Total pages in book: 179
Estimated words: 170878 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 854(@200wpm)___ 684(@250wpm)___ 570(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 170878 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 854(@200wpm)___ 684(@250wpm)___ 570(@300wpm)
Especially since the wind no longer whistled through my expensive new coat.
Beau nodded in response. “I’ll get dinner and dessert organized for you two before I leave.”
I shook my head. “I know I’m no chef, but I can throw together a dinner picnic and dessert. I’ll stick to your ingredient rules.” I’d memorized what Clara couldn’t have by then—food dyes, high fructose corn syrup, and seed oils. Only organic, grass-fed, pasture-raised.
Beau’s features didn’t change, his eyes remaining on me. “I’ll do it.”
Again, I normally would’ve conceded, especially considering Beau’s harsh tone. But I wasn’t feeling submissive.
I stood up, pulling my shirt down when I realized my knit sweater had ridden up to expose my midsection. It only flashed for a second, and it wasn’t an unseemly sliver of sin. Plenty of women my age showed that much or more on a regular basis, in public. But the way Beau’s eyes traveled to that small area made it feel decidedly inappropriate.
My body tensed. Need coiled in my stomach, forbidden, wrong. Tawdry. Which made it more desirable. Which made him all the more desirable. If such a thing were possible.
“You cook all day at the restaurant.” I cleared my own throat, trying to banish my feelings. “I’ll take care of dinner.” My voice had a husk to it that I didn’t entirely recognize, as though I’d meant to say, “I’ll take care of you.”
Because I wanted to. Take care of him. Yes, maybe in all the sexually explicit ways I imagined in the dark of night. But not just that. I wanted to feed him, rub his shoulders, be the person he could talk to and lower his walls with. I wanted to be the person he could be vulnerable with. I wanted to keep my hand on his thigh for more than five seconds while we were driving.
Beau’s body straightened, scrubbing a hand along his jaw. A visible reaction. One that told me my tone affected him. I affected him. I’d been collecting moments like this, looks like this, to reinforce my theory that there was something between us. My collection of moments tipped that theory to almost certainty.
But then his features turned harsh, as was his default. “I’m not working tonight.”
“Where are you going, then?” I probed.
Beau didn’t have a social life to speak of. I’d never once witnessed him grab a drink with friends, beyond Elliot or his father coming over and forcing him to relax with exactly one beer. Maybe a whisky.
The only time he was willingly away from Clara was for the restaurant, and that took up a lot of his time.
I waited for him to tell me it was none of my business, be cruel or rude. I welcomed it. Suddenly, I wanted a fight with Beau.
Anything to make me feel like something other than a victim. And Beau deserved a hefty amount of the fire that I felt like breathing in his direction.
He considered me, surely reading my flared nostrils, my arms folded across my chest, and the rapid rise and fall of that chest.
I was daring him. To fight me.
“A date. I’m going on a date.”
All the fight ran out of me. My heart stopped working, my fingers going numb.
A date.
Beau was going on a date.
And he was simply there asking me to do my job—to essentially babysit his daughter. Because that was all I was to him. A glorified babysitter.
Embarrassingly, my eyes filled with tears. Shame nipped at my skin, though I refused to look away from Beau. I couldn’t.
I just stared at him. Like a lovesick fool.
Beau stared back at me, definitely noting my tear-filled eyes because it was impossible not to. His features flickered for a second, softening as he visibly swallowed.
Then he turned his back on me.
Like I was nothing.
Nothing but the nanny.
BEAU
I made a mistake.
A big fucking mistake.
Well, I’d made plenty of big fucking mistakes in my life. Not making Naomi sign a prenup was one of them. I still felt the sting of her taking almost all of my savings, the only viable option because the alternative was to give her half of my share of the restaurant.
I could never say marrying her in the first place was a mistake, because then I wouldn’t have Clara.
Since becoming a parent, I’d made a bunch of mistakes. Not packing a change of clothes in the diaper bag, not buckling Clara into her high chair. Not being alarmed enough by a small, dime-sized bruise on my daughter’s stomach.
Yeah, I’d made plenty of mistakes as a father.
But going on this date trumped them all. Except the bruise.
Could I bring myself to think that hiring Hannah in the first place was a mistake? I thought of my daughter’s smile, the laughter, and warmth in our house since her arrival. The way Clara’s eyes had lit up when I brought out her cake, the cake Hannah made her. I thought of fairy gardens, picnics, fresh flowers, and music.