Chapter 5

LAYLA

“You can’t be serious,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Because I’m Shelly’s sister.”

“So?”

“So, you hate my sister. You made it clear the boys will never know her, or have any contact with our family.”

“That was before I met you, Layla.”

“You’ve known me for, like, less than twenty-four hours.”

“I’m a pretty good judge of character,” he said. “The moment I heard you talking to the babies, I knew you were nothing like your sister.

“The nurse said you’ve been there every day since they were born. How many times did your sister visit? She had access right up until the paternity test came back and she signed away her rights.”

I stared past him at the glass barricade surrounding the terrace. It was like a sunroom with no roof. And who needed a balcony this big? Our entire double-wide would probably fit out there.

Was that a hot tub in the corner?

“How many times, Layla?” Briggs repeated.

“What?”

“How many times did your sister visit her children?”

“Never,” I whispered.

“And how many times did you visit them?”

“Every day.”

“Exactly!”

“That doesn’t mean I’m qualified to be their nanny.”

“You love them. They’re your flesh and blood. That makes you very qualified.”

“You already hired a nanny.”

“I need two.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think it’s a good idea, Briggs.”

“Okay,” he said, getting up from the lounger next to me. “Why don’t we go out to your place and get your stuff? We can talk more about this later.”

“I can’t stay here,” I protested.

“You can stay another night. You don’t have anywhere to go.”

“I have to work tomorrow.”

“Vlad will drive you and pick you up.”

***

I flopped down on the king-sized bed in Briggs’s guest room. Never in my life had I slept in such a comfortable bed.

Come to think of it, the only beds I’d ever slept in were the twin bed I’d had my whole life and the bottom bunk at my best friend’s house. Until she had to move away, because of my sister.

I shook my head. I couldn’t go there today. There were too many other more pressing thoughts whirling around in my brain. We were leaving in a few minutes to go pack up my belongings from the only home I had ever known.

I pulled out my phone and stared at Shelly’s name in my contacts. How could she forget to pay the rent for three months? I hit the call button and brought the phone up to my ear.

“What’s wrong, Layla?” she grumbled, picking up after several rings.

“Hello to you too,” I muttered.

She sighed into the phone, cursing under her breath. “Where are you? Frank was looking for you last night.”

“I’m staying with a friend.”

“Well, he broke into our house last night and did some serious damage.”

“That fucking asshole!” she yelled. “Where were you? Why’d you let him in?”

“I didn’t let him in, Shelly,” I explained with an exasperated sigh. “I wasn’t there. He ~broke~ in.”

“Why weren’t you home?”

“I was out.”

She laughed. “You don’t go out.”

“Shelly, why haven’t you paid the rent for the past three months?”

“Where did you get that idea from?”

“Mrs. Flaherty told me when she called to say she’s evicting us today.”

“What?!”

“Can you meet me there? I don’t know what you want from the house.”

“I can’t today.”

“Why?”

“I just can’t, Layla!” she barked. “Fuck.”

“What about all your stuff?”

“I’ll buy new stuff. There’s nothing there I want.”

“Okay. Whatever.”

“Do you have somewhere to crash?” she asked with a reluctant sigh.

“Yeah. I’ll start looking for a new place for us to live, but it’s not going to be easy to find one we can afford.”

“Uh, Layla?”

“Yeah?”

“I can’t live with you anymore. You’re twenty. I’m not responsible for you now.”

“I see.”

“Don’t be upset,” she whined. “I sorta got married, and my husband wants to fuck me on the kitchen table and stuff. So, we kinda need to live by ourselves.”

“You got married?!”

“Yeah. I met this great guy on the subway the other day. We got to talking, and I went back to his place. After we fucked, we went down to the courthouse and got hitched.”

“Aren’t you supposed to get married ~before~ you have sex?” As if that was the biggest concern about Shelly’s marriage.

She snorted. “Oh, Layla. You’re such a frigid stick in the mud. Are you sure you’re not adopted?”

“No, Shelly,” I snapped. “I have morals and self-respect.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“Nothing,” I muttered. “Never mind.”

“I gotta run, little sis,” she whispered. “Barry just pulled his cock out.” She hung up without even saying goodbye.

~Nice~.

I stared at my phone. What was I going to do? I had nowhere to go. I couldn’t afford to live by myself.

“You ready to go?”

I glanced up at Briggs. He was standing in the open doorway with his arms crossed, muscles bulging under his black T-shirt.

“Yeah,” I said, dragging myself off the bed with a heavy sigh.

“Is everything okay?”

“No.”

He walked over to me, placing his hands on my shoulders as he gazed down at me, concern etched on his face. “Talk to me.”

“I called Shelly.”

“How’d that go?”

“Worse than I expected.”

“What was her excuse for not paying the rent?”

“She didn’t even bother trying to make one. She was too busy insulting me and telling me I was on my own now. Oh, and she married some guy she just met.”

“She got married?”

“Yeppers.”

“Your sister is a train wreck.”

“You don’t even know half of it,” I sighed. “And now she’s abandoned me. She would never be nominated for the legal guardian of the year, but she kept a roof over my head and my belly fed for the past ten years.”

“I’m really sorry, Layla,” he said softly while his large fingers caressed my shoulders. “I wish you’d let me help you.”

“Does the nanny position include a place to live?” I asked, peeking up at him with a nervous giggle.

“Yes, it does.”

“I might be interested then.”

***

“Relax,” Briggs whispered when we turned into Dorset Meadows. “Vlad and I will be with you the whole time. That guy won’t get anywhere near you.”

“Thank you for coming with me,” I said.

“It’s no trouble at all, Layla.”

The front door was boarded up where the glass window used to be. I sucked in a breath when I saw the mess Frank had made. The kitchen chairs were broken in two, the table overturned.

It looked like he put his boot through the front of our television.

I wrinkled my nose, the strong smell of urine assaulting my senses. “Did he—?” I gasped when I saw the urine streaks on the walls.

“I’m gonna wait outside,” Vlad grumbled.

I glanced into Shelly’s room on my way down the hall. It was completely ransacked, bras and panties ripped to shreds and left on the bed and floor. The bedside lamp was smashed.

We had shared a bedroom until my mom died. After she passed, Shelly took all of her clothes to Value Village and moved into her room. Mom’s bed was still in there.

Shelly never bought a new one. We couldn’t afford it. And that mattress; how many men must have had sex and slept on it with my mom? How many had Shelly entertained in there? Hopefully, Mrs. Flaherty burned that mattress.

I shivered as I pulled the door closed. That bedroom didn’t hold any happy memories for me.

Nobody should learn about the birds and the bees the way I did, pulling my pillow over my head to drown out the grunts and groans, and the dirty dialogue that played out night after night.

My bedroom was in a similar state, the drawers open with my undergarments strewn about. At least he didn’t rip my bras in halves.

Bras are expensive, especially when you require a larger cup size. I’d have to wash everything when I got back to Briggs’s penthouse. I didn’t even want to think about Frank’s hands touching my underwear.

I hefted the empty Hermes suitcase onto my bed. Briggs had loaned it to me when I informed him that I didn’t own any luggage. It smelled like leather, cologne, and Briggs.

He had a very distinctive, manly scent. I thought it was his aftershave or his soap until I researched it and found an article that said men with high testosterone levels emit a distinctive odor that fertile females can detect.

Briggs definitely had lots of testosterone surging through his sexy body. But he was off-limits. I’d never had a boyfriend, nor was I looking for one.

Besides, Briggs Westinghouse was so ~beyond~ off-limits that it wasn’t even funny. Technically, he was my boss, now that I’d agreed to be his kids’ nanny.

Not to mention the fact that he was the father of my sister’s triplets. And he was also old enough to be ~my~ father!

I yanked open my closet door and started pulling clothes off hangers. Then I emptied my dresser drawers. My complete wardrobe barely filled half of the suitcase.

I picked up a framed photograph from my dresser, surprised Frank hadn’t smashed it. It was the only picture of all three of us together.

My eyes burned with unshed tears as I sank onto my bed. I wasn’t sad because I was leaving a home full of happy, childhood memories. I was sad because I couldn’t recall any. Because they didn’t exist.

“Hey!”

I glanced up to find Briggs leaning in the doorway. He had to duck to get into my bedroom.

“I’m just about done. Sorry for taking so long.”

“I didn’t come in here to rush you,” he said, his eyes landing on the picture frame clutched in my hands. “I came to make sure you were okay.”

“I’m fine.”

He lifted the suitcase onto the floor. “Is it okay if I sit?”

“Sure.”

He sat next to me, flinching when the mattress springs creaked loudly under his weight. “You look a lot like your mom,” he observed, studying the photo.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “She wouldn’t have been much older than me in this picture.”

“How old was she when she had your sister?”

“Fifteen.”

“Christ!” he shook his head.

“Yep. She was twenty-three when I was born. She had a few abortions before and after she had me.”

“That’s very sad. Why do you suppose she kept you?”

“She didn’t know she was pregnant until it was too late.”

“How do you know that?”

“Shelly told me.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Because I threw a fit in the doctor’s office when she dragged me there to get birth control pills.”

“How old were you?”

“Eleven.”

~“Eleven?!”~

“Yes.”

“Why on earth would an eleven-year-old girl need birth control pills?”

“I didn’t need them,” I sighed. “But my sister said she wasn’t taking any chances. The day I got my first period, she made the appointment. My mother did the same thing with her.”

“I’m sure she wanted you and your sister to have a better life than she did. I think most parents want that for their kids.”

“Maybe.”

“You guys look happy in that photo,” he said.

“I was just a baby. I was probably smiling because I had gas or something. My sister was only eight. Still too young to fully realize how shitty our lives were.

“And my twenty-three-year-old mother was most likely high. Either that, or she’d just fucked the photographer in the bathroom at the Sears Portrait Studio— That actually happened once.”

“Really?”

“Yep. Shelly told me mom left her alone with me after we got our picture taken with Santa one year. I was three, so Shelly would’ve been eleven. And it wasn’t the photographer that time. It was the mall Santa.”

His eyes widened in horror.

Why did I tell him all that stuff? He was probably having second thoughts about hiring me now. I was so stupid. I jumped off the bed and tossed the picture frame into the suitcase before zipping it up.

“Sorry,” I mumbled as I struggled to lift the suitcase. “I don’t know why I told you all that stuff. You don’t need me unloading all my emotional baggage on you. It won’t happen again.”

“It’s perfectly fine,” he said, taking the suitcase from me. “And you can talk to me about anything. Anytime. I mean it.”

“You’re my boss,” I reminded him. “It’s not appropriate.”

“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “You don’t officially start working for me until the babies come home, so until that time you’re a friend who is staying with me. How does that sound?”

I gazed up into his eyes, my heart fluttering like a baby bird trying to flap its wings for the first time. He stared back, his pupils darkening almost to black. There was nothing friendly about the electricity crackling between us.

He cleared his throat and grabbed the handle of my suitcase before ducking under the archway. I took one last look around my childhood bedroom before closing the door behind me.

“Bye, Mom,” I whispered as I walked past her bedroom for the last time, leaving our trailer and Dorset Meadows behind. It was time to start the next chapter of my life.