Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 130307 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 652(@200wpm)___ 521(@250wpm)___ 434(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130307 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 652(@200wpm)___ 521(@250wpm)___ 434(@300wpm)
And this was certainly a change in routine.
It was also my first time nannying for someone as high-profile as Will Perry.
I shook my head at the memory of him dropping off Ava at school this morning. He’d slid a check for five-thousand dollars into my hand when he’d walked Ava to class, and although I’d tried with all my energy not to accept it, he’d insisted.
Five grand.
That was more than I made in a month.
There was absolutely zero chance that I’d continue to let him pay me such an astronomical amount, but arguing with a six-foot-four, two-hundred-twenty-pound goalie on the day he had a game didn’t seem like a smart idea.
Besides, that money could help me pay off the student loans my matriarchy was currently buried under. It could help me pay my own bills without stress.
That was the life of a teacher that so many left out. You had to love what you did because you certainly weren’t going into this career for the money.
I blinked, my vision coming back into focus, and found myself scanning the ice for that beast of a man I was now temporarily working for. I knew from the tiny blue and white jersey Ava was wearing that he was number twenty-eight. It was also fairly easy to spot the goalies, as they stood out among the other players.
When I found him, he was standing off to the side of where all the rest of the team was shooting pucks. He hovered close to the glass, facing the rink, and he skated in place, side to side, with his gaze locked somewhere on the ice ahead of him. Then, he crouched low, dodging this way and that with lightning-quick movements and fast-snaps of his limbs in various directions like he was blocking pucks.
The back of my neck tingled with awareness as I watched him, knowing that under that cage of a mask was the scowl that he wore so easily. He was menacing, on or off the ice — and yet, after dinner last night, I couldn’t help but wonder if there was a softness under that hard shell exterior.
The way he cared for his daughter, the way his chef seemed to care for him — it just seemed like there was more to him than met the eye.
And the poor man needed help.
That was more evident than anything else. He’d acted like I hung the moon rather than just helped his daughter get ready for bed. I knew he’d had a string of bad luck with finding a nanny, but had it really been that atrocious?
I marveled at his poise as he went through his warmup drills, the crowd getting louder and louder. I took my eyes off him long enough to pay attention to one of the announcements on the jumbotron, and when I looked at him again, my eyes shot wide.
He’d moved down to the ice now, onto his hands and knees, and he was stretching like he belonged on an Olympic gymnast team rather than a hockey team.
His hands were braced in front of him, holding his weight steady as he stretched his hips wide against the ice. One leg was bent, the other extended to the side, and he crouched low to the ice before rolling his hips forward and backward in a rhythm that made heat rush to my cheeks.
It should have been illegal for any man to have an ass like that.
And it should have been a felony for him to move his hips in that way, the way that made it impossible not to imagine what it would be like to be beneath him while he did it.
I tried not to stare. Really, I did. I attempted to focus on the other players, on the fans, on the bright orange fish mascot that was now making its way around the arena.
But my eyes kept snapping back to Will Perry.
He had both legs bent now, and he’d roll forward before extending his legs as straight as he could and then bending them again. After a while, he laid in a pancake stretch, his stomach and chest on the ice and his legs spread. But it wasn’t a passive stretch, it was active — his quads and hamstrings lifting him off the ice a few inches before he’d lower deeper into the stretch.
When he bent his legs and started rolling his hips again, I forced myself to look away.
Now was not the time to fantasize about my new boss — not when I was responsible for his daughter in the seat right next to mine.
Okay, in reality, I probably should never fantasize about him.
But he was a hot, professional athlete with a daughter he’d move mountains for.
I might have been celibate, but I wasn’t dead inside.
I managed to keep it in my pants through the rest of the warmup, and when the game actually started, Ava took her seat with something that almost resembled a smile.