Nanny for the SEALs by Cassie Cole

10

Heather

Being in a suite at the Four Seasons made me feel like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.

Minus the hooker stuff, I mean.

As soon as the bellhop showed me the room and then left, I ran across the room and jumped onto the bed, landing flat on my face in the cloud-like sheets. After that I took a long soak in the tub. Maurice and I didn’t have a tub at the apartment—just a standing shower. I hadn’t had a good, long bath since I was back home in Texas.

Now I was wearing a lush bathrobe and relaxing in the sitting room—did I mention my suite had a sitting room?—while helping myself to mini-bar drinks and a fat room service steak.

Why not? HLS Security was footing the bill.

It had been a while since I treated myself to anything resembling luxury. Last Christmas I splurged on a spa treatment. That wiped out my bank account so thoroughly that I had to eat peanut butter sandwiches for two weeks, but it was worth it.

Staying here was even more enjoyable since it was free.

My phone rang around ten. It was Maurice. “How’s your date going?” I asked him.

“Better than ever. We’re getting ready to head home for drinks. But the only thing I intend to put in my mouth is him.”

I giggled.

“And thank you for giving me the apartment for the night. Are you crashing on Ashley’s futon? I definitely owe you one.”

“Actually, I’m not at Ashley’s. I’m at the Four Seasons.”

“The Four Seasons golf course? Did you set up a sleeping bag on the eighteenth green? Watch out, the sprinklers go off at four in the morning. Don’t ask me how I know that.”

“My room actually overlooks the golf course,” I said, going to the window. “I can see downtown in the distance, too.”

Maurice groaned. “What did I tell you about running up your credit card? The biggest mistake someone our age can make is getting into debt. It snowballs and snowballs until it’s so big you can never pay it down. Get your booty out of there before they charge your card!”

“Relax, I didn’t use a credit card. It’s all paid for, actually.”

“What’s happening right now?” Maurice asked. “Are you doing a bit? Are these lines from a script where you play someone who isn’t broke as hell?”

“I’ve had a busy day. It’s a long story. But it’s a good story. I’ll tell you the next time I see you.”

A knock came at my door.

“Oh! There’s the ice cream bar I ordered from room service.”

“Ice cream bar? Room service? Girl, you should switch with me. Let me and my date have the hotel room and you can stay in the apartment.”

“Nope!” I said cheerfully. “Trust me, after what I went through today, I earned this room. Hold on a second.”

The bathrobe I was wearing lacked pockets, so I put my phone down on the table and went to the door. But room service wasn’t who had knocked.

It was Rogan Holt. He stood outside the door with his hands in his jeans pockets.

“You’re not my ice cream bar,” I said.

A polite smile appeared on his chiseled face. “Mind if I come in?”

I nodded and went back into the room, with Rogan following close behind. I grabbed my phone off the table and said, “Maurice, I have to go. Enjoy the rest of your date.”

After I hung up, Rogan said, “Was that Maurice, the friend who likes all the dicks?”

I groaned. “That’s not fair. You drugged me. That’s why I said all of those things. You’re not allowed to throw it in my face afterward.”

“Just teasing you.” Rogan leaned against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest. “What happened was fucked up. I’ll admit it.” He gestured around the room. “Hopefully all of this makes up for it. Even if you don’t end up nannying for us, we’ll pay for you to stay here a full week. Anything to make things right.”

I had only expected to stay here a night. The thought of spending an entire week here left me feeling lighter than air. Suddenly I didn’t care about being abducted in the middle of the day and interrogated.

Yeah, I know. I’m shallow. Sue me.

Another knock came at the door. “That’s my ice cream bar!” I ran to the door and threw it open.

“Hi Miss Hart!” the delivery boy said as he wheeled a long room service cart into my room. On the cart were metal containers with three different flavors of ice cream, and another dozen bowls filled with various ice cream toppings: sprinkles, nuts, chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, chocolate syrup, caramel, whipped cream.

Rogan frowned as the cart rolled by him. “When you said ice cream bar, I pictured something hand held.”

“Don’t judge. I’ve had a busy day, and I worked up an appetite. This is Timmy, by the way. He’s the one who keeps bringing me all the goodies I order. We’ve become good friends over the past few hours.”

Timmy beamed. “Miss Hart is a really nice lady. And I’m not just saying that because she’s such a good tipper.”

One of Rogan’s chestnut-brown eyebrows rose. “Is she, now?”

“I sure am!” I said while accepting the room service receipt. “Let’s see. The ice cream bar was forty-two dollars. I think that deserves a fifty dollar tip.”

“That seems excessive,” Rogan replied, deadpan.

“Excessive? I don’t think it’s enough. The cart is really heavy. Let’s do a sixty dollar tip.” I wrote the number on the receipt and handed it back. “You’ve earned it, Timmy.”

He grinned from ear to ear, thanked me, and then left the room.

“Glad you’re getting your money’s worth,” Rogan told me. “On second thought, I’m not sure we can afford to keep you here all week.”

I lifted the lid on one of the ice cream flavors. “I’m sure it’s cheaper than being sued for wrongful imprisonment.”

Rogan smiled at that. “You’re not wrong.”

The ice cream was still too cold to scoop out, so I went back to the mini-bar and pulled out a bottle of white wine. “Want a drink?”

“Why not?” Rogan mused. “I’m paying for it.”

I refilled my glass, then poured Rogan one. He lowered himself into the couch in the sitting room. I chose the chair across from him, crossing one leg over the other to make sure the bathrobe stayed closed.

“I’m not just some poor girl who has never had a taste of luxury before,” I said. The alcohol was making me ramble, but I didn’t really care. “Back home in Texas, my family was firmly middle-class. Comfortable. But coming to Los Angeles was tough. They always show you the glamorous lifestyle. Lavish parties and expensive champagne and dresses that cost more than a new car. They never show you how tough it is to get to that point. Being an aspiring actor is rough, let me tell you. Maurice and I share a studio apartment.”

Rogan’s lip twitched with a smile. “Maurice, the one who likes all the dicks? That Maurice?”

I glared at him. “Bring that up again and I’ll pour everything in the mini-bar down the drain, just to run-up the bill.”

Rogan held his palms out in surrender. “Sharing a studio apartment is tough.”

“It is! The whole place is four hundred square feet. We have one window, but it doesn’t open. Our building used to have mice. Now we have rats. The rats killed all the mice. Oh, and we have about six seconds of hot water in the shower. I know you’re a guy, so you probably don’t have any idea how long it takes for a woman to wash her hair.”

Rogan sipped his wine. “Can’t say that I do.”

“We’ve shared this studio for three years. Working part-time, saving up as much money as we can to support our acting careers. We never get to treat ourselves.” I swept my arm across the hotel room. “It feels good to finally let loose and not worry about the money. That’s why we snuck into your suite at the Lakers game.”

Rogan rested an arm across the back of the couch, which made his bicep bulge within his T-shirt. “I thought you snuck into the suite because, and I quote, fuck rich people, end-quote.”

“That too,” I admitted. “But mostly it was because we wanted to experience what our lives could be when we finally break out. After three years, I needed a reminder. I’m just so exhausted.”

Rogan nodded. “I can sympathize. It can be tough struggling through the shit, roughing it and holding out hope that things will get better.”

I grunted. “When have you ever roughed it?”

“Afghanistan.”

I blinked. “Oh.”

“We were in the SEALs for six years,” he said. “Training was a bitch. Our actual deployments were even rougher. One time, our evac site was overrun by hostiles and we had to trek eighty miles to the Pakistan border. That was a long week.”

“Isn’t Afghanistan land-locked? The Navy SEALs wouldn’t be there.”

Rogan stared back at me placidly. “That’s not how it works.”

Something in his tone, and in his eyes, told me not to challenge him. He was telling the truth, and would never lie about that kind of thing. I clamped my lips shut.

“No matter how tough it is to share a studio apartment, it still beats the hell out of sleeping in the desert with a thousand hostiles searching for you.”

“At least there aren’t rats in the desert,” I said with a smile. “Right?”

He returned the smile. “We had scorpions instead. And camel spiders. Don’t Google the latter. You’ll have nightmares.” He shuddered.

Spiders didn’t bother me, but I didn’t want any part of something that could make a man like Rogan shudder. I got up and checked the ice cream. It was nice and soft now.

“Okay, you win,” I said while fixing myself a bowl. “Being deployed to Afghanistan is worse than living in a tiny studio.”

“Deployments weren’t the only tough part,” he said. “Being home was just as bad. Maybe even worse.”

I made a face at him. “How so?”

He drank the rest of his wine, then grabbed the bottle. “Anticipation. See, our deployments weren’t like other branches of the military. Ours were always spur-of-the-moment. Zero warning. A phone call to pack our bags and get to base as soon as possible. My last deployment, I was six beers deep at a Dodgers playoff game when I got word. Had to rush home in the middle of the fifth inning. I sobered up real quick.”

Rogan shook his head. “That kind of thing wears on you. I was never able to relax because at any minute I could get that phone call.” He stared off at nothing. “It’s like waiting for a gun to go off. Your entire body is tense because you know the bang is coming. There’s no such thing as down-time. There’s only deployment, and waiting for deployment. Don’t get me wrong: I loved it. I was good at it. I’ve never felt so alive as I did when we were on a mission. But there’s only so much a guy’s nerves can take.”

He blinked as if remembering where he was, and who he was talking to. “Not trying to one-up your situation. This isn’t a pissing contest over who had it worse. But I understand going through hell while waiting for something better. It was a huge relief when we finally got discharged and started HLS Security.”

“Fuck, I bet,” I said.

He smirked and gestured with the wine bottle. “You’re going to have to watch your language when you’re nannying our kids.”

“If I nanny your kids,” I corrected. “Not when. I still find the idea of working for three guys who kidnapped me to be… strange.”

Rogan sighed. “We don’t normally operate like that. We’ve been desperate. Private security is a cut-throat business here in Los Angeles. Our competitors have been sabotaging us at every turn. Especially Jimmy Cardannon, over at Heimdall Security. When you showed up last night and started bashing our company, I was certain you were a plant. Still, it was wrong to do it. I know an apology is inadequate, but… I’m sorry.”

An apology was inadequate after what had happened, but it meant a lot coming from Rogan. It seemed heartfelt. I wanted to accept the apology.

“Think about your career,” he said, returning to the topic at hand. “You’ve been in this city three years, and you haven’t made any progress as an actor. You’re still unrepresented. Nanny for us for six months, and we can change all that. If it were me, I would take it.”

“You’re not me,” I muttered while eating the rest of my ice cream. “I still don’t understand why you want me. If you have all this cash to spend, then you could hire anyone in Los Angeles to do it. Hell, for what you’re paying me per month, you could probably clone Mary Poppins.”

“We’ve been through several nannies already,” Rogan replied simply. “The boys are a handful. We need someone who can put them in their place, get them in line. Last night in the suite? You yelled at everyone as if they were the intruders rather than you. I knew then and there you could handle our boys.”

“You make it sound like they’re the spawn of satan.”

“They very well might be demons,” Rogan chuckled. “Especially Dustin, Brady’s boy.”

“So is that why you came here?” I asked. “To wait until I was comfy and full of ice cream before convincing me to take the job?”

“No, I…” Rogan hesitated. He scratched a long finger against his jawline, tracing the hard lines of his face. “I came here to ask why you kissed me.”

I blinked at the sudden change of subject. I had forgotten all about the kiss thanks to all the other craziness that had happened since, but now the memory came flooding back to me. The way his lips felt against mine. The way his thigh ground between my legs. His fingers lacing into my hair and tightening possessively…

“I only kissed you because I was about to be caught,” I found myself saying. “I was trying to distract you so you wouldn’t notice the real Amirah Pratt had walked into the suite.”

Rogan’s dark eyes stared back at me. “It wasn’t because you’re attracted to me?”

“Nope,” I replied without hesitation. “Not even a little bit.”

A hint of a smile touched his lips. “That’s not what you said when we interrogated you today.”

I put down my ice cream bowl. “Not fair.”

“You said you wanted me to touch you,” he went on. “You wanted me to take off the restraints so we could, and I quote, get freaky.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “I was lying. I’m actually immune to that truth serum crap. I had to put on a show to make you think it was working.”

Rogan rubbed his jaw. “If you were lying about that, then maybe you were lying about working for one of our competitors.”

“You caught me. I’m a plant sent to infiltrate HLS Security. Does this mean you’re kicking me out of the hotel?”

Rogan stood up slowly. He was a big man, a physical presence without needing to say a word. He planted his hands on the armrests of my chair and leaned forward. Once again his delicious scent filled my nose, reminding me of the kiss in the suite.

“If you were a plant,” he said in a soft, yet deep, voice, “then I would need to interrogate you all over again. Rougher, this time.”

The sudden, unexpected flirting sent a naughty tingle throughout my body. We were in a hotel room. We had already kissed. And he knew I was lying, because I had enjoyed every second of our kiss last night, and Rogan was insanely attractive. He may have started out in the military, but he had a face that was made for Hollywood.

I wanted him. I wanted him desperately. And the smile on his face said that he knew it.

I bit my lip. “If you must torture me, then go ahead. Give me your worst. I can take it.”

Rogan’s smile deepened.