Chapter 3
Chapter Three
While I sat in bed contemplating my life, I kept staring at Miles’s picture on his website, though he was called Taron there.
I had scoured the internet trying to find out as much about him as I could.
What I’d gleaned so far was he was forty years old, never married, raised by a single mom, and-based on how many women were draped all over him in the pictures he was featured in—he loved women.
The women seemed to adore him too. They all looked at him as if they would sell their souls to remain permanently by his side.
I could hardly blame them. He was dashing and he had this enigmatic smile that made you want to know what he was thinking.
I should stop thinking like that. I needed to look at him as a potential employer, not future boyfriend material.
“Hey, Mom.” Chloe walked into my room with a towel on her head, freshly showered after soccer practice.
“Hi, baby girl.” I patted the ever-empty space next to me in my bed.
She took the invitation and jumped in bed with me, snuggling into my side. I put my arm around her, breathing in not only her clean scent, but her goodness. I was the luckiest of moms.
She leaned her head on my shoulder, eyes fixed on my laptop screen. “Who’s that guy?”
I gave Miles one more glance before I closed my laptop. “Funny you should ask.” I reached for the book on my nightstand and handed it to Chloe, making sure to point out Miles’s picture on the back copy. “He goes by Taron Taylor, but his real name is Miles Wickham. I met him today at the bank.”
Chloe touched his picture. In it he looked like a brooding author with his hand under his chin. “That’s cool. He’s hot.”
My brow furrowed. “What do you know about men being hot?”
“Mom.” She rolled her eyes. “I know lots of hot boys at school.”
“Oh, really? Who?”
She blushed, making me worry. I was hoping for her not to notice boys until she was thirty and had the sense to stay away from them all together. It was a pipe dream, I know. When she didn’t answer, I became more concerned. “Do you like someone?” Dear God, please no.
“Kind of,” she squeaked.
My heart dropped to my feet. “Does he have a name?”
“Alec.” She grinned.
“How do you know Alec?”
“We have the same lunch. He’s in ninth grade.”
All the air whooshed out of my lungs like I’d been sucker punched. That’s how I met her father, except I was a sophomore and he was a senior. I had to remind myself Chloe wasn’t me. “That’s nice,” I lied. My baby was only in seventh grade. No one should be looking at her, especially older boys.
“It’s no big deal. I’ve never talked to him.”
I breathed a sigh of relief, for now.
“But one of his friends told Ginger to tell me that he thinks I’m pretty.”
That was it; we were for sure moving back to Carrington Cove. “That’s sweet, but can I give you some advice?”
“Okay,” she resigned herself.
I kissed the top of her towel. “I know you think I’m old, but it wasn’t that long ago that I was in your shoes.
And I wish someone would have told me to wait for a boy who is brave enough to tell you himself how he feels about you.
” If only I’d known. Leland was like this Alec.
He played the cat and mouse game with me my entire sophomore year, having his friends tell my friends or me how much he liked me, but he didn’t ask me out until the last day of school.
Then all summer long he strung me along until he left for college.
He broke more of our dates than he kept.
His excuses ranged from having to work to his parents grounding him, but looking back, it was always another girl. I was just too na?ve to realize it.
He played the same game with me every summer until I graduated.
Like a lovesick puppy, I always chased after him whenever he showed me any attention.
All because he was beautiful, angsty, and could play a guitar.
Every girl I knew wanted him. Then I finally went off to college and started dating a nice guy named Matt.
When Leland found out, he came chasing after me, telling me how much he loved me.
I was foolish enough to believe him, but the truth was he didn’t want anyone else to have me.
That’s how we got Chloe. There I was, pregnant and married at nineteen, baby at twenty, divorced by twenty-one.
Never once did I regret having her. I squeezed my girl tighter.
“Mom, it’s no big deal.”
She was probably right, but I knew there would be a day when it was going to be a huge deal, and I wasn’t ready for it. Just like I wasn’t ready for the choice I had to make. “Baby girl, I need to talk to you about something important.”
She lifted her head and looked up at me. She barely had to lift her head; she was almost as tall as me now. A few more inches and she would surpass me at five foot eight.
I tapped her cute button nose. “The man on the back of this book, Mr. Wickham, offered me a job today.”
Her face scrunched. “What kind of job?”
“He wants me to be his nephew’s nanny and his personal assistant.”
Chloe’s face looked more than unimpressed. “He wants you to be a babysitter?”
I pulled her to me and hugged her tight. “It’s a little more detailed than that, but sort of, except this is better paying than any babysitting job. In fact, it’s a lot more money than I make now at the bank.”
That got her attention. She popped up and out of my arms. “Like how much?” Her eyes began to swirl with all the possibilities. “Could I finally get a cell phone?”
“It would definitely be enough for you to get your own cell phone.”
She squealed and kicked her legs. “Yes! Take the job.”
“Before you get too excited, kiddo, I don’t know if I should take the job.”
Her mouth fell open like I was crazy. “Why not?”
“Because, honey, I don’t know this man, and it would mean you and I would have to move back to Carrington Cove.”
Her green eyes, so like my own, widened while she got up on her knees, making my bed bounce. “You mean I could go to school with Brooke?” Her BFF since she was in preschool.
I nodded.
She grabbed my shoulders and shook me. “You have to take this job. Please, Mom.”
I placed my hands on her perfectly smooth cheeks. “I’m thinking about it.”
“Think hard,” she begged.
“I’m having dinner to discuss the job further with him tomorrow night after I drop you off at Grandma and Grandpa’s, and we’ll see how it goes.”
She flung herself on my bed with her hands clasped together. “Oh please, oh please, oh please,” she repeated over and over again.
I couldn’t help but smile at her and want to make her wish come true.
After all, she had made almost all of mine come true, even before I knew to wish for something as wonderful as her.
She changed my life, making me less selfish and more aware.
She kept me from being bitter about her father.
Even now, as Leland was threatening to intervene in our lives once again, Chloe reminded me that she was worth any price, even facing her father.
Unfortunately, facing him was a possibility.
A couple of months ago, he called out of the blue after having no contact with us for three years, to tell me he was remarried with a baby and he wanted Chloe in his life.
According to him, he was a better man now, all because his new wife taught him what love really was.
Leland never failed to shove the knife that he’d stabbed me with so many years ago in deeper.
Everything was always my fault. His excuse for cheating on me was I was always too tired to have sex with him whenever he wanted because I was busy taking care of our daughter.
He didn’t pay child support because it wasn’t his fault I didn’t use birth control.
And now he felt the need to remind me that he never loved me.
He was real father-of-the-year material.
If only I could legally keep him from seeing Chloe.
I didn’t want him to flit in and out of her life, hurting her more than he already had when he disappeared again.
And I knew he would. Which got me thinking.
If I did take this job, I could finally hire a lawyer to sue him for all the back child support he owed his daughter.
But gazing at Chloe, I knew that the choice I had in front of me would be solely based on what was best for her. I only had to decide what that was.