Filed to story: The Alpha and His Nanny Luna (Tiffany & Asher) Book PDF Free
I stood my ground and stared down at the little ball of fury, which only became more furious as I continued to ignore her displays of aggression.
“Why aren’t you running like the rest?!” she shouted, her high-pitched voice turning into a squeal.
I crouched down to meet the little girl’s gaze. Her hair had fallen into her eyes. I slowly extended my hand to brush it away; she flinched, growling and baring her teeth, but let me do it when I persisted, revealing sparkling blue eyes.
“You’re very pretty,” I said softly, watching intently as the little girl’s ears pricked up and her lips slowly closed. “What’s your name?”
She paused, staring at the floor, and when she spoke her face was still pointed down at it. “Ella.”
“Nice to meet you, Ella,” I said. “My name is Tiffany. Can I ask why you want to scare me away?”
“My daddy is a handsome and rich man,” she said, her voice now a whisper. “All of the young and pretty girls like you just want to work for him so they can marry him and take his money. No one wants to be here for me. I told Ms. Selina that I didn’t want to see anyone else, but she brought you instead.”
I paused for a moment, feeling tears prick at the backs of my eyes at the little girl’s words.
“You know,” I said softly, holding out my hand with my palm up and feeling the dread lift out of my stomach as Ella touched my fingers, “I was an orphan when I was your age. I understand what it’s like to not feel wanted.”
“Really?” Ella said, looking up at me with wonder on her face. “You’re not here to steal my daddy away?”
I shook my head, holding back laughter as I thought about how silly it would be for a wealthy Alpha werewolf to be interested in me, a human.
“No,” I said gently. “I’m here for you.”
Ella and I both looked up as we heard the door creak open. I looked over my shoulder, still crouching, to see the woman from before standing in the doorway. “It’s past your bedtime, Ella,” she said, clasping her hands in front of her.
“I want this one,” Ella said, walking cheerfully past me and skipping out the door as if she hadn’t just been threatening to bite my face off.
The old woman — Selina, as I had discovered her name was — cast me a disbelieving look, her eyes narrowing as she sized me up.
“Hmph,” she said under her breath once Ella was out of earshot. “What did you do to make her choose you?”
I shrugged. “Finding a common ground is a powerful thing,” I said, following Selina from the room.
When we got downstairs, Selina opened the front door to let me out. “We have your address on file, and a car will be waiting for you first thing in the morning to take you to sign your contract and begin your first day. Be ready at six o’clock sharp, and not a moment later.”
Smiling, I nodded and walked past Selina with a light feeling in my body despite her curt attitude, then paused and turned around to face her. “What was the father’s name, by the way?” I asked.
Selina pursed her lips and looked at me coldly. “You’ll receive the details once you sign your contract,” she said, promptly closing the door in my face and leaving me alone on the doorstep.
Tiffany
I woke up at 4:30 the next morning — a bit earlier than I needed to, probably, but I wasn’t taking any chances with this job. I spent the next hour practically scrubbing myself raw in the shower, fixing my hair, ironing my clothes, and taking extra care to make sure that there wasn’t a single stray hair or speck of dust on me, because today was the first day of the job that would change my life, and I had to be perfect.
I then spent the final half hour of my preparations pacing and staring out the window, willing myself with all of the strength I had to not bite my nails, as I waited for the car that Selina had mentioned. Lo and behold, as soon as the clock struck 5:59, I saw a black car slowly pulling up out front, and I practically flew out of my apartment and down the stairs so that I was opening the car door by 6:00 sharp.
“Hmph,” Selina said, looking at her watch as I clambered into the back. “Six o’clock on the dot. A little out of breath, but at least you’re here.”
“Sorry,” I said, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear and buckling my seatbelt. “It’s a bad neighborhood, so I didn’t want to wait outside.”
Selina didn’t answer. The driver pulled the car away from the curb and started heading down the street.
“We’ll be stopping to sign your contract with the lawyer first,” Selina said, her voice flat as she looked out the window with a modicum of disgust on her wrinkled face. “Then, you’ll get a tour of the penthouse apartment where you’ll be spending most of your time. I suspect you won’t be needing to return to your old home to collect your things?”
I thought back to my apartment and its contents.
“Well, I have some clothes and things there–“
“Your employer will supply you with anything you need: clothes, toiletries, books, and anything else you might need or want. Unless you have sentimental belongings you need to go back for, I wouldn’t recommend wasting your time and energy on such a move.”
I nodded, clutching the tiny silver locket around my neck. That locket was the only sentimental thing I owned, and it was always around my neck. Everything else in that apartment could burn, for all I cared.
“Very well,” Selina said.
We spent the next several minutes of the car trip in complete silence. Although Selina was seated directly across from me in the back of the expensive town car, she didn’t turn away from the window to look at me even once. I didn’t let it get to me, though; growing up human in a world dominated by werewolves prepared me for this sort of treatment. There were many werewolves who saw humans as equals, but there were even more who saw us as an inferior race. Selina was likely one of them.
The driver eventually pulled the car over in front of a brownstone with large bay windows with a sign over the door that read “William Brown, Esq.” Selina got out of the car without a word and started for the door — I did the same, standing behind her as she rapped on the door with the brass knocker.
The door swung open a few moments later, and a young woman led us in. The office smelled like a sickly combination of mahogany and burnt coffee, and it was eerily quiet. Neither Selina nor the woman said a word; the woman only shut the door behind us and gestured toward a half-open door at the end of a short hallway, and when we entered, there was an old man sitting behind an enormous wooden desk.
He was asleep.
Selina cleared her throat loudly and sat down in the chair across from him, and when he still didn’t wake, she swiftly kicked him under the desk.
“Wake up, William!”
“What? Oh!” the old man exclaimed with a start as he was unceremoniously awoken. I stifled a laugh as I stood in the doorway, but my smile quickly faded when Selina abruptly turned around and gestured with her head for me to sit.
“Right,” William said, putting on his glasses with shaking old hands as he opened a drawer and pulled out a stack of documents. “Now, let’s see…”
The cuckoo clock on the wall behind him ticked in time with my racing heartbeat and filled my ears, driving me practically insane, as the elderly lawyer licked his fingers and flipped through the documents. Finally, after a painstakingly long time and a curt “ahem” from Selina, he produced the packet of paperwork for me and set it down in front of me with a pen.
