3. Declan
DECLAN
“This is beautiful,” Olivia said softly, looking out the passenger window.
I tried to see it through her eyes. Fields of emerald green grass, cut through with old rock walls, underneath a thick layer of mist. A few of the towns we’d passed through probably looked quaint to her eyes, with their narrow streets and short, colorful buildings.
But to me it just looked like home.
“We’ll be there in about ten minutes,” I said.
“Why don’t you live in Dublin? That’s where your company is headquartered, right?”
So she’d looked me up. I wondered what she was getting up to when she’d been so quiet on this flight.
“Dublin’s not so far. Only two hours,” I said. “And most of Snug’s workers are scattered all over the world.”
“Do you work from home most days?” she asked.
“I will while Catie’s here.” I turned onto the lane that led to my mansion.
Olivia shifted in her seat. I couldn’t tell if she was pleased or displeased by that revelation.
We drove in silence until I drove up the driveway and Olivia got a look at my home.
“Oh. My. God,” she said.
My architect had replaced the crumbling Victorian mansion that once stood here with four floors of gleaming glass and polished concrete, complete with an indoor pool in the basement.
“I don’t remember this,” Catie’s voice said from the backseat. Her voice sounded small and uncertain in a way that hurt my heart.
“I didn’t realize you were awake, a stór,” I said gently. “You probably wouldn’t remember. You and your mum moved away when you were two. Normally Granny and I come to see you.”
I parked, then I led Catie and Olivia inside and started the tour. Everything was spacious and posh, decorated in what my designer called “earth tones and natural textures.” Whatever that meant. I just knew it felt relaxing every time I stepped through the door.
“Here’s the nice big living room your granny uses when she hosts her book club,” I told Catie, leading her through one room and into another. “And here’s the smaller one I like, with the massive telly.”
Catie pointed at a wall with some art on it, relaxing enough to smile. “I recognize that.”
I grinned. “This is where I normally video chat you from.”
I looked over at Olivia and caught her watching me and Catie with a smile on her face. She quickly looked away, turning to inspect some photos on the wall.
Unfortunately, that gave me the opportunity to inspect her ass. She had a great ass. I feared the rest of her would be equally magnificent, if she ever took that sweatshirt off. I knew Olivia was pretty, but thus far, I’d largely managed to ignore it.
Now that Olivia was living with me, it would be harder to ignore. That might become a problem.
“Who’s this?” Olivia asked, pointing to a striking photo of my da perched on the edge of a boat.
“My grandad,” Catie piped up. “He’s dead.”
“Oh. I’m so sorry,” Olivia said, throwing me a sympathetic look.
I hated that look.
I cleared my throat. “Anyway. The kitchen is that way.”
I showed them the rest of the first floor, with its gleaming kitchen, home gym, and library.
I gave Olivia the rundown of my various staff who kept the place running (gardeners, a private chef, housekeepers, et cetera.).
Generally they tried to be discreet and do their work when I wasn’t around, or when I was locked up in my office working.
I liked my privacy and had never quite gotten used to having staff wandering through my house.
But I needed help keeping a place like this running, and people in town needed the work.
I led them up to the second floor, which had the bedrooms and my office. “That’s mine,” I said, gesturing to the door at the far end of the hall.
Catie didn’t listen. She’d found a picture I’d taken of her, Sinead, and my mum having a picnic in the backyard of this house, right after it was built. She stared at the photo of her mum, transfixed.
Olivia looked at me expectantly.
“Most of the other rooms are guest rooms. You can have…er, this one.” I led Olivia to the guest room farthest from mine. It was decorated in shades of pale, creamy yellow and vintage white furniture.
A sunny room for an obnoxiously sunny woman.
“It’s lovely. Wait, is that…?” Olivia said. She ran a reverent hand over one of the chairs. “I saw one of these in a museum once, in an exhibit about the Gilded Age. And now one’s in my bedroom?”
I shrugged. It looked like a chair to me.
I half turned to the door. “Anyway. Let’s go—”
“What hours would you like me to work?” Olivia interrupted, then bit her lip. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt. But I have a few questions about the work expectations. I find it’s normally best to clear those up early, if that’s all right with you?”
“It is.” I crossed my arms. “What do you want to know?”
She pulled out a small notepad from her sweatshirt pocket and a pen from her messy bun. “My contract gives you 50 hours a week of my time. When would you like to use them?”
“When I’m at work. But my schedule varies.”
She opened her mouth like she wanted to press for more info, but then she snapped it closed, scribbled something in her notepad, and moved on to her next question. “What’s Catie’s daily routine look like?”
Fuck, I thought. I have no idea.
“She can do what she wants. She doesn’t need a routine.”
Olivia’s eyebrows shot up. “That’s…are you sure?”
I wasn’t. “Do you have any other questions?”
Oliva sighed and added something else to her notebook. I got the sense I was being evaluated—and failing.
“Is there any subject in school she’s struggling with?” Olivia asked. “Anything she could use some extra tutoring in during the summer?”
“She’s smart,” I said defensively.
“I didn’t say she wasn’t smart,” Olivia said in a placating tone. It made my hackles rise even more. It felt like she was trying to manage me. I’d spent enough of my early career trying to manage inept bosses to know when someone else was trying to do the same. And I didn’t need her disapproval.
What if she’s right? What if you’re a bad caretaker for Catie? I squashed the thought.
“Any dietary restrictions?” Olivia chirped. Her smile was bright, but she was clenching her pen so tight her knuckles had turned white.
That answer I knew. “None. But you don’t have to worry about what she’ll be eating. My chef makes lunch and dinner.”
I heard a crash from another room.
“Uh-oh,” Catie said, her voice sounding farther away than the hallway.
Even I knew that was a bad sign.
I ducked into the hallway and followed Catie’s voice to my office. Catie stood in the center of the room, staring down at the floor, where my work laptop’s screen was bent at an unnatural angle.
She looked up at me, eyes wide with the fear of getting in trouble. “I was trying to dry it off. After the water spilled on it.
I winced. Sure enough, a half-filled mug I’d forgotten about lay on its side, water spreading rapidly across my desk.
“Shit, shit,” I muttered, as I yanked off my sweater and did my best to sop up the mess before it could reach anything else important on my desk.
Olivia jumped into action beside me, grabbing files of paper and moving them away from the spreading water.
We got everything cleared away before I had to resort to stripping off my T-shirt as well.
When we’d finished, I looked at my laptop and winced. It wasn’t the cost of replacing it, it was the hours of work I’d just lost. Normally I backed everything up at the end of the day, but my last workday had been interrupted by Sinead’s call for help.
Catie’s lip trembled, and I realized she was trying not to cry.
“Hey, hey,” I said, kneeling in front of her to give her a hug. “It’s all grand. You didn’t do anything wrong. I’ll fix it. Brave girls don’t cry, right? Can you be brave for me?”
Catie nodded.
Behind me, Olivia cleared her throat. “Actually, crying is nor—never mind, we can talk about that later.” She wrote something else down in that damn notebook.
I pulled back to check Catie’s face. “You good now? Do you want to see your room?”
Her frown gave way to tentative enthusiasm. “I have a room?”
“Of course.” It was the one I’d originally had designed for her when she and Sinead lived here, and I’d never been able to bring myself to change it to anything else.
A little over a year ago, I’d finally swapped out the crib for a big-kid bed and had my designer update the décor and toys, in the event Catie and Sinead ever did come back to visit.
I stood, led Catie out of the room, and pointed to her room, which was right across from mine. Catie dashed in ahead of me, gasping when she saw the shelves of toys.
Olivia moved to follow her, but I stopped her with a hand on her arm. “You thought I did something wrong in there, didn’t you?”
“No, of course not...” Olivia was the least convincing liar I’d ever met.
“Hand over your notebook,” I ordered.
She looked mulish, but she did as I asked.
In looping, feminine writing she’d written Explain emotional authenticity. Below that she’d written academic aptitude test: support passions + round out challenge areas and get Declan’s work schedule from his assistant every Friday if he has one?
“Emotional authenticity?” I demanded, zeroing in on the most outrageous. “What the hell does that mean?”
Several expressions flickered across her face in quick succession. It was kind of fascinating how I could see everything she felt clearly spelled out—from nervousness about speaking out to that same stubborn spirit I’d seen when she’d talked about her former charge with the ulcer.
“You told her not to cry,” Olivia explained. “But expressing our emotions is healthy. Otherwise we—” I literally saw her bite her tongue, cutting herself off.
“Oh, don’t stop now,” I goaded. “Otherwise what?”
She glared me at me. “Otherwise, we grow up into grumpy, bossy people.”