Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 72648 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 363(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 242(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72648 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 363(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 242(@300wpm)
He raises an eyebrow. I probably crossed some professional lines, but I don’t care. I’m too psyched about the opportunity to explore more of my sexual boundaries with this enigmatic, gorgeous man. He merely smirks wryly before walking out the door.
CHAPTER 13
Declan
“Seriously, though… how are you feeling?” I ask Leonie for the third time this evening. The first two times she refused to answer, instead fawning in delight first over the bottle of wine I’d chosen, and next over the shrimp scampi she’d ordered.
She makes a low growling harrumph deep in her throat, a sound she always makes when she’s irritated with me. “Honestly, Dec,” she admonishes. “I’m doing great. Leave it alone.”
I settle back in my seat as she scoops a spoonful of crème brûlée into her mouth and sighs in delight. The woman could always eat a full-grown man under the table, and she usually held onto those delightful calories in her wide expanse of hips and plump bosom. She’s lost some weight over the last six months. It worries me, although she assures me it’s because she’s been extremely active lately, taking advantage of the warmer weather here in Nevada.
“You’d tell me if something were wrong, wouldn’t you?” I press.
She glares.
“Damn it, woman,” I growl at her. “I’m paying for a damn fine meal for you, the least you could do is answer my questions.”
“You watch your tone with me, mister,” she growls right back. “I’m still spry enough to take you over my knee.”
I roll my eyes. For the eighteen years she was my nanny, she never once raised a hand to me, but the same cannot be said of my parents. Of course, I don’t blame them. They sucked at parenting, and didn’t know how to deal with the least bit of disrespect or rebellion from a young boy. When they got easily frustrated, they would often lash out with a hard whack across my backside.
Not Leonie, though. She was smart, patient, and loving enough to attempt to redirect me first. That often succeeded, but if it didn’t, she just had a look she leveled my way that would make me snap to attention.
Then she’d say in her barely-there German accent, “I’m going to blister your butt, young man.”
It was always an empty promise. I knew it, and she knew I knew it. I’d reply rather cheekily, “Really?”
Her shoulders would sag, and she’d admit, “No. Not really.”
And that would make me laugh like a loon, and see what she did there? Totally redirected me.
Leonie Schmidt served the Blackwood family, having first been hired to raise my father and his two brothers. She’d stayed on and ended up as a nanny to my older sister, Marissa, and then me.
Sadly, her age—she claims it’s a youthful seventy-six—is a preventative now with Marissa’s children—who are three and six. At least that’s what Marissa says. My parents agree, so Leonie has been living out her golden years in a retirement community. I moved her to Vegas so she would be close to me. The little desert village she lives in keeps her active, but it has constant support and care if she needs it. Someone comes by to check on her daily, which is something I can’t often do, to make sure she’s okay. Still, she’s a responsibility I take seriously, given she’s my closest family member. Yes, I consider her family.
Despite her lifelong devoted service to the Blackwoods, they cut her loose without a backward glance once she was of no more use to them as a nanny. Granted, they gave her a generous severance and a healthy pension, but it was the quiet disconnect from our family that hurt her. Even after having raised them from babies and then their babies, they’d essentially turned her out in the cold and slammed the door in her face.
Not by me, though.
Never by me.
And when I move on from the Vegas resort to the next big project, wherever that may be, Leonie will come along with me.
“How are your parents?” Leonie asks, a diversionary tactic to move the questioning off herself.
The question bothers me deeply because my parents never ask about her. Neither does my sister, for that matter. But Leonie always wants Blackwood news, so I fill her with silly details that will make her happy, but which boil my blood because they mean nothing to my family.
I prattle on about my parents’ plan to take a winter holiday in Paris, where they own a luxury apartment, my sister serving on the boards of numerous charities, and her kids being well… spoiled the same way Marissa and I were.
Our meal ends, as it usually does, with Leonie getting a little drunk on wine. She becomes contemplative, and her worries come out. “You take such good care of me, Declan. You know you don’t have to.”