by Ella Brooke
The problem of course was that it already felt like more than playing house to her. The feelings that had been awakened years ago in James arms had never gone away. As much as she might have wanted to think that she had gotten over him, she never really had.
The James that was in front of her now felt different from the one she had known then. This one looked her in the eye and spoke words that she had always wanted to hear.
It was reckless to love someone, she had discovered, but sometimes, the risk was worth it.
“All right,” she said. “We’ll give this a try.”
James pulled her to him quickly, and the kiss he gave her warmed her right to her toes.
“Beautiful girl,” he murmured. “I swear, you will not regret this.”
“I hope not,” she said, but she smiled as she said it.
***
The morning when everything changed started out normally. James rolled out of bed first, and while Celia listened with a sleepy half ear, she heard him talking quietly to Maisey. He was getting her her first food for the day, laughing and chatting with as if she really could understand him.
“I don’t know that she can’t,” James said with a humorous smile. “And it’ll help her when she starts to talk herself, won’t it?”
By the time Celia was up and dressed, James was ready to make his way out the door. That morning, he gave her a deep sweet kiss on the way out.
“The sitter service is going to be sending someone over around seven,” he said. “I was thinking that if you gave Maisey her dinner a bit before, we could sneak out for something fun.”
“On a school night and everything, James?” Celia asked teasingly, but there was a part of her that warmed over it. Over the last few years, she had simply spent her time as Maisey’s mother. Now with James, there was another part of her life that was opening to the light, and it felt warm and lovely.
He gave her another kiss, and then a sweet kiss for the top of Maisey’s head, and then he was gone.
“What do you think?” Celia asked her daughter. “Think we should keep him?” Maisey burbled with pleasure, and it occurred to Celia how bright and happy her daughter had become in the last few weeks. She was getting more time with her mother and learning more about her father with every day that passed. She had put on some weight, and grown more quickly than she ever had in the States.
‘Irish air’ was James’s theory, but in her own mind, Celia thought that it was simply love. There was more love being heaped on the little girl, and Celia couldn’t help but think that was going to help her grow.
She set Maisey up to play in the living room before drawing her laptop out to do her own work. If she had ever thought that James had created a job to bring her and Maisey to Ireland, she had stopped thinking so a few days into the venture. The museum work that James wanted her to do in Dublin was definitely something that needed to be done. She was fortunate that at this stage, most of the work could still be done from home. James had assured her that when the time came, they would find a good au pair—or if she wished to do so, she could simply bring Maisey along.
Celia sat down with her coffee, opening up the emails that had accumulated overnight. She was just digging into her work when her phone rang. The phone number was a strange one to her, but that wasn’t necessarily an uncommon thing. There were plenty of people who she still had to meet at the museum, after all, and she picked up the phone ready to introduce herself.
“Hello, this is Celia Breeland speaking.”
“Miss Breeland? I... I need to talk with you.”
The words were simple but there was a stuttering quality to them, as if the speaker was very distracted... or extremely afraid.
“All right, I’m listening,” Celia said, sitting up.“Miss Breeland, I need to tell you that things are not what they seem. When it comes to James Casey, they never are.”
Celia could feel a thrill of fear and apprehension run up her back. Quickly, the phone still cradled in her hand, she stood, looking around the house. She quickly reassured her that there was no one at the window, and a quick glance reassured her that Maisey was still playing peacefully.
“Is this some kind of threat?” she asked, and she could tell that her own voice was shaking a little. There was something terribly strange about the woman on the other end of the line, and it was all she could do not to hang up.
“No!” said the woman who was speaking to her. She initially thought it was a woman. When the woman said ‘no,’ there was a break to it that made her think of a girl instead. “No—I mean, not at all. I would never threaten you, miss, never ever. I was only... Well, I wanted to warn you is all. About James Casey.”
“What’s your warning?” asked Celia. Even saying the words felt oddly disloyal. Something in her told her to simply hang up the phone. It told her that there was no reason at all to listen to what this woman had to say, but something in her refused to heed it.“James Casey seems a wonderful man at first, doesn’t he?” said the woman softly. “He comes on like a winter gale, and doesn’t he make you so many promises? How much he cares for you and your baby, how he will look after you. How much he has always wanted a family and how he already feels like you are a part of him.”
“What is this all about?” said Celia. It felt as if she were numb, as if there was a cold frost spreading through her.
“I’m saying that he says that to all of us,” said the woman, and suddenly her voice sounded less young. There was something harsh about it, full of sorrow and rage, and if she had been standing in front of Celia, Celia would have taken a step back.
“No, you’re lying.”
“Listen to me and save yourself before it is too late,” the woman said bitterly. “He wants a family until he gets bored, and if you are lucky, he will put you back where he found you. It doesn’t matter if the baby is his or not. Mine certainly was, and—”
“I am not listening to this anymore,” Celia said, but her voice was beseeching rather than strong. “I’m hanging up now.”
“Just remember me!” the woman implored. “Keep my number. When you see the cracks start, and they will, call me. Believe me, keep the number.”
There was no telling what else the woman was going to say. Celia ended the call with a click, and she let the phone drop from her hand. The woman’s words left her in a tailspin, leaving her spinning like a compass surrounded by powerful magnets. It couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t be.
She thought of the way James looked at her and at Maisey, a light in his blue eyes. She thought of the way he had said he wanted a family. Could a man fake all of that? Could he say he wanted all of those things, and then could it turn out not to not be true?She glanced at her work, shaking her head. She couldn’t imagine working right now. Instead, she went to Maisey, scooping the little girl up in her arms. Maisey fussed a little to be pulled away from her toys, but she brightened up when her mother swept them both out of the house.
Celia walked aimlessly, thinking about the woman on the phone and about James. The woman had said that he came on like a winter gale, and that was certainly true enough. But could the woman have James’s child? Could James have turned away his own baby? What did it all mean?
When Maisey started to fuss, Celia took them back to the house. As she cared for her daughter, however, she remembered what James had said about this lovely traditional home. He owned it, but he had never lived in it before. He lived in a penthouse, and when she had known him, he lived in elegant hotels. The house they stayed in together was certainly lovely, but what if he was just playing house? What if he was just amusing himself for a short while before he returned to his playboy lifestyle?
Celia shook her head. “No,” she said out loud. “Innocent until proven guilty. James must be innocent until proven guilty.” Instead of focusing on the fear that ran through her, she thought of James’s smile, of his gentleness with Maisey and of his generosity when it came to her. She had to focus on that. That was the man she k
new, not the shadows that the woman on the phone evoked.
Celia tried to focus on her work, but there was no denying the fact that her nerves were fried. When the young au pair showed up from the agency, she was almost too distracted to get dressed for dinner with James, even after the young woman assured her over and over again that everything was going to be all right and that no harm would come to Maisey under her care.
Just when she was confident that the young woman would look after Maisey, there was a knock on the door. Celia was startled to see that it was a series of packages all tied up in pale blue tissue paper.
“What’s all this?” she asked in confusion, and the delivery man gestured at the tag.
“Evening wear, miss.”She took the packages to her room, opening them up cautiously. The smaller packages revealed a pair of dark burgundy heels and a deep wine-red handbag. When she opened the large package, it turned out to be a slinky red gown subtle frosted with glittering rhinestones.
“Oh, how beautiful!” The au pair exclaimed, and Maisey clapped her hands at how shiny it all was.
Celia showered hastily and dressed. When she put her hair up in a careless twist, she barely recognized herself in the mirror. It was only after everything was on that she saw the note laid in the largest box.
I thought that after all the work you put in, you deserved to feel like a star.
She certainly did feel like a star in all the finery, but she wasn’t sure that she felt entirely like herself, no matter how lovely the vision in the mirror.
James arrived, all smiles and devastatingly handsome in his dark suit. To Celia, he was even more handsome when he removed the jacket, rolling up the sleeves. He grinned at her and helped her into the car as if she was royalty, winning a faint smile from her.
“I was thinking French tonight,” he said. “Sometime soon, I would love to take you and Maisey across the channel for the real thing, but until then, this place is one of my favorites in Dublin.”
The Peche d’Or was quite lovely, with a half-dozen gorgeous dishes over the course of dinner, but Celia found that she could not concentrate on the meal in front of her. James quirked an eyebrow at her as he poured her a glass of red wine.
“Everything all right?” he asked, and she tried to find a smile for him. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him all about the mysterious phone call that she had received that day, but for some reason, she didn’t want to.
“I suppose I have just been in a thoughtful mood today,” she said. “Thank you for the dress, though, I do not know if I have thanked you for it yet.”
James reached a hand over the table to take her hand. His hand was so warm that she could have cried, but somehow she sniffed the tears back.
“That’s actually the third time that you’ve thanked me for the dress. Believe me when I say that how lovely you are is all the thanks I need. Will you tell me what you have been thinking about?”
Celia took a deep breath, letting it out before she spoke. Her thoughts were falling all around her like snow.
“What do you think of families?” she said.
James frowned at her question, and she wondered how he was going to react to such a daft thing.
“Why do you want to know?”
Celia shrugged uncomfortably. It would be too awkward to reveal the phone conversation from earlier. Perhaps she could bring it up another time.
“Well, Maisey and I are staying with you right now. You want to take care of us. I can see how careful you are with Maisey, and you told me many times that you are sorry you missed out on her first year. Do you ever think about what the idea of family should look like, what it means to you?”
James frown deepened, but she did not think that he was angry or irritated with her. Instead, he thought about her question for a moment before he spoke.
“Family is not an easy thing for me,” he admitted. “We’ve talked about it a little bit a long time ago. I’ve told you about my parents...”
Celia nodded. He had. His mother died young, and his father just a few years later. Neither of them had been interested in being parents, and she knew that hurt James more than he would ever let on.
“But I think that one thing that I never told you about was one of my father’s habits.”
“Habits?”
James shrugged, looking more irritated than anything else. “He had a taste for pretty young girls and then a habit of dropping them as soon as they did something he disliked. He didn’t confine his habits to the time after my mother died. I found that even when I was a teenager, I could not respect the way he did things. It was... distasteful.
“I suppose my views on family are a little skewed. I know I want things to be different with us, but sometimes, I wonder if they can be.”
“You do?” Celia asked, and somehow, her voice stayed level.
James smiled a little, shaking his head.
“Nature versus nurture, my love. I will do my best, how is that?”
Celia smiled a little at that, but her mind was racing. If he had told her that under any other circumstances, she might have been wary, but in the end she would have given him the benefit of the doubt. Right now, though, with the phone call so fresh on her mind, she found that she was nervous and at a loss.
The dinner conversation drifted to other things, but throughout the night she kept hearing that woman’s voice in her mind, talking about winter gales and men who made promises they had no intention of keeping.
***
James had to admit that having Celia and Maisey around changed things. For example, after he had started sleeping with Celia, his sleep had grown deep and untroubled, something it had never been before in his life, except…
....Except when he had been with her two years ago in Eastwick.
Sometimes, he really could be an idiot.
That night, after he had seduced Celia out of her gown and made love to her, James propped himself up on his elbow to watch her as she slept. She was so different from anyone he had ever known; so sweet and lovely. He frowned a little, thinking of some of the women who had come before Celia, but they passed from his mind without a second thought.
The talk of family that night was startling, he thought, but it was a good talk. The last few weeks with Maisey and Celia had been so lovely and calm that he thought that they could live simply as they were. Of course a mother would want something more stable for her child.
And as her father, I should provide it.
No, not just as a father, James was realizing. He reached down to stroke the hair from Celia’s forehead. The only regret he had about Maisey was that she took after him so much in coloring. Perhaps if they had another child, that child would have Celia’s fair hair and beautiful eyes.
The idea of having another child with Celia made his heart squeeze, and James rose from the bed, reaching for his phone. It was late, but money had privileges, and within just a half hour, he had an appointment for the next day.
***
Celia awakened as James rose from the bed. She could hear him stirring in the next room, and in her half-awakened state, she wondered what in the world he could be doing.
The panic and alarm she had felt from the call in the morning came back, and before she could lose her nerve, she reached for her phone. It lit up at a touch, and there at the top of her call history was the mysterious number. She hesitated for a moment. Something in her told her to simply delete it and to ask James what he had been doing out of bed. However, that part of her also felt like the part that waited in vain for a dashing Irish lover to return while she grew rounder and more despairing with their child.
Holding her breath, she thumbed the number and started to type:
I want to speak with you. Can you meet me tomorrow?
Chapter Nine
James apparently had an early day the next morning. He was out the door with barely more than a gentle kiss for her and Maisey, and for better or worse, that tied in well with Celia’s plans.
>
She dressed quickly, and for a moment she hesitated over Maisey. She could call the au pair service whenever she wanted, but right now, she felt too nervous and too unsettled to have her daughter anywhere too far away from her.
Of course it didn’t help that Maisey was having a difficult day, and she wasn’t in the mood for cooperating with her mother. She flailed as Celia tried to bundle her into her clothing, and then she whimpered when Celia offered her favorite food.
“I wish James were here to do this,” Celia murmured, and then she felt a strange hollow feeling at the idea of James never doing that again.
The woman had gotten back to her in the small hours of the morning with a time and place not far away. It was in a small park in one of the town centers, a place where she and James had gone for dinner a few weeks ago. It was slightly obscure, a bit quiet, and it would be a perfect place to rendezvous with the mysterious stranger.
As she was getting ready to leave, Celia’s phone rang. Her heart was in her mouth, but then she realized that it was James.
“Hello you,” he said, his voice almost heartbreakingly warm. “I’m sorry I was out the door so very quickly this morning, and I wanted to make sure that my two best girls were doing all right.”
Celia smiled at his words in spite of herself. “We’re doing just fine, we’re just stepping out for a bit of a walk, I think,” she said. “Maisey’s been a little hellion all morning, so maybe this will wear her out a little.”
“Well, I would much rather be taking her around the neighborhood than where I am, that’s for sure. My lunch appointment should be a little easier though.”
Celia nodded along absently, and she didn't realize she had spoken until she heard the echo of her words.“James... Are you keeping any secrets from me?”
There was a long pause, and then to her surprise, James laughed. “Smart girl,” he said. “Can’t get anything by you, can I?”