“Of course. I mean, not at all!” She slammed her laptop shut. “I wasn’t getting much work done anyway.”
Byron sat across from her, making the chairs, the table, everything look insanely small in contrast to his broad-shouldered body. He took another large drink, and Beth sipped her soda. She was so excited it might as well have been liquid meth.
“So, you’re at uni?” Byron tilted his head at her laptop.
“Yeah, I’m, um, doing communications. I want to work in PR.”
A small curve of his lips. “Not planning on being a full-time nanny forever?”
“Oh, um, no. I don’t think so. I like working for you, though,” she added, then blushed as though she really was the hired help. “I mean, you and Mrs Thomas. You’ve both been great to me.”
“Have we?” Byron sounded amused. “Me and Mrs Thomas?”
“Yes, you’re both so nice,” Beth bluffed. She decided to escalate the situation, shifting toward Byron and pushing hershoulder back so her tits were practically bursting through her tight little t-shirt. “Why? Has Mrs Thomas said anything?”
“She’s always saying something about something.” Byron’s gaze flicked downward, then returned determinedly to her face. “I hope she’s not too hard on you…”
Beth took another small sip of soda and decided a little fake-tipsy honesty was in order. “I mean, I don’t know if she likes me… but she’s a bit… I mean, she’s really great…”
“You don’t have to be polite.”
“She’s, um, a bit bossy?”
Byron burst out laughing. “Yeah, she is, ay?”
The intimacy of the conversation—the idea of talking about Audrey behind her back with her husband—sent a shiver down Beth’s spine. Byron drained his whiskey and headed back to the cupboard.
“She’s always been that way,” he said, pouring himself double. “We’ve been together since uni.”
“Oh, wow...”
“Yeah, not the smartest idea, staying with your first real girlfriend.” He returned to the table, but his chair was much closer to hers this time. “You have a boyfriend, Bethany?”
The way he said her full name was electric. Like a secret they both shared, precious and dangerous both.
“N-No. Not right now.”
“That’s surprising. You’re a great-looking girl.”
Beth felt herself flush to the roots of her hair. “Thank you. I mean, I know I’m not like Mrs Thomas...”
“No, you’re not,” Byron said. His gaze fell to her chest, then rose again. “That’s not a bad thing.”
Beth’s neck glowed, and sweat prickled in the corners of her elbows, underarms, the backs of her knees. This was all too fucking hot. Too real. She didn’t think she could take muchmore, yet she never wanted it to stop. “I, um, don’t have as many followers on Instagram.”
Byron leaned forward, his green eyes gleaming. “Maybe you’re not taking the right kind of pictures?”
She giggled, the sound tighter and higher than genuine amusement allowed, and an idea occurred to her. She drank half her mocktail in one go as though willing it to give her the strength to say something inappropriate.
“I thought about doing something like that before I started nannying,” she said in a rush. “Sexier pictures, I guess. I have friends who tried it, and they made so much money, I thought I could do it.”
Byron stared at her, and the air between them became so loaded it could have been a semi-automatic rifle. “Did you go through with it?”
“Um, I made an account and took some photos. But I got too shy.”
“Right.”
Byron always had the gift of loading single words with unworldly significance, but this was an all-time record. In one syllable, he’d managed to say that he wanted to see those photos, jerk off to them, show them to every single man he knew and ‘check out my kid’s nanny.’ She imagined him lying on his back, stroking himself to her photos. Coming onto his stomach as he thought about fucking her…
