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Camilla
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The next morning, in the comfort of her own home, Camilla nursed a large mug of coffee while thinking back on the night before.
When she had awoken to Brock’s lightly prodding fingers on her shoulder, she’d been mortified at having fallen asleep before he’d made it home from the university. The hours of building pretend castles with blankets and trying to help Rynn name all one-hundred and one of the dalmatians in the movie just because the little girl told her to must have been more tiring than she realized.
But Brock had been anything but upset with her for falling asleep on the job. He had actually thanked her, and something told Camilla that his gratitude wasn’t just from her staying with his daughter for the evening.
Hell, she felt like she should thank him. If last evening was any indication of what it was like to be the nanny of a child who wasn’t in the running for the devil’s most malicious spawn, then she was going to hold on to this job for dear life. The hours she spent with Rynn hadn’t seemed like working. It didn’t seem like a job to hang out with the little girl and play with dolls and dress-up clothes and wait for her daddy to come home. The truth was, for those few brief hours, they’d seemed very much like...
A family.
Camilla shook that thought away immediately. Brock Hanlin was her boss, nothing more. Rynn was the little girl she cared for in his absence. She needed to remember that, and she couldn’t get too comfortable.
But it was hard. Because there was something about the way Brock stared at her, the way there always seemed to be a simmering quality to his gaze, like a fire burned somewhere in their deepest depths, just waiting to ignite into a blazing inferno.
And there was something about him that made Camilla sure that, if that was true, she would let him. Let the fire lick and lap at her sensitive flesh until it engulfed her completely, consuming her whole and reducing her resolve to ashes and embers.
She wanted Brock to spread through her like wildfire, and if the barely-contained blaze in his eyes was any indication, Brock wanted the same sinful flames to sear through him, too.
***
The next two days came and went in a flurry of coming and going. Brock taught two classes on Tuesdays, leaving Camilla with Rynn for the bulk of the day, and one long lecture on Wednesday mornings, but he had asked her to stay for a few more hours after he made it home Wednesday afternoon so he could keep his class curriculums and paper grading at bay. Judging by the stacks of essays he pulled from his briefcase, she didn’t think it would be hard to end up behind in his paperwork if he left it for more than a few days.
She might have only seen him in passing, and not for more than a few minutes at a time during the day, but when Brock did finally come home from work, they seemed to linger around each other. Camilla couldn’t seem to make herself leave, and Brock always seemed to be a step away, asking questions and keeping the conversation going to make her stay.
She could almost hear the buzzing in the air between them, the electricity and tension that crackled as they spoke and got close to one another but never touched. Their words might have held her there, giving her a reason to postpone having to walk out that door, but Camilla yearned to reach out and lay her fingertips along the bulging muscles of his biceps.
She could imagine the intensity in the stare that would follow, visualize the way his lips would part, hear the faint intake of breath that would break through the thick veil of sensual tension and bring them together, like a wall that had been built between them had been destroyed, causing them to crash together with the force of their unspoken desires.
There were more than enough reasons why they should deny the connection between them. He was her employer, after all, not to mention at least ten—maybe even fifteen or more—years older than she was. It would be wrong to pursue something between them, no matter what kind of tingles and heat the man was eliciting within her with just his gaze.
Thursday night, however, Camilla could tell that something had shifted between them the moment she arrived at Brock’s place. He only had an evening class to teach that night, so it was already after six o’clock. Rynn would be getting ready for bed in an hour or so, and it would be a quiet night in the Hanlin household. An easy shift, if Camilla thought about it like a job. Which she didn’t.
“Rynn Tin Tin can barely keep her eyes open as it is,” Brock advised her when she joined him in the kitchen, watching him lock up the metal clasps on his briefcase. “She’s got a pile of new books she can’t wait to show you, but I doubt you’ll make it through the first page of the first one and she’ll be out like a light.”
Camilla’s stomach fluttered with the affectionate way Brock spoke of his daughter. She really was his world, and he didn’t try to hide that for anyone. “I’ll do my best to keep that in mind,” she said, reaching across the kitchen counter to put her phone in the middle of it where she always kept it, so it wouldn’t get broken during her and Rynn’s playful antics, but also so she would know where it was.
At the same moment, Brock turned, reaching in the opposite direction for his car keys. Their hands collided, and they’d both leaned in, bringing their upper bodies and faces closer to each other than they’d ever been before.
Camilla could feel his warm, damp breath against her lips, and her eyes searched his as they both held perfectly still, transfixed by their sudden closeness and lost in the electricity that sparked between them and robbed them both of breath.
“I want you to keep something else in mind, too.” Brock’s voice was low, with a huskiness to it that hadn’t been there a moment ago.
“Anything,” she breathed out. Neither of them moved away from the other, but neither of them leaned in closer, either.
Brock’s hot gaze was locked on her lips. “I want you to stay,” he said. His gaze lifted to hers. “Tonight, after class, I want you to stay.”
“You want me to...stay after class.”
That made his mouth twitch at the corners. “Precisely. I’m glad I’m understood.” Brock grabbed his briefcase and left without another word, leaving Camilla with only her shallow breaths and her racing heart to keep her company.
***
I want you to stay. Those five little words catapulted through Camilla’s mind for hours, wondering if she was truly interpreting them the way he intended them.
Did he mean he wanted her to stay, as in stay the night? With him? In his bed?
Hell, that’s how she hoped he meant it.
But there was a chance he meant he wanted her to stay for other reasons, too. Maybe she had done something he didn’t approve of, or Rynn had said something to him that had him questioning her abilities as a caregiver. Camilla couldn’t think of anything she could have done that would be misconstrued, but that didn’t mean that a four-year-old couldn’t see things differently.
Maybe Brock wasn’t happy with her as Rynn’s nanny. Maybe she just wasn’t cut out for this kind of job. Hell, maybe he was going to fire her because of the sexual tension between them. If he felt it with the same insatiable desire she did, then there was a chance Brock Hanlin didn’t want that kind of distraction, especially not when that distraction was supposed to be the one looking after the little girl that was his whole world.
That’s it. Brock was going to dismiss her from his employ. It made the most sense. If he had truly intended for her to stay the night with him, to feel the rush of giving themselves over to the relentless need that pulsed between them like a lifeline, then surely he would have given her something more to cling to before he left. More words. More explanation.
Hell, he could have leaned in the mere inches between them and pressed his mouth to hers. That one little gesture would have told her everything she needed to know.
Instead, she was sprawled out on the couch in the living room after cleaning up the kitchen and snack dishes, wishing Rynn was awake just so she would have a distraction of her own to keep her rampant thoughts at bay. Wishing she knew something, anything, beyond the tidbit of information he’d given her.
She heard the door open and the beeping of the alarm being reset. In a way, it seemed like forever since Brock had left, and only minutes at the same time. Camilla let out a loud, steadying breath and stood, rounding the corner.
What met her on the other side of the wall answered every question without so much as a word uttered.