The Billionaire's Christmas Cinderella

‘I generally stay between six and eight weeks with a new family before the permanent nanny takes over. I try to allocate four weeks between jobs, but it never really works out. Babies come early, as we saw today.’

‘Do you go home between jobs?’

‘No, I generally have a holiday. Sometimes if there’s a decent gap I might house-sit.’

‘Where’s home?’

‘The next job.’

‘So you’re a nomadic nanny.’

‘I guess.’ That made her laugh, she’d never really thought of describing it like that. ‘Yes.’

‘And you only look after newborns?’

She nodded.

‘That sounds like constant hard work.’

‘Oh, it is,’ Naomi agreed. ‘But I completely love it.’

Or she had.

Naomi didn’t share that with him, of course. She didn’t tell him that she was tired in a way she’d never been before. Not just from lack of sleep but from the constant motion of her lifestyle.

There was one slice of pizza left and both their hands reached for it at the same time.

‘Go ahead,’ Abe said.

‘No, we’ll share it.’

And when he tore it and there was one half a bit bigger, instead of not noticing, she looked at him until he tore a piece off the bigger half. ‘That’s fair now,’ Abe said.

‘Hmm.’

She was so full it shouldn’t matter, but she had never, ever tasted something so delicious, Naomi thought. Or was it the open fire keeping them warm as the snow fluttered outside the window, or was it adult company in the middle of the night that made it all so nice?

‘Do you ever have,’ Abe asked, ‘er, issues with the fathers?’

‘Gosh no.’ Naomi laughed. ‘I dress like this for work. I don’t think the mothers have anything to worry about.’

He begged to differ.

Scantily dressed Naomi wasn’t, but for Ethan there was no doubting her sensuality. It wasn’t just her curves or the very full mouth or ripple of dark hair and how it fell in her eyes, it was more subtle than that. Little things, like the way she covered herself when her robe gaped, and how she closed her eyes after each and every sip of cognac as she held it on her tongue for a moment, and the lick of her lips when she’d first glimpsed the pizza.

Yet, he mused, the mothers wouldn’t have anything to worry about.

She was nice.

Moral.

The sort you would trust your baby to.

And for Abe she had made this hellish night so much better.

‘Do you ever get asked to stay on?’ Abe asked.

‘All the time.’ Naomi nodded and then took the last bit of her pizza and he waited, watching the column of her pale throat as she swallowed, before asking another question.

‘And do you ever consider it?’

‘Never.’

‘Ever?’ he checked, for she sounded so adamant.

‘Never, ever.’

‘Why not?’

She looked into the fire and wondered how to answer him. Naomi never told her employers her real reason for declining.

She would never even consider staying on. In fact, it was stipulated in the terms of her employment that a permanent nanny be signed to take over before Naomi commenced her role. And should that fall through, it was specified that an agency be used, for she would not be extending her contract.

No matter how wonderful the terms or the family.

Actually, because of just that.

‘Why don’t you stay in one place?’ he asked again, and now he did probe, because suddenly Abe really wanted to know some more about her.

‘I guess because I’ve never stayed in one place for very long. We do what we’re used to, I suppose. Revert to type...’

But he shook his head at her excuses.

Abe wasn’t buying it.

‘Why?’ he asked again.

He was brilliant at maths, but she didn’t add up.

Abe wasn’t one for sitting talking by a fire, but she’d made him feel at ease, she made the place feel like a home, yet she chose not to have one for herself.

‘You want to know why?’ She looked at him then, blue eyes on black as they held the other’s gaze.

‘Yes.’

‘Because I’d fall in love with the family,’ Naomi said. ‘And then one day it would be time for me to leave.’

Her blue eyes were serious, and there was no trace of tears, which told him this was no revelation, she had known this about herself for a very long while.