Filed to story: The Alpha and His Nanny Luna (Tiffany & Asher) Book PDF Free
“Put two cups of flour into this bowl,” I said, “and the baking soda…”
Soon enough, we had enough cookie dough for an entire army. Sophia took half of the children as a group, helping them to roll the dough into little balls and place them on the trays, while Asher and I helped the other half.
“Mr. Sterling?” Clara said — she seemed to have taken a liking to him, which reminded me of Ella.
“Yes?” Asher asked as he rolled a ball of dough between his palms.
“Do you have a mom?”
“I do,” Asher replied.
Clara was silent for a moment, sticking her tongue out to the side a bit as she focused on rolling a wad of cookie dough into a misshapen ball between her tiny hands, then slapped it down on the tray with an unprecedented amount of force for such a small girl. Then, she turned toward Asher and looked up at him inquisitively. “How come you never bake with your mom? If I had a mom, I’d probably bake with her all the time.”
Asher opened his mouth to speak, but the words didn’t seem to come.
“Clara,” Sophia interjected from across the room, “That’s an awfully personal question.”
“Oh. Sorry, Mr. Sterling.” Clara drooped her shoulders and dug into the bowl of cookie dough to grab another handful.
“No,” Asher said, taking me by surprise once more, “it’s alright.” He bent down to Clara’s level and looked at her with unexpected honesty in his eyes. “My dad doesn’t always think that boys should do the same things that girls do,” he said. “So, I grew up thinking that if I tried to ask to do things like bake with my mom, I would get scolded.”
Asher’s words sent a pang through my heart. Growing up in the orphanage, Sophia had always allowed the boys and the girls to play however they wanted and to try new things. I grew up not only baking and doing traditionally feminine things, but I also had all of the opportunities in the world to try traditionally masculine hobbies. I couldn’t imagine not being allowed to try those things just because of my gender, but it explained so much about Asher’s personality… And it made me dislike his father a little more.
One of the little boys, who was sneakily stuffing raw cookie dough in his mouth, suddenly spoke up. “That’s dumb,” he said, his voice garbled through the cookie dough. “Baking is fun.”
“Hey, Elliot!” I shouted, running after the little boy. “Don’t eat raw cookie dough!”
Elliot ran around the kitchen, evading me, and the children erupted into laughter again. When I looked up, I saw that Asher was laughing, too.
…
Soon enough, the cookies were out of the oven and the children were happily stuffing their chocolate-covered faces. Sophia led Asher and I to the door; we hadn’t realized it, but we had been there so long that the sun was already beginning to set.
“I really can’t thank you enough, Mr. Sterling,” Sophia said as we stood in the doorway. “Your donation means the world to us. We’ve really been struggling lately — the government isn’t so generous with their money when it comes to human orphanages like this one. I really thought–” I watched as Sophia blinked back a few tears. “–I thought that we would have to shut down soon.”
I reached out and squeezed Sophia’s arm. Asher fell silent and appeared to be thinking, his brow furrowed almost angrily.
“I’ll see what I can do in the future,” he said suddenly. “I could set up a foundation.”
Sophia’s and my eyes both widened in shock. “You’re joking,” she said.
Asher shook his head. “Children deserve to be taken care of,” he said. “These kids are lucky to have someone like you. I’ll do what I can to help keep this place afloat.”
A sob suddenly escaped Sophia’s throat, and she threw her arms around Asher in a tight hug. I watched, suppressing a smile, as he stood there stiffly with his arms at his sides as though he didn’t know what to do. Finally, Sophia pulled away and wiped a tear away from her eye with her finger. “I’m sorry,” she said. “That was inappropriate.”
Asher said nothing, but walked out the door with a nod. I said my goodbyes to Sophia and the children before following him. The air was much cooler now, and there was a breeze coming off of the nearby ocean. As we walked to the car, I watched Asher walking ahead of me. He still had his sleeves rolled up and carried his suit jacket over his arm. The breeze ruffled his dark hair, which had been combed back neatly when we first arrived and was now loose and free, which made him look all the more handsome. I could feel Mina’s presence inside of me as I looked at him.
“Wait! Mr. Sterling!” a tiny voice suddenly shouted from behind. Asher and I turned around to see Clara running toward us with wild abandon as she swung a small paper bag in her hands. Sophia was standing in the doorway, watching.
Clara stopped in front of us, panting from her mad dash, and her little face turned bright red as she forcefully held the paper bag out to Asher. He looked down at her for a moment, puzzled, before tentatively taking the bag.
“It’s two cookies,” she said between breaths. “One for you and one for Miss Tiffany.”
“That’s very sweet, Clara,” I said with a smile, watching as Asher seemed to be suppressing a smile himself.
Clara, satisfied with her gift, turned on her heel and began to march back toward the orphanage with confidence. She stopped halfway, however, and turned around to say one more thing.
“When are you gonna come back to bake some more, Mr. Sterling?” she asked.
Asher was silent for a moment. His jaw clenched and unclenched.
And then, he said: “I’ll be back soon.”
Tiffany
A few more days went by, and I had just come inside from a midday walk with Ella and was taking her sun hat off in the foyer when I suddenly felt a newspaper being shoved into my hand. I glanced up to see Amy standing above me with a surprised look on her face, and I took the paper from her to see that the front page had a picture of Asher crouching in front of Clara from the day we went to the orphanage, when he crouched to explain the situation with his father to her. Selina must have snuck a picture while they were talking.
The headline of the article read “CEO OF WERECORP VISITS ORPHANAGE, SPENDS HEARTWARMING AFTERNOON WITH CHILDREN”.
“What’s that?” Ella asked, leaning over to look at the paper. She gasped then and ripped the paper out of my hands. “It’s daddy! And look, Tiffany!” she exclaimed, pointing to the background. “There you are!”
In the background of the picture, I could be seen standing and looking down at Asher and Clara. I felt my face get hot; I was never one for any sort of public attention, not that anyone would necessarily be looking at me.
Ella handed the paper back. “Will you read it to me?” she said.
I nodded and led her over to the big armchair in the living room, where she crawled up onto my lap and traced the words on the page with her small finger while I read.
“‘Mr. Sterling is a kind and lovely soul, beneath his hard exterior,’ Sophia Brown, the director of the orphanage, stated during her interview,” I read. “‘What was meant to be a brief meeting turned into an entire afternoon of fun with the children, who all can’t stop talking about their new favorite visitor. I sincerely hope that Mr. Sterling will come back often.'”
The article went on to talk about Asher’s donation, as well as his commitment to change. However, the reporter also went on to mention their suspicions that the visit to the orphanage was all just a publicity stunt to cover up his unfair treatment of human
