Free The Nannies by Melody Mayer Page B

they’d certainly been adopted by the right parents.
    Esme checked her watch; the kids were scheduled for a private swimming lesson in five minutes. She coaxed them away from Dora and led them out of the building and toward the pool. People smiled as they passed. Esme figured the smiles were either to demonstrate how liberal and inclusive they were, or because they thought her sister was J.Lo.
    She found the pool. Unfortunately, it was the wrong one, for adults only. A waiter directed her to the family pool, on the other side of the breezeway. But before she could herd the girls in the right direction, Easton spotted the TV camera crew near the diving board.
    “TV! TV!” Easton shouted. She jumped so high that her Harry Winston twenty-four karat gold-and-diamond E pendant—a gift from some Hollywood big shot—flew up and hit her on the cheek.
    Weston picked up her sister’s chant. “TV! TV!
Yo quiero
TV!” Obviously, something was filming. But they couldn’t stick around to find out, since Esme had less than three minutes to get the kids to their lesson. She tried to explain to them that they could come back later, but neither kid would take
“más
tarde”
for an answer.
    Stuck, Esme phoned her boss and asked for guidance.
    “Let them have fun,” said Diane. “We’ll worry about discipline later.”
    Weston pointed to the camera. “TV!
Como
Jimmy Neutron!”
    Esme sighed and closed her cell. It would take a while for the kids to appreciate the difference between animation and live action.
    “Hey. Your twins are so cute! They look just like you.”
    Esme’s hackles rose at the comment from an unseen someone behind her; it was just so typically Anglo—another way of saying that all brown people looked alike. She turned and scowled at a slender girl with a deep tan, pale eyes, and long, choppy, white blond hair.
    “I don’t think so,” Esme retorted, her voice chilly. “I’m their nanny.”
    “Oh, cool. I’m a nanny too!” the girl said, clearly not in the least offended by Esme’s frosty tone. “The kids I’m taking care of are out of town, though. Lucky me.”
    Esme almost smiled. She couldn’t stay mad, the girl was just so ingenuous. “Do you know what they’re shooting?”
    “
Platinum Nanny.
”
    Esme had seen the promos for
Platinum Nanny
—there were billboards all over town touting the show. So she stood on tiptoes to better check out the contestants—each girl was better looking than the one before, the lone guy handsome in a white-bread all-American way, but
so
not her type in those stupid Confederate flag cutoffs.
    Easton tugged on her arm. “Can I be on TV?” she asked in Spanish.
    Esme chuckled.
“Más tarde, cuándo tu tienes a menos que veinte
años. Ahora, tu estás demasiado joven.”
    “You said something about when she’s older, right?” the blond girl asked.
    Esme nodded. “You speak Spanish.”
    “A little,” the girl said. “Homeschool. Where I’ve been living for the last eight years, no one spoke English but my parents and me. And when I say no one, I mean no one.”
    Odd,
Esme thought. The girl had no accent, except maybe a twinge of Southern. Where could she have come from where no English was spoken?
    “I’m Lydia Chandler,” the girl said, with a friendly smile. She held out her hand.
    Esme shook it. “Esme Castaneda.”
    “Nice to meet you, Esme.” Lydia nudged her chin toward the contestants. “See the brunette in the one-piece? I’m rooting for her.”
    “You know her?”
    Lydia shook her head. “But she looks like she doesn’t belong up there, you know? I know how that feels. Plus, I think they’ve got her mother on the show—that woman over there. My momma would bump uglies with a witch doctor before she’d go on a reality show.”
    “Bump uglies with a witch doctor?”
    “Did you just say—” Esme began.
    “Look at that.” Lydia’s attention was still focused on Mrs. McCann. As Esme watched, a producer tried unsuccessfully to