Chapter 10 You have an interesting face

By the end of her second week as Liam’s nanny, Zoe felt like she was slowly going insane.  

Liam wasn’t the problem. Contrary to his father’s words, he was a lovely, quiet child—at least he was lovely and quiet when he wasn’t clinging to Zoe’s leg and throwing a fit whenever Zoe tried to leave the room.

It was more than a little uncomfortable, but it was something that had been slowly improving as the second week came to an end: Liam now seemed to take Zoe’s leaving only with a trembling bottom lip and wide, sad eyes.

Although that look made Zoe’s chest tighten with illogical guilt, it was still an improvement over the hysterical sobbing, so Zoe took it as encouraging progress.

No, Liam wasn’t the problem. His father was.

Milano still stared at her. Not as obviously as he used to, but far more intently than was normal. And since he now wasn’t evaluating her as a prospective nanny for his son, Zoe didn’t know what the hell the guy’s deal was. Zoe got a reprieve from the weird staring only when Milano was at work.

“Look, what’s your problem with me?” Zoe finally snapped one day.

They were in Liam’s playroom, and Milano was supposedly watching his son play with Zoe, except his unnerving gaze was fixated mostly on Zoe. It made Zoe… weirdly self-conscious. She couldn’t focus on Liam at all, acutely aware of Milano’s attention on her.

Milano raised an eyebrow. “I have no idea what you mean.”

“Oh, yeah?” Zoe said, keeping her voice low for Liam’s sake. The boy didn’t like raised voices. “In what world is it normal to stare at your son’s nanny like a creep?”

“In the world I’m paying the nanny ten thousand dollars a week,” Milano said, his voice very dry.  

“I agreed to be Liam’s nanny, not an object for gawking.”

Blue eyes gazed into her lazily. “For ten thousand dollars a week, you will be what I want you to be.”  

Zoe stared at him for a moment before laughing. “Just when I started thinking you couldn’t get more unbearably bossy, you prove me wrong again.”  

Liam made a demanding sound and Zoe tore her gaze from the father to the son. Liam had destroyed the block tower they had built, and it seemed he wanted to build it again—or rather, he wanted Zoe to build it.

“You can build it yourself, too,” Zoe said, brushing her fingers through the boy’s soft hair and smiling at him.  

Liam shook his head, something stubborn about his expression, but he remained silent.

Zoe tried not to frown. For all the encouraging progress in Liam’s behavior over the past week, he still hadn’t spoken a word after he said the word “ma-ma.” Zoe was pretty sure the boy understood speech well; speaking was another matter entirely.

“You have an interesting face. That’s why I look at you.”

Blinking in confusion, Zoe looked at Milano. Predictably, she found Milano already looking at her. “An interesting face? Are we talking about my resemblance to your ex-wife again?”

Milano shook his head. “The resemblance is actually superficial,” he said, scrutinizing Zoe’s face. “Her face is beautiful, but her features are perfect—boring. Yours aren’t. At certain angles, your face looks too sharp, almost ugly, but then you turn your head a little and it looks ridiculously beautiful. It’s really fascinating. It makes me want to…”

“What?” Zoe said when Milano had trailed off.

“Want to draw you,” Milano said, his gaze still fixated on Zoe’s face.

Zoe stared at him in amazement. “You’re an artist?”

Milano snorted a laugh. “Hardly. But sometimes I draw. Why are you so surprised? Can’t I have a hobby?”

“Of course you can,” Zoe said, building the tower again. “But billionaires usually have hobbies like sleeping around or drinking.”

There was amusement in those blue eyes now. “And how many billionaires have you met?”

Zoe laughed. “Okay, point. Just you and Derek Montreal, actually, but he doesn’t fit the stereotype, either.”

She couldn’t help but notice that Milano’s eyes grew significantly colder at the mention of Montreal.

Zoe was wondering if she actually had the nerve to ask her employer about it when Milano said, “I want to draw you.”

Zoe scrunched up her nose. “Will I have to sit still for hours? If so, that’s a hard pass for me.”

“You won’t have to sit still. Just let me look at you.”

Zoe chuckled. You’ve been doing it anyway. She shrugged. “Okay. As long as you don’t want to draw me naked or something.”

Milano’s lips twisted. “I’m not interested in seeing you naked, Zoe.”

Zoe grinned, batting her eyelashes exaggeratedly. “I thought I was ‘ridiculously beautiful?’” A part of her, a very distant part of her that wasn’t currently busy flirting with her prick of a boss, wondered what the hell she was doing. “You sure you don’t want to see me naked?”

“Very,” Milano said wryly. “I’m not a perv.”

“Good for you then, ” Zoe said. “But what does being it have to do with art? Can’t you be interested in drawing naked people as an artist too? Some artists have done it right?”

Milano snorted. “Personally, I think artists that like drawing naked people just use it as an excuse to ogle the models. You draw something that’s interesting to you and inspires you. Art can’t be impersonal and objective.”

“You just managed to accuse hundreds of great artists of being lecherous perverts.”

Milano shrugged. “Not necessarily lecherous perverts, but you know what I mean. Why did Titian keep painting women with brownish-orange hair? Not because he objectively found them interesting.”

Zoe laughed. “Okay, whatever you say. I’m not going to argue with you for the sake of arguing when I understand nothing about art.”

At that moment, Liam made a war cry and destroyed the almost-finished tower again, to Zoe’s exasperation.

“Liam!” she said.

The boy grinned, blue eyes wide and full of glee.

Zoe couldn’t help but smile back. The kid was just so adorable; it was impossible to be annoyed with him.

Milano cleared his throat. He stood up, glancing at his watch. “I have to go to the office, but I’ll be back in the afternoon. Wait for me in the right wing on the third floor. I have something of a studio there.”

“Okay,” Zoe said and watched Milano tentatively approach his son.

“Bye, Liam,” he said, his voice significantly softer than his usual uncompromising tone.

Liam shot his father a look that was a mix of shy and apprehensive before quickly turning back to his toys and acting like his father wasn’t there.

A deep furrow appeared between Milano’s brows. Grimacing, he turned away and strode out of the room. Zoe felt a little bad for him.  

When she looked back at Liam, the kid was watching the spot his father had just been with a strange expression on his cherubic face.  

“You should be nicer to your dad, you know,” Zoe said. “He’s trying.”

Liam looked at her and then looked back at his toys.  

Zoe gave him an unimpressed look. “I know you understand me, kiddo.”

Still no reaction.

Zoe sighed. Sometimes she felt so out of her depth with Liam she wasn’t sure what Milano was paying her for.

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