Nanny

8

Braxton

I grew up in absolute poverty.

My family lived in an efficiency apartment rented from the meanest landlord in Baltimore. Mom washed laundry for the wealthier families on the other side of town, and dad was a laborer down on the docks, hauling the fresh crabs every day. For reasons I couldn't understand when I was a kid, we never had anything to spare. Mom kept what little money we had in a coin purse sewed into the bodice of her dress, because the couple of dollars inside was too precious to leave at home.

I wasn't given anything in life. From the start, all the cards were stacked against me: poor family, no education, barely enough food to fill my stomach. I didn't have toys, or books, or anything. Me and the other kids in the slum apartment occupied our time by throwing rocks and pretending we played for the Orioles.

I struggled to keep up with the other kids at school. Since we didn't have books at home, I went to the grocery store and practiced by reading the labels on the food boxes. As I got older, I had to walk three miles through the bad part of town to get to the library. Sometimes I got beat up by gangs of kids on the way home. I clutched the library books to my chest, both to protect the books and to shield myself.

With nothing else to do, I read everything I could. I read so fast that I made three trips to the library a week. My dad accused me of working a job after school and keeping the money to myself, and he gave me the belt when I insisted I was walking to the library. A man like him couldn't understand why I would give up two hours just to borrow books.

But I knew that books were my ticket out of that Baltimore slum, so I treated every tome like it was the bible.

Slowly I caught up to the other kids in school. Then I started reading at a grade higher than my own. When I got to high school and we were given real textbooks, big thick rectangles heavy enough to break a toe, I was so excited I read them all in the first week. Then I read them a second time.

Dad didn't believe me when I said I got a scholarship to the University of Maryland. He thought it was a trick, or I was lying to get attention. But that's okay. I didn't need him anymore. I had found a way out of that efficiency apartment.

I never looked back.

Growing up like that made me the man I am today. It was the reason I worked so hard and was never satisfied. It was the reason I was so hungry for success, even after I was comfortable enough to retire a hundred times over.

But I hated my upbringing. I couldn't think back on my childhood without getting sad, or upset, or so angry that my vision went red and my hands shook.

No child should have to live like that.

I wanted my children's lives to be easier. Not easy, of course. But easier.

Languages had been especially tough for me to learn as an adult. Even spending three hours a day with a tutor, it took me years to be able to passably speak German. And Japanese? That took even longer. It was a roadblock in my professional career. Other investment managers were fluent in several languages, but me? I could barely hold a conversation.

I wanted my kids to begin life with the deck stacked in their favor. I wanted them to have all the opportunities I never had. And languages seemed like the perfect place to start.

Kate seemed like the right woman for the job. There were plenty of nannies in New York who spoke a second language, usually Spanish. But few spoke multiple languages, and none spoke it with the skill of a professional translator. Hiring Kate felt like I was setting my children up for success.

And Kate herself...

I wanted it to remain purely professional, but I couldn't help but notice how attractive she was. Yesterday she was stunning in her pencil skirt, and today she was even more gorgeous in casual jeans and sneakers.

And what she had going on underneath her clothes...

I shook it off. Adam's warning was still fresh in my head from yesterday, and again today before he left to pick Kate up.

You said this time would be different.

He was right. I didn't want things to go the way they had with the last nanny. I had to be professional. I had to be above it all.

But that wasn't how the world worked. Knowing something was forbidden just made a person want it more, whether it was a diet-ruining candy bar or an incredibly sexy, witty, down-to-earth nanny.

"Get it together, Brax," I muttered as the elevator opened onto the floor of my office.

All the top-level directors were waiting in the large conference room for our weekly meeting. I was two minutes late. I felt a pang of regret for it, then shook it off.

If a billionaire couldn't be late to his own meeting, then what was the point of all this?

"Let's get started," I said. "Alice, you're up first. What acquisitions are we looking at this week?"

I sat down to listen to their reports, but all I could think about was the woman downstairs.