Page 20 of The Dragon’s Accidental Manny

“I need to be honest. I hired you to look after my children, and you proved more than capable. They adore you. But I had an ulterior motive. I wanted you here.”

Cam tilted his head to the side. “The children care for me, as I do for them, but it must have been a burden having me in the house.” He ignored my last sentence.

I took a deep breath. “Yes and no. They often wear their bracelets in the house because if they’re overexcited or tired, they might burn something.” But I added that having to hide who they were wasn’t fair to them.

“I’d like to see your dragon sometime, but not now, not yet. Sorry, but I’m not ready.” He ran his finger around the rim of the can.

“That’s fine. I get it.”

He watched me across the table, and somewhere in the glow of the fairy lights, the space between us had closed. I didn’t remember either of us moving. His gaze dropped to my lips, and I leaned forward, until we were a breath apart.

We were so close, I could have kissed him, I wanted to, but as I wavered and wondered if I should, he jerked back as if he’d touched the furnace.

He got up. “I have to sleep on this, maybe for a few nights, because I don’t know what to ask and how to say it. I’m not leaving them. And you.” He stopped. “It’s... you’re…” He stomped his foot. “Ignore me. I’m exhausted. Night.”

“The questions will keep until morning or as many mornings as you need.”

But it was his unfinished sentence I was puzzling over. After failing to complete it in my head, I gave up.

Talking to Ledger might help. I’d see if both of them were agreeable.

ELEVEN

CAM

For three days we were polite to one another.

I made breakfast and did the school run because Price left for the studio early. Perhaps he thought he could sneak out before I got up, but he didn’t count on me not being able to sleep and pacing the back garden before the sun came up.

Me interrupting him had ruined his perfect blue, not that he’d told me that. We didn’t speak other than, “Pass the hot sauce,” and “Jack needs new shoes.” But I’d overheard him speaking to a client and pieced together that it was the blue thing he was working on when I interrupted him.

Another revelation was it turned out the school wasn’t for humans. Silly me. Why would I think my three charges went to a human school, though that explained the Fire-Free Zone sign near the entrance.

I didn’t allow myself to be in a room alone with Price. My thinking was still muddled, and I was bombarded with the words dragons, shifters, fire, but I still didn’t want to leave.

My boss thanked me for little things like helping Jack put on his shoes, and he kept to his end of the house and I kept to mine, except when we circled around one another and the children in the kitchen. I avoided the courtyard which was my favorite place in the house, and I missed its serenity.

The kids didn’t query me as to why I wasn’t talking to their dad, but they watched us orbiting one another all week.

I wasn’t angry at him for not revealing the shifter thing, because if I were Price, I’d have done the same thing. He hadn’t wanted a human to broadcast to the world that there was another species living among us. But he’d put pressure on the children to be someone they weren’t to accommodate me.

On the fourth evening, I snuck into the courtyard and let the sound of the fountain soothe me. But Price found me. I tensed because I didn’t want to have that conversation.

“There’s someone you should talk to.”

I scoffed at his suggestion, because if he’d set up an appointment with a shifter shrink, I wasn’t playing.

“There’s a friend a few doors down who a couple of years ago was in the same situation you are.”

“Huh? Did you scare the crap out of another manny?” That was mean, and I wished I could delete it, and anyway, I was the family’s first manny. Maybe he did want me to see a psychologist.

He had a slip of paper, just as Meara once had. Oh, Meara, she was in on this too. She had to be, but I didn’t dare ask what she was if she wasn’t human. And what was it with the paper? Did shifters prefer going old school to digital?

“I’ve never been the human in this story, so he’ll be able to give you a different perspective.”

The next day, I stopped in front of Ledger’s place. Number 221. But the one was faded and hardly visible. That was why I’d missed it that first day. How about that? One misread number and I ended up in a home with three lovable children and their father who was… Yeah, I couldn’t finish that.

It was a huge three-story house, and after I was buzzed in the gate, the door opened, and a man, presumably Ledger, with a toddler on his hips, appeared. He hugged me, and the little girl gave my hair a tug.