"Daddy!"
"Not now sweetheart; I really need to finish this up."
"But daddy!"
"Don't worry. Mama's gonna be home real soon and you can play with her. Just hang tight."
The little three year old blonde girl tugs at her father's arm, greatly distracting him from the copyediting of his latest novel.
"Zoe, please," Kendall tells his daughter. He takes one hand from the keyboard briefly and pats her head before turning it to its rightful place on the keys. "I really, really have to finish this. Why don't you go play with your dolls? I'll be in soon and help you get ready for bed."
"Oh, okay." Zoe sighs greatly and leaves her father's study. She steps down the big, empty hallway of the giant house and goes to her room, plops on the floor and begins to play with a few princess dolls. "Oh Lady, you are late for the ball."
Kendall smiles from the study when he hears her little voice echo through the lonely house. He has just a few more pages to edit and he'll be done with this book. Unfortunately he'll turn around and immediately start the next, but it could be worse.
The phone rings.
"Who calls now?" he thinks to himself. Without checking the caller ID, he picks up the receiver and says, "Hello? Yes, this is him."
His face falls white.
"…what? When? How?!"
"Uh, Mr. Garcia, right?"
"Yep."
"What makes you qualified for a live in nanny position?"
"Well, I have four younger brothers. Being the oldest, I always had to take care of 'em."
"Oh, right. So the job also includes cleaning and cooking. You know this, right?"
"Yeah that's cool."
"You, um, you do you realize you're getting Cheetos all over my desk, right?"
"Oh. Uh, yeah."
Three interviews later and Kendall still has no one. How hard is it to find a good live in nanny/housekeeper in LA? Apparently harder than it seems.
Zoe climbs up into his lap and hugs him. "Are we gonna get a new mama?"
"Don't say that, sweetie," Kendall whispers. "It's not a new mama, just a new friend. Someone who can play with you and take care of the house just like mama did when she was home."
"Yeah, a new mama."
"No baby girl, it's not a new mama. Don't say that, okay?" Kendall pets her soft hair and kisses the top of her head. "You'll still only have one mama."
He looks down at a chart on his desk and reads the last name for the day. "Logan? Logan Mitchell?" He calls out.
Through the two open doors to the study comes a short young man. He has fair skin, short dark hair and what seems to be deep brown eyes. He's wearing a collared shirt under a sweater with nicely pressed khaki pants.
"H-hello, Mr. Knight," the applicant says.
"Hey, how are you doing?" Kendall asks casually. "Go ahead and take a seat."
"Thank you." Logan nods and smiles just a bit, showing off a pair of cute dimples in his face. He sits at the only chair across from Kendall and puts his hands in his lap. "This must be Zoe, right?"
"It sure is. Zoe, say hi to Logan."
"Hi Logan!" the little girl waves a lot at the boy across from her and grins. Logan smiles back.
"She's adorable," Logan says.
"Hah. Thanks. She's the most important thing to me, you know."
"I can see why."
"Alright so uh, Logan," Kendall looks down at the papers and pulls out the boy's resume. He sees that he's only recently turned 19. "You're pretty young. You know this is a live-in job, right?"
"Yes, I'm aware."
"What drives a 19 year old boy to get a job like this?"
"Okay, well I've been a fulltime nanny before. Never live-in, but almost. It was extremely rewarding work and I loved every minute of it. The people moved, though. So I've been out of work. But ummm, to be perfectly honest…"
"Yeah?"
Logan blushes and looks a bit shy. "There's a lot of drama at home and I'm trying to avoid it."
"Ah, I see. I get it. That's cool." Kendall puts his arms around Zoe again and smiles sadly. "We understand how drama is. It's good to avoid it as much as possible."
"Yeah," Logan says with a sigh. "Just, ah, complicated stuff."
"It's alright. Thanks for telling me that much, I appreciate it."
"Not a problem." Logan smiles at Kendall warmly and Kendall returns the emotion.
"So you can cook? Clean? Keep house?" Kendall asks.
"I think so. I've never had any complaints before. Of course I'm still learning a lot, but I'm trying my best."
"Fantastic. Trying always counts, right?" Kendall flashes his green eyes and Logan and the younger man blushes again. "You seem like a real nice guy."
"I, haha, I try my best," Logan giggles.
"So when can you start?"
"Logan is going to be your new best friend, alright?" Kendall tells Zoe as the new nanny is unpacking his things in the guest room downstairs. "It might be weird at first since he's new, but give it some time and you'll get along great."
"Okay daddy," Zoe says quietly.
Kendall picks up the Lady doll and hands it to his daughter. "I bet he'd love to meet your princesses, huh?"
"Yeah, I think," the girl answers, now playing with Lady's long red hair.
"Good. I'm gonna go check on him, so you stay here and be good."
"Yep!" Zoe cheers with a grin. Kendall kisses on the top of the head then heads downstairs to see how his new nanny is settling in.
The guest room is on the ground floor and it is very large. It's actually two rooms in one (or three if you count the bathroom), so Logan has a big bedroom then a smaller sitting room with his own TV. The entire area is almost as big as the apartment he had been living in with his parents.
"Logan?" Kendall asks, knocking on the door.
"Yeah, come in!"
Kendall opens the door and steps inside. The young man has neatly unpacked his few things in nice stacks on the sofa, and he stands with his hands on his hips as he looks things over.
"Feel free to redecorate or anything," Kendall says. "This is your place to live now, so you can do whatever you want to feel comfortable. I want you to work here as long as you can."
"Alright," Logan says. He looks over his shoulder at Kendall and smiles. "I don't see any reason why I can't get a few years here, at least."
"Fantastic," Kendall says with a smile. "I'm glad you're already situated well. Are things really that bad at home?"
"Well, kind of," Logan admits. He sits down on the sofa. "There's always yelling. Mom had an affair and it's just a mess."
"I see. I'm sorry."
"It's alright. Out of sight, out of mind; or something like that, huh?"
"Yeah," Kendall laughs a little and looks at the floor. "We've had our share of problems, too."
"Um, Mr. Knight?" Logan asks, his voice suddenly growing timid and quiet.
"Yeah?"
"Do you um, mind if I ask what happened? To your wife, I mean."
"Yeah, that's fine." Kendall chokes down a bit of sadness and sits beside Logan with his elbows on his knees. "Okay, so my wife was a model."
"Wow, really?"
"Yes. Nobody real famous, but she travelled a lot and made pretty good money."
"That's amazing. She must have been beautiful."
"She was," Kendall sighs. "There are pictures around the house. You'll see."
"What do you do, again?" Logan asks.
"I'm a writer," the blond man says. "I think at the end of the day I made more money than Jo, but…" Saying her name suddenly hurts him. She's been dead for only a month, and after the first week he's managed to avoid saying her name.
"Are you alright?" Logan asks when Kendall stops speaking.
"Y-yeah," the widow groans. He bites his lower lip for a second then exhales slowly. "It probably seems funny that, even though I work from home, I need hired help to live with me."
"No I don't think it's funny at all."
"You don't? 'Cause I thought so. The problem is that I really need to be focused when I'm working. See, my wife would go out of town a lot and it was always difficult to take care of Zoe and write. I don't want Zoe to feel left out. She's already suffering from losing her mom; she needs to know people really, really care about her."
"I understand," Logan says. "I'll do my very best to make her feel loved."
"That's great. That's, that's really great." Kendall gets up and smiles. "We'll do alright the rest of today, but later on I'll show you around and tomorrow you'll get started. How does that sound?"
"Wonderful. Thank you."