by Tia Souders
“Um.” Mel hesitated, then hooked a thumb toward the door. “That’s okay. I need to finish the dishes anyway, but I’ll be right outside,” she said, then hurried from the room.
Once outside, she pressed herself against the wall separating her bedroom from the living room, listening to the soft murmur of voices from within. And every time she heard Blake’s voice, her stomach gave a little jolt.
She lied. There were no dishes in her sink waiting to be washed, but she couldn’t bear staying in the room. It would feel too much like a family, a solid unit, when they were anything but. Blake had only been with them a few weeks, and she already found herself wishing for a life she didn’t have. One where she had a teammate. Someone to lean on. Support. Love. Stability. A father. A husband. Someone like him.
He was dangerous. Being around him was hazardous for her mental state.
The last thing she needed in her life was a man storming into their lives and complicating things. Especially not her manny. Not only did he work for her, but he was doing so to prove to his soon-to-be fiancé’s family that he’d make a good husband. He’d be leaving them soon, and he was proving himself almost a little too much.
When she heard the bedroom door creak open a minute later, she sprung off the wall. How long had she been standing there, lost in her thoughts?
She smoothed a hand down her jeans and her rumpled t-shirt, wondering what Blake thought of her. She must look like crap in comparison to the girlfriend he just left.
“Oh, hey,” he said, when he noticed her standing there.
She ran a hand self-consciously through her hair, then hugged her arms. “Hey.” She took a step forward. “Thank you again. Running the kids to the convenience store a few blocks down all day tomorrow would’ve been a chore, especially when none of their bladders seem to be on the same schedule.”
He gave a little shrug. “It’s no big deal. I was glad to help. Besides,” he ran a hand over the back of his neck, his expression sheepish, “it was good to feel needed.”
“Oh, I’m sure your girlfriend needs you for plenty of things.” She meant to tease, but it came out flat.
Blake shook his head and laughed. “Actually, you’d be surprised how little she does.”
“Of course.” Mel rolled her eyes at herself. “She has people to do that kind of stuff for her.” She grimaced as the words left her mouth, realizing they sounded crass. “Sorry,” she muttered.
“No. It’s okay. You’re not wrong.”
Mel nodded in understanding. “I don’t have a coffee pot anymore, so I can’t offer you a cup of coffee, but would you like a glass of wine?” she asked, heading into the kitchen. She paused at the sight of the empty bottle on the counter. Oh, right. “Er, scratch that. It seems I’m out.”
Blake followed behind, the sound of his feet soft over the floor as he opened her refrigerator and pulled out two juice boxes, then waved them enticingly out in front of her.
She laughed and grabbed one. “I guess this will have to do. Couch or table?”
“Couch is good.”
Mel headed toward the sofa, trying to ignore the nerves flipping in her stomach. “So,” she said, sinking down into the soft, worn cushions. “Where was it you came from so dressed up?” Mel didn’t know a lot about fashion—the fashion column at work was not her mojo—but even she recognized quality when she saw it. Whatever suit Blake wore was designer, tailored to him, and expensive, much like the one he wore that day at the Garwood Inn & Suites.
He groaned and rubbed a hand over his face, sinking back into the couch.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” Mel rushed to add.
“No, it’s fine. Jen’s parents were having one of their elaborate dinner parties.”
“Ah.” Mel nodded and busied her hands with her juice box. She removed the little straw from the box and popped it in the top. Oh, to be wealthy, she thought. Where lavish black-tie dinner parties on a Saturday night were a reality and not just something you saw in the movies. “Fancy,” she added when he didn’t respond.
Blake huffed out a laugh. “You could say that. They hire enough waitstaff to run an entire restaurant. Not to mention several chefs, a bartender, rented linens, flowers, fancy place settings that were probably imported from who-knows-where. The whole nine yards.”
Mel pictured it and imagined herself there, but it was hard. The closest thing Mel had ever come to a dinner party of that caliber was the buffet at the PopNewz staff Christmas party. And because she didn’t know what else to say, she said, “Well, I’m sorry you missed it because of me. It sounds . . . delicious.”
Blake grunted. “When you called, I was currently debating on drowning myself in my chestnut watercress soup.”
“Oh.” So he really had wanted to leave. Mel tried not to feel delighted at that, but despite her best intentions, a surge of pleasure rippled through her at the notion that Blake would rather be here, in her tiny apartment, fixing her toilet and reading a bedtime story to her children, than dining on lobster with the Garwoods. She stifled her grin as she said, “I take it dinner wasn’t going well, then?”
“That’s an understatement.” Blake snorted, then turned to her and met her eyes. “Her parents hate me. I had a feeling they were asking me to do this nanny thing as just some kind of a joke, but tonight confirmed it. We kind of got into it a bit at the table. Nothing crazy. It was all very underhanded, subtle barbs. That’s how it always is. Anyway, then I saw your text and I just. . .” He shook his head. “I said I had somewhere else to be and got up and left.”
He groaned and closed his eyes. “I’ll probably never live this down, leaving like that.” He blinked his eyes open. “But the truth is, they’ll never accept me. Nothing I do will ever be good enough, so . . .”
Mel swallowed. If the whole nanny thing had just been a joke, that meant he was free to quit now.
Fear spiked her veins, but she shoved it aside. This wasn’t about her. If anything, over these past weeks, Blake had become a friend. He’d helped her in ways she could never repay him, and he deserved her support.
She reached out and squeezed his forearm. “Hey, don’t say that. I’m sure that’s not true.”
“They think my job is a joke. They hate the fact that I come from nothing, that I have no family, no legacy to my name. What else?” He tapped his chin, and Mel frowned. She’d never seen him negative like this before. “They hate that I drive a motorcycle. The one time they met my brother, they all detested him. Even Jen doesn’t like Grant and vice versa. Name something about me, and they loathe it.” He leaned forward and placed his juice box on the coffee table, then hung his head between his clasped hands. “I’m an idiot.”
Mel’s stomach sunk. She glanced uselessly at her juice box and wished, for his sake, she had something stronger. What could she possibly say or do to help him? She was the last person who should be giving relationship advice.
“When I met Jen, I was living in an apartment in Queens with my brother. It was a nice place, trendy.” He lifted his head and glanced at her. “After I met Jen and we started dating, I up and moved. I leased a place in Manhattan, afraid I wasn’t good enough, that I needed to be better for her. Time and time again, I try to impress them and fail.”
Mel lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “Maybe you should stop trying. Maybe that’s where you went wrong.” She offered him a small smile. “Just be you. No one else. Because you seem pretty amazing as is.”
His throat bobbed, and he stared at her a moment, his dark eyes drinking her in and giving her the courage to continue. “If Jen likes you, if she truly loves you, then that’s all that matters. And surely over time, they will too. Maybe you just need to let them see the real you.”
He exhaled a ragged breath. “Maybe,” he murmured, but even Mel heard the lack of conviction in his voice.
His eyes shifted to her mouth, sending a trickle of heat up her spine.
She cleared her throat and glanced down at
her hands as she toyed with the straw on her juice box. “You’re good with them, you know. The kids. It’s been a short time, and already they love you.” Mel hated to think of what they’d do once he was gone. Would it set them back again? Make Peter’s potty issues worse just when they were getting better? Despite the toilet issue today, he hadn’t gone in his pants once.
“They’re great kids. I just think without help and your mom watching them, they lacked structure. Grandparents are supposed to spoil, not set a ton of rules. Then they moved, and the kids were thrust into a whole new environment. It’s a lot.”
Mel hummed in response. “I’m sure you’re right. Plus, my parents are older. They had me when my mom was almost forty. So caring for triplets was a lot for her, a big ask. That’s why when they announced they were moving, I couldn’t blame them. They deserved this, and she had already helped me so much.”
“You never thought about going with them? Moving?”
Mel avoided his gaze. “Not seriously at first. My job is here. But . . .” She bit her lip, then shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. I’ve thought about it. I’ve wondered if it would be better for me, for the kids.”
He stared at her intently a moment before he asked, “What happened? With their father? I know it’s none of my business—”
“No.” Mel held up a hand. “It’s okay.” She laughed. “It’s not exactly a secret. Craig and I got married at twenty-two, fresh out of college. We decided a couple years later that we wanted children young. So we tried, but we struggled for over a year. I had one of my ovaries removed as a teen for health reasons, so my doctor recommended hormone therapy.” Mel’s mouth twisted into a sardonic smile, and she shook her head. “We hoped for one, thought we might end up with two, but what we didn’t bargain for was three.”
“And he split,” Blake said, filling in the blanks.
“He didn’t last long.” Mel remembered the look on his face when they found out they were having triplets—the sheer panic. His eyes had gone glazed, his jaw slack, and he had been quiet the whole way home from the doctor’s. “We weren’t even home from the hospital twenty-four hours before he bailed. He went out to get diapers and never came back.”
The muscle in Blake’s jaw flickered. “I’m sorry. He didn’t deserve them. Or any of you.” His eyes locked with hers. “My brother and I were left as babies. I’ve had my whole life to wrap my head around how you could abandon your own child, but I still don’t understand it.”
He was left . . . Mel had already known he had spent his childhood in foster care, but hearing him say it now made her feel for him that much more.
She reached out and squeezed his shoulder, feeling the heat of him through his shirtsleeve, and pulled back.
Clearing her throat, she prayed he was oblivious to the thumping of her pulse. “I hate that my kids don’t have a father,” she confessed. It was true, and maybe it was obvious to feel this way, but it was something she never said out loud before. “It bothers me. Every day. I constantly wonder how it’ll affect them in the long run—if they’ll feel unloved, abandoned, or if they’ll search in all the wrong places for a father figure to replace him. Especially Kinsley.”
“They won’t.” Blake said, his dark eyes fierce, jaw set.
“How do you know?”
“You’re a good mom. You don’t give yourself enough credit. The fact that you care enough to worry means you won’t allow it to happen.”
She smiled. He was maybe the first person, other than her own parents, to tell her that. “Thanks.”
Blake relaxed back into the couch, glancing around him in the silence, and Mel wondered how she looked, how her apartment looked, through his eyes. Did he see every imperfection—the small tear in the couch, the scuffed paint, and the small hole in the rug? Or did those details fade away and blend in as he got to know her and the children? Like a person who became more attractive once you knew them. Did it even matter?
“Please tell me he’s at least helping you guys out,” Blake said.
“For a while, he sent the occasional check. But I haven’t heard from him in a while.”
Blake raised a brow. “You’re smart, so I’m sure you know that if you took him to court, he’d be legally mandated to give you quite a bit every month for three kids.”
“I know.” This was the same battle she had with her parents, but in the end, they let it go. “But, at first, I thought he’d come back. Then I didn’t want a court battle, and I’ll be honest, once I got over the sting of it all, my pride kicked in. I didn’t want his help. I was angry and hurt and confused, but I wanted to do it on my own. Stand on my own two feet and succeed. To prove, maybe more to myself than anybody, that I could do this on my own. I didn’t need him.” She sighed and shook her head, dropping her gaze to her hands. “I know that probably sounds so stupid.”
“No. It sounds brave.”
When she glanced up at him, the look on his face was so sincere, so honest, she continued because it felt good to put a voice to all these things she never spoke of. “There are so many days where I look at this tiny apartment and wonder if I chose right.” She toyed with the hem of her sleeve as she spoke. “But I know Craig. He’s not one to part with money. It’s how he is. Or was. And I didn’t want him asking for shared custody just to punish me or so that he wouldn’t have to pay as much. Because he didn’t want them, that much was clear. I could totally see him dropping the kids off at his parent’s place or just leaving them with some crap-sitter, all because he would consider it bought time, even if he didn’t have to deal with them. At the time, taking nothing seemed so much easier.”
And now, if everything went right, she had the chance to turn things around with this promotion. More money meant she could finally get out of the city and buy a house. As soon as she signed her contract and got her first check, she’d crunch the numbers and see what she could do, at least come up with a game plan.
Blake pressed his hand over the one toying with her sleeve, and her stomach squeezed. Slowly, she glanced up at him to find his gaze steady on her face. A lock of hair fell over her eye, obscuring her view, while the warmth of his fingers zipped through her veins.
She swallowed as he moved his hand and slowly brushed the rogue hair out of her face. But instead of pulling back, he hesitated. The palm of his hand hovered just above her cheek before he trailed his thumb down the side of her face, to the curve of her jaw, the side of her neck, and she shivered.
“You’re pretty incredible, you know that?”
Her breath snagged in her chest, the rumble of his voice sending her heart thumping into her ribs. She closed her eyes a moment, trying to ground herself. Instead, she was greeted with the scent of cedar and something spicy.
When she finally opened them a moment later, Blake dropped his hand, and she had half a mind to snatch it back.
She licked her lips, and his eyes shifted to the movement. As if tethered to her, he leaned closer, and she thought about kissing him. How it would feel—amazing.
What a kiss from Blake would mean—she had no idea.
And then she remembered all the reasons she couldn’t.
Her kids.
His girlfriend.
The fact that he was her manny, and she needed him.
She needed to focus on work, changing her life, helping the kids adjust.
With a deep, shuddering breath, she turned away from him.
A second passed before he cleared his throat. “I guess I should be going.”
She nodded. “That’s probably best.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
BLAKE
If Blake could sum up in one word the status of his life, it would be screwed.
He lay in bed Saturday night, staring at the ceiling, wishing sleep would claim him, if only for a reprieve from his swirling thoughts and the gift of a fresh perspective. But instead, his mind churned, mostly occupied with one thing. Mel—the one person he shouldn’t be thinking about.
For
the millionth time, he tried to redirect his thoughts to Jen and failed. He should be thinking about how the dinner party went wrong and what he could do to mend the situation. But every time he thought of her, he veered right back to Mel.
He connected with her in a way he never had with Jen. He felt something tonight. Something real and raw and . . . different. Mel could relate to him in ways Jen never could. They connected on a level he wasn’t sure Jen was capable of. There was this kinetic, intrinsic, bone-deep pull he felt toward her he couldn’t explain.
As Blake rolled onto his side and pounded a fist in his pillow, he realized the only regret he had for the evening wasn’t walking out on Jen or upsetting her. It was not kissing Mel. And that was a problem.
BLAKE PACED THE LIVING room of his apartment, ruffling his hair with his hands. Grant sat across from him, sprawled like a cat on his sofa, drinking his craft beer, staring at him with an annoying smirk.
“So I take it your little meeting with Jen didn’t go so well?”
Blake paused and glared at him. “Obviously.”
“What happened? Did she throw a hissy fit over the lobster bisque?” Grant grinned.
“Can we be serious?”
Grant raised his hands. “Sorry.”
Blake crossed his arms over his chest. “I met her for lunch, which was a mistake because I should’ve given it another day.” Or another month. “Because I was still thinking about Mel and annoyed about Jen’s dad. And I guess I thought maybe we’d both take some culpability in the crappy evening, but she wasn’t apologetic at all. In fact, she was furious with me for leaving her. Apparently, she saw no need to defend me and continues to insist her father means well and was joking.”
“Dude, I hate to say it, but what did you expect?”
“I already told you.” Blake blinked at him like he was stupid. “I expected her to apologize for her dad being an A-class jerk, maybe admit she should’ve said something to him. Then I would’ve apologized for leaving and making a scene.”