A moment later, the spell was broken and he went back to unloading more dishes as though nothing were amiss, scowling at some of the items he was pulling out, like a hairbrush and wooden spoons and a Barbie.
I chuckled, watching as his expression went from concerned to confused.
“Clearly these items had to be sanitized for whatever reason,” he said, putting the blonde beauty on the counter. “At least whoever put these in here had the good sense to place them on the top rack.”
“Sure,” I said like that made sense.
His grin, like he knew I was out of my depth, threw me off-balance. “Brann, I know this is all new for you. I read your file, after all, so please, know that I’ll help you find your footing here.”
“Footing?”
“With what you have to do,” he clarified, which didn’t help at all.
“What am I gonna do?”
He arched an eyebrow, and with his smile still in place, playful and sexy at the same time, I felt the flush of heat run over me. I took an inadvertent step forward, responding to what felt like an invitation into his space, a familiarity that at the same time was new but not, right before I stopped myself.
I never, ever, had this kind of reaction to anyone. It wasn’t me. I never reached toward anyone new. It had to be safe first. Locryn had to invite me over to his place for a beer and throw me up against his front door before he got a reaction out of me. In the course of the short five months that we’d been fucking, he must have said a million times, why didn’t I ever initiate anything? Why did I have to wait for him to kiss me, grab me, before I took over and held him down? Why couldn’t I put myself out there?
And I knew why. Half of it was the dread of being turned down, of not being wanted—which turned out to be warranted, in his case—but the rest had been plain old me being careful. In the Navy, I had sex when I was on leave and no other time. There was the fear of being outed, if anyone found out, but there were also actual safety concerns in countries where being gay could mean a jail sentence, or worse. I was always on my guard. Up until I took the first step into this man’s home.
“Are you all right?”
My gaze met his and I realized that there, in his kitchen, I felt utterly safe and secure and it was… overwhelming. I’d been all over the world, I’d been armed to the teeth, been the fuck buddy of a guy who would have actually killed anyone who tried to hurt me, and yet here, now, was where I felt grounded, like everything was solid under my feet?
What the hell was going on with me?
“Scared of what you’re going to do here?”
Again with that. “I don’t—what?”
He laughed, and normally that would have pissed me off, as though he were having fun at my expense, but I was so off-balance, off-center, that I just grinned like an idiot. He broke me, and I suspected he wasn’t even trying to.
“You know you’re the nanny, don’t you?”
“I—yeah. Sort of. I mean… in theory yes, but really, no.”
“Oh, that wasn’t confusing at all,” he said sarcastically.
“No, then. Firmly.”
“No?” He sounded skeptical, crossing his arms as he regarded me.
“Well, no, because I shouldn’t be.”
“And why is that?” Emery pressed me, the rakish arch to that eyebrow again making my stomach twitch. He was daring me to say something brilliant. “Do you hate kids?”
“What? No,” I said quickly, defensively. “Who hates kids? That’s nuts.”
“Then clearly I’m missing the issue.”
What was I supposed to say? “Okay, so I’ll tell you that I never really got to be a kid myself, so I don’t know how much help I can be.”
“And why weren’t you allowed to be a kid?” he asked, and I read the concern on his face and heard it in his voice.
My fault. I opened the door for that. I had no one to blame but myself. “It was just me and my dad after my mother died, and he drank some, so… I had to step up a bit.”
He nodded. “So you’re telling me that you grew up too fast.”
I had to think. “Yeah. No,” I said, finding it hard to commit to an answer. “Maybe.”
He was smiling at me again. “You speak in circles, did you know?”
“I maybe got that memo once or twice.”
Again with the gleaming eyes, like I was something special. It was a brand-new thing for me to have someone look at me like that, and I wanted it to go on and on and on.
“How old were you when your mother passed?”
“Two, I think.” I couldn’t remember. I had seen photos of her, had all of her and my father’s scrapbooks in storage, but at this point it was hard to separate my true memories from pictures I’d seen of the two of us.