by Dara Girard
Hannah was thinking about Amal’s words and kiss as she walked to her apartment, but she stopped when a man stepped in her path. She glanced to her side and noticed the limo.
She rested her hands on her hips. “How come this feels so familiar?”
Peter gestured to the limo with his head. “You know what to do.”
“You haven’t said ‘please’ yet.”
He sighed with exaggerated annoyance. “Please.”
“That’s better.”
Peter bent down, turned his cheek to her and tapped it. Hannah stared at him for a moment and then laughed, remembering what she’d done before. She playfully patted his cheek and then stepped inside the limo. To her surprise Martha wasn’t sitting there, but her husband, Granville. He held out his hand. “I never got a chance to formerly introduce myself before in the courtroom. I’m Granville Thompson.”
“And I’m—”
“Yes,” he interrupted. “I know who you are. That’s why I need to talk to you. You’re the only one who can help me.”
“Help?” Hannah said just to make sure she’d heard correctly.
“Yes.” He sighed. “Martha is not doing well. She hasn’t been well since we lost the boy. It’s just been too much for her. Right after the custody hearing she went to bed and hasn’t left it since. I think she’s dying, or at least willing herself to.”
“I’m sorry,” Hannah said, genuinely concerned. “But what can I do?”
“She’s too proud to speak to Amal, and I’m sure he wouldn’t allow it anyway—”
“Allow what?” Hannah asked, eager for him to get to the point.
“She needs to see the boy. Just for one day. Come by with the child and let her see him. I’m sure that’s all she needs.”
Hannah bit her lip. “I don’t know.”
“Just once,” he pleaded. “I’ll make it worth your while.”
“I don’t need your money. This is risky. There’s not just Amal, but J.R.’s nanny and his grandmother.”
“I’m sure you’ll find a way around it just to give Martha one glimpse of him. Her heart is broken. I won’t say that what we did was right, but she’s already been punished. I’m asking you to do this for her, please.”
It was a lot to ask. Hannah knew that Amal wouldn’t say yes. He was still very bitter against them, but she felt Martha did have a right to see her grandson. From the worry on Granville’s face, he felt desperate, and she knew that feeling. She’d been there when her parents were about to lose their house. “All right. Just one time. And I’ll be there the entire time. I won’t let J.R. leave my sight.”
“Understood. Come this Thursday. I’ll pick you up at—”
“No, you don’t need to pick me up. I’ll come to your house with J.R. in the late afternoon.”
“Okay, we’ll be ready. Thank you for doing this.”
“Thank me later. I haven’t done anything yet. I have to see if I can make this work first.”
But when the day arrived, Hannah wasn’t sure she could pull it off. She told Doreen and Camille she wanted to take J.R. to a “Mother and Baby” workshop to give them both a break.
“That sounds like a great idea,” Doreen said.
Camille frowned, uncertain. “Why don’t I come with you?” she said.
“Because I’d like to bond with him on my own,” Hannah replied.
Camille folded her arms in challenge. “But I’m hired to look after him.”
“Yes, but this is important to Hannah,” Doreen said. “She’s like his mother.”
“But she isn’t his mother. Not yet at least. You haven’t shown interest like this before. Why now?”
Hannah just looked at Camille, seeing how in the months she’d worked there she’d taken a higher position than what she’d been hired to do. Now she was blurring the lines between her place with the baby and with Amal. “I’ve always shown interest in J.R. and—”
“Not like this. You didn’t even want me to come with J.R. when you took Amal to meet your parents. Why is that? You didn’t want them to know he had a son?”
“Why are you speaking to her like that?” Doreen asked, dismayed. “She’s the one who got you hired.”
“No,” Camille said with a cool smile. “I was hired because of Amal—”
“Mr. Harper,” Hannah corrected.
“He lets me call him Amal.”
Yes, regretfully he did. She’d tried to convince Amal to be more formal with the nanny, but that had failed.
“She should call you Mr. Harper,” Hannah had told him one evening as they cleared up the dinner dishes.
Amal had shuddered. “It sounds strange to me.”
“But it makes you too familiar.” She’d placed dishes in the sink.
“Leave the dishes.”
“I need to get them washed.”
He’d turned her to him and searched her face. “No, you don’t.” He’d rested his hands on her shoulders. “Tell me why you’re upset.”
“I don’t like how she addresses you.”
“She’s in my home and I trust her. It’s no big deal.” He’d slid his hands down her sides and then settled on her waist. “There’s no reason to be jealous.”
Hannah had removed his hands and turned. “I’m not jealous.” But that had been a lie. Part of her was jealous that this beautiful young woman had the same access to Amal that she had, except in the bedroom. Hannah sensed that if Camille had her way, she would have access in there, too. Camille was more dangerous than she’d realized. Doreen was right—Hannah had sabotaged a good thing, but she would fix it. She’d turned the faucet on full blast, wishing she knew how.
Amal had reached past her and turned it off and then wrapped his arms around her waist and held her snugly. “Look, it’s an ego thing. I like pretty women calling me by my first name, but it doesn’t mean anything more than that.”
Hannah had dipped her hand in the water and then flicked it in his face. “Your ego needs an adjustment.”
Amal had wiped his face and laughed. “It’s nothing.”
“To you maybe, but what about her?”
His gaze had dipped to Hannah’s mouth. “What about her?”
“You may be giving her the wrong impression.”
He’d unbuttoned the top of her blouse. “Huh?”
She’d covered his hand. “Amal, pay attention.”
“You just gave me an idea. Let’s go take a quick shower.”
She’d grabbed his face. “Focus. We’re talking about Camille.”
“But I don’t want to.”
“This is important. I think—”
He’d swung her into his arms. “Stop thinking.”
“But Camille—”
He’d headed out of the kitchen. “Forget about her,” he’d said, and soon gave her plenty of reasons to.
But Hannah remembered it now as she looked at Camille and realized what her fear had been. “That doesn’t mean you two are close.”
“Amal makes the rules, not you...and I work for him. I’m here to do what he pays me to do—look after his son, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. We all have roles. You’re Amal’s girlfriend. I’m J.R.’s nanny. You fulfill your role and I’ll fulfill mine.”
“Fine.” Hannah took out her cell phone and started to dial.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m calling Amal to let him know that you’re refusing to let me take J.R. with me.”
Camille snatched the phone away. “I didn’t say that.”
Hannah raised her eyebrows with feigned innocence. “Didn’t you? Remind me again about our roles.”
Camille pursed her lips.
“Score one for Hannah.” Doreen grinned. “I’m glad y
ou realize your role. Only one of you is easily replaced.”
Hannah held out her hand for her phone. Camille slapped it into her palm. “I’ll be back before Amal comes home. You can take the day off.”
“If anything happens to him...”
“Don’t threaten me,” Hannah warned. Then she took J.R. and his things and drove to the Walkers’ house, fully aware she’d escaped one fire and jumped into a cauldron.
Chapter 16
The Walker mansion looked like a page out of Architectural Digest. The entrance featured a massive oak staircase lined with gold-framed artwork and large family portraits. Expensive Italian marble tile lined the hallway leading to a series of heavily decorated rooms with nine-foot ceilings. From what she could see, money was certainly not a problem.
Peter met her in the foyer and gave a low whistle. He seemed impressed when he saw J.R. in her arms.
“You’re braver than I thought.”
“You know better than to underestimate me,” she said.
“I’m learning.”
Granville came up to her. “I’m so glad you’re here. Let me see him and take him to her.”
“No, that wasn’t our agreement. I’ll take him to see her and I’ll stay the entire time.”
He relented. “Okay, follow me.”
Hannah walked up the spiral staircase and then entered a grand room, where she saw a large poster bed and a small figure inside. The woman appeared minimized by the expansive room around her. Martha looked as if she’d aged years. Her eyes widened when she saw Hannah. “What are you doing here?”
“I thought you might want to see J.R.”
“No.” She frantically covered her eyes. “I don’t want to see him.”
“Are you sure?” Hannah walked over to the bed. “Just briefly.” She sat on the bed. “J.R., this is Grandma.”
He looked at Martha with brief interest as he would any stranger, and then his interest went to the drapery above them.
Martha lowered her hand and then reached out and touched the springy black curls on his head. He looked at her and smiled.
Her face crumbled into tears.
“Do you want us to leave?” Hannah asked.
“No, please don’t. Oh, I’m so happy to see you.” She hugged him. He briefly allowed her to embrace him and then tried to wiggle out of her grasp. Hannah gave him his favorite plush ball to keep him occupied. “He likes to play with this.”
“Does Amal know you’re here?”
“No.”
“Why did you come?”
“Your husband asked me to.”
“You didn’t have to say yes.”
“No,” Hannah said. “So don’t squander this moment.”
“How could you do this for me when I’ve done such horrible things?”
“I’m hoping that one day you and Amal will reconcile for J.R.’s sake.”
“He’s such a wonder,” she said, staring at her grandson. “At first Jade didn’t know she was pregnant. After Amal left her she tried to get clean and went cold turkey, but the chills and the nausea were too much for her to take, so she reverted back, thinking that would stop it. When it didn’t and she missed two cycles, that’s when she knew it was something more. I was with her when she took the test. I prayed that it would come out negative because I knew what a positive response would mean. Amal would have rights I didn’t want him to have.”
“What do you mean?”
“Jade was in a terrible state at the time, still in the grips of her addiction. Disappearing at night and meeting with awful people. I knew that if Amal found out he would take the baby from us. When we found out the results, Jade wanted to tell him, but I persuaded her not to, that he’d only want the baby and not her. I was only trying to protect my daughter. I didn’t realize how much I’d hurt her instead. She went into a program that helped her deal with her addiction, but then she ate instead. She stopped talking to me. I wanted to take her abroad, but she refused. She wanted to be close to Amal even if he didn’t want her. She’d sometimes follow him without him knowing.”
“Why didn’t you do something then? Why didn’t you tell him?”
“Because then he would have seen what a mess she was. She only cared about him. She made him her world. She always had. She didn’t start a business because it meant something to her. She did it all for him. She didn’t care about the baby she was carrying. She just had it because she wanted a part of him with her. If I hadn’t stopped her she would have begged him to take her back.”
“But instead you told her that he wouldn’t want her,” Hannah guessed. “Especially nearly seventy pounds overweight, not counting the baby’s weight. Yes, I saw the pictures. I saw what she’d become.”
“He did that to her!” Martha said with such fury that it startled J.R.
Hannah caressed the baby’s cheek and rubbed his back. “It’s okay, Grandma’s not angry.” But Hannah could see that she was and was trying hard to hold it under control.
“She developed high blood pressure and diabetes,” Martha said in a low whisper. “We’d finally gotten her off one set of pills only to put her on others. I told everyone that she just had weight issues. I didn’t want them to know the truth. And I kept the secret well hidden. When she was close to her due date, I kept her at home. But I’ll admit that it got to the point when I couldn’t stand to see her eat. It disgusted me.”
“She was in pain.”
“She did it to hurt me. She knew how much being healthy meant to me, how important it was for a young woman to keep their figure and face. She used to be so beautiful.”
“She was still beautiful.”
“Don’t give me that inner-beauty nonsense. She was being childish because she wasn’t getting her way. You know, she was eating her way through her third spicy burrito when she went into labor,” Martha said with a cruel laugh. “She was nearly sick and it served her right for trying to spite me in that way. We took her to a small hospital out of town and put her under another name. She was in labor for ten hours, begging me to call Amal, pleading with me, but I didn’t listen. I told her that she didn’t need him because I was there. She finally focused on her breathing and gave birth to James. But the stress of labor was too much for her heart, and a week later she suffered a massive heart attack and died. All because of him.”
Hannah could hear the bitterness in Martha’s voice every time she said Amal’s name. “But the papers listed her death as a suicide as a result of an overdose.” Jade dying from a heart attack had not been mentioned during the custody trial.
Martha looked up at her. “Money can buy many things. Even a coroner’s report.”
“You told her lies. You kept her away from the man she loved, a man who loved her.”
“He wouldn’t have abandoned her if—”
“He left her because he couldn’t help her and neither could you, and that’s why you hate him. You wanted him to work the miracle even you couldn’t. And now you hate Amal because of your guilt and your regrets. You’ve tormented yourself with the thought that Jade might still be here if you’d given her what she wanted.”
“Yes! I know that I failed Jade. I failed her in so many ways, and I wasn’t kind to her in the end because I couldn’t stand to see what she’d become and I hated myself for it. When she wanted me to hug her, all I saw were her fleshy arms and round face, and that wasn’t my daughter.”
“She was still your daughter, Martha.”
“I needed James as my second chance to make up for what I’d done. But now I don’t have that.” Martha rested her head back. “I don’t know what to do anymore. My hatred for Amal kept me going, it kept me alive. I enjoyed blaming him for everything—he took away my Jade and now James. I hated him so much I wanted to destroy him, but it came back and destroyed me.
If I’d just given him the inventory he’d never have found out about James. But you’ve forced me to face what I never wanted to, and now I can’t hate him anymore. What am I supposed to do without something to hate?”
“Learn to love instead.”
“Do you think you could bring J.R. by to see me again?”
Hannah shook her head. “Amal...”
“Just once more.”
“Okay,” Hannah conceded.
But “once more” turned into the next three months. Once a week Hannah came up with the excuse of the “Baby and Mother” workshop and instead took J.R. to the Walkers, where Martha played with him in the nursery and out in the garden. Her color and energy had returned. But one day as Hannah left the home under a bright autumn sky, she realized she couldn’t keep the charade up forever.
* * *
Camille watched Hannah’s car leave the Walkers’ gate and grinned with satisfaction. She’d been following Hannah for several weeks, and now she knew it was time to use the information to her advantage. She’d thought of telling Amal about Hannah’s deception right away, but she knew the longer it lasted the better it would be for her. At times it grated on her nerves how much Amal was devoted to her. It was “Hannah this” and “Hannah that.” There would be no wedding bells in sight for Hannah—but perhaps, rather, for her. There was always hope. Her mother had taught her that a man’s gratitude could get her anything, and she wanted to prove to Amal that she was more indispensable than Hannah was. She knew that Hannah had helped her get the job, but that didn’t mean much. She still had her own life to lead, and she didn’t need to be grateful. She would have gotten the job one way or another.
Besides, Hannah had started this war when she’d upstaged her in front of Doreen. Nobody did that to her. Hannah was crafty, but not crafty enough—she was trying to play both sides, but she’d fail. She was probably getting a hefty fee for this little deception. She couldn’t blame her; money was everything. Camille thought of blackmailing Hannah, but that could get complicated and she didn’t like complications. Her allegiance was to Amal alone because he was the true power, and a wounded man was easier to manipulate. She didn’t plan on being a nanny forever, but the role might come close to an end sooner than she’d thought. She’d get rid of Hannah, and Amal would pay her well to stay by his side because he’d feel she was the only woman he could trust. She grinned. Yes, Amal needed to know about Hannah’s deceit, and she would be the one to tell him.