CHAPTER 1
Lexi
Everyone had their price. It turned out that Lexi Wellington’s was ten thousand. Ten thousand dollars for two days of babysitting wasn’t bad. It worked out to a little over two hundred and eight dollars an hour. Well over the thirty-two dollars an hour she was making as a receptionist to the biggest jerk in Seattle.
Curtis James wasn’t just Seattle’s most eligible bachelor. He was the head of a multi-billion-dollar corporation that made and sold kitchen implements of all things. She’d grown up with the James name in her household. Actually, three generations had because that’s how old the company was. Broderick James started the whole thing with a hundred-dollar loan and his incredible ingenuity in his garage after his wife complained about her hand-held cake mixer. Patrick James continued his father’s legacy, expanding at an incredible rate, mass producing, and taking the company global. Curtis James got to inherit the whole dang empire when his father retired.
Just like most entitled, trust-fund brats, Curtis James did absolutely nothing with his life. His friends called him Curt, but Lexi wasn’t one of his friends. She used to call him, at least in her mind, The Big D, which stood for The Big Douchebag, but then she finally realized what else it could stand for- and she certainly DID NOT know anything about him having a big D- she knocked that right off. She settled instead for TFB, Trust Fund Baby, only in her head of course. It was apt, seeing as he rarely showed up at the office and on days that he did, it was to bark orders in meetings and shit all over everyone’s happiness and no- he didn’t shit rainbows and glitter. More the real, gross, nasty kind of shit that no one ever wanted to smell, step in, deal with, or clean up.
Most of the time she didn’t mind her job. It was those rare moments, the ten percent of the time, when she actually had to deal with the TFB, that she would rather stick a fork in her eye repeatedly and viciously, than show up to work.
How she let James talk her into her current predicament was beyond her. Oh right. He actually used the word please, probably for the first time in his spoiled, shallow existence, and sweetened the pot with ten thousand dollars- after taxes- if she was willing to show up at his house at seven on a Friday night and stay until four on Sunday.
And no. None of James’ anatomy was involved in the bargain. She might be his executive assistant. She might have sandy blonde hair and be okay in the looks department as far as she was concerned. She might even wear the occasional pencil skirt and pair it with high heels because she liked to show up to work looking at least semi-professional, but no. She wasn’t a cliché. She wasn’t going to her boss’ house to gamble on her career. She was there to do what The TFB viewed as the impossible: babysit his niece and nephew for the weekend.
Unfortunately, Curtis James would be there as well. Duh. They were his sister’s kids and for some crazy reason- which he hadn’t fully explained when he called her into his office mid-week to ask her to save his sorry non-rainbow shitting hide- he’d agreed to look after them for the weekend. He’d debriefed her quick. Given her his usual to the point, asshole list, rattled off like he was reading from some actual bullet pointed paper he’d committed to memory.
Curtis hated kids. He also made it clear he would never have kids of his own. But he had a sister and apparently, she didn’t hate kids. And unfortunately for him, she’d decided to go and have her own kids. And now, she and her husband wanted to go away for the weekend. When Lexi asked why he’d agreed just like that to be the “sacrificial lamb” here, the TFB said that his sister actually begged, pleaded and even produced actual tears until he agreed to look after her kids. And that she didn’t trust a babysitter.
He also emphasized to her several times over how much he actually loathed children. Especially the four and two year old variety. He was in deep shit (that was implied, he didn’t actually say it). Would she be willing to help him for the weekend?
And Lexi wasn’t like Curtis James at all. She actually loved kids. At twenty-seven, she wasn’t exactly ready for her own yet, but she was actually pretty okay with babysitting not that she had had much chance to do that for the past couple of years. Her brother and sister, both younger, also weren’t ready for settling down and starting families and most of her friends were either single or just getting into that committed stage and didn’t have kids either. But she had done her fair share of babysitting when she was in high school, so she had some experience and was more than ready.