“That’s not the worst of it. Me trailing along paving her way with money wasn’t the worst of it. The worst was when she came to me begging for another chance. I told her that I hated her, that she was a whore—I was vicious. She told me she was pregnant. I was furious, because we had agreed we never wanted children. The last thing I wanted was to be tied to her forever. Heather said she’d keep the baby and I could pay child support and never have to see it. But you know me, I had to have control.”
“You took her back.”
“Yes. I moved her back in here, insisted she take care of herself. I didn’t want her and the baby around the drinking and drugs and late nights of the clubs she played in the city. So I basically had her on house arrest. She could stay here or go shopping or to exercise class or whatever, but no playing gigs, no band practice. I really acted like I owned her. So when I caught her drinking, it was as much my fault as hers. I picked up her water bottle, took a drink, and it was vodka. I got mad, told her I’d have her declared unfit and take the baby away from her. She said she didn’t care, she didn’t want the baby and she didn’t want to be my prisoner. That the baby was nothing but a meal ticket. That it might not even be mine.”
I nodded, because I’d been wondering that.
“If I could’ve thrown her out, I would have. But I was afraid of what she’d do and where she’d go. So as soon as David was born, I filed for divorce. She signed him away, all her rights, for a generous settlement.”
“Has she been to see him?”
“Once, in five years. She came to his first birthday party with this big stupid teddy bear. I had her escorted out. I don’t want him confused, and frankly I was barely recovered from losing her, from being a new father, from the depression I went into. It was all my own doing, my own fault, Jessica. I didn’t put on the brakes and stop myself from going after her and doing everything to keep her. I chased her, showered her with gifts, married her, agreed to anything she wanted and then I tried to control her, keep her in line, make her follow my rules. I didn’t try to know her as a person, and I didn’t want to let her be herself. When I found out what she was like, I was disgusted with myself.”
“Do you think she wants to see him? Do you think he’d want to know her?”
“I don’t want her anywhere near my son.”
“I know. And I understand it completely. You want to protect him. But what if he needs to know her and know his story?”
“Maybe when he’s older. He’s too little. He wouldn’t understand. Hell, I don’t even understand it.”
“You loved her. People do crazy things when they’re in love.”
“It wasn’t even her. It was the idea of her. But it wrecked me. I was useless when she finally left. We hadn’t been home from the hospital for a week yet. I had filed, but I had planned for them to stay in the home until everything was final. Then maybe I’d get a new place and she and the baby would stay here… She said that I wanted her gone and she was done. She took her things, took the newborn pictures of David that we’d had done at the hospital, and cleared out the savings account. The lawyers got a hold of her to get her to sign off, and she agreed to everything just to be free of us.”
“So you both wanted the divorce and then what? You were overwhelmed by being a single dad?”
“No, I wasn’t worth a shit as a dad. I was so wrapped up in how sad I was, how she had never loved me, how she hadn’t even tried to stay with us—I had help, and I was lucky I could afford it. I was on leave from work but I just sat in my room and drank. I finally went and saw a doctor, but that first couple of months—I wasn’t worth shooting.”
“Depression is nothing to be ashamed of, William. I wasn’t clinically depressed, but when my dad died—is it okay to tell you this now? I don’t want to seem like I’m making this about me.”
“I want to know. Please,” he said, stroking my hair.
“I was in my first semester of college for restaurant management. That was my plan. I’d been waiting tables since I was fifteen. My dad called me, said he went to the doctor for his cough and that he was going to have to do some treatments, nothing to worry about. Well, it was lung cancer. I tried for a few weeks to stay in school, but I kept missing to go home and take him to treatments or stay with him while he was sick from chemo. It didn’t make sense to continue. So I dropped out.”
“I bet he hated that. As a father, it would kill me if my son gave up his dreams to take care of me.”
“Then as a dad you’d need to try listening. There was nothing I wanted more than to be with him. He was all I had. I got to help take care of him, make his favorite soup, watch vampire shows together when he couldn’t sleep. It got bad. The treatments didn’t work, and everything went to hell. It was like being in a nightmare that wouldn’t end. I learned how to change a feeding tube, a foley catheter, so many things I want to forget, that he hated having me do for him. But I was the one who should, the one who needed to be there. I couldn’t exist outside that house, outside that room after a while. And the bank came and got his truck but I never told him. It took him three months to die after they stopped treatments. He suffered so much I’d pray for him to die. It was hell on earth. And once he was gone it was worse. Because there were bills and paperwork and everything. I came to Chicago because that was what we talked about when he was in treatments—that I’d finish my degree, and I’d go to cooking school for a year and then start my own restaurant. But I didn’t want that or anything else anymore. I wanted him back, I wanted to unlive the last year. I didn’t want the kind of dreams that I had when I wasn’t alone.”
William took me in his arms as my voice broke. He rocked me, held me, “Of course, you didn’t. You didn’t think you should want anything. But trust me, he would want you to be happy, however that looks for you. No matter what,” he said, his voice thick with emotion.
“It looks like this,” I confided, “it looks like you holding me. It looks like coming here and feeling like I’m home after a long damn time alone.”
He kissed me then, long, slow and deep. I had curled up in his arms, and we had held each other. He told me about when David was teething and screamed all the time and threw everything you handed him—his pacifier, a teething ring, a spoon.
“It was a four month tantrum. Even with the night nurse and the nanny and myself, there was never any calming him down. None of us slept more than two hours at a hitch. It was like war.”
I laughed, feeling better, feeling closer to him now that we’d shared our worst stories. He had someone sent out for Chinese noodles, and we sat cross-legged on the floor eating them in front of the TV.
“What would you do if Heather ever showed up?” I said.
“I’d tell her to get the hell out before I call the police.”
“He’s her child,” I said gently.
“He’s my child.”
“Is he?” I said. “I mean, did you have a test done?”
“No. It doesn’t matter. He’s my son,” William said, and I think I loved him even more then.
“I’m glad you asked me to come over tonight,” I said, “there’s nowhere else I’d want to be.”
“I want you to be here all the time, but that is selfish and short-sighted. Either I’d try to control you, and you’d run, like Heather did, or it wouldn’t work out between us and David would be crushed. I’m not capable of going through something like that again.”
“Why does it have to end badly? Why does it have to end at all? You’re only playing worst case scenario. You could give us a chance. To be together, out in the open,” I said.
He shook his head, “I want to, but we can’t always have everything we want. I’m grateful to you for being with me in a way that I can allow myself. I know you deserve better, that you deserve a man who wants to show you off to the world, but this alone, being with you tonight is better than a hundred society parties and charity balls. Because it’s us, and it’s real.”
“It is real, isn’t i
t? I wonder sometimes, if I’m dreaming it all. If I imagined you hired me and talked with me and kissed me. If I’m still just waiting tables, waiting for my life to start, wishing I could admit I had a crush on you.”
“If anyone’s dreaming, it would be me. To find someone I understand, who understands me. Who makes me feel—not alone.”
“Not alone. I get it. I don’t think I knew how lonely I was until you let me lay with my head in your lap while you play with my hair. I could have died happy right then and there,” I admitted.
“It’s that simple, just having a connection to someone, being seen and valued and wanted,” he said, “There’s no word for it, how it makes you feel.”
There was a word. It was love. But I wasn’t going to say it. I just curled up in his arms and let him kiss me for a while.
We started having Tuesday game nights with David, where I’d come over after work—I got off at five on Tuesdays—and we’d play Candy Land and Jenga and Animal Rummy. David and I played as a team in Animal Rummy and we always kicked butt. We hoarded the bears and monkeys because they were David’s favorite, and we kept giraffes and never discarded them because we knew his dad collected those every time. We found ways to thwart him and always win. There was so much laughter, so much silliness.
But also so much tension, so many secret looks between William and me, so much electricity when he brushed my hand with his, or touched my leg under the table, his wicked fingers stealing up my thigh for a breathless moment that left me shaky and hot.
One time, the dinosaurs came out and joined the game, with plush dinos having their own game piece in Candy Land or their own hand of cards which David insisted that William play for them. Then when the T-rex won at Candy Land, David got mad and threw the stuffed dinosaur across the room and got a time-out. Even though it was really funny, we couldn’t let him act like that when he lost. So he cried in time out and I ate a lot of chips in the next room because it bothered me to hear him being upset.
After that, game time broke up and it was bath time and story time. I read him a bunch of rhyming books and when he went to sleep, I met William in the kitchen. He cued up a song on his phone and asked me to dance. Barefoot, in my old jeans, in the kitchen of his mansion. I took his hand and the most handsome man I had ever met literally waltzed me around the enormous kitchen to an Ed Sheeran song so sentimental I could have fallen over from how romantic it all was. We danced to three more songs, then fell laughing into a kitchen chair with me in his lap, and we kissed and kissed.
I spent so much time with them outside of being David’s nanny. And it got harder and harder to hide my infatuation, harder not to go up to William and put my arms around his neck and kiss him. We went out for hot dogs one afternoon when he came home early, and as he was picking the onions off David’s hot dog, I sidled up to him, seemed to look over his shoulder when really I slid my hand into his back pocket and touched his butt, his firm, muscular butt. He tensed up and looked over his shoulder at me. I grinned innocently and I could tell he wanted to grab me, kiss me, put his tongue in my mouth and show me who was boss. I slid my hand out of his pocket casually and collected my own hot dog and got David some ketchup for his. At the library while I read David part of a book to see if he liked it, William came up behind me and rubbed my shoulders. My body relaxed under his hands, a different, more heated tension building like electric shocks from my spine down my legs and up my neck. I lost my place in the book and stammered and William stopped rubbing my shoulders. I shot him a glare and he laughed. Those kinds of feelings and thoughts did not belong in the children’s section of the library.
I scolded him for it later when we were alone, trying to stay stern but we ended up laughing and kissing instead. I loved being with him, talking and laughing, watching TV and snuggling. We kissed, and kissed passionately at night, and we indulged in a little flirting, some longing looks during the day. But we tried to keep things out of the bedroom, tried to keep it to a secret romance, a courtship almost. There were times I didn’t think I could resist the heated passion between us, and I’d leave early, or he would go step out onto the balcony into the cold air and look at the stars. I knew not to follow him out there, because we needed distance between us at those times. We were getting to know each other, growing closer, and the restraint made everything more intense, more special.
About a month after we started sneaking around, we set out for the Bear’s game. Despite my protests, William had gotten me a t-shirt and a hoodie with the team logo. He had even put on the socks I gave him—probably the first time he’d ever worn patterned socks in his entire uptight life, I imagined. But it made David happy to pull up his dad’s pant leg and see the bear, which he did about ten times on the way there. Our seats were incredible. I’d only been to two games in my life, both high up in the stands where the wind chaps your skin and your teeth ache from the cold.
We got a program and some popcorn and William went through the lineup with David, explaining as he went. I munched my popcorn, drank my Diet Coke, and just soaked up the fact that we were out together doing this fun thing I’d wanted to do. I snapped a couple of pictures with my phone and smiled. I sank back in my comfortable seat and enjoyed the view and the pregame music. We stood for the anthem and when play started, even though we had an incredible view of the field, William put David on his shoulders so he could see better. I had my phone out again and took another picture. I couldn’t resist. After the second down, I went to the bathroom and when I returned I had brought cotton candy for David. We shared it, sticky and sweet, and then I took him down to wash his hands. David climbed onto his dad’s lap and I took advantage of that to sit beside them instead of leaving David’s middle seat empty. William leaned over to whisper to me.
“This is the best day. I’m grateful to you for thinking of this outing.”
“You’re welcome. I’m glad to be a part of it.”
“This wouldn’t exist without you,” he said, and that sent a thrill through me. Perhaps he just meant the fact we were at a Bears game which had been my idea. But it felt, deep down, like he meant that this happy family day wouldn’t have been possible without me. That the bond that I felt between the three of us was real, was not something I was imagining or reading too much into. I took his hand and squeezed it. He held my hand for a minute and then released it. Probably not wanting David to see, not wanting anyone to notice. I put my hand back in my lap and felt a little sad and rejected, but I’d agreed to keep things secret and I could be thankful for what I did have. A wonderful man, his terrific kid, box seats to the Bears and half a bag of uneaten cotton candy. A cozy new sweatshirt. A boyfriend who wouldn’t hold my hand in public. I shrugged it off.
After the game we went out for pizza; the deep dish, crazy messy kind that was sinfully delicious. David was dead on his feet, so exhausted and so wired from reliving every single thing that happened during the game. William carried him to the car when we were done eating. Back at the house, I wiped David’s face and hands with a warm washcloth, helped him brush his teeth, and we put him in his pajamas. There was something about putting him in bed together, tucking him in, smiling down at him with love and pride and that bittersweet longing for him to stay little forever. Something about that ritual just got to me. Then William’s hand slid into the small of my back and he held me against his side as we looked down at his sleeping son. We shared that moment in silence, and it was perfect. I wanted to tell him I loved him. But it was too soon, too risky.
So I stood on the tip of my toes and kissed his jaw. I felt the way his body tensed, the clutch of his hand on the back of my sweatshirt. We moved to the hallway, then up the stairs to his bedroom. He stopped on the stairs once, pressed me into the wall and kissed me hard and long. The tension between us had been building, and neither of us could wait a moment longer. I wound my arms around his neck, let him hold me fully against him.
I could feel the muscled planes of his chest through his sweater, could even feel the h
ard rod of his arousal against my stomach. I tipped my face up for his kiss once more. I felt his lips, impossibly tender against mine, parting them, his tongue searching, stroking pleasure from me. I made a sound in my throat that was my longing for more. More of the lush, deep ecstasy he’d given me before.
“You’re not—you’re not allowed to freak out and dump me again,” I managed to say.
“I only want you closer. I’d move you in here if I thought we had a prayer of keeping our affair a secret in those circumstances. I know it would be hopeless. I’d have you in my arms at every opportunity, and I’d kiss you every time you made me laugh, every time you made David laugh. You wouldn’t have a chance to breathe for being kissed.” He said.
That promise was intoxicating even as I realized it was the explanation as to why he wouldn’t ask me to live with them. He couldn’t resist me—or else he wanted to keep me at arm’s length. Still, I pushed aside that reservation and gave myself up to the moment, to the goodness of it.
William lifted me in his arms, my legs dangling over his forearm as I giggled. He carried me into his room and placed me on the bed. Then he took the zipper of my hood and slid it down. The sound of the zipper was rough and delicious and made me bite my lip. I reached for his face, his perfect jaw, his full lips. I traced his features with my greedy fingers as he undressed me. I lifted my hips on cue and he took my jeans down, pulling my panties with them. I laughed.
“You’re not wasting any time.”
“I’m a little rusty on the dating scene, but I bought you popcorn, so doesn’t that mean you have to put out?” he said. I laughed and he consumed my laugh, his mouth on mine. The kissing turned more serious, deeper. He let me feel the passion coiled inside of him, everything he’d held back as we kept our attraction hidden. I gasped for air. William removed my bra, covered my bare breasts with his hands. It felt so good that I sighed. The relief of his hands on me, of skin to skin contact with the man I loved was profound. By the time he was plucking at my nipples, making teasing circles around them with his thumbs and then rolling them, pinching them to sharp peaks, I was moaning, my head falling back. He kissed his way down my stomach. Heat pooled in my belly and I felt the plump wetness grow between my legs.
CEO's Secret Baby: A Single Dad & Nanny Romance Page 8