Nanny for the SEALs by Cassie Cole

22

Heather

So I was a flirt. Sue me.

I was having fun with the boys. They were easy to get along with. As much as I liked Rogan, there was a seriousness about him that never faded—even when we were together. I guess that came with authority. The weight of leadership on his shoulders.

But Brady was a goofball. And despite his quiet exterior, I was beginning to learn that Asher had a funny streak too. He didn’t joke around much, which made his deadpan jokes a thousand times funnier than if they had come from someone else.

They were also both extremely hot. That was a big factor. I happened to think that a guy’s personality was his most important quality… But sexy good looks had a charm of its own.

As I finished my second beer and retrieved a third, I knew I was going to have fun living here. For all its luxury, I was lonely back at the Four Seasons. Maurice usually worked at night and couldn’t hang out with me. My only other friend was Timmy the room service delivery boy, and I had a feeling he only liked me because I tipped fifty bucks on a twenty dollar bill. Being around these guys was a welcome change.

But there was still one big question I didn’t understand. And since Rogan wouldn’t answer it, I was hoping these guys would.

“All right, I need to get the full story,” I said. “What’s the deal with the kids?”

After sharing a few beers with them, I had learned that Asher had a way of running his fingers through his short blond hair when he was thinking. He did that now. “What do you mean?”

“You each have a six-year-old,” I said. “There aren’t any mothers in the picture. You raise them all together, and Cora calls the boys her brothers. What’s the story of how you guys ended up like this? And don’t brush it off the way Rogan keeps doing whenever I ask. I know it’s personal, but I am taking care of them all day. I’d like to understand the whole dynamic.”

Asher and Brady looked at each other. “It’s not too personal,” Asher said.

Brady nodded. “We just don’t ever really talk about it. Guess we take it for granted. It’s weird, huh?”

“It’s a little weird,” I agreed.

Asher twisted on the couch to face me. His knee brushed against my leg, which momentarily caused him to tense. He removed his wire-framed glasses—another gesture I had learned meant he was buying himself time to think—and placed them back on his nose.

“When we were in the SEALs,” he explained, “we had a few… close calls. Brushes with death, you might say. Our missions were getting riskier and riskier. Eventually we lost a teammate.”

“Mark Hopkins,” Brady said with a fond smile. “We called him Hoppy. He fucken hated that nickname.” He raised his beer. “Here’s to you, Hoppy.”

“To Hoppy,” Asher agreed.

I toasted with them and said, “I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine what it’s like to lose someone like that.”

“It was difficult,” Asher said diplomatically. “It made us face our own mortality. That’s not easy to do. Navy SEALs are, generally speaking, pretty cocky.”

“Speak for yourself,” Brady said. “I’m as humble as Mother Theresa.”

Asher ignored him. “Not long after Hoppy, we received new orders. The brass were giving us a month to grieve, and then we were getting shipped out on a longer deployment. This was back when ISIS was spreading faster than anyone could keep track of. Lots of rumors were going around. Everyone agreed it was going to be more dangerous than before.”

“Shit’s tough,” Brady said bluntly. “Lost a teammate, then sent back out. I’ll admit it: I was afraid to die.”

Asher nodded. “We all were. None of us had a family. We were single. If we died, we wouldn’t have any sort of legacy.” He sipped his beer. “So we decided to ensure we left something behind.”

“So you all went to the bar and knocked up the first woman you saw?” I asked.

Brady barked a laugh. “That was my idea. This guy talked me out of it.”

“We decided to try IVF,” Asher patiently explained. “It was difficult on short notice, but we found a surrogate who was willing to carry our eggs.”

“Really?” I asked.

Asher nodded. “It was quite expensive—both for the procedure, and to pay the surrogate fee. They implanted eighteen eggs. Six for each of us.”

“Eighteen?” I asked incredulously. “Like you’re playing skee-ball with her uterus?”

Brady shook his head. “Nah, that shit’s normal for IVF.”

“Even with eighteen implanted eggs, the odds of a successful implantation are quite low,” Asher said. “I believe we had slightly greater than a fifty-fifty chance.”

“All that money for a coin-flip,” Brady muttered. “Seems crazy, looking back on it. But you gotta understand we were desperate.”

“I get it,” I said, although I didn’t get it at all. I had never been in that situation, and God willing, I never would be.

Asher tried to sip his beer, found that it was empty, and then placed the can on the coffee table. “We made a pact before shipping out. Whoever survived the deployment would raise the child as their own. Since we used eighteen eggs fertilized by each of us, we wouldn’t know who the father was.”

“Could have done a blood test,” I pointed out.

“Didn’t want to.” Asher shrugged. “It didn’t matter. All we cared about was our brotherhood, and ensuring a piece of us lived on regardless of what transpired in Afghanistan.”

Brady cleared his throat. “As you can see, all three of us made it back alive.”

“Woah, spoilers!” I said.

“Got lucky with the IVF treatment, too,” Brady continued. “Were hoping for just one egg, but three ended up implanting. We returned home in time to see the triplets born.”

“It was a difficult situation,” Asher explained. “We had spent the entire deployment thinking we might die. Then, within a few weeks of returning home, we were fathers to triplets. We were all roommates, so we raised them together. It quickly became obvious which child was whose. No blood test was required.”

“Cora was the spitting image of Asher,” Brady said. “Fair-skinned, blonde hair, sapphire-blue eyes.”

“You sound like you have a crush on him.”

Brady barked a laugh. “He’s a pretty boy. No denying it.”

“He is,” I agreed with a smile. Asher’s cheeks darkened.

“Dustin was obviously mine,” Brady said, grinning like a proud father. “Same black curls, same attitude. Also, he cried whenever anyone else tried to hold him. I was the only one he was good with.”

Asher nodded. “Micah was more difficult. We were not sure until he grew older. But now we are certain. He has red hair and freckles like our surrogate, but otherwise he looks exactly like Rogan did when he was a child.”

“And here we are,” Brady said with finality. “Six years later, we’re still raising them together. They’re triplets, so it would’ve been fucked up to split them up. Ya know?”

I frowned. “That must be hard by yourselves. Without any help.”

“We’re not by ourselves,” Brady said. “We’ve got the three of us. Three’s more than two. Fifty percent more parents than a traditional couple. That’s just math, right Asher?”

“Three is indeed fifty percent more than two,” Asher said dryly.

Brady nodded as if he had agreed with him genuinely, rather than sarcastically. “Overall, it’s great. Only problem is how much we work. First few years getting the company off the ground, then expanding to other cities, and now running it all… The work never gets easier. And, uh, we’ve kind of slacked off with the parenting. Which explains their behavior.”

“It explains Micah’s and Dustin’s behavior,” Asher corrected.

Brady groaned and rolled his eyes. “Don’t act like you had anything to do with her quiet personality. It was a lucky coin flip, is all.”

I considered all of the information. It was a lot to take in. I couldn’t imagine believing that I would die, and then hiring a surrogate to keep my blood line going, just in case…

“I guess that explains why you’re all single,” I said. “It’s probably tough to date while raising three kids and running your own company.”

Asher and Brady shared a look.

“That’s part of it, sure,” Brady admitted.

“But really, we just have not found the right girl yet,” Asher said.

Brady scoffed. “Tough to find something you’re barely looking for, buddy.”

Asher looked taken aback. “What do you mean by that?”

“C’mon. When was the last time you went on a date? Or even checked out Tinder?”

“I don’t like dating apps. Too impersonal.”

I took the opportunity to check Asher out. He was ridiculously cute. With his glasses and his modesty and the way he shyly shrugged his shoulders before looking down at the ground. He was like a sexy clerk. I wanted him to lick me like a postage stamp.

“Besides,” Asher added, “it’s better to be selective than bang everyone I meet.”

Brady put his hands behind his head and grinned. “So what? I like playing the field. Seeing all my options. And physical relationships are easier to maintain than serious ones.”

That’s certainly true. I thought about what Rogan and I had been doing in the hotel room. Simple, sexy, and fun. Much easier than a real relationship.

“There’s a difference between playing the field,” Asher pointed out, “and being a man-whore.”

“Woah, low blow,” Brady replied. “Who says I’m a man-whore?”

Asher ignored him and leaned close enough to me that I could feel his breath on my arm. “Brady will do anything in bed. He’s lucky he’s a guy, because if he was a girl, he’d definitely get a reputation.”

“Aw, c’mon,” Brady said. “Why you gotta knock me down in front of the new nanny?”

I was nice and tipsy, which made it easier to push the issue. “So you’ll do anything, huh?”

Brady shrugged cheerfully. “Within reason.”

“What’s the wildest you’ve ever done? Like, an orgy?” I asked.

“Hah!” Brady replied. “Naw, nothing that crazy.”

“What about a threesome?”

That got their attention. I could feel Asher tensing next to me. Brady tried to keep a poker face, but he let out a nervous little chuckle.

“Yeah, a threesome…” Brady glanced at Asher, then back at me. “We have done that.”

That’s when I realized Asher’s fair skin had turned a new shade of crimson. I gawked at him.

“Both of you?”

“It was a long time ago,” Asher said, clearly embarrassed by the story. “We don’t need to discuss it.”

“Oh, we definitely need to discuss it,” I persisted. “What happened? How did it go?”

“It was a long time ago,” Brady explained, “back before the surrogate and the triplets. We were shipping out of Norfolk the next day, so I convinced Asher to come out to the bar with me. I was looking to get laid, and I found a girl who seemed willing. She liked the uniform.”

“You wore your Navy uniform to the bar?”

“Not our dress blues,” Brady replied. “Just the working uniform. And yeah, we wore it to the bar. Works every time. And on this girl? It really worked. She couldn’t get enough.”

“We don’t need to talk about it further,” Asher said curtly.

I looked sideways at him. “It must have been a bad threesome, then.”

Asher cleared his throat. “No. It was not bad. In fact, it was good.”

“Very good,” Brady agreed. “I’ll skip the juicy details in order to spare my friend’s tender feelings. But suffice to say, it was a wild night. Always said we should do it again.”

“We’re not kids anymore,” Asher said, sounding like a fifty-year-old rather than his actual age of thirty-two. “We have a family, now.”

“Who says single fathers can’t have threesomes? Use your imagination. We’ll go to the bar…”

While they argued, I found myself imagining it. I couldn’t help it. A girl straddling Brady’s lap, riding him steadily. Asher stood next to her in his crisp Navy uniform, holding the back of her head while she turned and sucked him off through the hole in his pants.

And then suddenly I was the girl being passed between them. Asher gazed down at me with lust in his eyes while I wrapped my lips around his tip, and Brady’s hands squeezed my ass and moved me up and down on him…

I shook off the thought, as tantalizing as it was.

I finished the rest of my drink and stood. “I’m going to get some sleep. It’s going to be a long day with the triplets tomorrow. Thanks for explaining the situation to me.”

They both mumbled goodnight, and I felt their eyes on my body as I walked down the hall to my room.