He just stood there, smirking, as if he was used to this reaction.
Well, I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.
“Since she was puking all night, I’d say not,” I huffed before I strode over to him and reached for the bag. I took it from him and stepped beside him to make my way for the kitchen, but before I could get past him I felt a light pressure on my arm.
I looked down at his hand on my forearm, and the warmth of his body encompassed my entire being as his gaze hardened on my face.
“I didn’t mean my comment on your clothes to be a reflection on your status,” he said lowly.
His statement made me chuckle dryly before I slowly panned my gaze up to his face.
“Boy, you really are thick, aren’t you?” I breathed. “I don’t care what you think about my clothes. I’m not your woman. It’s not my job to look good standing beside you.”
I wrenched my arm from his grasp and began striding forward towards the kitchen.
“I didn’t mean to offend you in any way!” he yelled after me; of course the yelling only spurred Clara’s crying to increase. I swung the bag onto the kitchen counter before I took off back down the hallway, and his eyes only followed me before I turned into her room and found her in her crib. The poor girl was fighting between sleep and hunger, and when I scooped her up from her crib I realized she had blown her bowels right out of the sides of her diaper.
“Well, you’re just a mess, aren’t you beautiful?” I smiled down at her. She reminded me a lot of myself. Well, at least of the stories my mother told me of when I was small. She had told me how she battled both colic and bowel issues with me, and she always talked about how she knew I would be stubborn and strong-willed because of my unrelenting ability to keep her up at night with the most mundane circumstances.
And that’s when an idea struck me.
I brought Clara over to the changing table and got her cleaned up before I cradled her in my arms. I shoved my way past Mr. Blake, who had probably been staring at us in utter confusion from the doorway the entire time, and made my way back to the kitchen. I felt him hot on my trail, with his robe audibly swishing behind me as we both broke through into the other room, and when I went to grab the plastic bag, he ripped it from my grasp.
The quick gesture caused my head to whip over at him, and I found him studying me closely. The look behind his eyes was shocking: in a pompous man, there was always a conniving glitter. Men like that – with money, prominence, and silver spoons in their mouths – they all looked as if they were holding back a secret from other people. And it was a secret only to be given and known to those who were their financial equals –
Only to those with the same silver spoon sticking out of their faces.
But instead, I found a bit of helplessness in his eyes. There was some confusion, and a bit of sorrow. It was strange, coming from a man who intentionally rolled his shoulders back to intimidate people.
“Could you show me how to make it?” he asked lowly.
Clara curled into my body while my eyes dropped down to the bag swinging in his hand. It was obvious he was out of his element. He didn’t even call this beautiful girl by her name! It was very clear he felt no fatherly calling towards the little bundle of joy, even though she had his nose –
And his chin –
And his smile…
Clara gurgled in delight and it caused both of us to smile and snicker lightly.
“You’re very good with her,” he said.
“You could be, too,” I urged. I was the nanny, not this child’s mother. If she had been abandoned by her mother as he insinuated, then he was going to have a real and lasting impact on her.
He couldn’t abandon her, too.
My eyes hooked onto his and held his gaze for quite some time. The air in the room shifted and I felt a bit of my wall slowly give way to his presence before I felt a pinch come down onto my breast.
“Ouch!” I exclaimed. I jumped and grasped Clara’s hand, whose fingers were now digging into the meat of my nipple, and tears welled in my eyes before I screwed them tightly shut.
“Looks like that hurt,” Mr. Blake chuckled.
“Shut up,” I murmured.
“Walk me through how to make one,” he said before he set the cans of formula down onto the breakfast table.
So I showed him where I was keeping the clean bottles as I massaged my sore and tender breast.
9
She’d been here for two weeks and Clara still wasn’t sleeping through the night. My daughter would begin to shriek, and before I could peel myself out of bed to do something about it I’d find Madeline already in the kitchen pulling a bottle out of the fridge. She said she’d just made a habit out of making a few before she went to bed and then she’d shoo me back off to go sleep.
Night after night, it was like this, for the majority of the vacation I took.
I had decided against going anywhere for said vacation. I mean, just because I didn’t know Clara had existed, didn’t mean that gave me the right to dump her with someone else and continue to live my life. Had things been different… had Gracie stayed… it would’ve been like this anyway.
So, I stuck around.
Madeline showed me how to change a diaper, though she never actually let me do it. She showed me how to make Clara’s formula bottles, though she always conveniently got to it before I did, and she even showed me how to hook her up into her car seat should I ever want to take her somewhere, just the two of us.
But there was always a reason Madeline insisted on going, and I found myself relenting to her presence.
I couldn’t even attribute it to the fact that she was beautiful, although her curves were incredibly pleasing to the eye. Clara was just… comfortable with her. Sure, she tolerated me, but Clara felt at home with Madeline: she nuzzled into her body whenever she was tired and whenever Madeline bounced her around she always seemed to giggle a little harder than she did with me.
I was sometimes jealous, until Madeline would remind me of the cold, hard truth.
“She’s just been abandoned by a woman. It would only stand to reason she’d cling to another one to help her cope.”
It boiled my blood – the word “abandoned.” No child should ever be abandoned like that. No person should ever have to experience anything like that.
And yet, sometimes I would catch Madeline staring out the windows of the living room in my home, and I got the distinct feeling that she understood.
She knew what it was like to be abandoned.
There was one early morning, however, before the sun started coming up, that I heard Clara wrestling around in her crib. I had gotten up to pee and pressed my ear to her room before I slowly pushed the door open. I knew the sound she was making, the squeaking sound before the shrill shriek, and I decided to scoop her out of the crib before she startled Madeline awake for the fourth time again that night.
And I was shocked when I walked into the kitchen and found Madeline asleep at the breakfast nook.
The rest of the day, I made her relent. I changed the diapers, though sometimes Clara’s butt cheek was hanging out of them, and I made all her bottles. I took care of the meals, laid Clara down for her naps, and told Madeline to go get some rest before another restless night was had with my daughter. I didn’t just want her to take care of herself; I also wanted the time to bond with Clara.
After all, she was here for the rest of her life; who knew how long Madeline would actually stick around before taking on another job somewhere.
I took Clara to the park and walked her around in the stroller combination Madeline showed me how to work. I walked her through her naps while she slept soundly in the moving vehicle, and when it was time to go home I sat with her in my arms while we watched the sun set over the city through the massive windows that peppered my home.
I watched the sun set in my daughter’s eyes for the first time that night, and I felt my heart leap with joy… something I had n
ever really felt up until this point.
I was holding this little child who was exactly half of me, and it was shocking, even to me, how easily I found myself eventually falling into this role.
Soon, Clara was asleep in my arms and I was nodding off on the couch. Madeline must have come in at some point in time during my cat nap because I felt Clara being lifted from my arms. I braced protectively, my eyes shooting open in order to take on the person attempting to take this child away from me, and my bristling finally settled down when Madeline simply attempted to hush me back to sleep.
“It’s alright,” she whispered, “It’s just me. I’m going to go put her to bed.”
I nodded and yawned before I dropped my arms to my side. As I listened to Madeline retreat with Clara in her arms, I decided to get myself a drink. The stars were going to be out heavily tonight with the onset of fall, and my mouth was watering for a decent cup of scotch to go with my exhausting day.
Who would’ve thought a three and a half month old child could be so tiring?
I dragged myself across the room and watched as the amber liquid bounced off the crystal glass, and I stuck my free hand in my pocket before I strolled over to the window. My entire body gazed down at the street below me, watching the little dots and rectangles move in the city below. I loved my home and where it was located, and all of a sudden I could envision myself raising Clara here: watching the sunset every night with a movie playing in the background while we ate dinner off the coffee table. I could see myself enrolling her into the most prestigious private education system the city had to offer, and I found myself wanting to spoil her.
I wanted her to have the nicest clothes and the best hair and a shining new car when she turned sixteen. I wanted her to get the best grades and attend the best college the world had to offer.
I even entertained the idea of her taking over my position, eventually, at a company I had built from the ground up.
A swell of pride puffed out my chest before I downed the rest of my drink.
I placed my cup on the kitchen table and turned to go into my room before it dawned on me: Madeline never came out of Clara’s room. Usually, she would just retire to her own room, but every once in a while, she would grace me with her presence and allow me to watch the moonlight bathe her skin in its luscious glow.
My feet carried me over to the cracked door of my daughter’s room, and my heart jumped to my chest. I pushed the door open and flicked on the light and was met with an empty crib and absolutely no nanny. My head began to swirl as my body rushed into the room, and I tossed around blankets and looked under furniture in a futile attempt to figure out why no one was in my daughter’s room.
Why was my daughter not safe and sound, sleeping in her own bed?
I strode out of her room as the palpitations of my heart constricted my throat. Panic unlike anything I’d ever experienced rattled my body as my hands physically began to tremble. I burst into the dark corridors, reached down and jiggled the doorknob of Madeline’s room, and readied myself to roar her awake.
What the hell had she done with my–
And just as quickly as the panic had risen, it dissipated as I looked towards Madeline’s bed. Her arms, cradled around my lightly-snoring daughter, guarded Clara protectively as blankets and pillows situated themselves around my baby to keep her in place. Madeline’s leg was hanging off the bed while her cheek nestled itself onto the top of Clara’s head, and for the first time in two weeks it looked as if both of them were sleeping soundly.
Maybe that’s what Clara had needed all along: someone to keep her company at night so she felt safer in this new environment.
I slowly backed myself out of the room and silently shut the door behind me, and I stilled my body in the middle of the hallway before I brought my hand up and raked it through my hair. In the span of two weeks, I had gone from being a single, self-made billionaire bachelor with throngs of women falling at his feet to a bustling, tired father who experienced mild panic attacks whenever his daughter wasn’t in sight.
Instead of spoiling women who would spread their legs for me that night, I wanted to spoil a little girl who had spread my heart open wide and nestled her way into the middle of it.
I was in shock by the weight of it all.
I felt a deep-seated haggardness cascade along my spine as I slowly hunched over in the hallway, and I decided to let the alcohol running through my veins take me under and swallow me whole as I dragged my body to my room. Without taking my clothes off, I toed off my shoes and flopped down onto the mattress. It finally dawned on me why I had made her so mad.
I finally understood what had made Madeline so upset with me in the kitchen.
I had been so busy with Clara and taking care of her that I realized I hadn’t even showered today; by asking her if she wanted an advance for clothes, I had been innately criticizing how she took care of Clara.
I had been critical of how she had sacrificed herself in order to take care of this child who had been abandoned to a person who didn’t know what they were doing.
I made a mental note to write Madeline her first check in the morning so she could deposit it however she wished. I also wanted to try and remember to ask her when her birthday was.
I could only imagine, if I felt like this after only one day, how she felt after two weeks of caring for my daughter. So, if she was doing this day-in and day-out for a month or two, she would be more than deserving of a day off.
Was that normal? Was it all right to give your nanny a spa day?
I didn’t know if it was normal; all I knew was that I wanted to do it.
The same way I knew I wanted to spoil my daughter.
Maybe if Madeline didn’t want to shop for clothes, she would take up the offer of a spa day. That couldn’t possibly be something that was offensive, right?
10
When I fluttered my eyes open, the small snores of a child wafted around my ears. I looked at the clock and realized it was almost 8:30 a.m., and I smiled when it dawned on me that Clara had slept through the entire night. Over two weeks of my time, thus far, had been dedicated to getting up at least four times in the middle of the night, and I felt badly that the only thing she wanted was to be near someone.
It made sense, after going through all of the upheaval in her young life.
I lay there, looking up at the ceiling, and wondered if I should stay in bed. I’d made a habit of cooking breakfast, and I’m sure Mr. Blake would be up soon with his mouth already watering. You could train men like dogs you know, if you took the time to do it. A snap here and a call there, and you could have them begging at your feet for whatever it was you were taking the time to give them.
But all I wanted to do was take a shower.
I scooped Clara up into my arms and padded out of my room. I crossed the hallway and nudged her door open with my hip, and when I had gotten her situated underneath her fuzzy blanket in her crib, I slowly backed out and shut the door behind me. While my bedroom didn’t have its own bathroom, there was a massive one on the opposite end of the penthouse apartment that I had taken as mine to occupy. So, I grabbed a change of clothes, searched for a towel, and slowly made my way to the other end of the house.
The bathroom was massive: a stone, walk-in shower/tub that had a step down into it. Then there were three steps to get to the bottom of the shower, and if you decided to take a bath the heated stones had jets immersed in them that would make you feel as if you were sitting in your very own whirlpool jet hot tub.
My favorite thing was to plug up the tub, turn on the shower, and slowly let the water fill in as the hot, steaming water pounded onto my skin.
I sat back onto the stone level that wound around the tub while the water pummeled me with its relaxing temperature, and I closed my eyes. Every once in a while, I took the time to do something like this: take an extra-long shower or deep condition my hair. I didn’t treat myself to things very often. I thought it was vain and wasteful, considerin
g so many people who had so little. I knew what it was like, scraping around in trash cans, hoping to find a tattered coat to put around your shoulders.
I knew what it was like to jump for joy at finding a quarter on the ground because that meant you could buy a cheap package of noodles to eat on for the next couple of days.
Mr. Blake had excess, and part of me felt guilty for indulging.
I sighed as the steam began to rise up around me. As the condensation on my chest began to drip between the valleys of my breasts, my mind wandered back to last night. I had gone out to pick up a few things for Clara, and I came back in to see Mr. Blake, sleeping on the couch, with his daughter in his arms. He had been adamant about learning childcare over the past couple of weeks, and it was finally nice to have him intrigued about his daughter. I slowly saw the way he began to smile at her, and there were even a couple of times during the night where I would be feeding her, and he would poke his head around the corner to see if we were all right.
But last night, the moon had bathed them both in its light, and I couldn’t help but stare.
I had walked around the couch and just looked at them: Clara, cradled close to his strong chest, had her feet stuck into the throbbing veins of his forearms. His chest had been rising and falling with his steady breaths as Clara shuddered into his body. At first, I thought he was going to wake up when he shifted. He pulled his daughter closer to him, sensing that she was cold even though he didn’t wake up to see it for himself.
And still, I couldn’t take my eyes off of him.
The shadows of the apartment played on his rigid cheekbones and jawline, and his disheveled blonde hair beckoned my fingertips. I wanted to reach out and trace my fingers along the ridge of his strong nose. I wanted to wrap my hands deep within the confines of his hair. Yes, he was a pompous windbag; and yes, he was incredibly privileged; and sure, he had no issues flaunting it.
Filthy Desires: A Romantic Suspense Collection Page 39