Nanny for the SEALs by Cassie Cole

9

Asher

“She’s never going to go for it,” Brady argued.

“You don’t know that,” Rogan replied.

Rogan was driving our Chevy Tahoe, and Brady was in the passenger seat. I was in the next row of seats, staring out the window and thinking about what had just happened.

Thinking about Heather.

We had called an Uber to take her back to her apartment, then over to the Four Seasons hotel, like she had requested. The three of us were heading home to deal with our kids. We had to beg Patty to watch them, and in the end she had agreed to stay there for an hour.

But we had been gone closer to two. I could only imagine what kind of trouble Micah and Dustin could cause in that time.

“I thought you liked Heather for the job,” Rogan said. “You said she was perfect.”

Brady bobbed his head. “She is perfect. She’s feisty. If anyone can handle the boys, it’s her. But that doesn’t mean she’ll take the job. We fucken kidnapped her. She’s the kind of girl who takes that personally.”

Who wouldn’t take that personally? I thought to myself.

“It would have been fine if you didn’t open your mouth,” Rogan argued. He mimicked Brady’s New England drawl and added, “She’s, like, wicked fucken smaht to notice that.”

For once, Brady didn’t have a response.

Rogan merged lanes and set the cruise control. “The offer is a good one. We’re paying her a lot. She won’t turn that down.”

“She will if she thinks she can sue us for more.”

Rogan shook his head. “I don’t think she will. And if she does, then we’ll settle. That’s why we have insurance.”

Most insurance companies didn’t cover the kind of thing we did. We had to use a company in Switzerland that shielded itself in dozens of layers of shell companies. The premiums were high, but it turns out kidnapping could be insured. If we needed to pay Heather Hart a settlement, we would be fine.

“I don’t care about any settlement. I care about the boys. Who’s going to nanny them if Heather says no?”

“She isn’t going to turn down the offer,” I said.

Both of my partners twisted with surprise. They had a habit of forgetting I was there when they were arguing.

“Why do you think that?” Brady asked.

“Because Heather needs a challenge,” I said.

Brady’s face twisted skeptically. “How the fuck do you know that?”

“Because I don’t just talk. I listen, too.”

“He’s got you there,” Rogan said.

Brady laughed. “Well then listen here. I come from a long line of talkers. To my family, it’s the same as breathing. Why do you think she needs a challenge?”

I thought back to all the research I had done last night. After Heather and her friend infiltrated our suite, I used facial-recognition software from the suite cameras to match her against a worldwide database of social media photos. From there I harvested all her social media accounts, her address, and the rest of her history. It was the same sort of scan we did on anyone who seemed like a threat to one of our clients.

Eugene Howard’s acting class had its records shared on a cloud drive, which was easy to hack into. Easy for someone like me, at least. Then I looked up Heather’s high school record, including notes from her teachers.

From Mrs. Wall the kindergarten teacher all the way up to Eugene Howard the acting coach, every teacher Heather ever had agreed on one thing: she needed to be challenged. Otherwise she got bored of the subject. But if presented with an obstacle, or a difficult puzzle, she wouldn’t be able to stay away.

And that’s exactly what Micah and Dustin were: a nannying challenge.

“She’ll take the job because she wants the challenge,” I said. “Trust me.”

“You wanna bet on it?” Brady asked, lips curling into a big smile.

“I don’t wager.”

“Must not be confident in your analysis then…” he teased.

I only smiled to myself. I was quite confident.

“Speaking of confidence,” I said, “what was Heather referring to during the interrogation?”

“Which part?” Rogan asked.

“The part about kissing you last night.”

I knew Rogan better than I knew my own family. Heck, he was family to me. Years spent together on deployment had a way of forming a connection, and we’d had enough trouble and close calls to last a lifetime.

So when Rogan’s knuckles gripped the steering wheel a little bit harder, and the side of his cheek tightened as he clenched his jaw, I had my answer.

“Oh yeah!” Brady said. “I forgot all about that.”

“She was just rambling,” Rogan said.

“I don’t need sodium thiopental to know you’re lying,” I said.

“When did you two find time to make out?” Brady asked.

“We didn’t make out,” he replied curtly. “It was in the bathroom inside the suite. She ran inside and bumped into me. I caught her before she fell. Then she kissed me. End of story.”

“My ass that’s the end of story,” Brady said. “Was it good? Did you cop a feel? Was there tongue?”

“I’m not having this discussion right now.”

Brady went right on talking. “Because that dress she was wearing last night? Oh baby. If I was a casting director, I’d give her whatever part she wants.”

“Calm down there, Harvey Weinstein,” Rogan said.

That shut Brady up real quick. “I didn’t mean it like that. Geez.”

“What happened last night doesn’t matter,” Rogan went on. He was addressing the entire car, me included. “The important thing is that we need her to be our nanny. We can’t flirt with her, or fool around with her, or do anything else that might jeopardize that. We need someone to get our kids under control.”

Your kids, I thought. Cora was the easy one. She was a voracious reader, and just sat in the corner with her books all day. It was the boys who were constantly getting into trouble.

But Rogan’s core argument was correct. We desperately needed someone to watch the children so we could focus on our security company.

Which was difficult because of how beautiful Heather Hart was.

Obviously I could keep it in my pants, so to speak. I wasn’t an animal. But Brady was another story entirely. Despite being the eldest of us at thirty-one, he had the willpower of an untrained puppy. Wave a treat in his face and he’d follow you off a cliff.

And a woman as gorgeous and charming as Heather was more alluring than any treat.

I was somewhat worried about Rogan as well. The fact that he had kissed her was surprising. Rogan was the Commanding Officer (an O-5) of our SEAL team, with an instinct for how to handle certain situations. He knew what to do and what not to do. Heather was never a potential client of ours because she wasn’t the real Amirah Pratt, but Rogan had thought she was at the time. And he had kissed her anyway.

I made a mental note to discuss it with him later.

We pulled up to the converted warehouse that served as the HQ and base of operations for our security company. The second floor, however, had been converted into a loft-style condo. We went upstairs and opened the front door. Shouts and squeals of excitement immediately drifted through the doorway.

Patty, who was Brady’s sister, immediately jumped up from the couch and grabbed her purse. She already had her shoes on, like she had been waiting for us. Her black hair was a mess, with what looked like the remains of a melted crayon above her ear.

“They’re your problem, now,” she grumbled, shoving past us.

“Thanks, sis,” Brady called as she ran downstairs to her car.

Rogan looked around the living room and sighed. Coloring books were scattered everywhere, with pages torn out and crumpled up. It looked like the boys had gotten into a paper ball fight.

And based on the sounds coming from the next room? It was still in progress.

“I hope Heather accepts the job,” Rogan said.

Brady nodded. “From your lips to God’s ears.”

Rogan’s phone rang. He answered it, said a few words, then hung up. He blinked in surprise.

“That was Amirah Pratt’s agent. She wants to hire us.”

“Even after the embarrassment at the suite?” I asked.

Rogan nodded. “Apparently she got another death threat. She wants a security detail covering her at all public events.”

“You see?” Brady said, smacking me and Rogan on the back. “Sometimes things work out.”