Nanny Undercover

Chapter 5: An Outing

"You sure you want to do this?" The concern in Jeffrey's voice was touching and unmistakable. He looked at Goldie and the girls uncertainly, blinking his brown eyes as they flicked back and forth. He looked so handsome and worried.

"Of course," Goldie replied airily. Her thick blonde hair was in a ponytail braid, and she was wearing a T-shirt with jogging shorts and running shoes, looking like a teenaged au pair from Scandinavia who might perhaps speak broken English with a delightful accent.

She had the babies in their triplet stroller, which was really just an extra wide one, so they still had access to each other. Jeff and Goldie had agreed that the stacking kind, which were narrower and more convenient, would be too isolating, and keep the girls too far apart from each other.

She was going to go for a jog.

Jeff had objected strenuously at first to her taking the babies, saying he'd just keep them at home so she could jog alone.

"Jeffrey, that's idiotic," Goldie had protested. "I'm here to take care of them, it's my job. But I need to get some exercise, or I start to get all flabby and loose and gah, you know?"

While thinking to himself that she looked anything but loose and flabby, Jeff reiterated that he'd keep the girls.

Jemma, Genie and Pippa watched and listened with interest as their grown ups argued while climbing all over them, poking their fingers into their ears and mouths.

"I'll be fine, people jog with babies all the time," Goldie said. "Why else did we get that snazzy stroller, if not to go out with them?"

"I know," Jeff said lamely. "But it seems like it might be better if I went with you?"

"Have you ever been for a run in your life?" Goldie asked.

Reluctantly, Jeff shook his head.

"I usually run thirty miles a week, just for maintenance," Goldie told him. "You couldn't keep up, you'd stroke out on the first day."

So he'd acquiesced, and Goldie had popped the babies into their stroller, put their little hats on, and gotten them ready to go out.

"Okay, girls, say 'bye-bye' to daddy," Goldie sang, waving to a forlorn Jeff. "Tell him we'll be back in about an hour."

Jeff watched them from the large window that faced the street, most of him worried about his darling babies, but part of him thinking that Goldie's rear end looked really nice in her running shorts, and her breasts looked really pretty as she started jogging.

What in the world was he doing?

He shook his head and turned away from the window, walking resolutely to the piano to see if he could get any writing done while he had the apartment to himself. After ten minutes, though, he admitted that all he could think about was a nap, so he lay down on the sofa and was out cold in five minutes.

Goldie, meanwhile, was hitting her groove after a couple of weeks of not running, really enjoying being outside. It wasn't too hot yet, and the sun and air felt good on her body. She could see the girls' little hands grasping the sides of the stroller and their heads swiveling back and forth as they looked around at the things that made up their world in lower Manhattan, in Tribeca and Greenwich Village.

She turned right on Waverly Place and jogged to Washington Square Park, feeling a little bit of a burn in her legs, realizing that the couple of weeks she'd taken off had made a difference in her stamina already. She jogged around the park and cut in, stopping at a bench to take a break, grabbing her water from the back of the stroller and taking a long drink as she caught her breath.