Caveman (Wild Men 1)

ollowed closely by three-year-old Cole.

What the hell am I doing here? How can I take care of them?

Love them, I hear a familiar voice in my mind and close my eyes in pain. Love them, Matt.

Of course I love them. They’re my heart’s blood. My own. There was never any doubt about that, not for me.

I shake my head, shake her voice loose, because she isn’t here, but I am.

And I won’t let myself sink into that bottomless black hole again. Not this time. I’m here to break with the past. To escape it once and for all. Remember who I was once.

I can feel it in my bones that it’s my last fucking chance…

“Jasper wants to talk to you first, face to face,” the guy on the phone tells me in a deep bass voice, “but I’ll be straight with you: the job is as good as yours already, and Jasper will pay extra to have you. Qualified mechanics are hard to come by around here.”

I blink. Didn’t expect to find a job so soon. This is good news, but I can’t find any joy in me, no matter how hard I search.

I also don’t know if I’m supposed to say anything in the stretching silence.

“All right,” the guy says finally, giving up on getting a reaction from me. Maybe he’s used to antisocial mechanics. “The shop opens at nine. Be here half an hour earlier.”

“Fine,” I mutter, just as a crash comes from upstairs.

My heart jolts. I drop the phone.

Fuck.

I stride to the stairs and take them two at a time, my fucking heart in my throat. “Mary! Cole!”

Cole is crying, and the sound twists something inside my chest, something that’s been twisted tight for years. Mary is shouting, but I can’t make out words as I pound up the last steps and run to their room.

I burst inside and stop, panting, when I see them both sitting on the floor, the shards of a mug and a dismembered doll between them.

Shaking my head, I bend over to catch my breath for a second. Fucking hell. We’ve only just arrived, and this is my second almost heart attack of the day.

And the day is still young.

One thing becomes clear to me as I crouch down to gather the jagged pieces of ceramic before either of them gets hurt—and where did they get the mug from?—to make sure they aren’t bleeding:

I need to find a nanny.

Chapter Two

Octavia

“He won’t give you the job, Tati,” my sister says. “No way, no how.”

“You don’t know that. Also, why are you here and not at school?”

I’m leaning against the post of the bus stop across from our house, dressed in a knee-length black dress and high-heeled pumps, my hair pulled back, my lipstick a sheer gloss. Not dressed to kill, but to land a job, a job my sister Gigi has decided I won’t get.

Well, gee, thanks for the vote of confidence, Little Sis.

“I’m getting a ride,” she says airily, waving a hand. Her nails are done a different color each, peeking from her black fingerless gloves, and I detect a new blue streak in her hair. Mom will have a fit.

“With whom?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” She bats her lashes at me.