He knew that. It was what he’d feared since the beginning.
“Thanks for the coffee,” he said, turning to leave before he said something friendly that he’d later regret.
But Holly stopped him with a carefully worded “So, you and Amy...you’re a thing now?”
His shoulders slumped. He should have known that not even coffee came without a price in this place. There was a chance it was the workday coffee date that gave them away and not the making out in dark rec room corners, but he doubted it. Amy was subtle like the crash of a cymbal.
“Kind of. There are extenuating circumstances.”
Holly’s silence shrouded him in recriminations—all the more stifling because they were justified. He could practically read her thoughts. Amy is worth a lot more than extenuating circumstances. Amy is worth a lot more than you.
He knew it. He’d known it since the day she arrived here. And he realized with a surge of anguish that the time had come to make sure she knew it too. There would be no more of this waiting, this hoping, this half-fearing for the day Mr. Montgomery called him up to his office to decide the job was done, his dreams ready to come true.
He was ready to be back in control of his own future—even if that meant driving himself straight off the road.
“We’re just not blasting it from the rooftops yet, that’s all,” he lied. “We’d appreciate it if you kept it to yourself for now.”
“Got it.” Holly made the motion of a zipper over her mouth, but he could see the accusation lingering in her expression. “Mum’s the word—you don’t have to worry about me. I’m a ninja at keeping secrets.”
Now it was his turn to study her. Leaning one hip on the counter, dressed comfortably in jeans and a chef’s jacket, her feet in sensible kitchen clogs, Holly was the picture of nonthreatening friendliness. This was a woman who cooked disgustingly healthy foods and kept a clean kitchen, a woman who could shrug off a broken dumbwaiter with a laugh. But there was a hard set to her angular jaw, a flash in her eyes—cold and flat and almost black—that made him wonder how much of that was a façade.
“It’s not a secret. Just complicated.”
Holly shrugged and returned to her work. “Where I come from, those are usually the same thing.”
* * *
“Don’t take this personally, but I can’t decide whether I’m happier to see you or the coffee.”
Since the urge to plant a kiss on Ryan’s slightly parted lips was stronger than the one to gulp scalding caffeine, Amy could only assume he pulled out ahead. If he actually cared how much seeing him standing outside the nursery door made her heart leap, he could probably stay ahead for the rest of his life.
She stopped herself from making the mistake of saying that out loud. He did care. Just not enough.
“And before you make the mistake of coming any closer, let me inform you that there’s a firm No Funny Business rule once you cross these nursery doors. I’m halfway convinced Serena had a nanny cam installed before her trip to Paris.”
“Really?”
“Well, it’s the only explanation I can find for that monstrosity.” She led him into the nursery and pointed at the giant teddy bear in one corner, so tall its head brushed the ceiling, its limbs like couch cushions. Amy could have sworn its eyes followed her as she moved around the room. “Isn’t it awful?”
“It has quite a presence. But aren’t nanny cams usually smaller? More understated?”
“Have you ever spent any time with the lady of the Manor? Understatement isn’t something she worries too much about.” Then, since she wasn’t wasting her precious nap moments on Serena or the possibility of surveillance, she dropped to the rocking chair and indicated for him to sit nearby. “I missed you.”
Since most of the furniture in the nursery was built for butts no wider than a few inches across, Ryan settled on the floor, one knee casually bent so that he looked like a lounging demigod. A lounging, slightly scowling demigod, but based on what she knew of Greek mythology, that seemed about right.
“I missed you too,” he said.
“Then why are you wearing your curb-stomping-puppies face?”
She’d meant the words to be a joke, to lighten the mood, but then she recalled that the last time she’d seen this face was when she’d asked him to close his eyes and replay the worst moment of his life. The worst moment for him had to be the drunk driving accident, when his world had changed and everything he knew and loved was taken away.
Oh, God. That wasn’t about to happen again, was it?
“Ryan?” she asked, her voice small. “Are you okay?”
He looked up, and his eyes softened when they landed on her. “I’m fine. But Holly said something that got me thinking.”
“A dangerous pastime.”
“But a necessary one.” He shifted so that he leaned close enough to play with the bottom hem of her jeans, touching but not touching. “I don’t think she likes the idea of us sleeping together.”
“She’s protective of me.” Amy took a drink of her coffee, made exactly the way she liked it. “I get the feeling she’s the sort who doesn’t think anyone is good enough for the people she cares about. You should see the way she hovers over Serena. She jokes about her with the other staff members, but you can tell they have a deep bond.”
“She’s right to be wary of me.”
“I think you’re being a little dramatic.”
“I’m not.” The puppy face was back again. “I’m just the right amount of dramatic. The truth is, I wasn’t completely honest with you that day we went for a walk with the twins. And I need to be. I’d like to be.”
“You mean Incest Day?”
“Jesus. You named it?”
“May thirteenth will forever be known to me as Incest Day.” She placed a reverent hand over her chest. “I’ll celebrate by listening to banjo music and gouging out my own eyes.”
Before Ryan could stop himself, he found himself relaxing again. Goddammit—she was killing him with her sunny disposition. Here he was, trying to confess his ignominy, struggling to find a way out of this mess, and all she did was make him want to chuck every reservation out the window and ravish her on top of a stuffed floor-to-ceiling nanny cam.
“I mean it, Amy.” He would stay firm. He wouldn’t be derailed by benevolence and an almost see-through white tank top. This had to be said, if only to free him. To free them both. “The deal between me and Mr. Montgomery that I told you about—the one where he asked me to keep you away from Jake in exchange for my job—there’s more to it than that.”
“I don’t understand.”
No. Of course she didn’t. Why would she think for even one second that the men she trusted—the men she cared about—would descend to such depths to get their own way?
“You’re worrying me, Ryan. Why do you look so grim? What are you talking about?”
He swallowed heavily and braced himself for the worst. “I told you that Mr. Montgomery allowed me to keep my job on the condition that I separated you and Jake, right?”
“Yes. And I still think it was shitty of you not to tell me right away.”
“You might want to reserve your swear words for what comes next. The part I didn’t tell you was that he also implied he might be able to get me my old job back.” When she didn’t respond right away, Ryan said the words he’d barely allowed himself to hope might come true. “What he offered me in exchange for keeping the two of you apart was a way out of here. For good.”
“He can do that?”
“It certainly looks that way.” He had the money and the power and—most important of all—the motivation. “But that’s not the worst part in all this. The worst part is that even though I knew I’d have to lie to you and manipulate your relationship with Jake and cause you pain to make that happen,
I didn’t say no.”
She still didn’t say anything, just kept looking at him with a soft, almost perplexed expression—like she either couldn’t or wouldn’t allow the words to sink in. In that moment, he feared she might find a way to twist this around, to give him the same excuses she offered all the people in her life who took advantage and wronged her and otherwise treated her like crap.
He couldn’t let that happen.
Gripping her hands tightly in his, he strengthened his tone. “Do you understand what I’m telling you right now, Amy? I didn’t say no.”
* * *
In Amy’s opinion, there were no words on the face of the planet more condescending than “Do you understand what I’m telling you.”
That simple phrase, dropped from Ryan’s lips with a pained grimace, implied so much—that Amy couldn’t possibly know what kind of dark, twisted torment kept him up at night, that she was incapable of grasping what went on in the world around her.
But she did know. And she was capable. She might enjoy the company of children and princesses, but that didn’t make her blind to the realities that existed around her. Mr. Montgomery had been so desperate to keep her from finding out the truth that he’d recruited Ryan’s help, offering the one thing there was no way she could compete against.
So, yes. She understood what Ryan was telling her. He didn’t say no. He wanted to go home.
She put on her brightest smile, spread so thin it became brittle. “Well, then. I guess the only question left is when do you leave?”
Ryan’s eyes clouded with suppressed emotion. “What do you mean? When do I leave for what?”
“I assume Mr. Montgomery is satisfied with your performance,” she said, pushing the words out one by one, a labor of—if not love, something very close to it. “Jake and I are apart. Romance is the last thing on my mind when I look at him now. You did your job exceptionally well, and you deserve to be rewarded for it. So that’s it, right? Hollywood or bust? The golden ticket home?”
Ryan placed his hands on Amy’s shoulders, squaring her to face him, his fingers pressing so hard they felt like prongs. She fought for only a few seconds before realizing how fruitless her attempt was. The brittle feeling had escalated, and she was afraid that if she struggled too hard, she might break.
“I’m not accepting his stupid prize.” Ryan’s mouth was firm, his eyes going from turbulent to outright thunderclouds. “Think about what it would mean, Amy. He went to extreme lengths to bribe me with this—extreme lengths to avoid coming out as your father. The second you approach him with our suspicions, the deal is off. Why would he reward me with Hollywood when I led you straight to the truth he was trying to avoid?”
Oh. She hadn’t thought of that. But it was obvious Ryan hadn’t been thinking of anything else. He’s thought long and hard about how to accept this deal without hurting me. He wants this so much he’ll do almost anything to get it.
And she’d do almost anything to help him.
“So I’ll never know,” she said quickly. “I’ll go through life believing I’m nothing more than the nanny. You know how scared I am of upsetting the balance anyway—it’s not that big of a sacrifice.”
“It is a big sacrifice, and I won’t let you make it.”
A whimper from behind the door indicated Amy’s duties were about to interrupt the conversation just as it was reaching its crux. Ryan could have thrown something or punched a wall or ripped a giant stuffed bear apart with his teeth. There was always a fucking Montgomery in the way. As long as she lived under this roof, their desires would always trump her own, their demands be the center of her world.
“Before you go in, please listen. As soon as Mr. Montgomery gets back from Paris, I’m going to talk to him. Not because I plan on cashing in on my prize, and not because I’m going to tell him what we know, but because I want him to know that under no circumstances will I consider his deal. I don’t want my old life back—not at that cost.”
“Not at that cost,” she echoed, blinking rapidly.
That was the wrong way to put it. “Not at any cost,” he amended, but it was too late. Reality lay stark and exposed between them, a live wire dangerous to the touch. He might balk at the thought of using Amy to get his career back, but the truth was that he’d already taken much more than that. And they both knew it.
The look she gave him, one hand on the doorknob to attend to the twins, halfway in his world, halfway in theirs, was difficult to read. “You know, I wonder if maybe we’re missing a really obvious solution here.”
There’s a solution? Other than turning back the hands of time and actually listening when his goddamned common sense told him not to get involved?
“Don’t do anything drastic yet, okay?” She paused just long enough to offer him a smile—wobbly but bright, powerful by virtue of being hers and hers alone. “I’ll swing by your apartment after work. I think I might have a way to fix this.”
“You do?”
“Of course. Easy solutions to complex problems, remember? That’s my specialty.”
Chapter Seventeen
The one good thing about the Montgomerys being out of town was that there were no family fires for Amy to put out, no last-minute requests for her to feed Evan this or sing Lily that or please keep them entertained while we have guests for dinner.
It was almost as though Ryan could pretend they were normal people with normal jobs and a normal relationship. He’d get off work first and head home to walk the dog that wasn’t his. He’d clean up a little so he wouldn’t be ashamed when his girlfriend came over. They’d go out for Chinese and hit the mini-golf course and return for hours of mind-blowing sex.
A light knock stopped him in the act of the second one, a quick run-through of his apartment to make sure there weren’t any dirty clothes tossed on the floor or other wayward items that would shame him in front of a woman he didn’t need to impress but desperately wanted to.
But as he pulled open the door, he realized that with Amy, normal would never happen. It wasn’t even a remote possibility. He wasn’t confronted with a girlfriend in need of a foot rub and a good laugh after a long day at work, or an angry lover who’d recently learned she’d been used by the man she cared about. Oh, no. Not him. He got a woman in a trench coat. A woman in a trench coat—unbuttoned and pulled open—tall black heels and absolutely nothing else.
“What are you doing?” Grabbing her by the wrist and pulling her through the door, he looked furtively up and down the hallway to determine who might be gawking at her, but all he could see were rows of closed doors, the muffled sounds of life going on all around him. “Are you insane?”
Her lower lip came out in a pout, but not the kind that signaled grief. This was the other kind. The sexy kind.
As the door shut behind them, she allowed the coat to fall open once again. It was just an ordinary coat as far as he could tell—to her knees and khaki-colored and slightly shiny in that way fabric had when it was designed to repel rain. Who the fuck was he kidding? It was a coat. What really mattered were the parts underneath it. His gaze wandered over her exposed body. Up and down. Side to side. Up again. And definitely down once more.
His hands moved forward, drawn to the soft, naked flesh that beckoned underneath the fluttering fabric. He stopped just short of cupping the weight of her breasts, reaching instead for the tie of her jacket and cinching it tight around her waist. “Jesus, please tell me you had all this buttoned up on the way over here.”
“No.” She frowned down at her now-covered body. “I drove stark naked down the street and got out of the car to pull this coat out of my trunk—but not before the mailman and I chatted about the squirrel problem for a while. Of course I buttoned up. You don’t like it?”
“No.” He took a step back, thinking distance might help him clear his thoughts, but it only pre
sented a more complete picture. Even with the coat pulled closed, he could still see the plunge of cleavage underneath, the impossibly long legs ending in heels that made him want to run his hands and tongue and teeth over every flexing muscle of those calves. He swallowed. “I fucking love it.”
Amy didn’t waste another second. She dropped her hips and rolled them as she walked forward, her full seduction mode on. She didn’t have very many moves, if she was being honest. Showing up naked—or nearly so—at a man’s house just about exhausted her store of resources when it came to eliciting desire. Everything she’d ever been taught on the subject had included pretty much just being ready and willing.
She was ready. Clearly. She was willing. Clearly.
But it didn’t seem to be working. Rather than lolling his tongue slavishly out and pinning her against the wall, Ryan was backing away, a horrified expression on his face.
She stopped her forward movement, her rolling hips stopping along with it. “If you love it so much, why do you look as though I’m about to ask you to remove both your testicles with a rubber band?”
He laughed and then grimaced, proving in an instant how ineffective her attempts at wooing a man were. Duh. Castration wasn’t one of the most ideal topics when attempting to entice a lover.
“I’m trying to remember what it was I wanted to say to you. For some reason, my brain seems to be running on empty here.”
Good. That had been her intention. Distract and awe and enjoy him for what might be the last time. She deserved a nice parting gift—especially once Ryan heard what she was willing to do to earn it.
“You were going to tell me I look pretty?” she guessed.
“Pretty doesn’t begin to cover it.”
“Hmm. Maybe you were going to suggest a restaurant for dinner?”
“No. I’ll be damned if I’m taking you anywhere if that’s all you have to wear.”
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