The Owner's Secret Client Read online

  “It’s the last week, Dad,” she said, and Serenity put her head down and smothered the smile that threatened to get her fired before she’d even had a chance to work for this family.

  And she needed the job. Her family in France had been understanding when she’d explained about her mother’s illness and her desire to return to the United States to be with her. It was sheer dumb luck that Liam Addler had happened to put in his application for an au pair the day before that.

  Looking at him from underneath her lashes, and all of her cells screaming about his broad shoulders and good looks, she thought maybe it was fate. Destiny. Something romantic like that.

  She chased the thoughts away as he argued with his daughter. Even the sound of his voice, frustrated as it was, made her organs vibrate in a pleasant way.

  Serenity almost offered to just keep Kimmie, but she felt it would be a black mark against her to get into the thick of things between Liam and his kid. Carefully, as to not draw any attention to herself, she quickly moved back into the kitchen and started putting away the dishes she’d used to fill the house with smoke.

  At least she’d already learned something. Liam didn’t cook much. If he did, all that black stuff on the bottom of the oven would’ve been burned off by now.

  “Fine,” he finally said.

  Serenity turned at the same time he shot Kimmie a lasered look that could slice through steel. And yet the girl stood there, smiling as if nothing had happened. Serenity’s pulse, however, pounded in her throat as he came toward her.

  Touching him again would be a huge mistake, and yet her fingers twitched in anticipation. He was downright gorgeous, and the picture in his file had not done his strong jaw justice, nor the wavy quality of his hair.

  “Can she stay with you?” he asked, his tone perfectly polite now. “I realize I didn’t pay for you to start today, but I can call Heartland on my way over to the orchards.” He glanced at his phone. “I really am late for something, and hopefully I won’t be gone long.”

  Their eyes met, and the pulsing electricity between them would’ve brought her back from the dead. He could obviously feel it too, as something stormed in those deep ocean eyes.

  “That’s fine,” she said, her voice hardly her own.

  Several moments passed before he said, ‘Thank you.” He seemed to shake himself before walking away. He crouched down in front of Kimmie and spoke to her, his voice low. She looked right into his eyes and nodded.

  “Okay, Daddy,” she said, throwing her arms around his neck in a childlike hug. He held her for a few seconds, and then he went back out the front door without a backward glance at Serenity.

  The click of it sent Serenity into motion. “So,” she said. “Lunch first? And then you can give me the grand tour of this place.” Everything was easier with Liam out of the house, even talking.

  “Sure,” Kimmie said, and Serenity got the bread and cheese back out. She wouldn’t make anything smoke this time, because she’d used a pan for the grilled cheese sandwich.

  “Tell me all about you,” she said. “Name, age, favorite color, boy you have a crush on at school….” She grinned at Kimmie, who stared at her as if she had five horns growing out of her head.

  Then her face broke into a grin, and she giggled. Serenity laughed with her, glad she’d cracked the stoic child already. She started talking, and Serenity listened while she buttered bread and sliced cheese and got everything browning and melting.

  She may have missed a detail or two as she fantasized about Kimmie’s father. But fantasies were fine. Heartland didn’t have any rules against fantasizing.

  Serenity just couldn’t allow her imagination to ever become reality.

  “Your old nanny lived here?” Serenity gazed around the basement apartment, thinking she’d very much like to live there.

  “Yes,” Kimmie said. “Her name was Ella, but she was going to college or something. She left.”

  Serenity swung Kimmie’s hand between them as she moved through the living room in the basement. It wasn’t one of those dark, dank basements where everything is too low and too dark and made of cement.

  Oh, no. Liam Addler’s house had a walk-out basement, with plenty of light coming in through full-sized windows. The ceilings were still ten feet tall, and there were two bedrooms down here.

  She pulled in a breath and held it as she saw the natural light pouring in and hitting the wall. Her art studio should be in this room.

  But Heartland didn’t allow their au pairs to live on-site. She got a housing allowance, and they’d even gotten her an apartment since she was coming from overseas. Maybe she could ask Liam if she could put an art studio down here anyway. After all, Kimmie could paint with her, or watch a movie on the huge-screen television in the room right beside her.

  She’d already told Serenity how much she liked watching videos on her dad’s phone, and Serenity decided she’d just ask. All he could say was no.

  She had a feeling Liam said no a lot—but not to Kimmie. She wondered if she could get him to say yes to her too, because she’d really love to paint with that light coming through the window.

  That was all. She didn’t need any other yeses in her life. Oh, no, she did not.

  Her mind didn’t seem to be getting the messages from itself, because it kept looping through possibilities of a relationship with him.

  Don’t be ridiculous, she’d tell herself in one moment, and in the next, she’d wonder what it would be like to hold his hand.

  Anyone’s hand, really. Anyone over the age of eleven, at least. She held hands with a lot of children, but it simply wasn’t like touching a man that made her weak in the knees and clouded in the brain.

  After the house tour—Kimmie and her father both had bedrooms on the main level, and the second story of the house had another two bedrooms and a bathroom, all unused—she took Kimmie outside with her dog, Curly.

  The teeny tiny toy poodle seemed afraid of grass, no matter how earnestly Kimmie urged it to go potty. She eventually did, quickly stepping back to Kimmie, who scooped her up into her arms like a baby.

  “How old is Curly?” Serenity asked.

  “Three,” Kimmie said. “But that’s twenty-one in dog years.” She looked at Serenity with those big, brown eyes with more wisdom than a seven-year-old should have.

  “It sure is,” she said with a smile.

  “Do you have any pets?” Kimmie asked.

  “No,” Serenity said. “I just came from France, and we’re not allowed animals.”

  “France?” Kimmie’s eyes rounded. “I’m reading a book about France. Come see.”

  Instead of getting the neighborhood run-down of where all of Kimmie’s aunts and uncles and grandparents lived—apparently all the Addlers lived on this patch of land they farmed too—she laughed and followed an eager Kimmie back inside.

  It still smelled a bit charred. A bit like burnt rubber. But all of that was forgotten when she saw Liam standing at the island, a knife in his hand.

  He glanced up. “How was the afternoon?”

  Great, her brain told her vocal chords to say, but they remained silent. She watched him slice through a sandwich, cutting it from corner to corner, and lift it to his mouth.

  Lucky sandwich.

  He looked at her and lifted his eyebrows.

  “Good,” she blurted, a smile following. “Afternoon was great.”

  All she could hope for now was that her evening would be even better. And with Liam home so early, all signs pointed to yes, the evening had unlimited potential for greatness.

  Chapter Three

  The house held a charge it never had before, and Liam actually liked it. He felt alive for the first time since Heather had passed away. He wondered if Kimmie could feel it, but she scampered away from him and Serenity as if someone had lit her heels on fire.

  “Where’s she going?” he asked.

  “She has a book about France, I guess?” Serenity made it sound like a question.


  Liam nodded. “Oh, yeah, my parents brought it back for her. They went on vacation there last year.” He concentrated very hard on the cucumbers in front of him. After all, he needed all of his fingertips, but Serenity’s sweet perfume had already infiltrated his house. His senses rioted as she moved closer and sat at the bar.

  Normal. Totally normal. Ella had joined them for dinner almost every evening. Of course, she’d lived in the basement too. Serenity didn’t, and he seized onto the conversation topic so he wouldn’t be the father who brought awkwardness wherever he went.

  “Did you get moved into your place okay?” he asked, glancing up at her. She really was beautiful, seemingly so much older than he knew she was.

  “Yeah.” She sighed. “I mean, I didn’t have much.”

  “You’ve been living in France for three years, right?” He lopped off the ends of another cucumber as Kimmie came skipping back into the room.

  “Yes,” Serenity said, steadying the barstool so Kimmie could climb up onto it.

  “Are those for me, Daddy?’ she asked.

  “Yes, bug. Show us your book.” He worked on the cucumbers, making them into “boats” by cutting them in half the long way, and then into quarters. Once they resembled potato logs, he pulled out the ranch dressing and slid everything toward his daughter.

  She showed Serenity the book his parents had brought her, and Liam couldn’t help smiling. She’d been worried about Serenity being nice, but from what Liam could see, they’d already become best friends.

  Serenity pointed to things and asked questions, and Kimmie answered them all as if she herself had been to France to research this children’s book about the landmarks.

  Kimmie finished talking and started eating, and Serenity’s gaze wandered back to Liam. He hadn’t looked away from her for more than a few seconds, and sudden heat blazed through his bloodstream.

  “Should we go over a few things?” he asked just to have something to say. Perhaps his insane feelings for this woman would calm down once they had all the paperwork in order. Once he reminded himself that she worked for him, and that she was one hundred percent off-limits.

  Of course, he knew all of that already, but the message wasn’t getting through to his heart.

  She followed him out of the kitchen and into the office situated at the front of the house. There were no doors on it, and he couldn’t remember the last time another human being had been in the room with him. Probably Ella, when he’d gone over her contract too.

  The desk took up the space in front of the large window, and on days when he had paperwork to do, he loved sitting there, sipping his coffee, and watching time pass. Not many people went down this lane, and only Sami lived past him. She went to work early, and he rarely saw her come home in the evening.

  She did, of course, but it was late, as she worked two jobs with her focus split between maintaining the public face of Sunshine Shores Orchards and Vacation Rentals and dealing with her boss at the cell phone tower company where she worked on client relations worldwide.

  Sami was smart, and technology-minded, and if Liam had a problem he needed to solve, he went straight next door to his sister.

  “Uh.” He looked around the office, realizing how messy it was. A couch waited opposite of his desk, but it was covered with stacks of folders and discarded shirts and ties. He scooped up an armful of them and threw them over the back of the couch in the living room, opposite of his office.

  “Is that okay?” Foolishness hit him hard, and he hated it. He reminded himself that he ran the biggest and most profitable cherry orchard and vacation rental in the state. “I think I have your paperwork here.”

  He moved around the desk, hoping he looked calm and confident. The surface of his desk was likewise littered, but Liam knew what every file and every paper was. So he easily plucked Serenity’s pink folder from among the chaos and went back around the front of the desk.

  He leaned into it and crossed his ankles. “Let’s see,” he said, as if he hadn’t looked at this paperwork yet. Of course he had. He’d known her name, age, future address, references, college education, all of it.

  “You’re from Forbidden Lake?” he asked, his eyes catching on something he’d noted last week when he’d learned he could get Serenity to start before school got out.

  “My mother lives here, sir,” she said, and wow, fireworks popped in his system when she called him sir. “She’s the reason I came back.”

  Liam closed the file. “She is?”

  “She’s been ill for a while,” she said. “But her breast cancer has progressed, and I wanted to be here with her….” She cleared her throat. “At the end.”

  Liam didn’t know what to say. His heart grew until it was too large for his chest. It labored to beat, the sound loud and gong-like in his ears. “My wife passed away from breast cancer,” he said, his voice only one step above a whisper.

  “I know, sir.” Her eyes met his, and he swore the lights flickered with the increased power.

  “You don’t need to call me sir,” he said.

  “What should I call you?”

  “Liam is fine,” he said.

  Surprise crossed her face, but she didn’t argue with him or say anything else.

  He tossed the pink folder onto the desk beside him. “My last nanny got two days and three nights off every week. She picked the days. I just need to know a week or so in advance so I can make arrangements with my staff and my workload. How does that sound?”

  “I get paid for up to forty-five hours of care per week,” she said. “Do you prefer me here early in the morning? Later at night?”

  Both, he wanted to say. “Why don’t you live with me?” he asked, realizing instantly how it sounded. “I mean, us. Why can’t you live downstairs the way Ella did? That way, it’ll be much easier for everyone.”

  “Our program—”

  “I’ll call the program director.” Liam pulled out his phone and navigated to Heartland’s number. The line rang, and a woman picked up. “Michelle Meyer, please,” he said, rounding the desk so he didn’t have to look into Serenity’s eyes while he spoke to her supervisor.

  “Liam,” Michelle said. “I sent Serenity over there early. Have you met her?”

  “Yes, she’s here,” he said. “We’re going over scheduling and whatnot.” That sounded really professional, as if he’d had countless au pairs before. “I’d love to have her stay in my basement, Michelle. My last nanny did, and it made things so much easier for me. For her. For Kimmie. My schedule changes so much, and it would save time too.”

  “Is it a separate apartment?”

  “Yes.”

  “Furnished?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d need to have someone come look at it. We could make it her approved housing, and you’d get paid for it.”

  “That wouldn’t be necessary,” he said, though he had done a bit of remodeling after Heather died so the basement was a functioning apartment—specifically to have a nanny live with him. Them. The two of them. “But I would like to get it done. When can you send someone to look at it?”

  “Let’s see….” She tapped on something on her end of the line, and then she said, “Tomorrow?”

  “Do I need to be home?” He thought of the two meetings he had in the morning, and the insecticide officer coming to show him some troubling finds in the orchards in the afternoon.

  “No, as long as we can get in.”

  “Great.” He turned back to Serenity, who watched him with those dark blue eyes. Almost gray. Maybe like the deepest part of the lake. He blinked, focused. “Serenity will be here to let someone in.”

  He hung up and said, “I wouldn’t get too settled in your place. They’re going to come inspect the apartment downstairs.” He sat down, taking his time to settle into his desk chair. “That way, if I need to run out early in the morning while Kimmie is asleep, you’ll be here.” He didn’t tell her that “run out” literally meant going running. “Or if I h
ave a late meeting, you can be here for that too.”

  “That sounds fine, Liam.”

  He flinched even as warmth filled him. He’d made a mistake. She definitely couldn’t call him Liam in that sexy voice.

  She smiled, and that certainly got his pulse hopping. “Do you mind if I teach Kimmie some French?”

  “Of course not.”

  “My host family in Paris always had room for me at dinner,” he said. “Is that acceptable here?”

  “I don’t see why not, though I’m not great in the kitchen.”

  “I can cook,” she said. “I did light housekeeping in Paris too. All the grocery shopping, and a few errands each week. Will that work for you?”

  “Yes,” he said through a too-narrow throat. “I want you to have time with your mom too.”

  Her eyes blazed, and he couldn’t tell if it was desire or anger. “Thank you. I appreciate that.” She drew in a deep breath. “I’m first aid certified, and I’d love to do things with Kimmie. Swimming lessons. Cooking. Art classes.”

  “It’s summer,” Liam said, standing. “I want her to have unstructured play time outside too.”

  “That’s fine,” Serenity said. “I’ll check with you on everything.”

  “Oh, that’s not necessary.” He felt on the outer edge of sanity. “If I didn’t trust you, you wouldn’t be here. Let me know if something costs money. I’ll pay for it.”

  She stood, somehow sensing this meeting was over. Liam needed to get her out of his space sooner rather than later. “I’ll make dinner tonight then.”

  “Let me know your schedule for the next couple of weeks,” he said. “I’m sure it’ll be fine, but I need to plan.”

  Serenity approached and shook his hand again. “Thanks, Liam.”

  Time stilled, and Liam couldn’t remember the last time his throat had gone dry because of a woman. He was probably just thirsty. He’d had a stressful talk with Charles about the check-in procedures, and he just needed a drink. He managed to nod, but somehow, for some reason he couldn’t name, he kept her hand in his and covered it with his other one.