“Yes, she’s about your age.”
“Are her parents at work?” Annabelle wanted to know. “Does she like horses?”
Melinda gave a sad smile. “Her parents aren’t around anymore, honey. I take care of her now. And yes, she loves horses. I take her riding as much as I can afford.”
“I’m sorry. Start over.” Vane was completely bewildered
“Her parents aren’t around anymore?” Annabelle pressed. Her eyes were unnaturally wide. “Where are they?”
“Annabelle,” Vane chastised.
Melinda waved her hand. “It’s okay. Kids are curious.” The older woman knelt down and took Annabelle’s hand. “Her parents were in a car crash.”
“They’re dead?”
“Annabelle,” Vane said more sharply.
But Melinda just nodded. “Yes, honey."
“So are mine,” Annabelle said gravely.
Melinda’s eyes twinkled. “Then I bet you would have a lot to talk about. Would you like me to introduce you? Her name is Lila.”
Annabelle thundered down the front porch, then remembered herself. “Can I go, Uncle Vane?”
Vane was still staring at this implacable apparition, but he managed a nod, and Annabelle took off toward the new car in the driveway. “You said Maggie sent you?”
“Yes, for the nanny position. I realize it’s kind of out of order that I brought Lila with me. But you know, it was somewhat sudden.” Melinda’s eyes twinkled even more.
Vane swallowed. “You can say that again.”
“Oh, honey, you looked shellshocked.” She took his hand and squeezed. “Don’t worry—one nanny leaves, another shows up to take her place. It’s the way of the world. I’ve been doing it a long time.”
Vane pulled his hand back. “She’s way more than just my nanny… She’s my—” He cut himself off. What was Maggie to him?
Everything
She was everything.
He’d told her Annabelle needed her. Clearly, that was a lie, given Annabelle's happy chatter with her newfound best friend. No, he hadn’t wanted her to stay to be his nanny.
He'd wanted her to stay because he loved her more than anything else in the world.
But she had her dreams, he realized in the same breath. She wanted to travel, have her freedom. What did his love matter if loving her stood in her way? Maybe it was better this way.
“Excuse me a moment?” he asked Melinda. “I just need to—”
He trailed off and walked away without finishing. He instinctually moved to the safety of his office and shut his door behind him. It was familiar and safe, but right now it felt wrong. He looked around wildly to figure out why, and his eyes landed on the picture he'd just put on his desk yesterday.
It was a shot of the three of them. A selfie he'd taken that afternoon at the dunes. He picked it up and traced his finger over her beautiful laughing face.
Maggie should have this, he thought. A memento to take with her on her journey.
It was like a key sliding into a lock and opening a door that had been shut all this time. He grabbed the picture and thundered down the stairs in a perfect imitation of his ward. He vaulted onto the porch where Melinda was patiently waiting. “Melinda, you’re hired. Can you start right now?”
Once again, Melinda was completely unfazed. “Sure, that’s why am here. Just show me where the bathroom is and I’ll be good to go.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I’m an old lady now. We need to know these things.”
“Annabelle will show you.” He was already starting his car. “I’ll be back, I promise.”
Annabelle waved happily, hand in hand with her new friend. It struck him as he looked in the rear view mirror that she'd had no playmate her own age this whole summer. He had never seen her smiling like this. It was one more thing he needed to fix. He put find Annabelle friends on his mental to-do list.
Right below the main priority.
Maggie.
15
Maggie’s house plants were all dead. Her elderly neighbor, the one who was supposed to water them for her, acted like she’d ever seen her before and slammed the door in her face.
Maggie decided it had to be a sign. There was nothing else here for her.
It took less time than she liked to get everything packed up. She was just tucking the last box into the back of her car when she heard the sound of an engine cut out behind her.
Vane? She had no idea why that was where her mind went. Why would he be here? This was the last place she expected to see him, especially since she was pretty sure he had no idea where she lived.
But if he was the last person she thought she’d see, the person getting out of the car was the second last.
“Hey, princess,” her mother said breezily. “Where you headed?”
“Mom.” Maggie closed her trunk and sagged against it. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh, I was just passing through, looking for a place to crash if you have a piece of floor I could pull up.”
“I literally just gave my keys back to the landlord. Your timing could not be worse. Why didn’t you call me?”
“Oh!” Her mother laughed. “Because I had no idea I was going to be here until just now. I was passing through and thought, hey, I think this is where my daughter lives.” She eyed Maggie’s packed car. “So you're really heading out?”
“Just like you always said, got to stay light on my feet, right?” Maggie laughed, and hoped her mother didn’t hear the slight hysteria in her voice.
“Oh.” Her mother sounded startled. “I said that?”
“Enough times that it plays on repeat in my brain. Why do you think I’m all packed up to move out? I'm on my way to the next adventure.”
“Yeah? What have you been up to? Tell your old mom.”
It struck Maggie just then how strange this must look to anybody else. A mother and daughter, both with their cars stacked high with belongings, standing in the road and trying to catch up on the last five years. But this was completely normal to her. As was her mother’s idle lack of curiosity about what was in store for her daughter next.
“I took a posting as a rural teacher in Alaska. Five years. But I wanted to do some traveling before I start.”
Her mother tilted her head. “You do? You don’t sound very excited about it.”
Maggie blew out an aggrieved sigh. “I guess it was kind of spur of the moment. This morning I woke up in a completely different place.”
“Than here? Very nice, my child.” Her mother waggled her eyebrows suggestively.
“Mom, it wasn’t like that. I had a nanny position.” She gritted her teeth. “And yes, I guess it became a little something more than that. But I've got to stay light on my feet right?”
“Is that what you wanna do?”
“Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do?”
“That’s what I’m supposed to do, Maggie. Not you. Yeah, when you were a kid, we moved around a lot. But you never seemed to like it very much, and I always figured as soon as you were off on your own, you’d have yourself a perfect little house with a white picket fence. Probably that you built yourself, since you’re strangely good with a hammer.”
Maggie stared at her mother. “You really thought that?”
“Of course I did. Any place we lived, you always did your level best to make it a home. You always had your plants, your pictures, all the things that you carried with you. You may not have had a permanent home, but you had an idea of what home should feel like. And, I might add, you were very opinionated about it, too.”
She laughed in recognition. It was finally clear. Home was the feeling she’d been searching for her whole life.
The feeling she had felt with Vane.
“Crap.”
Her mother raised an eyebrow. “You okay?”
“I think I may have just royally screwed up everything.” Maggie buried her face in her hands.
Her mother shrugged. “So fix it.”
�
��Oh, that's your motherly advice? Everything is always so easy for you, isn’t it?”
Her mother broke into peals of laughter. “Whatever gave you that impression? Things are plenty hard. But I always knew what I wanted, and what I wanted was a life unlike everyone else’s. That was for me. I'd hoped by now you’d have figured out the life for you.”
A sob broke free from Maggie's lips. “I think I had it,” she blubbered. “And I let it go.”
Her mother folded her into an embrace. “So get it back,” she whispered patting her on the back.
* * *
The landlord seems confused to see Maggie again. “Thought you were done,” he grumbled.
“I just want to show my mom around. I’m not moving in again.”
“I can give you twenty minutes,” the landlord grumped. “And then we got to start cleaning for showings.”
Shouting her thanks, Maggie led her mother around the empty apartment.
“I can picture it.” Her mother nodded enthusiastically every time Maggie described how she’d set everything up and how exactly she'd made this place a home.
She'd just finished up when a knock sounded on the door.
“Is that twenty minutes up already?” her mother wanted to know.
“All right, I’m leaving!” Maggie complained as she went to the door.
Vane stood in the hallway.
Her breath left her lungs. “What are you doing here?” she whispered, unconvinced she hadn't conjured him out of sheer longing.
He held out a framed picture. “I wanted to get this to you before you left on your trip. It's for you to put in your new place. So you remember me. Remember us.” He rubbed the back of his neck, looking wholly unsure of himself. “I’m not going to hold you back, Maggie. I just want you to know that I was wrong about why I was upset you were leaving. It was my heart that was breaking. I love you. But if you need to do this, I’m not going to hold you back. Here.” He pushed the picture toward her.
She took it into her hands and stared. He'd captured the three of them laughing. She wasn't even looking at the camera. She was looking off in the distance. And he was looking at her.
He'd captured them. All three of them, as whole people. “Where was this last night?” she whispered.
“What? In my office, actually. I took a whole bunch just like this. They're kind of corny. Just a guy taking pictures of the woman he loves.” He shrugged. “I picked the more artsy prints for your room.”
She smacked her hand against her head. “Mom?” she called, aware that her mother was watching this whole thing without a word. “Thank you for showing up like this. You delayed me just long enough to keep me from making the biggest mistake of my life.” She cupped Vane's face in her hands and kissed him hard. “I love you, too."
His face broke out into a wide, shocked smile. "You do?"
She couldn't help but laugh. "You look so surprised!"
"I'm…" His smile turned into an expression of awe. "I guess I hadn't dared hope. You're amazing, Maggie. Before I met you, I didn't know it was possible to feel this way. I never trusted my own feelings. You made me realize what happiness, real happiness, feels like. You changed me, and I had to tell you how grateful I was before I let you go."
She touched his face. "The fact that you came all the way here, not to try to stop me from leaving, but to give me this." She looked at the picture again. "Right? You weren't going to put a condition on this? If I accept it, I agree to stay for another six weeks?" She grinned.
He shook his head slowly. "No strings. I just wanted to give it to you because I thought you'd want something for your new home."
Her heart squeezed tight in her chest. "You are my home."
Vane blinked in surprise but only for a moment, before clutching her tightly to him. "Maggie." He kissed her in that same dizzying way.
If Maggie had any lingering doubts left as to where she belonged, they fell away from her in his arms. "I love you," she said again.
He still looked skeptical. “You're sure? What about your search, your travel, your freedom?”
She shook her head. “I’m done searching. I found you.”
Epilogue
Annabelle and Lila raced across the front lawn. Five other girls trailed behind them, shyly holding back.
It was the first weekend for the support group for orphans and their caretakers. Melinda had been instrumental in getting it all together, accessing her broad network of friends. This first weekend was small. But Maggie had assured Vane that word would get out.
“This place will feel like home to a whole lot of kids,” she'd promised him, touching his face.
He'd kissed her then. Just like he kissed her now as they watched the new arrivals be absorbed by the group. The shouts of laughter and squeals of delight echoed off the walls of the fully renovated beach house.
“You're smiling,” Maggie noted. She eyed him sidelong.
“What is that? You've watching me like that a lot. Like you're spying on me.”
She broke out laughing. “How could I spy on you? We're together every waking moment.”
Vane touched his pocket. “Glad you said that, because I have something I need to tell you.”
“Me, first,” she interrupted breathlessly. The counselors had rounded up the kids and were herding them to the first activity. “You really like having lots of kids around?”
“It's louder than I expected,” he admitted. Then he grinned. “Yeah, I like it.”
“What about different age groups?”
“Sure, that'd be fine.”
“Babies?” Her eyebrows zoomed up.
He drew in a breath and then nodded. “Sure. I mean, I'm not sure how much support we could give babies, but if they need help in some way—”
“Oh, you adorably dense idiot, you're so bad at reading people it's precious.” She grabbed his hand and placed it over her belly. “I'm pregnant, Vane. That's why I want to know how you feel about babies.”
His mouth fell open. “Are you serious?”
Maggie burst out laughing. "I can think of a lot of other ways to tease you than this, Vane McClellan. Starting with the fact that your entire wardrobe seems to consist of button- down shirts." She tweaked his collar affectionately. "Seriously. I'm buying you some sweatpants. A basketball jersey stained with mustard. Bring you down to my level."
"Your level?" He swept her into his arms. "You're a goddess!" He swung her around as she whooped with laughter and then set her down and palmed her belly with an awestruck look on his face. "There's a baby in there? My baby?" He swallowed against the lump in his throat.
Family. That's what this house had always meant to him. Family formed by blood. And now, by love.
Vane felt the rush of emotions fill him. But rather than fight them off, than press them back down deep into of himself, he let them free. Love and desire and gratitude and hope for the future all swirled in his mind, bringing tears to his eyes.
"Are you okay?" Maggie touched his face, sounding concerned.
He swept her hand to his lips. "I'm more than okay. I'm just in shock."
"Do you need a minute?" Maggie, in her wonderful, caring way, was trying to read his emotions. And, Vane thought with a rush of love that almost blinded him, she was getting him all wrong once again. She couldn't read people at all. But one of the many, many reasons he loved her was that she never stopped trying.
“I can show you the test I just took,” she pressed, still misinterpreting his shock for disbelief. “That's why I keep watching you. I was wondering if you noticed it in the bathroom. You didn't.”
He shook his head and traced his thumb over the tiny hand he still held in his. “No, you're right, I didn't notice that. But I noticed something else.”
“What's that?”
He turned her palm over in his. “How naked your hand looks,” he said as he slipped the tiny ring onto her elfin finger.
She gasped as he fell to one knee. “I don't know how it could
get more perfect, but you telling me we're having a baby is pretty close. Maggie, I've wanted you to stay with me for the rest of my life pretty much since I met you, and now I want to make it legal.” He pushed the ring the rest of the way on as he asked, “Will you marry me?”
She covered her mouth with her free hand. “I can never say no to you,” she whispered, almost to herself.
“You can. And you have.”
“But I don't need to. I love you. Yes!” She flung her arms around his neck and kissed him in full view of everyone. But he didn't mind one bit. He had his house. And now he had his family—Annabelle, Maggie, their baby—to make it a home.
End of The Billionaire’s Ward
McClellan Billionaires Book Three
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Leslie North is the USA Today Bestselling pen name for a critically-acclaimed author of women's contemporary romance and fiction. The anonymity gives her the perfect opportunity to paint with her full artistic palette, especially in the romance and erotic fantasy genres.
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McClellan Billionaires: The Complete Series Page 30