Page 19 of Knot The Nanny We Planned

I go still. Of course she is. She's a toddler in an Alpha household; scent is her primary language. She's cataloging me, filing away my scent, honey and vanilla, the omega markers she's biologically wired to seek. And something in her tiny body relaxes, the tension in her shoulders loosens, and her grip on my shirt softens.

"Mega," she murmurs against my neck. The word is barely formed, more sound than syllable, but it's there. Clear as anything.

Omega.

She recognizes what I am. What she's lost. What she's been missing. My throat closes up, and I hold her tighter.

"Yeah," I whisper. "Yeah, baby. I'm here."

I carry her to the kitchen, and the scene that greets me makes my heart stutter.

All three men are there. JD stands at the stove, sleeves rolled up, flipping pancakes with the focused precision of a man who approaches everything, cooking included, with CEO-level intensity. Deklan sits at the island, laptop open, glasses perched on his nose, a mug of black coffee steaming beside him. And Knox is leaning against the counter where I left him, but he's changed, black t-shirt now, dark jeans, and he's slicing strawberries with a paring knife, his movements quick and practiced.

Three men. One kitchen. One child. One omega.

The pheromones hit me the moment I cross the threshold. Pine, smoke, cedar, all three scents layered on top of each other, thickened by the heat of the stove and the close quarters. My body responds before my brain can catch up, slick coats my thighs and my nipples tightening against the thin cotton of my shirt.

Lily lifts her head from my neck and looks at the men. Then she looks at me. Then back at the men.

"Unca Knox!" she squeals, and her arms stretch toward the Alpha with the golden hair and the knife.

Knox sets down the paring knife and reaches for her with a grin that transforms his entire face. Gone is the predator from the kitchen earlier. In his place is a man who looks at this child like she hung the moon.

"Hey, monster," he says, settling her on his hip. "You sleep well?"

She responds by grabbing his nose.

"She woke up hungry," I say, and immediately feel like an idiot for stating the obvious. But JD glances over his shoulder at me, and something in his expression, not quite a smile, but close, makes the embarrassment fade.

"Pancakes in two minutes," he says. "She likes them cut small. No syrup, she gets it in her hair."

"Noted."

I stand there, hovering, unsure of my role. Am I supposed to take Lily back? Help with breakfast? Sit down? The nanny contract was specific about duties, childcare, meal prep for Lily, light household management, but it said nothing about what to do when your three employers smell like sin and look like that, and your underwear is still soaked from the conversation you had with one of them forty-five minutes ago.

"Sit," Deklan says without looking up from his laptop. "You're hovering."

"I'm not hovering. I'm... assessing."

He looks up. One eyebrow arched. The ghost of something, amusement? Irritation? Flickers behind his glasses. "You're hovering. Sit down. Eat. She's fine."

I sit. The stool is high, and when I climb onto it, my bare legs dangle. I'm acutely aware that I'm still wearing Deklan's oversized shirt and nothing else, and that the hem rides up when I sit. I tug it down, but the fabric is thin, and every time I move, it shifts.

Knox catches my eye from across the kitchen. His gaze drops to my legs, bare from mid-thigh down, then rises back to my face with a slowness that makes my skin burn.

"Pancakes," JD says, setting a plate in front of me. His knuckles brush mine during the handoff, and the contact is electric, brief, accidental, and enough to make my breath catch.

He hears it. I see his jaw tighten. His nostrils flare.

"Eat," he says, and the word comes out rougher than he probably intended.

I eat. The pancakes are good, fluffy, slightly sweet, cooked to golden perfection. JD Blaine, billionaire CEO, makes excellent pancakes. The disconnect between the man in the tailored suit and the man at the stove is so jarring that I almost laugh.

Lily eats in Knox's lap, tiny pieces of pancake disappearing into her mouth at an alarming rate. She chatters between bites, not words, exactly, but sounds and gestures that Knox interprets with practiced ease.

"She wants more strawberries," he says. "And she's telling me about a dream she had. Something about a dog? A big dog?"

"Bow-wow," Lily confirms, nodding emphatically.