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BELLA
23rdDecember
“Nanny Bella, do you think Santa will bring me everything on my list?”
I look up from where I’m wrapping my boss’ present, and regard six-year-old Ivy. She worries her lip.
“Well, you have been very good.” I’m lucky to be a nanny to such a lovely kid.
“I have!” she says in that earnest little voice. “I’ve really tried.”
“Did you tell your Uncle Lucas what you wanted?” I can’t even say my boss’ name aloud without my heart racing. He might be a scary, tattooed mafia boss, and overly demanding, but between how he is with his orphaned niece and his sheer silver-fox gorgeousness I can’t help my reaction to him.
Ivy’s eyebrows pinch together. “I don’t know if Uncle Lucas would like it.”
“There are many things your Uncle Lucas doesn’t like.” Amongst them, his nanny attempting to flirt with him. “But if he can, I’m sure he’ll tell Santa, and Santa can bring it for you?”
Ivy considers this with all the intent focus of a child. “Can I whisper it to you?”
Ope, this means I will be responsible for passing on this request to my boss.
“Of course,” I lie. “Though it would be better?—”
“I want a mommy and daddy,” she blurts out.
“Oh Ivy.” I stretch over the presents and gather her into my arms. I don’t even say anything about the pronunciation of mummy. Mr Knight grumbles that the books I read to her, and the children’s television we started to watch so she could know what was being discussed at school, is a bad influence, so I usually correct her when she uses an American word. But not now. This isn’t the moment. “I’m so sorry.”
She snuggles in and it hits me all over again how lucky I am. I’m an orphan too, but I landed on my feet. I have a great job, that’s well paid. A little girl cares for me, it’s Christmas, which is the best time of year.
I love a man who will never be mine. But I have a place in the world, and what more can a person ask for?
I shouldn’t feel lonely.
“There’s nothing Santa can do about that.” I spent my whole childhood asking for the same thing. “But your uncle loves you.”
“Sometimes he growls at me,” she says, peering up from my lap.
“I know.” Not as much as he growls at me. I sigh. “But he always comes to say goodnight, doesn’t he?”
Every evening, I put Ivy to bed, and at exactly twenty to seven Mr Knight tells her one story and kisses her goodnight. He turns out her light at seven o’clock. No later. No sooner. He reads to her and does all the voices, but it’s his own husky baritone that makes me swoon.
Honestly, everything about Lucas Knight makes my knees weak. He has permanent black stubble on his square jawline,like it grows out the moment he shaves. There are streaks of silver through his black hair, and it has a slight curl and falls over his forehead. I know most girls of my age wouldn’t be thirsty over a man with white in his hair, but it works perfectly on my boss, matching his eyes. And oh my god, his grey eyes. He has the longest black lashes that make his eyes pop. I swear he could be in mascara adverts and make even more billions than he has as a ruthless and deadly kingpin. Add that to the fact he towers above me—I think he’s at least six-foot-four—and has broad shoulders, yeah.
Definitely model material. Except for the tattoos, which are carefully concealed by the suits he always wears. But in the summer, we went to the beach for the weekend, and I saw his chest. I’ve basically never recovered. Beneath that neat facade, my boss hides muscles covered with black ink in swirling patterns, and a scatter of dark hair. He even has that V of muscle at his hips and the happy trail that points down to the place I had to look away from because I was blushing so hard.
I long to trace all those contours of his body. The hair, the muscles, the tattoos. And what makes it worse is that while I’m obsessed with how my boss looks, he never spares me a second glance.
In short, I don’t know who is more excited—me or Ivy—about the twenty minutes precisely that Mr Knight allows for the task of his niece’s bedtime.
Like a King’s Cross train, he runs exactly to time. He’ll sometimes have dinner with us too, and it’s impossible persuading Ivy to eat her vegetables on those days because her uncle eats so few greens, I’m surprised he doesn’t have scurvy.
I have stopped saying how much I love my veggies after I once said, “I love a big eggplant,” and he just looked at me, no hint of a smile, and replied, “We call it aubergine in London”.
No twinkle of amusement or shared look of acknowledgement of what that vegetable means in internet emoji. Nope. He really, really doesn’t want to flirt with me.Possiblybecause my jokes suck. But really, don’t powerful billionaires as attractive as him have a moral responsibility to give crumbs of hope to the pathetic, horny—if inexperienced—girls they turn into puddles of hormone every day?
Clearly not.
