Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 81150 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81150 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
The sexy yet moody federal agent could secure the attention of any woman when he enters a room, but he only has eyes for one.
His almost six-year-old daughter, Lucy.
She’s the apple of his eye.
His reason to breathe.
And his recently recruited nanny’s biggest ally.
***
After a taxing few years, convincing an age-discriminating single father to hire a ‘less experienced’ nanny should be a walk in the park for Henley.
She’s stubborn, beautiful, and harboring more secrets than a lack of nannying credentials.
But since she is running from the past, she’s forgotten that the biggest dangers only ever present when unexpected feelings develop.
***
Nanny Dispute is a brand-new standalone age-gap romantic suspense by bestselling author Shandi Boyes. It can be read as a standalone.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
1
BRODIE
“Desk duty.”
As I thump the steering wheel of my truck with my fist, Lucy’s glistening eyes lift to mine. I grin at her before making out my angry bump is merely me grooving along to the latest pop group coming out of Ravenshoe.
My last assignment before eighteen months of rehab after being injured on the job gifted me more “cool creds” with my daughter than I am used to. It gave me direct access to the number one band in the country and saw Lucy looking at me with more value than most single fathers get.
When Lucy’s attention returns to the Spotify app on my phone, I direct my focus back to Thane, my once brother-in-law and now regular sounding board. “Sixteen years I’ve given them, and they put me on f’ing desk duty. The movement of my arm is back to full capacity. There’s not even a twinge of pain when I rotate it.”
I grind through my lie while circling my left shoulder to back up my claim like Thane isn’t on speakerphone. I got shot in the line of duty. My torso absorbed and disregarded the bullets like a pro, but an intern’s bad patch-up of the exit wounds has been the biggest obstacle to my recovery.
Occasionally, I still get stuck removing my undershirt, and although rehab has drastically improved the range of movement in my upper body, I face issues any time I lift my left arm above my head.
I didn’t tell the director that, yet I’m still scheduled for desk duty three weeks from Monday.
“I told you, man, all the money is in the private security sector now anyway.” I pfft at Thane when he says, “I’m sure Million-Dollar Marcus would give you a position quicker than a backhanded clit slap.”
I glare at the dashboard of my truck when Lucy asks, “What’s a clit slap?”
With his maturity as low as his IQ, Thane starts to explain, “A clit slap is when Uncle Thane’s girlfriends don’t—”
“Is the name of Uncle Thane’s new cat,” I interrupt before he can scar my daughter more than losing her mother when she was only six months old.
For the first time in months, the shimmer in Lucy’s eyes is from something more than sadness. “You got a cat?” She bounds out of her seat to get up close and personal with the speaker booming out her favorite uncle’s voice. Their bond makes me feel like shit that I tried to block Caroline’s family from having direct access to Lucy five years ago, but I was grieving and not in the right headspace to realize she is as much theirs as she is mine.
We all make mistakes.
Lucy takes Thane’s wheezy laugh as confirmation he got a new pet. Thane is my late wife’s youngest brother. He is twenty-five, lives the life of a bachelor even while shacked up at his parents’ mega mansion, and is clueless on how an almost six-year-old’s brain works.
He often puts me in a pickle.
Today isn’t any different.
“Can we come pet it?” Lucy’s eyes are on me, pleading and begging. “Please, Daddy. I want to see Uncle Thane’s cat. I bet he’s pretty and furry, and his breath smells like tuna! The last time I saw a cat was when Ms. Fiona brought hers for a visit. It didn’t like me. It scratched my arm.” After lifting the sleeve of her long-sleeved shirt to display the imaginary scratches, her nose screws up in disgust. “And it pooped in the garden. Well, not in the garden. On the footpath. You trod on it and walked poop throughout the house, and Ms. Fiona wouldn’t clean it up. She said if you’d looked where you were walking, you would have seen the poop.” With a sigh, she folds her arms over her chest and huffs. “She was bossy and mean and—”
“The reason we’re getting a new nanny.” My comment sours her mood in an instant.
We got lucky in the four years following the death of my wife, but with Ms. Mitchell moving to West Virginia to assist in the raising of her grandbabies, we’ve gone through more nanny placements than I have occupational therapists in the past six months.
I’d like to blame the “intolerable working conditions” on Lucy, but that would be as blatantly dishonest as saying my shoulder no longer hurts.
I’m not the most tolerable person in the world in general, but when I’m being weaned off the pain medication responsible for my ability to dress without sobbing like a baby and forced to face the possibility of a desk job for the remainder of my career, “intolerable ass” is a deserving title.
Ms. Mitchell didn’t put up with my crap. She was stern and raised Lucy with values Caroline would be pleased about. We’ve been lost without her, and as much as the nanny placement officer assures us she can be replaced, she will forever be irreplaceable to Lucy because she doesn’t want a nanny.