taking a sip of water. "Kevin's opening up a branch of the law firm there, and we've got to move immediately. Some big trial or something to do with the royal family and Diana's butler." Anna closed the Vicodin container and rolled her eyes, although Jacqui knew there was nothing her employer liked better than to drop (clang!) such big names. "And we've been invited to Highgrove for some big dinner--you know, with the Prince of Wales." This time there was giggling to accompany the name-dropping. "It's tomorrow night. I wonder if Camilla is as much of a bowwow as she is in pictures?"

"Oh." Jacqui was startled. "London? Tomorrow?" "I know, it's a shock to me too, but Kevin's already found us the most darling little pad near Hyde Park." Anna finally noticed the rice cereal Eloise had been throwing and moved the bowl out of her reach. "It's next to Madonna and Guy!" (Clang! Clang!) She turned to face Jacqui again. "Be a dear and help me with the

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interviews--you know the kids so well, you can pick a good replacement, can't you?"

For a moment, Jacqui was too stunned to say anything. She froze, trying to process everything Anna had just said.

"I really am sorry, but it looks like we won't be needing you this summer after all, especially since we need someone who can stick out the whole year, and with you off to college and all . . ." Anna's shoulders rose in an exaggerated shrug, and she knit her eyebrows in concern. "But I hope this will cover it. . . ." She fished out an envelope from her red patent leather Jimmy Choo Ramona handbag and extended it toward Jacqui. "It's not for the whole three months--more like a severance."

Jacqui automatically stuck out her hand and took the envelope, mumbling, "Thank you." She stood there numbly, her arm still extended, unable to move.