Broken Daddy: A Single Dad & Nanny Romance

by Blake North

  I looked at Pete, whose gray eyes were level. “Let’s go. Good luck, buddy.”

  I swallowed hard. Returned his gentle smile as best I could. “Thanks. Good luck to you too.”

  As I split off, heading down the ridge and taking the long way into the morass of the docks, facing the warehouse, it occurred to me that I should have called him “buddy” too.

  It seemed disrespectful, so I didn’t.

  I shook my head, part of me finding that funny. Of all the things to think at a time like this…

  The thoughts all stopped as I reached the door.

  I knocked, the way we used to knock when I worked here. Three short, two long. Pause. Three short again.

  The door opened.

  I stepped inside.

  “Hey! What the…no way! Get outta here!”

  That was Geoff. He was the driver. He recognized me, evidently. He launched himself at me.

  I was ready. Years of training in the gym had made me lithe and strong. I was not the college student I had been and as I hit him, the part of me that was still twenty years old reveled in my new capability.

  Geoff yelled, his nose bleeding. He ran at me, huge fists swinging. I knew I couldn’t stand against him for long. But I was more fast on my feet. I nipped round him and ran at the door.

  A shot went off. It whistled past my ear and I dropped to the floor, trying to zig-zag. I had learned a bit of this, when I was a boy. My uncle Bruce had taught me. I thanked his memory as I ran to the door.

  I was in the warehouse part. The scent of it assailed my nostrils—the acrid smell of rust and dust and the fainter scent of mold. I breathed in and looked around. Another shot rang out. Someone screamed.

  “Hayley!”

  I let out a roar. I hadn’t known I could sound like that. Blindly, without thinking, I ran toward the sound. The bullet hit my shoulder and I fell back.

  Wow.

  Stupidly, that was the first thought that came into my head as I fell: the power of the bullet awed me. I could smell a burning smell and my shoulder felt bruised. I put my hand up and it was wet with blood. I couldn’t feel anything yet.

  Footsteps erupted into the room, someone stepping over me, someone running toward me.

  Then the pain came. It was too sore to scream, or I would have. I whimpered. I gasped, and I sobbed. The pain got worse. Burning, searing, bruising—all the pain I had known tied into one. I grunted and reached out toward the legs that were running past across my blurring, splintered vision. I grabbed an ankle.

  “Whoa! What the…”

  A man crashed to his knees. I grunted in victory and hauled myself to my feet. Someone was running toward me. Someone shouted in a voice I knew.

  “Hayley!”

  I shouted it but my voice was a thread of sound. My shoulder seared, and my shirt was stained with blood. I could smell it everywhere—the wet tang of iron left in a rainstorm. I grabbed at Hayley with both arms, but only my left arm moved.

  “Beckett!”

  She slammed into me, knocking me back. I stumbled, then fell. It was a good thing we did. Falling together, her arm was ripped out of Jake’s grip, and he stumbled, then swore.

  I wrapped my arm around her, throwing myself between them. Jake fell against me and his head hit mine. I winced as my vision shattered into white and black, but I didn’t collapse. Hayley scrambled to her feet. A shout of anger and effort rang out, startling me into looking up.

  “Ugh!”

  To my awe, Hayley had fallen on the vast bulk that had toppled against me, her hands around his neck, throttling him. He clawed at her wrists, and probably would have dislodged them if the shot had not rang out across the warehouse.

  Which was just as well. Geoff had recovered and was behind me, there were shouts in the next room and I heard a gunshot go off, the bullet whizzing over our heads toward the open door.

  Another shot rang out in answer and my heart soared as the room filled with smoke. It was Peter! The plan was working.

  I laughed in delight, then coughed as the room filled with powder. Fine as mist, blinding as ash, it drifted over everything settling and clouding the air. Hayley screamed, but she did not let go of her grasp on Jake.

  I had my hand free now, and I joined in, pushing him up and back with knees and my left arm, as Hayley screamed at him, using words I didn’t know she knew, her nails tight in the skin of his throat.

  I was amazed. I was scared. I was awed as, suddenly, feet rang out through the warehouse, running from the back. The dust and haze spread and Jake and Geoff’s coughing was joined by our own. Hayley cried out aloud as the dust filled her eyes and her grip wavered as I slithered out from under the weight of my fallen foe-man.

  “Beckett!” she coughed, breath rasping in her throat as she tried to breathe in the dusty, tepid air. “What’s happening?”

  She coughed again, shoulders heaving, throat grating. I grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her to her feet. Then we were running to the door at the back.

  “Out!” I gasped. I was coughing too, and my shoulder was burning, right arm useless.

  “No!” she shouted, drawing in enough air from round the door to get the word out, to raise her voice. “What about you?”

  “I’m going back in,” I said grimly. I had no idea what I thought I was going to do: I was unarmed, wounded and I could barely take in air. But I had to go in. Peter was in there alone. Armed with a revolver and three canisters of powder fire-extinguisher. I could not leave him in there alone.

  “No!” Hayley screamed. At that moment, Jake appeared in front of us. He fired.

  Hayley screamed and something in my brain snapped as she fell.

  The last thing I remembered was Peter’s voice, shouting at me.

  “No, boss. No. Leave it now. It’s okay. You can stop.”

  Then I collapsed and everything was silent.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT – HAYLEY

  I fell, drifting, through layers of white mist. It wrapped me in warmth and everything was silent, the tendrils of it passing by me like snow on a dark night. It felt as if I was falling faster and faster. I saw something lying on a bed. Then I woke up.

  My arm was sore. It was a dull pain, different to the pain I had felt earlier. It was a pricking, tugging sensation, as if someone stuck pins in me. I rolled over. I opened my eyes.

  I was looking at a white ceiling. My body was warm. I stretched, and felt the slide of satin under my hands. I could smell roses. I sat up. I knew where I was.

  My arm hurt, the pain becoming a searing, nagging ache as I moved the muscle once again. I closed my eyes. But the pain was nothing compared the stifling warmth that filled my chest. I was home!

  Not the home I had left, the cottage in Montrose under the oak-trees. Beckett’s home. Home.

  The thought of it brought back a pain to my chest as memory flooded back. Beckett had gone back in. He had pushed me out of the way and I had fallen, my arm shot, and he had gone back in again.

  He was hit. I could see the blood. He must have been hit again. They killed him.

  But if he was dead, why was I here? The thought that he must have ordered it, or I would not be here but in a hospital somewhere, gave me hope. He must still be alive, or who had brought me home?

  I leaned back against the headboard and looked around. It was not my room, but one similar. The trees outside the window were missing, replaced with a distant view of lawns. And the bed faced the window instead of having it on the left side. But the scent of roses was the same and, when I focused on the dressing-table, there were the same kind of flowers in the bouquet as the ones put out for me, all those days ago when I arrived.

  I was alone in the room. I listened to the sounds of the house. A car whispered past on the distant roadway. A bird sang in the grounds somewhere. Someone raked gravel. And, in the next room, I could hear voices.

  “…and don’t you think it would be too soon…”

  “No!” the voice was hushed, but urgent.
“No. I don’t. Doctor, I have to…”

  “Mr. Sand, I’m telling you. Wait…”

  The door burst open and Beckett was there. He filled the doorway. Beckett, who was wearing a nightshirt; deathly pale and smelling of surgical scrub and medication. Beckett, who was swaying a little, with a vast bandage swathing his right shoulder, but who made his way over to the bed and sat on the edge of it, staring at me.

  “Hayley,” he said, his voice a broken whisper.

  “Beckett.”

  He covered his face with his hands.

  “Hayley,” he said again. “I am so, so sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” I whispered. “I’m sorry too.”

  He laughed, then.

  “No,” he said, still smiling. “No. Don’t be sorry. You have nothing to be sorry for.”

  He reached for my arm. My fingers twined in his. He took my hand, breath scalding my cool fingers as he lifted it to his mouth. He kissed the knuckles, the back of my hand, my fingers. Held it to his chest, his long, muscled, wonderful fingers stroking the back of my hand.

  I felt my heart leap as his touch flowed up my nerves, making my entire body tingle even though it had been through so much pain. There was nothing of that left in me now. All that pain and terror and sadness slipped to the back of my thoughts as I looked at him.

  He looked at me.

  “Hayley, you’re safe now. They’re gone. They’ll never harm you again. We got the police on to them—Peter tipped them off,” he explained.

  “Peter?” I asked.

  He smiled tiredly. “My security chief. He’s the one who got us out of there.”

  “No,” I shook my head. “You got me out of there. You saved my life, Beckett,” I whispered. “They were…they were going to kill me.” The memory returned to me and I screwed my eyes shut, trying to lock out the feeling of standing in front of a man with a gun, facing my death.

  “I know,” he said softly. “Those bastards.”

  I shivered. He shook his head, stroked my hand.

  “I know,” he said softly. “That’s not the point. The point is you’re here now and we’re safe and it’s never going to happen ever again.”

  I smiled. “Yes. That’s the point.”

  We sat there silently a while. A man appeared in the doorway—the doctor, I presumed. How Beckett was getting it right to have me hospitalized at his home I had no idea. I was so glad he had done. The doctor—a tall man with sparse hair and a strong, rugged face—smiled at me, studied us both for a moment, as if making calculations in his head, then departed.

  Beckett looked up at my face and looked round at the doorway.

  “The doctor,” I explained succinctly. “He’s gone.”

  “Oh.” Becket looked pleased. “Good.”

  “Good?” I asked.

  “Good,” he repeated. “Because I don’t think Doctor Brenner would approve of what I’m about to do as part of my recovery plan.” His eyes shining with that wonderful naughtiness that only he seemed to have, he leaned forward and, moving slowly so as not to tear open the wound in his shoulder, kissed me.

  I felt my body melting into his as his lips, soft and tender, moved over mine. My body—beaten and bruised as it was—responded eagerly, and I was soon holding him to my chest, pressed tightly together as his tongue slipped between my lips. I crushed him against my breasts, and he moaned. I gasped in longing. We were on the bed together, him sitting on the edge, me sitting up against the board.

  “I brought tea for the patients,” a voice said at the door. He shot upright and we both looked round guiltily as Mrs. Delange—apparently our self-appointed caregiver—came in.

  “Mrs. Delange!” Beckett grinned.

  “I think Doctor Brenner would have something to say about his patients being out of bed,” she said. Then she grinned at us and dropped an eyelid in a slow wink. “But that’s the doctor’s business, and I’ll mind my own. Tea is here when you are ready for some.”

  “Thank you,” I said gratefully.

  “What about coffee?”

  Mrs Delange shot Beckett a glance. “No coffee while you’re recuperating, Mister Sand,” she said firmly. “Doctor’s orders…I’m just obeying him.”

  “I shall have a word with Doctor Brenner,” Beckett said loftily. We all laughed.

  When Mrs. Delange had gone out, we sat together on the bed. He took tea and held it carefully, saucer in the right hand, tea in the left.

  “How is your shoulder?” I asked, pouring my own tea from the pot Mrs. Delange had left on the table by the bed.

  “Sore,” he commented, rolling his right shoulder back experimentally. He winced. “It hurts. Doctor said they took a while in surgery getting the bullet out. Said I could thank Heaven it wasn’t a higher caliber or I could have lost the use of my arm.”

  “Hell,” I said, whistling through my teeth. “I do give thanks for that,” I added fervently. “What did he say about my arm?”

  “He said we were lucky to get you into theater on time. It was bleeding heavily. You lost a lot of blood. They transfused you, though. So he said you shouldn’t suffer too badly from the loss. Me neither,” he added.

  “Oh.” I winced, thinking about all the surgery my poor body had undergone. My left elbow had a cotton swab on the crease, stuck with wound-tape. I guessed that was where the transfusion had gone in. “Thank you for organizing…all this,” I added, inclining my head to the bedroom.

  “It was nothing,” he said. “Least I could do. Good thing Dr. Brenner has a good idea of my wants and needs and leverage to make it all work. I’m not sure I’d be allowed to recover at home without his say-so.”

  “It’s nice here,” I said, sliding on the sheets. My recovery would be much faster for the beautiful surroundings, good food and the presence of my loved ones. That I knew for sure.

  “I’m glad you like it,” he said, giving me that rare grin that made him look like a boy again—naughty and shy.

  “Beckett…” I began.

  “I’m sorry about all the…”

  We spoke together and he stopped. “Your turn first,” he said politely. I grinned at him.

  “Becket,” I said slowly. “I’m sorry about the problems we had. It was my fault.”

  “No, it was mine,” he said softly.

  I shook my head. “No! I was the one who ran away. If I had stayed, none of this could happened!”

  He sighed. “No, that wasn’t it. I put you in danger, and if I thought about that too much, I would have never forgiven myself. Anyway, let’s not think about it like that. I’m just going to be glad it’s over.”

  “Me too.”

  We sat silently, sipping our tea, listening to the sound of someone raking gravel and the birds, singing in the trees outside the window.

  “Estella…” I began a half-formed question.

  “She’s here. She was with Mrs. Delange, organizing the rescue process. Peter phoned the house and they got Doctor Brenner down here with an ambulance crew just in time.”

  “They did a good job,” I commented, looking at him and then at my arm. It was covered in bandaging and it felt bruised, but undamaged.

  “They did,” he said. He was swirling the tea, looking into the depths of it. When he looked up his green eyes were deadly serious. “Hayley?”

  “Yes?” I said. My heart clenched at the wistfulness in his voice, the pain in it.

  “This is serious. When I…when I thought I’d lost you…” His voice shook and his face twisted as if in pain. “When they said they would hurt you if I didn’t stop them…my world ended, Hayley. I can’t live happily without you. Not ever again. This is a proposal.”

  I stared at him and he laughed.

  “This is the craziest proposal in the world,” he continued. “Seeing as how we’re already married—in the eyes of the world, that is. But I want it to be real, Hayley. Will you be my wife?”

  I stared at him. I put down the cup carefully, so as not to break anything. Then I c
rawled down the bed, body shaking, and wrapped him in my arms.

  He held me and we sat there together, embraced, saying nothing; our hearts beating in slow time with one another.

  He kissed me and I kissed him back.

  “Beckett, yes,” I said, very quietly but very certainly. I had never been more certain about anything else in my life. “Yes. I will be your wife.”

  Outside the birds still sang and the leaves still fell and someone still raked them. Inside, everything had changed. We were together, and in love, and we would spend the rest of our lives together. We had promised ourselves that, and each other. It was true. It was forever. We were getting married.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE – HAYLEY

  We were married on a Sunday in a small chapel near the seaside, overlooking the sea. We wanted a small service and, in the end, it was attended only by ourselves, with Estella, Cameron and Mrs. Delange and the doctor as witnesses. We wanted it to be simple, and it was. I wore a simple shift of white silk, he wore a bluish gray suit. I had my hair in curls and a bunch of lilies in my hand. Estella wore blue.

  After the wedding, we went for a simple supper at Cameron’s mansion. We had invited two guests each, besides the witnesses. I had invited Natalie, an old schoolfriend, and Brianne, my cousin.

  It was lovely to see Brianne there. She wore a tan colored suit and her hair was brown and glossy, all traces of rainbow removed for the quieter occasion.

  “Brianne!” I said as we entered, giving her a big hug.

  “You look so beautiful, Lula,” she said to me with that broad, warm grin. I smiled at her. Beckett looked from her to me, slightly baffled.

  “Lula?” his brows raised.

  I smiled at him. “Private joke,” I explained. He raised his brows further and said nothing. Brianne and I laughed.