The Omega Nanny Read online

  The Omega Nanny

  by

  Penelope Peters

  The Omega Nanny

  Alpha Thomas Whittaker needs a nanny.

  Single dad Thomas Whittaker loves work, his daughter, and coffee – not always in that order. Romance hasn’t been on his mind since his mate died six years ago. When his sister hires the cute busboy from Thomas’s favorite coffee shop as the new nanny, he’s just amused.

  Until he finds out that the busboy is an omega.

  Omega Kieran Corvey needs a job.

  Kieran Corvey is newly single, almost homeless – and determined to pay back every cent his parents spent on an engagement that went nowhere. Kieran needs money more than he needs a love life. Being hired to take care of a six-year-old girl is much better than shilling coffee to thirsty and lusty customers all day.

  Until he finds out his new employer is an alpha.

  Sometimes you find exactly what you need when you’re not looking for it at all.

  The Omega Nanny is a standalone Omegaverse non-shifter story with a HEA and mpreg (male pregnancy) ending.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Epilogue

  Links

  About the Author

  Also by Penelope Peters

  Acknowledgements

  Excerpt from The Country Omega

  Copyright Notice

  Chapter One

  “Brent wants to get married,” Connie announced over dessert, and just like that, Thomas Whittaker’s life began.

  It wasn’t that Thomas hadn’t known that change of some sort was coming. Connie’s own life had been on the backburner for six years – but the minute Thomas first met Brent Harvey, come to pick up Thomas’s older sister Connie for a date, Thomas had recognized something starting that he wasn’t going to be able to stop. That had been a year ago; since then, Connie and Brent had become such a fixture as a joint unit that most people forgot they were both betas and thus subject to very different rules than the majority alpha/omega population.

  Thomas liked Brent. He was a good man, a dependable friend, and as far as Thomas could tell, an exemplary soldier who sailed through every performance review and obstacle with grace and self-confidence. He was even a good match for Connie, who was smart and self-assured in her own right, but had a tendency to focus a little bit too zealously on the task at hand to the point of ignoring anything else going on. The way she’d committed herself to raising Thomas’s daughter Jessie, after Jessie’s mother had died when the girl was a week old, was just one example.

  Brent changed all of that. Thomas had front-row seats to Connie’s transformation from the doting aunt whose days revolved around playdates, preschool runs, and endless repetitions of The Wiggles – into a woman with her own hobbies, interests, and intentions. Connie had even been talking more recently about looking for work, maybe returning to college for a degree. Having her own career. Thomas wasn’t going to deny any of it to her – even if it did mean the disruption of his own comfortable world.

  “Oh, darling,” gushed Darla Whittaker, Connie and Thomas’s omega mother. She was up and out of her chair like a shot, her arms wrapped around Connie’s shoulders as Connie laughed and tried to bat her mother away. Growing up, it’d always seemed as if Connie and Darla were of the same mind, if not the same presentation. They even looked a bit the same – golden-brown faces framed by a riot of corkscrew curls, wide noses and intelligent, all-seeing all-knowing brown eyes that didn’t miss a trick. “We’ll start planning right away – when do you want to have the marriage?”

  “Before he goes to Germany,” said Connie, clearly pleased despite the nervous glance at Thomas. “That gives us a month. Neither of us want anything fancy.”

  “You’re not getting married in town hall,” scoffed Marlene, their female alpha father. Unlike her lighter-skinned daughter or mate, Marlene’s skin tone matched Thomas’s: dark brown and without a single blemish or freckle. She kept her hair shaved close to her head, all the better to show the vibrant, oversized earrings she wore, which dangled right down to her shoulders. She hadn’t gotten up from her seat, but she didn’t look particularly surprised by Connie’s announcement, which made Thomas think that perhaps Brent had approached her beforehand. “We can do a sight better than a hallway with a line of applicants, thank you.”

  “Enough out of you!” scolded Darla gaily. “It’s hardly that bad anymore. I’m sure it was crowded the first week, but the law’s been passed for a month now, surely people are willing to be married in the privacy of their own homes, instead of a dusty, poorly lit hallway where anyone could see?”

  Connie grinned blushing a bit. “I wouldn’t mind.”

  Darla let out a horrified squeak, as if the thought of a public display was perfectly abhorrent.

  “I would,” said Marlene gruffly, and that more or less ended the argument – or at least Connie’s willingness to make the argument for form’s sake.

  Thomas wasn’t surprised by his parents’ reaction to Connie’s announcement. They were fairly progressive for the older generation, and had been pleased when the Beta Marriage Act was passed the month before. They might not have always demonstrated their support for the rights of betas to marry and gain similar legal privileges to those enjoyed by bonded alphas and omegas, but Thomas knew they had made their own contributions to the cause over the years.

  No, Thomas’s concern was centered on his six-year-old daughter, Jessie, who hadn’t said a single word since Connie’s announcement.

  What Jessie had done was drop her spoon. That, by itself, wasn’t much of a reaction. Jessie dropped her spoon about ten times during mealtimes, mostly because she couldn’t stop trying to flip it between her fingers, or spin it like a miniature drum major. But this time, the dropped spoon was accompanied by a wide-eyed look as the girl stared at her aunt, holding her breath.

  Thomas was about to reach out and touch his daughter, just to try to knock her into breathing again, when Connie leaned over to her.

  “Jessie?” she asked gently. “Is this all right? Me marrying Brent?”

  “All right?” breathed Jessie, and then launched herself out of her chair and across the table to Connie’s lap, full of six-year-old joy, wide curls bouncing. “That’s so cool, does that mean Brent’s gonna live here? Do I have to call him Uncle Brent? Are you gonna have heats now? Or will he? Can I have a cousin? Can it be a girl? But she can’t have my room, she has to have her own.”

  Connie laughed, and Thomas could see the way her shoulders relaxed for the first time that evening. He realized with a pang of guilt that she had likely been carrying her worry for… oh, God. He didn’t have any idea how long. When would Brent have had a chance to talk to Marlene?

  “No, sweetie, that’s not how marriage works. It doesn’t turn either of us into omegas or alphas – we’ll still be betas, both of us. We’ll try to give you a cousin, but it might take a while. It’s not as easy for betas to have children.”

  “Why not?” demanded Jessie. “If you want them.”

  “I’ll explain later,” said Thomas firmly, though he hoped that Jessie would forget in the meantime. Probably not; the girl had a memory like a steel trap. “Back in your chair for now, you need to finish your dinner.”

  Jessie sighed dramatically and slid off her aunt’s lap. “I hate lima beans.”

  “Do you?” asked Darla cheerfully. “I always thought they tasted like
chocolate.”

  It was the same line that she’d used on Connie and Thomas when they were small. Thomas saw Connie roll her eyes and then look at him, before she glanced down at her plate, the hesitant tension back in her shoulders. As if she was afraid to look at him, to see what his reaction to her announcement really was.

  “Chocolate?” asked Jessie dubiously. “Mine don’t.”

  “Try another bite,” suggested Darla. “It’s an acquired taste. The more you eat, the more you’ll acquire the ability to taste the chocolate.”

  Connie looked up again, this time trying to hold back her laughter.

  Jessie took a large bite of lima beans, and chewed experimentally while Darla ate her own beans, careful to chew in time.

  It was exactly the same as when Connie had been a child – and Thomas had to forgive his sister for leaving them. She’d spent six years helping Thomas to raise his daughter. Surely that was enough. Connie deserved her own life, her own family – her own daughter, especially now that it was legal for her to have it.

  Thomas held his glass of wine up to his sister, in a silent toast, and Connie beamed.

  * * *

  “I’m sorry for springing it on you,” said Connie later, as she washed the dishes from dinner. Marlene and Darla were somewhere in the house with Jessie. Thomas could hear their voices from Jessie’s bedroom, where they were no doubt redesigning her dollhouse for the tenth time. “Just… we were talking about it this afternoon, Brent and I, and making plans, and I knew he’d asked Fa already, and I couldn’t keep it in any longer, Thomas, I know I should have talked to you first—“

  “Why? It’s not like you need my permission,” said Thomas, reaching for the still dripping pot as Connie deposited it on the rack.

  “No, but… I’m sort of leaving you in the lurch, with Jessie. It’s better now that she’s in school most of the day, but there’s still a few hours every afternoon where you have to work when she’s at home, and she’s too little to be by herself—“

  “Oh, now,” said Thomas, keeping his face neutral as he dried the pot. “That won’t be a problem. Jessie’s going to love Germany.”

  The water continued to run out of the faucet, but the noise of Connie washing the silverware stopped abruptly. Thomas had to turn his back to Connie before the grin overtook his face, and the moment Connie turned away from the sink, Thomas knelt down to put the dry pot away, which had the added benefit of keeping his expression from Connie a little longer.

  “Thomas,” said Connie, as serious and stern as she had ever been when they were growing up. “I am not taking your daughter to Germany with me and my new mate.”

  Thomas made his sigh as wistful as he could manage. “Oh, fine. I suppose she’ll just have to drop out of first grade and go to work with me.”

  “Oh my God,” groaned Connie, and Thomas felt droplets of water hit the back of his shirt and neck, and yelped. “You are awful. I never know whether or not to believe you when you say things like that.”

  “Then don’t,” said Thomas, rising to his feet, grinning at his sister. Connie scowled and crossed her arms. “It’s not as if I didn’t know this might be coming. If Brent was an alpha, or you were an omega, you would have been bonded a year ago.”

  “But we’re not.”

  “I knew he’d ask you,” said Thomas. “The minute that law was passed, and he found out about the transfer to Germany.”

  Connie closed her eyes and bent her chin to her chest for a moment, breathing hard and laughing. “I didn’t.”

  “Idiot,” said Thomas fondly, and reached to turn off the water before he leaned against the counter next to her. “Connie. Just… do you love him?”

  Connie was quiet for a moment, her face soft and thoughtful with her hair pulled back into a beaded clasp. She smiled, just for herself, and before she even answered, Thomas knew what she was going to say.

  Or most of what she was going to say.

  “Yeah. It’s… not the same as you and Felicity, but… yeah.”

  Thomas’s gut clenched, hearing Felicity’s name – but that hadn’t changed in the six years since she’d died, and he’d grown used to the sensation. “Yeah, well,” he said gruffly, pushing away from the counter. He reached for another dish to dry, so that he could turn away from Connie again. “It wouldn’t be. You and Brent won’t be able to bond like we did.”

  “I’m not entirely sure sometimes that’s such a bad thing,” said Connie behind him, and he heard her turn the water back on, the familiar clink of silverware being washed. “I want Jessie’s care settled before I go.”

  “The babysitting service,” said Thomas.

  Connie sighed. “She can’t have babysitters all the time, Thomas.”

  “I know that. They offer a nanny-placement service as well. I’ll call them in the morning, see who’s available.”

  Clink, clank, clink. Thomas knew his sister very well. He could hear her thinking. When she spoke, it wasn’t even the least bit of a surprise.

  “Felicity wouldn’t want you to be alone for so long,” said Connie finally.

  “No,” said Thomas shortly.

  “I just meant instead of calling the nanny-placement service, maybe you could call a bonding agent—“

  “I know what you meant,” said Thomas firmly. “I’m not ready.”

  Clank, clink, clink.

  “Are you ever going to be ready?” asked Connie, so gently, so lovingly, Thomas couldn’t even find it in him to be mad at her. “Thomas – it’s been six years since she died. And Jessie needs a mother.”

  “Jessie’s fine,” said Thomas. “She’s had you, hasn’t she?”

  “I’m not her mother. I’m her aunt. And I’m about to move to Germany. No matter how wonderful they are – a nanny who goes home at the end of the day isn’t going to replace me, and I never replaced Felicity, not really.” Connie dropped the last of the dishes into the rack and turned off the water. “Don’t play stupid and pretend you don’t realize that.”

  There were still dishes to dry; Thomas didn’t reach for them. “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come to take care of Jessie after Felicity died.”

  Connie touched his arm. “Like I could have done anything else? My baby brother’s mate died a week after giving birth. You really think I could have stayed away?”

  “The love of your life is going to Germany, and wants you to go with him and share his life. Do you really think I would do anything to stop you?” countered Thomas.

  Connie’s mouth wavered for a moment, and then she flung her arms around Thomas and hugged him tight. “Oh, God, I really do hate you, you’re gonna make me cry.”

  “I want a clock,” said Thomas. “The obnoxious kind, with the stupid bird.”

  “The most obnoxious I can find,” promised Connie, and pushed away. “You don’t hire anyone without my approval.”

  Thomas rolled his eyes. “As if you’d let me have a say in this anyway.”

  * * *

  The representative at the babysitting service was overjoyed to hear that Thomas was looking to hire someone on a more regular basis. By that afternoon, there were half a dozen profiles for prospective nannies in his email, waiting for his review.

  Thomas read through all of them, piled them neatly on top of each other – and gave them straight to Connie the moment he arrived home.

  “Piece of cake,” declared Connie as she rifled through them. Jessie sat next to her, legs swinging as she worked on her homework. Connie shifted back and forth between checking on Jessie’s penmanship and looking through the résumés. “No, sweetie, D faces the other way.”

  Jessie sighed deeply, as if she sincerely believed that the letter D had been put on Earth solely to make her life miserable, and began to erase the entire word.

  “Oh, I remember this person,” said Connie, and showed the profile to Jessie. “She babysat for you once, Jess.”

  Jessie peered at the paper and wrinkled her nose. “She smelled fun
ny.”

  Thomas frowned. “I thought all of the babysitters were betas?”

  “Not all of them,” said Connie, as she set the strangely-scented woman’s profile to one side. “There were one or two omegas in the mix.”

  “But the nannies, they’re all betas, right?”

  Connie raised her eyebrows at him. “I thought you didn’t want me to call a matchmaking service?”

  Thomas glared at her. “I’m just saying, it doesn’t make sense to have an omega nanny. What if they go into estrus when I have to be at work?”

  Connie leaned over and covered Jessie’s ears as she grinned wickedly at him. “Well, when an alpha and an omega reeeeeaaaalllly like each other’s scents…”

  “Stop it,” groaned Thomas. “Forget I asked. Just… find a good one, okay?”

  “A good nanny for Jessie or a good omega for you?” Connie called after him, and her laughter followed him all the way to his bedroom.

  Thomas let the shower run hot as he undressed. By the time he’d hung up his suit in the closet, steam had filled the bathroom. He stepped under the spray with a deep sigh. There was a thin layer of dust and grime on his skin, even where he’d been clothed. Spending the afternoon at a construction site did that, though he suspected the feeling of grit on his skin was more psychological than anything else. The water that sluiced down his body was never quite as grimy as he expected when it went down the drain. He wasn’t the one doing the work, either – he was just there, inspecting every last inch of it, ensuring the new buildings were up to safety codes and would pass their final inspections.

  Most of the time, it was basic work. No contractor actually wanted to have to rebuild something because they’d neglected some safety feature required by law. But every so often, he had to break the bad news, and those days, he came home and stood under the shower, washing away the imagined dirt as well as the very real guilt that came from telling someone their dollars had been wasted on poor planning.