Good Boyfriend: A Love Story (The Bad Nanny Trilogy Book 2) Read online

  “We're going to see my brother and sister-in-law,” he says, surprising me. I turn back to look at Zayden in his purple wifebeater and black skinny jeans. He's paired his outfit with some crazy black leather combat boots indented with ghostly silhouettes and purple laces, the steel toe wicked sexy and badass.

  I think it's about time to develop my own style, so I don't feel like such a plain Jane next to him. He's so sure of who he is and how he likes to dress that it took him all of five minutes to pull that ensemble on his sleep dazed state this morning. I could budget five hours of my time to putting together an outfit and not look that good.

  “When did you decide that?” I ask, blinking at him and feeling a nervous flutter take over my belly. Since Zayden's parents are no longer here, meeting his brother's family is about as close to the awkward 'meet the parents' scenario as I'm going to get. That's a somewhat frightening prospect for day one of our new relationship. It feels like a tiny little sprout that's just popped its head above the dirt, tender and green and fragile.

  I don't want to step on it.

  “Um, about ten seconds ago?” he says, flashing me another award winning grin. He must practice those damn things in a mirror. “I saw their exit and decided what the hell. Besides, Rob's already called me like fifty times since last night, asking me to check in. He probably thinks I'm dead. I'll bet you fifty bucks that he called the sheriff's office in Las Vegas and asked them to do a welfare check on me.”

  “Since I don't know your brother, I think I'll politely decline. I don't have fifty bucks to bet anyway,” I say and Zayden chuckles, like we're not both dirt-poor and broke as hell. I feel a momentary wave of panic when I realize that I'm once again jobless, but I push it back for the time being. “Are you sure you just want to stop over there like this? Shouldn't we call first?”

  Zayden gives me a look like I'm crazy, turning into a more familiar part of town, one that I recognize from our Arts Alive date, when we stopped at his brother's duplex and he pierced my eyebrow. As exhausted as we were last night, Zayden made me sit on the fuzzy pink toilet seat cover downstairs so he could clean it for me.

  “Call first? Nah. My family's always been more of a casual, drop-in sort of group. Lemme guess: yours isn't?”

  “Not even close,” I say with a sigh, wondering what my parents are going to think of Zayden. Unfortunately, I have the teeniest tiniest little inkling that they might not be big fans of his. You'd think after everything Ingrid had done, they might cut me some slack for stepping up and filling her shoes, but I already know that's not going to be the case. Zay's over-the-top mannerisms might just give her a heart attack. “We'll have to make a dinner date out somewhere—probably at the Sea Grill—for them to meet you because they don't like strangers in their house …”

  Zayden's already chuckling, so I take my hand away and punch him in his sexy, tattooed muscular shoulder. The act thrills me more than I feel like it probably should.

  “Ass,” I say as I fold my arms over my chest and pretend like the sight of the duplex lined street isn't ratcheting up my anxiety. I've already met all the kids—actually, lived with all the kids for weeks—so this shouldn't be too hard, right? “What do they know about me?”

  “Only that I pulled a fast one on you and pretended to be a nanny, moved their children into a house with a screaming banshee woman, and licked your privates in the shower.”

  “What?!” I shriek as Zayden parks the Outback along the curb and opens the driver's side door. “Zayden?!” I scramble after him, tripping over a crack in the sidewalk and ending up in the tight band of his arms with an ooph. “You've never gone down on me in a shower,” I growl out but he just tosses his head back and laughs.

  “I know,” is his only response, and then he kisses me, shutting down my brain, killing all my logicality and problem-solving skills. That mouth is dangerous as hell. And I love it. Love it, love it, love it. “We'll remedy that soon enough.” Zay pulls back a few inches and presses his lips to my forehead. “Don't worry—they're gonna love you, Smarty-Pants.”

  “Zayden!” a voice booms from the front of the green and white duplex. The word is punctuated with a sea of yipping, skittering chihuahuas that burst from the front door and sprint past their master's legs to assault us. “Where the fuck have you been?”

  “Curse jar!” Kinzie shouts, shoving past the massive lumberjack form of her father and sprinting down the grass to us, breathing hard and staring up at our faces with giant, round eyes. “You came back,” she whispers, almost reverently. I think this is the most excited I've ever seen Zayden's eldest niece. Usually she's a little bit of a brat.

  “What happened to school today?” he asks, picking her up and giving her a hug that makes me melt. Seeing the colorful canvases of his arms embrace the girl with such genuine affection makes my biological clock start to tick. I promptly reach inside my chest, grab hold of it and pull out all the cogs. Sorry, but I'm getting my master's degree first.

  “Dad said we should stay home as a family today. He also said you'd probably been kidnapped by a Mexican drug cartel or turned into raw hamburger meat on some highway in the middle of the desert. I saw him cry two times this morning when he was checking his phone.”

  “Kinzie Roth!” the big man says, coming out of the house with … the distinct shine of tears in his green eyes? I guess the kid wasn't kidding. “What have your mother and I said about eavesdropping?”

  Kinzie rolls her eyes as Zayden sets her down, promptly wrapping her skinny arms around my legs.

  “Aunt Brooke, I missed you!” she says, decidedly ignoring her father's admonishment. Said father looks at me like who the hell is this crazy person that my daughter's hanging all over?

  “Hi,” I say stupidly, slightly intimidated by the giant muscular beast standing in front of me. His hair is as red as flame, with short unruly curls on the top of his head and a shaggy beard on his square chin. He's wearing an unbuttoned flannel shirt over a white wifebeater. Orange curly chest hair sticks out around the neckline and dots the backs of his giant hands.

  “Rob, this is Brooke Overland, my girlfriend,” Zayden says by way of introduction, chihuahuas hopping around him on their back legs. They look as excited to see him as Kinzie is. Clearly I'm not the only person here attracted to Zay's charismatic orbit. I mean, I knew that considering the dozens and dozens and dozens of ex-girlfriends.

  I try not to purse my lips at the thought.

  “Zayden,” Rob says dangerously, giving me a brief nod of his chin before turning his attention back to his brother. “Where the …” He pauses to look down at his daughter's expectant face for a moment. “Where the fudge were you last night? I asked you to check in with me, you son of a … Barbie. Mercedes and I were worried sick.”

  “Son of a Barbie!” Kinzie says, pressing a kiss to my tummy and then grabbing the littlest chihuahua, the one with the white spot on its head. She disappears up the front walkway, shouting for her mom.

  “I got about two hours out and realized I was in love with Brooke,” Zayden says, shrugging his shoulders and giving me a smoldering look that makes both me and Rob blush. Now there's a sight, a big dude that looks like he could be Paul Bunyan flushing profusely. Zay makes a little swirl in the air with a tattooed finger. “Sooooo … I turned my ass right around and drove back here to be with her.”

  Rob gives me another long, lingering look.

  “You're the one with the two little girls?” he asks me and I nod. “I want to apologize profusely for my brother's idiocy. What he did to you was wrong. He never should have lied like that.”

  “It's okay, really,” I say as Zayden rolls his eyes, looking for a surprising moment like his seven year old niece. “It was honestly more of a misunderstanding. He ended up being … exactly what I was looking for.”

  The words fall out in a rush, and I find myself turning a shade of red similar to the color of Rob's hair.

  “Aw, baby,” Zayden says, pulling me in close and wrapping me i
n a tight, warm hug. He kisses the crown of my head, the tenderness in the movement almost surprising in its intensity. I guess it shouldn't be, considering the way he holds me, makes love to me. But in public, in a totally non-sexual situation like this, it seems even more genuine.

  “Doesn't excuse your behavior. You had me and Mercedes worried sick. I just got off the phone with the Clark County Sheriff. They're planning on doing a welfare check at your condo today. Now I have to call them back and tell them my brother's just an inconsiderate asshole.”

  “Whoa, bro, you need to chill out,” Zay says, his voice taking on an edge that I've only heard once before—at the playground with that asshole 'boys will be boys' dad. Looks like Zayden and his brother might have some issues? “I'm sorry, alright? I was busy confessing my feelings to the love of my life.”

  “The love of your life?” Rob asks as I take a step back and we exchange another look. He stares at me for a moment and then sighs. “Although I don't appreciate the two of you having oral sex in the shower where my daughter could see—”

  “That never happened,” I insert, but Rob's not really listening, gesturing for us to follow him up to the house. And isn't there something wrong with that statement? In the shower where she could see? If you ask me, they need to teach Kinzie to stop picking locks.

  I decide to hold my tongue for the time being, if only to make peace with Zayden's family. As far as I know, they're all he has.

  “Although I don't appreciate that,” Rob repeats as he opens the front door for me, “All I've heard since I got back is how much fun the kids had with Uncle Zay and Aunt Brooke. Come on in and make yourselves comfortable. I'll grab some sodas.”

  “Oh, Zay!” a woman says, appearing at the top of the steps with the baby in her arms. “We were so worried. Where the hell have you been?” She comes down dressed in a loose white sweater with an asymmetrical neck and a pair of black leggings. Her curly brown hair has a small pink sucker stuck in it, but I decide it'd be rude to bring it up.

  The woman—Mercedes, I'm guessing—gives Zayden a giant one-armed hug and then turns to me. Flashing a sharp grin that actually reminds me quite a bit of her brother-in-law, she does the same to me.

  “You must be Aunt Brooke,” she says with a laugh, passing Sadie over to Zayden without a word and grabbing me by the hand. “Come on it and have a seat. I'm Mercedes, by the way. I just want to say thank you for taking such wonderful care of my brood while Rob and I were overseas.”

  “It was pretty much all Zayden,” I admit as Mercedes drags me into the couch and makes me sit on the cushion directly beneath the shelf with all the chihuahua statues on it. I feel a little guilty all of a sudden for having really fantastic sex in her downstairs bathroom, but I guess what she doesn't know won't hurt her, right?

  Mercedes finally notices the candy in her hair and sighs, reaching up and doing her best to extract it. I cringe at the sound of snapping strands. I didn't grow my hair out this long just to have split ends; I take pretty damn good care of it. And having ass length hair … it's no easy feat. Sometimes I'm tempted to cut it all off, make a fresh start.

  But now that Zayden's staying in town … I sort of want him to keep pulling it during sex.

  I adjust myself on the cushion as Zayden flops down right next to me, draping his legs over my lap like we've been dating for years instead of mere hours. But that's one of the things I like about him, how loose and easygoing he is, how relaxed. LIVE EASY. I can't think of a single other phrase that Zayden could've tattooed on his knuckles that would've explained his personality so thoroughly and succinctly.

  “So, I need to know: what the fudge is going on here?” Mercedes asks as she hands the hair-covered lollipop to her husband and takes a frosty can of soda in its place. Rob offers me a choice between a store-brand cola and a flavored carbonated water. I choose the cola and pop the top with a snap and a hiss of bubbles.

  “I decided to follow my heart,” Zayden says with a slight smirk, bouncing the giggling baby on his knee as I hear the faint screech of the twins from upstairs. We exchange a look over her head, a thousand unsaid words dangling between us. Last night and today, it's all been a whirlwind. We need a quiet dinner out or something to talk. “I got two hours out and turned right back around to confess my love to Brooke.”

  I raise my eyebrows at Zayden's frankness, but then I notice Rob's blushing again and smile. It's nice to know I'm not the only person in here that isn't exactly comfortable blurting stuff out at random.

  Zayden frowns as Rob gives him the sparkling water, and sets it aside on the cluttered coffee table, taking the cola from my hands and chugging a few gulps. It's half-empty when I get it back, but I smile anyway.

  “I'm moving back to Eureka for a while,” he says and Mercedes squeals, leaning over my lap to give him and the baby a double hug. “I'm going to post my condo on Airbnb and rent that shit to overpaying tourists.”

  “Oh my God,” Mercedes says as she leans back, the smell of fresh laundry detergent clinging to her clothes. She laces her long fingers together and then points two at Zayden. “You should rent the other half of the duplex.”

  “Uh,” Zayden starts, glancing over at me with his pierced brow raised in silent question.

  “It's perfect, don't you think? And maybe while you're looking for a job, you could help with the kids a little? We could give you a discount on the rent. Oh, Zay, you're going to love being up here. We can finally be a family again.”

  “I was actually thinking of living with Brooke,” he says, still looking at me, trying to judge my reaction. My pulse picks up, thundering so loud that I can hear it echoing around inside my head. Live with me? I guess I hadn't even thought about it. He's basically been living with me. The question is: do I want space for our new relationship to grow? Or am I too attached to the way we've been doing things? The thought of Zayden leaving at night and heading home to his own bed bothers me a little.

  You are such the clingy virgin, Brooke, I think as I take a big drink of my soda.

  “You should both move into the duplex then,” Mercedes says matter-of-factly. Meeting her and her husband has just made me realize how Zayden ended up here in the first place. They've very, um, forceful? “It's a three bedroom, two bathroom. You guys could fix it up however you wanted, paint the walls, plant a garden.”

  “It's a serious shit hole over there, you know that, right?” Zayden says as he passes a fussing Sadie over to her father. “That pot growing fuck left it a goddamn mess.”

  “First month's free if you clean it up?” Mercedes asks, turning her laced hands into a prayer position. “Please, Zay. You know how crazy it can get with all these munchkins running around. Rob works all the time, and I'm starting to go stir-crazy here; I'm ready to get back to work myself. Besides, we can't afford this place for long without a renter.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Zayden says, putting up a palm. “Put on the brakes there, Mercy. I just confessed my love to this girl last night. Are you trying to chase her off already? She's only twenty-two, you know.”

  “Twenty-two?!” Mercedes asks with two raised dark brows. “Oh, Zay.”

  Please don't mention the virginity thing, I think, giving him a look and a slight squeezing of his knee. It seems like any normal human being would know not to bring that up in front of polite company, but I would not put it past Zayden Roth to spill the beans.

  He notices me glaring at him and crooks his sensual mouth up in a smile, his body draped lazily against the arm of the couch like he thinks he's some sort of prince or something. Or god, maybe? It was you that said he was the God of Tattoos and Piercings, wasn't it?

  “Don't oh, Zay me,” he says, sitting up and pulling me into his lap so he can plant a kiss against the side of my neck. If I said it didn't affect me, I'd be lying. Even with Rob and Mercedes in the room, it feels good. Too good. I scoot away from him and cross my arms over my suddenly hard nipples. “Can we have a minute to go check the place out? A couple of days
to talk about it?”

  I watch as Zayden runs his hand over the shaved side of his head and lets out a long sigh.

  “I still have to figure out how to get my stuff. I'd ask Jude to box it up, but he's an idiot. He'd probably end up inviting a bunch of girls over to my place and having an orgy instead.”

  “Why don't you leave Brooke's girls with us for a few days? The two of you could take a little road trip together? It's the least we can do considering all you've done for us.”

  “I think we need a little time to, you know, process everything.”

  “Considering you met two weeks ago?” Rob inserts, drawing a glare and a sneer from Zayden. Wow. Yep. I was right; the brothers definitely have a few issues with each other.

  “If I remember correctly, you got Mercedes pregnant on your first date together.” Zay grins and rises to his feet, clapping his hands together. “Well, now you know I'm safe, definitely not abducted by human traffickers, so you can relax a little. No more tears, okay Rob?” Zay claps his brother on the back, getting a glare of his own in return.

  “Get back to us about the duplex by Monday,” he grumbles as Mercedes gives us dramatic hugs goodbye and deposits the key to the other unit in my palm. “Nice to meet you, Brooke.”

  He turns away and disappears around the corner into the small kitchen as we head back out the front door and close it quickly behind us.

  It's barely clicked into place before Zayden's let out a loud burst of laughter, turning around and lacing his hands behind his head as he looks at me with sea glass green eyes, the irises bright with a sparkle of mischief.

  “What?” I ask as Zay walks backward down the walkway for a few steps.

  “So? How was it?”

  “How was what?” I ask, glancing over my shoulder at the front door and the luscious pink flowers planted along the sidewalk. I think they're winter camellias, beautiful and in full bloom even in the cold, dreary gray weather. One of the downsides of living this close to the ocean is that it dictates all the seasons, drenching the coast in salty fog and brackish misty winds most of the year. One of the upsides is that it never snows, hardly even gets close to freezing. I really would like to plant a garden.