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  She would have to be wearing a neon sign to make him believe that. He takes hold of her shoulders and tries to turn her around to face him. “Look at me, Kira. You can’t fool me. Something happened, didn’t it?”

  She wrestles against his grip. “I just told you nothing happened. It’s fine. A little bit of the first day jitters, that’s all. I worked it out. I’m sure things will be fine from now on.”

  He won’t let her go. “First you said it was fine. Now you’re saying it’s going to be fine from now on. What’s going on? Tell me.”

  She rips out of his arms. “I don’t want to talk about it, okay? Just drop it, Parker.”

  “I won’t drop it,” he replies. “I can see something is bothering you. If you want me to believe everything’s okay, you better tell me what happened.”

  Kira sighs. All the tension flows out of her. “Okay. Something did happen. I wasn’t sure this job was going to work out. In fact, I thought I might have to walk away, but I didn’t. Now I know it’s better if I stick it out.”

  “What happened to make you think that? It must have been something serious to make you want to walk out on a job. You never walked out on a job in all the years I’ve known you.”

  She looks around, but she doesn’t see anything around her. “When I first came up to the door, I heard Isaac, the boss, ranting and raving at someone on the phone. He said a lot of nasty things and yelled and slammed around. I almost didn’t knock on the door, but he saw me first. He pulled me inside and told me to go take care of the girl so he could get to work.”

  Parker shakes his head. He stands up straight and sets his hands on his hips. “You should have walked away then and there. You never should have taken a job working for someone so unreasonable.”

  “That’s what I thought,” she goes on, “but I couldn’t leave the kid alone. When I went upstairs and talked to her, I liked her a lot, so I decided to stick around, at least until the boss came home.”

  He frowns. “I guess you didn’t have any choice about that.”

  “I wasn’t in the room an hour before I got another crazy phone call from him. He was going on like he did before, ranting and raving about his ex and how dangerous she was and how I had to keep her away from the girl. I didn’t listen. I didn’t believe a word he said, and when his ex showed up and wanted to see her daughter, I didn’t think anything of it. I thought she was nice and well-presented and all that. Isaac’s friend showed up and wanted to hang out with us, but I wouldn’t have thought twice about letting the woman near her daughter. I thought she was a good mother.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “Isaac burst in and got really mad. He chased his ex out of the room with a poker from the fire place, and his daughter lost it completely. It wasn’t until after they left that Isaac’s friend told me some of the crazy stuff this woman did to him and his daughter. She’s dangerous, and Isaac got a judgment against her from the court. She’s not supposed to be anywhere near the girl, and she’s done everything in her power to ruin Isaac’s life and abduct her daughter and flee the country.”

  I freeze behind the curtain. So Connor told her everything. I should be relieved, so why do I feel like someone just punched me in the guts? I would rather Kira think I’m a raving violent lunatic that for her to find out the truth. Why?

  I can’t stand people feeling sorry for me. Connor’s the only person in the world who knows all the gory details of my dealings with Jade, and I don’t want anybody else finding out. I’ve worked night and day to keep my life together, to keep things as normal as possible.

  Now that’s all blown. Someone knows…I don’t want to call it a secret. It was never a secret, but now when Kira looks at me, that’s what she’ll see. She won’t see me strong and capable of anything. She’ll see me in pieces. She’ll understand why I can’t keep a lid on my temper. Nothing could be worse than that.

  Parker jerks his thumb toward the Jag. “Get in the car. I’m taking you home. I don’t want you spending another minute in this place.”

  “I can’t leave,” Kira exclaims. “Isaac’s not so bad, now that I understand why he’s doing what he’s doing, and Ivy needs me. I should help her if I can.”

  He slices his finger through the air. “Forget it, Kira. You deserve better than this. You can get another job, or you can come home and become Mrs. Parker Lynch.”

  She tries to smile. “Listen, Parker…”

  He jumps off the fender and faces her. “No, you listen to me. You don’t have to keep picking up these menial jobs. I make enough to keep you a lot more comfortable than you could ever be in a house like this, and you’d have maids and cooks working for you instead of the other way around. Come on, Kira. I’ve asked you to marry me three times, and you keep saying you don’t want to give up your job.”

  “Well, I don’t want to give up my job. I love my job. I’m not ready to become Mrs. Parker Lynch—not yet, anyway.”

  “Well, when are you gonna be ready?” he asks. “It seems like you’re never ready.”

  She casts that wild look around the estate again. “I don’t know. I’ve got the rest of my life to be Mrs. Parker Lynch. I don’t want to give up my life while I’m young.”

  He stiffens. “Give up your life? Is that what you would be doing by marrying me?”

  She draws close to him. “Look, Parker. You know I love you, but…”

  My heart wrenches in my chest. She loves him, but…. I love you, but… Those are the most dangerous words in the English language. He knows it, too. He goes hard and cold in front of her. “I thought we had something.”

  “We do have something. We have something wonderful, and I don’t want to give that up. If you love me as much as you say you do, you’ll want me to be happy and experience life to the fullest instead of becoming just Mrs. Parker Lynch.”

  He narrows his eyes at her. “Just Mrs. Parker Lynch?”

  She shakes her head. She slips her arms around his waist. “Do we have to talk about that right now? Can’t we go back to what we were doing before? I missed you so much. I just kept wishing today that I could be holding you instead.”

  He softens at her touch. He doesn’t want to, but she wins him over. She raises her face to kiss him, and he collapses against her.

  In front of my eyes, he starts kissing her again. His hands slide down her back to her ass rising against his hips. She seethes and breathes with inner tension. She’s on fire, and he’s taking her as high as she wants to go.

  I can’t watch this anymore. I turn away and draw the curtain on them. I go back into my room and sit down on my bed, but I hate myself more than ever.

  What would it be like to love someone like that, to connect with them and find shelter from life’s storms in them? I loved Jade once, but she killed that love so I could never feel it again for anybody else. She ripped my heart out of my chest, threw it on the ground, and stomped it to a bloody pulp.

  I’ll never love anybody again. I’d rather die than feel anything like that. I couldn’t look myself in the eye if I did. I’m a monster. I’m Quasimodo. I live on the outskirts of human life. I can only gaze in on the joys and pleasures of living from the outside. Those tender moments don’t exist for me.

  Parker’s car hasn’t driven away, so they’re still out there. Maybe he’s doing it to her on the hood of his car. Maybe he’s tasting her sweetness and enjoying her body in my driveway.

  I hate them more and more every minute. How dare they? How dare they experience such joy and bliss when I can’t?

  CHAPTER NINE

  Kira

  I wake up early the next morning. My room is right next to Ivy’s, and the balcony overlooks the sweeping lawns and dark wooded trees around the estate. I get in my morning routine and prepare for the day.

  I stay in my room and work on my computer until I hear Ivy moving around. I go next door and find her working on her ant farm. I smile and sit down at the chair opposite. “How many this morning?”

 
; She beams up at me. “Forty thousand, three hundred and seventy-eight. A hundred and thirty-two more than yesterday.”

  “Wow,” I exclaim. “The population keeps going up. What will you do when the colony gets too big for this display?”

  Ivy jumps up, and her face glows with inner light. “It’s too big now. I was thinking I should make a second colony and divide this into two. Then I could use one as a control by feeding them the same food all the time while I vary the diet of the other colony.”

  I can’t help smiling at her. She’s a great kid, and she needs all the help she can get. I made the right decision sticking around. “That sounds like a very scientific thing to do.”

  She pulls out one of her notebooks. “I have the new box all designed. I just need some help building it.”

  I swivel the notebook around to inspect her design. “I can help you with that. We can do it together.”

  Her eyes widen. “Do you know how to do this? Do you know how to make things out of wood and stuff?”

  “Sure. My dad taught me. I don’t suppose your dad knows that sort of thing. He’s more of a businessman.”

  Ivy shows all her teeth when she smiles. “Are you kidding? He wouldn’t know the hind end of a piece of wood if he tripped over it.”

  I burst out laughing. “Well, you’re in luck, girl, because I do. I don’t have any tools here, but I have a friend who can bring them to us.”

  “That’s okay,” she says. “Rex has lots of tools and lots of spare wood in his shed.”

  “Who’s Rex?”

  “He’s the handyman around the estate. He knows how to do everything, but he’s too busy to make this. I wasn’t sure how I could get it built.”

  “I’ll show you how to do it. That way, you’ll learn how to work with wood and you’ll get a new ant farm at the same time.”

  She leaps into the air. “Yay!”

  “I was thinking about what happened yesterday…”

  She stops dead.

  “I was thinking about what Connor said about going to the library. I could take you to the library…if it’s okay with your dad, that is.”

  She makes another wild spring into the air. “Could we really? I can’t wait to go to the library. Can we really? When can we go? Can we go right now?”

  “We better wait until after breakfast, and I’ll have to get your dad’s permission, but I don’t see why we couldn’t go all the time. You need to get out and make contact with the outside world. You’re a smart kid. You’ll have fun at the library.”

  A booming male voice startles me from behind. “What’s going on here?”

  Ivy races around the table. “Dad! Dad! Did you hear?”

  I spin around. Isaac stands in the door with his usual scowl on his face.

  “Kira’s going to teach me woodworking and help me build a second ant farm,” Kira gushes. “Isn’t it great? She and Rex are going to teach me, and I’ll be able to use the second farm as a control. I’ll just have to find some standardized food source for the control diet, and we’re going go to the library. Please say we can, Dad. It’ll be so fun. I need some new books, and I want to get some books on ant farming, and science, and space exploration, and oceanography, and….”

  Isaac hugs her against him, but he doesn’t look happy to see me. “That’s great, honeybunch.”

  I dreaded seeing him again. Now that he’s here, I have no choice but to stand up and face him. If I can get through to him, I might be able to help him, too. I lock my eyes on his face. “Good morning.”

  He frowns worse than ever, but he manages to get the words out between his gritted teeth. “Good morning.”

  I take a step toward him. “I want to say I’m really sorry about yesterday. I made a mistake not doing what you told me to. I want you to know I’ll be more careful in the future. You know better than I do what’s best for Ivy. I shouldn’t have second guessed you. I’m sorry.”

  He purses his lips and shrugs. “Well, make sure that you do what I tell you in the future.”

  I stand up straight. “Isn’t there anything you want to say to me?”

  “Actually, yes I do. I don’t want you having visitors to the house without my permission. Your friend could have been arrested for trespassing by driving up here unannounced the way he did. Make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

  I stare at him. He’s talking about Parker. I open my mouth to say something, but I can’t penetrate his iron face. I could try till doomsday to get through to him. He’s a closed book. He doesn’t want to be gotten through to. He’s inhuman.

  Every thought I had about helping him vanishes out of my mind. I don’t want to help him. I don’t want to see him or talk to him or negotiate with him. I don’t want to have anything to do with him. I wouldn’t be here at all if it wasn’t for Ivy.

  I keep my voice steady. “Okay, Isaac. I’ll tell Parker not to come to the house unannounced again.” I don’t say I’m sorry. I’m not sorry in the slightest that Parker came to see me. I’m not even sorry Isaac is such a bombastic tyrant. I hate him.

  “And another thing,” Isaac blurts out. “I’ll be the one to decide what Ivy does and what Ivy doesn’t do. I’ll tell you when I decide she can go somewhere. Until that happens, I’ll thank you to do your job and let me do mine.”

  I blink. What’s he talking about? I can only think of one thing. He’s talking about the library. He doesn’t want me taking Ivy to the library. I hate him even more. “I understand you’re ultimately responsible for what Ivy does, but…”

  He cuts me off. “No buts. I’m in charge here, and you don’t introduce anything to Ivy without my approval.”

  “I wasn’t going to do anything without your approval, but….”

  He chops his hand through the air. “You keep saying but to everything I say. That’s not going to work. It’s your second day at this job. Don’t come waltzing in here changing everything.”

  I open my mouth to argue, but I stop myself in time. He’s right, of course. Who am I? I’m a stranger. Ivy might be super excited to go to the library, but he won’t be so interested to have his whole existence turned upside down by some upstart nanny.

  I get myself under control. If I want to get through to him, I better take my time about it. He’s been through the ringer. I can give him a few feet of rope for now. “You’re right, Isaac. I won’t do anything with Ivy until you tell me to.”

  He glares at me some more, but what can he really do? He can’t exactly argue with me for agreeing with him.

  He turns back to Ivy. “Have fun making your new ant farm, honeybunch. I can’t wait to see it.”

  He’s about to leave for work. I have to come up with some way to engage him, to break down his reserve. “We could put off the ant farm until the weekend so you and Ivy could work on it together.”

  His cheeks flush pink. “I don’t think Ivy wants me to do that.”

  She hops around his feet and waves her arms and legs. “Please, Dad? Let’s do it together. Kira can show us how to do it. We could learn it together, and then it would be our ant farm, not just mine.”

  I can’t stop smiling at this girl. I never expected her to react like that. He gets even more embarrassed. “I don’t think so. I never was any good at that sort of thing.”

  “Come on, Dad,” Ivy pleads. “You’re always saying we never do anything together, and Kira can teach us everything we need to know. Please, Dad. Please.”

  He casts a glance at me. Could this be the opening I’ve been looking for? He just needs people around him so he can learn what it’s like to be normal for a change.

  He grumbles under his breath. “Well, we’ll just have to wait and see.”

  That’s a start. Ivy is thinking the same thing. She jumps up and down even more and cheers and hoots. “Come on, Kira. Let’s get started right away. I can’t wait to get this made so I can begin my new experiments.”

  She’s already forgotten about the library, so that’s good. She’ll have somet
hing to keep her occupied until Isaac comes around to the idea.

  I do my best to smile at him. “It would be really great if we could all do it together. It’s always good when parents and children do stuff together. It brings them closer as a family.”

  His eyes flash to my face. “Don’t think you’re gonna bring our family closer. Ivy and I don’t need to be brought closer, especially not by someone like you.”

  I throw up my hands in disgust. “Fine. I won’t try to bring you and Ivy closer. I won’t try to do anything. I’ll just sit in the other room and stare at the wall. Maybe then you’ll be happy to have a nanny taking care of your daughter.”

  I can’t stand his hateful presence a second longer. I blow past him and storm out of the room.

  The minute I get out into the hall, I regret losing my temper, but I won’t turn back. I head to my room and slam the door.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Isaac

  I don’t turn around. I hold myself stiff so the sound of the door slamming won’t make me jump, but I sure went and stuck my foot in it again. I came in here to make up with Kira and hopefully tell her I wanted to put yesterday behind us. Now I’ve gone and hurt her feelings again.

  Oh, well, I can’t stand around here all day. I’ve got to get to the office. I turn to say good-bye to Ivy, but the expression on her face makes me stop in my tracks. “What?”

  She cocks her head. “Nothing.”

  I squat down to look at her from her own level. “How are you doing? You’re having fun with Kira, aren’t you?”

  “I like Kira,” she says. “I don’t think she likes it here very much, though.”

  “What makes you say that?” I ask. “She seems to like you just as much as you like her. I don’t think she would suggest making that ant farm with you if she didn’t like you.”

  She fixes me with that old-lady expression that could cut through marble. “Look, Dad. Do me a favor, will you? Try not to be so horrible to her. Don’t chase her away like you’ve chased away all the other nannies you’ve hired for me.”