The Billionaire's Nanny: A BWWM Romantic Comedy by Mia Caldwell

mom was a baby.” She has chosen her words carefully. I wonder what she almost said.
    I’d asked her about her accent when she first started caring for Maeve, so I knew the grandmother is in Atlanta. “What does she think of you taking this job, then?” I ask.
    Vanessa shrugs. “She’s okay with it, I think. Now.” She gives me a mischievous smile. “She doesn’t really trust you, though.”
    “Oh? Why is that?”
    “Because you hired a girl to take care of your baby after only seeing her wait tables. Badly.” She takes a big sip of the wine. "Why did you hire me? Just because you thought I was good with Maeve? Or is there something else?"
    She’s looking at me so directly. I feel like I have to tell her some of the truth at least. I smile. "It might have been an impulse decision partly spurred by attraction. BUT," I add, cutting her off, "I maintain that it was a good impulse because you have been very good at your job. How’s the wine?" I throw that last bit in there to steer the conversation another way. I’m pretty smooth.
    “It’s fine. Good, in fact, probably goes down too easily for my own good. So, you really never even taste it?”
    My smooth steering just yanking the conversation in another direction I don’t really want to go.
    “No, I don’t. I have a guy for that. Let’s just say that I liked booze a little too much for a little too long and I felt it was best to make a clean break. It hasn’t been very long, so it’s best if I stay cold turkey for now.”
    The usual awkward silence follows that pronouncement. Then Vanessa says, “So. How ’bout them…Mets? Is that a team here?”
    Silence broken, we laugh pretty hard. “No,” I say finally, “That’s New York. If you want to support Oakland, it’s the Athletics, and god help you. But if you support San Francisco, it’s the Giants.”
    “And that would be…baseball, right?”
    Surely she’s playing it up for comic effect, but I’ll take it over the alcoholism discussion. “Yes. Football is the Raiders and the 49ers. Basketball, locally, is the Warriors or, if you prefer an underdog, the Kings, And hockey, if you are so inclined, and I cannot imagine that you are, is the San Jose Sharks.”
    “Into sports, then are you?”
    “Not in the least. But if you’re a man in the business world, you’re expected to have a team and a working knowledge of most sports. When I lived in Boston, I decided to be a Red Sox and Pats fan and I paid an assistant to keep track of them and tell me all the game highlights so that I could say ‘Whoa, what about that 3rd quarter call last night?’ I’m like a parrot, though, only the barest idea what I’m actually saying.”
    This strikes Vanessa as hilarious and she has to set down her wine glass to keep from spilling it as she laughs. I feel like I just made a huge sale, or–I guess–scored the winning run.
    “So,” she says, wiping her eyes and picking up her glass again, “if you got to pick the topic, what would you talk about?”
    “Travel. Kayaking.”
    “Hey, I like to kayak! I’d love to travel some day, too. This wine has made me a little lightheaded, can we walk?”
    “Sure,” I say, rising and then offering her a hand. Her skin is so soft in mine and I realize I’ve never touched her. I let it go reluctantly. “Where would you like to travel?”
    “I’d love to go to Vietnam and Cambodia,” she says, as we stroll. “India sounds exciting.”
    “It is, I’ve spent quite a bit of time there. I really love it.”
    Vanessa’s hand brushes mine, probably by accident, but I take it. She doesn’t pull away.
    “You were in India for the textile mills?” she asks.
    "Yes. I went over expecting to move our operation back to the US. A lot of companies were riding the Made in America wave, moving their factories to South Carolina. But after working with the people a while, I realized that to move the mill would devastate their village. So I stayed and tried to improve