I looked up and caught him taking off his Hawaiian- print shirt. My jaw dropped. I swear his pectorals had grown over the last six weeks. I think I licked my lips and moaned.
"This doesn't mean anything. You could have forged these." I flipped through his money. A couple of twenties, three fives and four ones and then I found…. "What's this for?" I held up the condom and grinned. I suppose I was doing a good job at pretending to be demure, that is until I giggled. "What? Only one?" That didn't last long. Now I was doing a good impression of an insatiable hussy. Oh, well.
He smiled and kicked off his shoes.
When I once said he was quick, I only meant on his feet. In bed, he moved like a sloth. Every minute counted. Each stroke of his hand against my bare skin felt perfectly orchestrated. Every precisely planted kiss meant something special and there was not one damn thing about it that I took for granted. I made love with him as if it was the only time in my life I was going to be lucky enough to do so.
When the intense breathing stopped and I was appreciating my afterglow, Jack rolled onto his side and smiled. "I heard about Bella from my sources at Interpol and I knew you had to be with her." He offered out of nowhere then laid his cheek on my bare breast.
I wasn't even thinking about Armenia. I was thinking how magnificent he was in bed. The past was the past. Okay, so I did appreciate the confession at that point. Hell, I'd just slept with the man. It was nice that he was finally opening up to me.
"How did you find me?"
"I have my ways." Once a Secret Agent Man, always a Secret Agent Man.
"So, it was you who orchestrated my rescue from The Rat?" I asked as I snuggled my arms tighter around the man who had saved my life. More than once, I might add. I inhaled deeply and closed my eyes.
"Uh huh." He nodded and kissed me again with tenderness. I appreciated his caresses because I now knew he had come for me. He was so much more than Secret Agent Man. "I also heard everything about what happened to you and I'm sorry that you got caught up in that mess that had nothing to do with you. DuLucere taped your statement and sent it to me." He actually looked sympathetic to my pain. "I also know that you were paid a visit from one of ours…Doug Lyons."
I popped my head off the pillow. Doug Lyons was the man who had threatened to erase my memory in that damp little room in Armenia. He was also the nice man who gave me a makeshift passport and paid my airfare home. "He's one of yours?"
"Sort of," he said, and began kissing me again with that same lustful yearning.
I knew I'd never get a straight answer out of him, but I was willing to bribe him with sex, repeatedly, until he spilled his guts.
We ended up doing it four more times before cuddling under the covers and finally talking about his family.
"I have two sisters, Robin and Kristina. My parents Edward and Megan are still married. They live in Sacramento." He licked his lips slowly. "If I tell you any more than that I'll have to kill you." He kissed me again and licked down my stomach to find where he had left that last piece of chocolate.
When he returned, I still couldn't catch my breath, but I was smiling and I felt fine with the fact that I wasn't receiving oxygen.
"Come to work with me, Charlie," he said, then quickly kissed me before my eyes popped out of my skull.
"Uhhhh." I was still recovering from the tongue bath I had just received. "What do you mean?"
"We'd be good together, Charlie."
Okay, so his mind had melted into mush by all the hot sex. He couldn't be serious.
"Are you serious?" I propped up onto my elbow and looked directly into his satisfied dark eyes. I do have to say that it did sound appealing in a weird and freakish kind of way.
"Think about it." He rolled off the bed and left me alone and naked to think about going to work with Secret Agent Man. That sort of thing doesn't happen every day, not to people like me.
"I'm not finished with my master's," I yelled toward the kitchenette. He came back to me with a bottle of champagne and no glasses. "I'm going to be a police detective, I'm going to buy a place in the country, with acres and acres of jackrabbits and I've already bought my dream SUV…."
His kiss was warm and inviting. As was his hand on the back of my neck.
"A police woman, Charlie?" His head shook in disapproval. "Come on, honey. You have skills. You have instincts. Your moves need a little bit of work…" he chuckled playfully, and dodged my hand, "but other than that, you're pretty much a shoo-in."
I blinked once or twice and scrunched my brows together. My moves need a little work? If I hadn't been naked, I would have flipped his ass onto the ground and shown him a thing or two. Oh. Maybe that would be fun with no clothes on.
The cork bounced off the ceiling.
"I don't even know who you work for." I took the bottle of Dom Perignon that he offered me and sipped carefully, never taking my eyes off his.
One of his eyebrows cocked and bounced up and down dramatically. "I think you know."
"Okay," I scoffed. "So I have an idea."
He bent and nibbled my ear, whispered something intriguing and crawled back into my bed.
I was right. He works for the _ _ _.
Epilogue
Two weeks in Hawaii with Secret Agent Man should be something I do every summer. I think I will add that to my new life's plan. For once, I was considering my options and amending my to-do list.
Jack…I still don't think that's his name, but it fits him now that I have screamed it out in bed a couple hundred times…told me that I had plenty of time to make up my mind about coming to work with him. He still had six months of paperwork to catch up on here in the States and months of physical therapy to get full strength back in his ankle before he could return to the field full time. He informed me of his six surgeries and of how he is convinced that his ankle is now bionic because of all the hardware they had to install to fix it properly.
Time? Time is something I don't have much of these days. Bella and I spend the majority of our free time together when I'm not in school and she's not in school or hanging out with her teenage friends who actually think the Backstreet Boys are cute. Now that she's officially a teenager, it's a completely new ball game, but I do my best to keep her feet planted firmly on the ground so she doesn't end up like her mother.
Roald finally decided not to take Nicole back, for which I congratulated him. I suggested that he find a nice, down-to- earth woman who didn't even go to the movies. He said that he would rather spend his time concentrating on Annabelle and strengthening their relationship. I guess therapy does work. Perhaps I should try it.
Nicole is now dating a rock-star, who can't really sing, but looks good in spandex. She is such a Heather Locklear wannabe.
Jack pops in and out of my life at the most inconvenient times, like this morning when he snuck into my bathroom and I almost shot him in the head. He likes keeping me on my toes and constantly jokes that I can't ever see him coming—which is true. He'll tell me he's off to Britain, I'll actually believe him and then he will sneak into the back of my SUV while I'm at the gym. I swear the man has super- abilities that I can't even fathom.
Finding time for each other is a huge obstacle and it is pushing me in a new direction. My life plan seems to have changed a bit since my time abroad and more importantly, it has changed even more so since my two weeks with Jack in Hawaii and then even more dramatically over the past three months in which I've been tortured by his ability to scare the living daylights out of me. He says he's just starting my training early. Ha. I think he just likes watching me squirm and scream like a girl.
I did manage to convince him to meet my parents when they came to visit. My father had never seen New England, so we took him to all the hot spots: Shea Stadium, The Meadowlands, Fenway Park and Gillette Stadium where the Patriots play. We went and saw Josh's NFL debut in Buffalo where he kicked three field goals and only one extra point— because the Bills can't do a damn thing in the red zone.
; Jack told my father that he was an insurance adjustor and we met when I crashed the Ludlow's BMW. I thought it was mildly amusing until it dawned on me that I never told Jack about the Ludlow's BMW.
Jack knows everything…and I mean everything about me. He even knows the size of my underwear and the brand of tampons I buy. He says it’s part of his job to know these things; I just think he snoops a lot.
He never did tell me what he was doing in Kenya and I finally gave up asking. I guess it will remain a mystery and I should come to accept that it's better for me not to know everything about him. I just have to keep reminding myself it's the price I have to pay for falling in love with a Secret Agent Man.
~*~*~*~
Charlie Ford Returns!
Charlie Ford, America’s favorite nanny returns in Charlie Ford Meets the Mole, the second in J.D. Tynan’s series starring America’s sexiest nanny and her young ward.
Available Spring 2016
Charlie Ford Meets the Mole
Chapter One
When I was a just little girl, I had dreams of becoming a doctor. My father was a surgeon, and to me, he was Godlike. We lived in Bend, Oregon and he was on staff at St. Charles Medical Center, where he spent the majority of his time. He wasn’t the most doting father, but he looked like an angel in his long white overcoat.
After a few visits to the hospital at the tender age of twelve, I soon found out I had a slight adverse reaction to the sight of blood. To be completely honest, it wasn’t all that slight. My eyes would roll back into my skull. My fingertips and toes would tingle, and then I’d see millions of tiny white specks right before my head would hit the cold Linoleum. Yep, that pretty much sealed my fate as a pansy-ass girl. I spent more time on a gurney than I did walking around behind my father. Pathetic, aren’t I?
Well, I eventually grew up. Now I’m a nanny. It’s a pretty fair assumption to say that blood usually doesn’t come into play much in my occupation. Just sometimes, when a toddler falls off his tricycle, or scrapes his knee while playing Duck, Duck, Goose. I’ve been in the ‘domestic technician’ line of work for over four years now. Before that, I spent eight years in the Army learning all sorts of new and valuable, yet deadly, skills.
Currently, I live in a small cottage out behind the main house of the most impressive mansion that I’ve ever seen. My employer’s name is Roald Munson. Never heard of him? Then you must not go to the movies. Roald Munson happens to be the hottest—and most sought after—action hero of our time. He’s a legend in Europe from his earlier days of really bad B movies, but ever since Hollywood’s top producer discovered him, it’s been champagne wishes and caviar dreams for the Fabio look-alike. And I live with the man. How lucky am I?
That’s subjective of course. Not too long ago, I accompanied his daughter, Bella to Africa and well -- let’s just say -- No, I’m not lucky. Our plane ended up being hi-jacked; we were shanghaied by a secret agent man and nearly died on several occasions. I was forced to eat burnt peacock and barbecued figs and had to see a lot of blood, some of which I had a hand in spilling. The one good thing that came out of it was it strengthened my relationships with those I love--one in particular.
“Bella!” I shouted from the bottom of the stairs, nearing a glass-breaking-caliber shriek.
Bella and I have been through a lot together. At first, she hated me, much like any other kid I’ve ever babysat for. Then we grew much closer during our adventure abroad last summer and now I love her like a friend or even a sister, but she’s just so darn…well, she’s a teenager! “Bella, get down here, now!” I screamed.
The living room looked as if it had been hit by a tornado. Pizza boxes were stacked in the corner by the stereo. Pop cans and empty bags of chips were crammed between the black leather couch cushions. Every CD was lying on the table, some of them broken. A bra was dangling from the crystal chandelier and the television had been slimed by… “Gross.” I wiped my finger across the gunk and gave it a whiff. “Chocolate pudding and popcorn. Son of a bitch…”
“I heard that. You owe me twenty-five cents,” her voice shrilled from atop the long flight of stairs. Bella has long blonde hair that she pays good money to have highlighted with burgundy and brunette. After last fall’s growing spurt, she’s now my height; five-foot-eight, and she could easily pass for seventeen thanks to the clothes that her mother, famous actress Nicole Harrison, lets her buy. – Most likely to dissuade her guilt for leaving Bella’s father and bed-hopping her way through Hollywood’s A-list. Nicole Harrison had been married three times before marrying Roald, and shortly after their divorce was final back in December, I heard a rumor that she was already secretly engaged to another action star who shall remain nameless.
“What do you want? ‘ Pimp my Ride’ is on,” Bella said with contempt.
Pimp my what?
Needless to say, I know nothing about the age of MTV, teenagers, and what is cool in this day and age. When I grew up, we listened to Duran Duran, Tears for Fears and New Kids on the Block. We had pictures of Michael J. Fox on our walls. Izods were popular, along with Polo and Esprit, and our Lawman and Guess jeans were actually made to stay on our teenage butts. Bare-midriffs were only visible on sluts, and our parents would never permit us to watch something with the word Pimp in the title. A lot has changed since I was thirteen.
I blinked and wiped the pudding off my finger and back onto the seventy-two inch high definition plasma television where it apparently belonged. “Get down here and clean this up, now!” I stomped my foot into the hardwood. “And that bra had better not be yours.” I glared hard. I kept her in line most of the time because she respects me and I tend to not take as much of her bullshit as her parents do. I’m her one and only link to the outside world when her father is out of the country; so needless to say, I try to run a tight ship. But right then, my pulse was in high gear. I’d had a very good night’s sleep after an amazing bout of hot sex. I’d already had my V-8, been to the gym, and taken my first final of the week. I had three more to go before I was officially finished with my master’s degree in Criminal Justice and Bella was not making it easy on me. Finals are hellacious enough without having to worry about a teenager on the rampage. Her father was coincidentally out of town again, re-shooting an entire battle scene in Greece for an upcoming Epic called Zeus and his Mistress.
“As if.” Her fingers wrapped around the brass railing as she leaned over and shrugged, completely flippant about the mess she’d made. “Laura-Lee can do it. That’s why Daddy pays her.” Her long blonde hair flipped over her shoulder as she turned on her heel to leave me alone with the mess that she and her entourage had made the night before.
“Damn it, Bella, I’m not kidding. Get your ass down here, now!”
I could almost see the smoke seeping from her ears as she mentally counted up how much money I owed her for that one.
Gregory had coerced me into giving up cussing, therefore Bella was on my ass about every obscenity that was uttered. Gregory Pike has been with Roald and Bella for over ten years. He takes care of the house, the pool and the seven acres that surround the house. He does it all, except for the cleaning, the gardening and the cooking.
Honestly, I don’t really know why he gets paid.
“Thirty-five cents, please.” She actually snickered at me and stuck out her hand.
I felt as if my eyeballs were going to pop from their sockets, then I heard the pitter-patter of Hamlet and Othello, followed closely by Gregory. His bedroom was to the right of where I was screaming and from the looks of his scowl, he wasn’t happy that I woke him. Both Great Danes walked at attention by his side.
“Well, holy Hell!” He planted his hands on his hips and rotated his head to also look up at Bella.
She stared wide-eyed at me until I huffed and turned my venom on Greg. “Where the hell were you when all this was going on? Those earplugs I gave you can’t work that good. This place is a national disaster area.”
Gregory
and I had traded nights watching Bella when Jack had suddenly become available last night because someone had leaked information about his whereabouts and thus his car had been blown to smithereens somewhere in East Los Angeles.
Jack’s the secret agent who shanghaied us in Africa. He not only saved my life a couple of times, he also seduced me into bed, and more recently was still trying to coerce me into working with him. I’m still not quite sure about that last part, but I’ll remain in his bed for as long as he’ll have me. Jack is sexy!
Gregory was still contemplating his apparent brain-fart with a confused scowl. “Oh, shit.”
Both Bella and I spoke at once. “That’s a quarter.”
Gregory was also trying to clean up his own potty mouth, so it was a group venture. Even Bella had to fork over her change if she got caught. But come on, she’s just thirteen. She still knows how to be sneaky.
“That was last night?” Gregory said and sank back against the couch, leaning right into a big smear of something brown and shiny. More pudding, I presume. “I completely spaced it. There was this vintage film festival downtown and Luke and I just got to talking and the next thing I knew we were holding hands and watching Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” He sighed, clearly remembering his intimate moment with Luke. “I love that movie!”
Or more like fantasizing about George Peppard. Frankly, I think George was much hotter when he was in charge of the A-Team, but that’s just my humble, female opinion.
I stared in wonderment as his eyelashes flittered. Greg doesn’t look physically gay. Not that I even know what that is really, but he’s very cute, has a great body that he takes care of and he’s very -- dare I say-- butch. He has shaggy brown hair that hangs in his blue eyes. He wears Levi’s and doesn’t use a lisp when he talks. But he also likes lavender bubble baths and manicures and he’s probably the most anal-retentive man I know, so I guess I can see it now.