Chapter 25: The Naughty Nanny

Santa Clarita, California

May 23, 1998

It was the Friday that kicked off the start of the Memorial Day weekend. Celia and her band had worked an eight-hour day in their new tour rehearsal warehouse, as they had done every day since the facility was handed over to them for their use the previous Monday. Under the terms of the tour agreement they had finally signed with National Records two weeks before, KVA was paying for the lease on the facility, the catering, and the salaries of all the musicians, but National was footing the bill for renting or buying all the tour equipment and for training up the roadies and techies who would be running the shows. National would also pay for the venue rentals when the tour actually started, and half of the transportation and personnel costs involved in moving the tour from city to city. In return, National would collect half of all ticket revenue and the other half would go to KVA. It was not the deal that KVA or National had hoped for, but it was what they finally agreed upon over six long days of negotiations.

The contract for Matt’s tour was a little bit different because National had an ace to play for that one. Since they owned the rights to Matt’s previous solo material and had the ability to forbid him to perform it if they wished, they demanded a few more concessions. The biggest was the division of the revenue. They would get sixty percent of ticket sales instead of fifty. And KVA would pay for one hundred percent of Matt and his band’s travel and entertainment expenses out of their own pocket. National would still pay for half of the road crew personnel and transport costs and one hundred percent of the venue costs, but KVA had to pay for feeding and entertaining the entire crew. KVA, in turn, had voted to give Matt sixty percent of their forty percent of the revenue so he could enjoy a healthy profit for his efforts (Matt would pay his band members and his paramedic out of that money). This did cut down on KVA’s tour profit considerably, but KVA had a lot more faith in their upcoming CDs than National did. They planned to clean up on those CD sales.

Jake, as had been his habit since the beginning of the experiment, had spent the workweek alternating between the two warehouses so he could supervise and shape the way both tours were being put together. The Nerdlys did the same, though they worked opposite of Jake, meaning that whichever band Jake was with on a particular day, the Nerdlys were with the other, working on their sound and engineering.

On this day, Jake had been with Celia and her band. They were a bit behind Matt in progression and were still working on the basic layout of how the show would go. There were only a few sound guys working with them currently. They had a basic stage set up and a basic sound system. As of yet, there was no concert lighting, no backstage area, no choreography being planned. They had not even found a saxophone player yet, so Laura was filling in for that part, but she had made herself very clear when she proclaimed that she would not be going out on the road.

The band finished their third rendition of Playing Those Games—which was loosely planned to be the closing number for the show—just after four o’clock. Though they usually worked until 5:00 PM, Celia decided to call an early end to the day in honor of the three-day break that everyone would be taking for the holiday weekend. The band, all of them tired and grumpy and a little burned out from this first week of grinding work, were grateful. Charlie, Eric, Liz, and Little Stevie all cut out immediately. Coop elected to hang out with Jake, Laura, and Celia for the traditional Friday post-rehearsal beer.

“Anyone wanna burn?” asked Coop, pulling out a joint and a lighter.

“I can’t,” Jake said with a little regret. “I’m flying in a little bit.”

“You’ll be flying a lot sooner if you hit some of this shit,” Coop told him. “It’s genuine Humboldt skunk bud.”

“Tempting,” Jake said with a sigh, “but I’ll have to pass all the same.”

“I’ll take a couple hits,” Laura said. “Fire that thing up.”

“Really?” asked Coop. “I thought you weren’t supposed to do that.”

“I’m not breastfeeding anymore,” she said. “Caydee got her first tooth two weeks ago. That brought an end to my nipples in her mouth.”

“So ... you’re just like feeding her regular milk now?” Coop asked.

“I still have a pretty good supply of pumped milk in the freezer,” Laura said. “We’ve been giving her that and some formula.”

“She’s also starting to eat baby food now,” Jake added. “Elsa makes it for her.”

“Oh ... I see,” Coop said, nodding wisely. Though he was a father, and was paying five digits a month in child support, he had never actually been around the child. “Let’s burn then.”

Coop fired up. He and Laura passed the joint back and forth until they were both feeling good. Celia and Jake watched them, Celia sipping out of a bottle of beer, Jake with a bottle of iced tea that was completely unsatisfying.

“Good shit, Coop,” Laura said, her eyes now half-lidded.

“For sixty bucks an eighth, it better be,” he replied.

Coop left a few minutes later. Nobody bothered to tell him to be careful driving while he was stoned. He was Coop, after all, and he probably drove more miles per week stoned than he did straight.

Ordinarily on Friday evenings Jake and Laura would go back to Celia’s house with her and the three of them would get naked together and do the sorts of things that three naked, horny people liked to do. Jake and Laura would then shower and drive back to the airport and fly home so that Meghan could start her weekend off after earning a little time and half bonus for the extra Friday night work. But that was not going to happen on this day. Instead, the three of them would be staying the night at Tom and Mary’s house outside Cypress. Caydee was going to visit Grandma and Grandpa with Jake for the weekend. The ladies had their own plans. They were going to drive to Sacramento tomorrow morning to attend the Dixieland Jazz Festival that was held every Memorial Day weekend in Old Sacramento. They had hopes of finding a sax player there was the excuse they used. Jake suspected they just wanted to drink and have fun, but he kept his suspicion to himself.

Jake used his cell phone to call Pauline and let her know they had knocked off early and were heading out of town soon. She was at the KVA studio working on some paperwork related to the upcoming tour. She had been invited to come with them but had passed. She and Obie and Tabby were going to spend the holiday weekend at an all-inclusive resort in Mazatlán. They would be flying out on a chartered business jet at 9:00 AM the next morning ... He then called the house phone in Oceano. Elsa picked up and he asked to speak with Meghan.

“Hey, Jake,” Meghan greeted a few moments later. “What’s up?”

“We knocked off a little early today,” he said. “We’ll be touching down at around...” He looked at his watch and did a few calculations in his head. “ ... oh, say five-thirty-five or so.”

“I’ll be there,” she promised.

“You’re the best,” he told her.

“Uh ... thanks,” she said shyly.

“You’re supposed to answer: ‘that’s what they say,’” Jake informed her. “Work on your witty retorts a little, will you?”

She giggled a little and then promised she would work on that.

“All right,” Jake said, stuffing the phone in his pocket. “Let’s blow this scene.”

They blew the scene, grabbing their luggage from over by the door and then tossing it into the trunk of Celia’s Mercedes. They let the security guard on duty know that they would be leaving Jake’s truck in the parking lot for the weekend. His name was Frank and he was a young kid in his early twenties who was quite awed to be regularly scheduled for this particular assignment. He promised that he and his colleagues would keep an eye on the truck as well as the warehouse and all of the expensive musical gear inside of it.

Celia drove them to Whiteman Airport with Laura in the front passenger seat and Jake in the back seat (“where you belong,” his wife told him with a giggle). Celia parked her car in the hangar where Jake’s truck was normally kept. They then boarded the Avanti, Celia in the copilot’s seat, Laura sitting just behind Jake. In the seat next to her was one of the four car seats they owned. This one was permanently kept in the aircraft. Another was kept in Jake’s BMW, another was kept in Laura’s cursed minivan, and the fourth was usually kept in Meghan’s new car (she had used her new earnings to buy herself a brand-new Honda Accord). Jake fueled up the tanks to about three-quarters full since jet fuel was cheaper at Whiteman than it was in San Luis Obispo or Heritage. Jill would have been proud of him. They took off a little past 5:00 PM and touched down at SLO Regional at 5:33. Jake taxied over to the general aviation terminal, where Meghan’s new Honda was sitting in the parking lot. He shut down the engines and the three of them stepped out of the plane.

“Where’s my little Caydee?” Laura asked in her high-pitched voice as Meghan walked toward them, Caydee in arms. “Where’s my little girl?”

Caydee, seeing her mommy and daddy and the cool lady who hung out with them a lot, broke into a huge smile. Laura took her out of Meghan’s arms, gave her a big hug, and then covered her face with kisses. Caydee giggled and cooed and kissed her mommy back with her wet, sloppy lips.

“I swear to God,” said Celia, smiling at the display, “she’s grown another inch or two since I saw her last week.”

“She definitely outgrows her clothes long before she wears them out,” Jake said. “Come here, Caydee. Come see Daddy.”

She held out her arms to him and Jake plucked her out of Laura’s grasp. He gave her a few kisses of his own and then hurled her up into the air, catching her neatly as she came down. She laughed in delight at this game, which was one of her favorites.

“I really wish you wouldn’t do that,” Laura said, chewing her lip nervously as Jake did it again, making Caydee laugh even louder.

Meanwhile, Meghan was staring at Celia with an expression of awe that bordered on religious worship. The two of them had not met yet but she was on record as being a huge Celia Valdez fan.

“Apparently they forgot their manners,” Celia said to Meghan with a smile. “I’m Celia.”

“Yes,” Meghan said. “Yes, you are.”

“And ... uh ... you’re Meghan right?” Celia asked, though it was not really a question. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“You have?” she asked. “What did you hear?”

“Uh ... just that you’re Jake and Laura’s nanny,” she said reassuringly. “And that you take very good care of little Caydee while they’re working.”

“Oh ... yeah ... yeah, I do do that,” she stammered.

“I met your sister,” Celia told her.

“You did?” Meghan asked. “When?”

“Uh ... when she was helping Laura deliver Caydee,” Celia said carefully. “I was there when she was born. That’s how Jake and Laura met you, right?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Meghan said. “Danielle told me that Laura was her patient and she helped deliver Caydee. She didn’t tell me that you were there though.”

“Interesting,” Celia said, impressed. Danielle had kept private information private, even from her own sister. Hopefully that discretion was a family trait. After all, she knew that young Meghan here had been made aware of what was going on between the Kingsleys and herself. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Meghan.”

“It is awesome to meet you,” Meghan said.

Celia then turned to Jake. “Hand over that chiquita,” she demanded. “I’ll hold her while you load the plane.”

Jake handed her over and Celia cuddled her against her body, calling her Chiquita, and exclaiming about how big she was getting. Caydee laughed and giggled and cooed and tried to grab Celia’s nose.

Jake and Laura and Meghan pulled all of Caydee’s baggage out of the Honda. She had more than her parents combined. She had a large diaper bag, the car seat, a suitcase full of clothes and toys, and another suitcase stuffed with extra diapers, extra wipes, bottles of frozen breast milk, jars of homemade baby food, cans of powdered formula, empty bottles, and a kit full of emergency supplies like Tylenol, teething gel, and diaper rash cream (Caydee was very fair skinned, like her mother, and prone to diaper rash). Jake loaded the suitcases into the cargo compartment in the nose. The car seat and the diaper bag were loaded into the main seating area and secured.

“All right,” Jake said once everything was loaded. “Looks like we’re ready to fly. Thanks for meeting us, Meghan.”

“No problem,” she said. “Glad to help, especially if I get to meet Celia Valdez.”

“Enjoy your weekend off,” Laura told her. “We’ll be back on Monday night.”

“I’ll see you then,” she said.

“Goodbye, Meghan,” Celia told her. “It was nice to meet you.”

“Thanks,” Meghan said shyly. “I just want you to know that I really enjoy your music.”

“Thank you,” Celia said. “Maybe when we get our act together a little more you can come out and watch one of the rehearsals and tell us what you think.”

“Really?” Meghan asked, her eyes wide.

“Really,” Celia said. “I’d love to hear a fan’s opinion of how we’re doing.”

“Anytime!” Meghan said enthusiastically.

“We’ll let you know when we’re ready for public consumption,” Celia promised. “You can bring your sister too if she’s not working.”

“That would be so cool!” she exclaimed.

Meghan said one more round of goodbyes and then climbed in her Honda and fired it up. She pulled out of the parking lot with a big smile on her face.

“She seems like a nice kid,” Celia said as she and Laura boarded the plane and Jake went into the office to file his flight plan.

“She’s a sweetheart,” Laura said, taking Caydee from Celia’s arms so she could strap her into the car seat. “A little young and naïve, maybe, but then so was I at that age.”

“Weren’t we all?” Celia said with a laugh. “Hopefully her lips are nice and tight.”

“Excuse me?” Laura said.

Celia looked at her and then laughed. “Not those lips,” she said. “Although they probably are. I was talking about the lips on her face, the ones she could spout unflattering information with.”

“Oh ... of course,” Laura said with a giggle. “So far, so good.”

“Your mind certainly went to the naughty place rather quickly,” Celia said slyly. “You got the hots for little Miss Meghan, Teach?”

“I do not have the hots for her,” Laura said firmly.

“Not even a little?” Celia chided.

“Well ... maybe a little,” Laura admitted. “She is really cute when she walks around in her long t-shirt with no bra on.”

“She does this a lot?” Celia asked, raising her eyebrows.

“No, not a lot. Just if she has to come out in the middle of the night for water or a snack or something. She doesn’t do it to be provocative. That’s what makes it cute.”

“Interesting,” Celia said. “She has nice legs?”

“Yeah,” Laura said dreamily. “She really does.”

“Hmmph,” Celia said. “Do I have myself a little competition to contend with here?”

“Not at all,” Laura said. “I would never do anything with Meghan even if she wanted to. She’s too young for my tastes and she is an employee. And she’s not into girls anyway. She’s just nice to look at when she’s walking around with her legs bare and her boobs bouncing around. That’s all.”

“Does Jake think so too?” Celia asked.

“He makes an effort not to look at her in that way when I’m in the room,” she said. “But he’s a guy. I’m sure he appreciates the occasional glimpse he catches.”

“What about Meghan’s thoughts about Jake?” she asked. “Anything there?”

“I don’t really know,” Laura said with a shrug. “Jake is a good-looking guy, and he’s famous and all that. But if she is attracted to him, she doesn’t let it show, doesn’t give off any vibes about it. And I trust Jake. He would never do anything with her even if she wanted to.”

Celia nodded. She strongly suspected that Laura was right about this. She knew Jake as well as she knew anyone on Earth. He might enjoy looking at the young nanny—especially when she made an appearance in a long t-shirt and no bra—but he would never actually fuck her. Not while he had two other lovers that he needed to keep satisfied. And speaking of that...

“We’re not going to be able to get together for some fun this weekend, are we?” she asked.

Laura shook her head sadly. “The only night we could do it is tonight,” she said. “But we’ll be staying with Tom and Mary tonight. They presumably do not know about the three of us. Jake and I would like to keep it that way.”

“No sneaking into your room then?” Celia said with a pout.

“No sneaking into our room,” she confirmed.

“Well ... that’s a rip,” she said, using a Jake-ism.

Meghan Zachary arrived back at the Kingsley’s house just after six o’clock. She used the remote control she had been given to open the gate to the property and drove through. As she had been instructed, she stopped immediately once she reached the other side and was clear of the gate’s swing. She watched in her rearview mirror until it was firmly shut again. Nobody tried to dash through or enter the property behind her—no one ever had—but she did not let herself be complacent. The incident with the hippies had convinced her that the Kingsleys really did have crazy people who would try to get to them.

She pulled up to the garage and pushed another button on the remote which opened the automatic garage door. She parked next to Laura’s minivan and then got out, grabbing her purse and the now-warm bottle of diet Pepsi she had been drinking out of. She carried these things to the door that led into the house, pushing the garage door button on the wall and watching as the door slid down. Only then did she use her key to open the solid door and enter the house. The alarm was not set, which meant the Elsa was still here. She would have set it if she had gone back to her quarters for the night.

Sure enough, the Nigerian housekeeper was in the kitchen when Meghan entered it. She was just putting some finishing touches on her cleaning before calling it a workweek.

“Hey, Elsa,” Meghan greeted politely. She liked Elsa a lot but was also more than a little intimidated by her. There was no mistaking who was actually the boss of the household, and it was not Jake or Laura. Though Meghan and Elsa were technically equals under their employment agreements, Meghan knew that Elsa was really her direct supervisor and had the power to have her dismissed if she felt like exercising it. So far, she had not.

“Meghan,” Elsa said with a nod. “Did you get Miss Cadence off safely on her journey?”

“I did,” she confirmed. “And I got to meet Celia Valdez! How cool is that?”

“Very cool indeed,” Elsa said. “I am very fond of Ms. Valdez myself. She always makes a point to make her bed when she stays over. Of course, I remake it because she does a terrible job of it, but I do appreciate the effort.”

Meghan blushed a little at these words. She always made her bed as well and Elsa always came behind her at some point during the day and re-made it (as well as stripping it down and washing her bedding every Monday and Friday). And she had organized Meghan’s dresser space and closet with military precision, with the socks and underwear she laundered for her neatly folded and arranged according to color, and her shirts, blouses, pants, and dresses always neatly ironed and hung in a similar arrangement. “That’s good to know,” she said.

“I am about done here for the night,” Elsa said. “I will be making the trip to Orange County early tomorrow morning so you will have the place to yourself. I trust you will abide by the visitor policy that you agreed to in your employment contract?”

“Yes, of course,” Meghan told her. The visitor policy was that she could not have anyone but her sister or her parents over to the house. No boyfriends, girlfriends, priests, rabbis, or even the Pope Himself was authorized to be present on the Kingsley property without explicit permission from Jake or Laura.

“Excellent,” Elsa said. “I prepared a few meals for you and put them in the refrigerator.”

“Really?” Meghan said. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I know I was not required to do this,” Elsa said simply. “I did it anyway. I rather like you, truth be told, but that is not the primary reason. I did not want you cluttering up my kitchen trying to concoct something yourself.”

“Oh ... I see,” she said.

“There is a plate of my chicken parmesan in there,” Elsa told her. “There is a plate with meatloaf and my homemade macaroni and cheese. There is another plate with marinated tri-tip that I deliberately undercooked so that when you heat it up it will be medium as you prefer it. There is a baked potato that goes with the tri-tip. In addition, I have made three breakfast burritos with sausage, egg, potatoes, and cheese and one plate with a chorizo and egg scramble in it. All of these meals have written instructions on how to heat them up. Please adhere to the directions so you may enjoy the meals properly.”

“Uh ... wow,” Meghan said. “I will, Elsa. Thank you!”

“You are welcome,” she said. “And do not forget to clean up after yourself as you go through the weekend. If I come back on Tuesday morning and find your laundry scattered about, or dirty dishes in the sink, or your soda bottles laying around, or any other form of mess in the house, you and I will have words.”

“I’ll keep things clean, Elsa,” Meghan told her. “I promise.”

“Very well,” Elsa said with a nod. “On that note, I will make my leave. Enjoy your weekend.”

“You too, Elsa,” Meghan said.

“And do not forget to latch all the windows and lock all the doors,” Elsa told her. “Set the house alarm and activate the motion sensors when you go to bed. If the motion alarm goes off, immediately lock your bedroom window and go to the office to evaluate the situation. Do not hesitate to call the sheriff’s department if you even suspect an intruder.”

“I won’t,” she promised.

“Very good,” Elsa said. “You’re a bright girl. You have a good head on your shoulders. Just use your common sense and all will be well.”

“Common sense,” Meghan said. “Right. I have that.”

Elsa showed her a rare smile. “Yes, you do,” she agreed.

And with that, she made her way out of the house, leaving Meghan alone. This was the first time she had been all alone in the house since she had started working for the Kingsleys. It felt a little strange. She had no Caydee to take care of. She had no Jake or Laura or Elsa to talk to. She decided that the first thing she would do was eat. She opened the refrigerator and pulled out the chicken parm plate. There was a neatly written set of heating instructions taped to the top of it. She read them and then took the plate over to the microwave and put it inside. She removed the plastic wrap and replaced it with a paper towel. She then set the timer for four minutes and thirty seconds and pushed the start button.

While her meal was heating, she walked into the entertainment room and went to the bar. Jake had told her that any food or drink in the house was hers to consume, including the alcohol (except for certain racks of the wine collection), as long as she was off duty when she consumed it. He had even instructed Elsa to stock certain things that she liked, such as diet Pepsi, Yoplait yogurt, Ritz crackers and chunky peanut butter, and Bartels and Jaymes wine coolers. She reached in and pulled out one of the B&Js—it was the tropical mango variety—and popped the cap. She took a nice long swig of the sweet beverage and then headed back to the kitchen to wait for her chicken parm to be done.

She ate in the kitchen nook and then rinsed her plate and silverware and put them in the dishwasher. She then went back to the entertainment room and found something to watch on the large screen television. She drank two more tropical mangos as she watched a few mindless sitcoms. By this time, the sun was low in the late spring sky and she was starting to feel a pretty good alcohol buzz. She looked out the window at the coming sunset and her eyes happened on the hot tub that sat out on a deck at the edge of the cliff.

Jake and Laura liked to go out there and watch the sunset from the hot tub. And when they did it, they went out there with their robes on and nothing on underneath. She had seen them on several occasions shucking their robes and climbing in (not that she had been trying to see them, of course but—oh, who was she kidding? She had been). She had been treated to a brief view of Jake’s bare butt on those occasions, but had never seen his cock. She had also seen Laura’s bare butt and the side swell of her naked breasts, and, while those sights did not particularly interest her, the idea that the two of them were naked together certainly did. And on one occasion she had seen, in the dim light of post-sunset twilight, Laura climb atop Jake’s lap and start bouncing up and down atop him while they kissed each other passionately.

I watched them fuck, she thought, feeling herself get a little wet at the memory. True, she had only seen dim silhouettes, but it had been quite obvious what they were doing. And then there had been the time when she had gotten up to get a glass of water one night near midnight and heard the distinct moans and cries of Laura in the throes of an orgasm come drifting out from behind their bedroom door. She had sounded very turned on, turned on to a level that Meghan herself had never experienced before.

Meghan had had sex with seven boys or men in her lifetime, only three of them more than once. She had never had an orgasm with any of them. One of them, that asshole in Mexico on spring break, had actually semi-raped her while she was drunk and had gotten her pregnant and given her gonorrhea and she had received no pleasure whatsoever out of the deal.

Jake is good in bed, she thought now, her hand idly playing with her right breast through her shirt. Her nipples hardened up as she touched herself and she began to feel tingly all over. She knew she would never do it, but she began to fantasize about how it would feel if Jake were naked with her, was touching her, was making her feel the way he made Laura feel.

Or the way he makes Celia feel, she thought with a delicious shudder. The three of them do it together! They might be doing it right now! And, again, though she had no real attraction to the female form, the thought of Laura and Celia and Jake all naked together and getting it on was blackly exciting.

She realized that she wanted to get naked and play with herself. She stood up, looking down the hallway in the direction of her room, but then she looked out at the hot tub again. There was nobody home except for Elsa over in her quarters. And Elsa did not, as far as she could tell, ever use the hot tub. And that hot tub could not be seen from outside the property at any time, and could not be seen from the house once the sun went down and the twilight faded away.

Should I? she thought, a naughty smile on her face. Why not? Who would know? Who would even care if they did know?

She made the trip to her bedroom. It was not the primary guest room, but it was still one of the larger secondary rooms. She had a queen-sized bed, her own bathroom with a separate shower and tub in it, a walk-in closet, a large dresser with a mirror, and a window with a view of the ocean. The bed was neatly made by Elsa’s hands. Her burgundy robe was hanging on a hook just inside the closet.

She closed the door and then quickly stripped naked. Her young, firm breasts felt congested and tingly. Her nipples were standing up proudly. Her neatly trimmed vagina was wet, the lips swollen a little. She could smell the odor of her own arousal. She touched herself between those wet lips for a moment and then put her fingers in her mouth, sucking the taste of her juices off of them.

Mmmm, I’m going to enjoy this, she thought. She was quite the accomplished masturbater. After all, she was the only she could rely on to pull an orgasm out of her. And it had been well over a week since she had last diddled herself. She was ripe and ready. And she had never done it in a hot tub before.

She threw the robe on and tied it around her waist. She opened the door and walked back to the entertainment room, where she went to the bar and pulled another bottle of B&J tropical mango out of the fridge. She opened the beverage and threw the bottle cap away in the garbage. She then went to the sliding glass door that led out onto the deck and opened it.

The sun was now only a few degrees above the horizon and the light was fading. The temperature was pleasant, maybe seventy degrees or so, and there was only a slight breeze blowing off of the ocean. She closed the door behind her and then made the walk across the deck, down the small set of stairs, and then along the concrete path to the second deck where the hot tub stood. She climbed those steps and opened the cover to the tub, letting out a blast of steam that was scented with chlorine. She pushed the cover all the way over the side, where it latched into the open position. A little digital display on the controls told her that the water was 101 degrees. She touched it with her hand. Yes, it was hot. The temperature of a hot bath. It would sting a little when she first got in, but then it would be heaven once she got used to it.