Chapter 18
eighteen
BEAU
The holidays rushed by in a haze of food, presents, and more people than I’d been around in my life. And more importantly, more people than Clara had ever been around in her short life.
I feared I’d have cracks in my teeth from the way I’d clenched my jaw, watching her at various family gatherings, in the middle of fucking Times Square.
Her doctor was not annoyed with me, though she should’ve been. I’d called her, emailed her, demanding more blood tests than Clara needed to ensure that her trip to one of the most populated cities in the country was safe.
She’d humored me, assured me that though it was earlier than was conventionally expected for Clara to be out, if we took some precautions, she’d be fine.
It was hard for me, very fucking hard, to let it happen. To let go of the fear that Clara was one sniffle away from a coffin.
Fuck, that call I got from Elliot, telling me Clara had an elevated temperature, took a year off my life.
Filled me with guilt and regret at leaving her.
For exposing her to too much of the world too soon.
Even though she never got sick, even though her doctor reassured me that it was good for her to be building immunity, I couldn’t relax.
Realistically, I knew Clara would eventually get a cold or a flu or a stomach virus. All kids did. I’d have to deal. I’d have to grit my teeth and trust that she’d recover. That she was strong enough. That I wouldn’t have to bury my whole fucking world.
It was logical to hope, but my heart wouldn’t let me embrace it. The heart that was damaged, scarred, and belonged to two women.
My daughter and her nanny.
Not that the latter would ever know. Could ever know.
Her divorce was proceeding well, based on what Marty could tell me without violating attorney-client privilege. I wouldn’t ask Hannah. Couldn’t.
The holiday season had helped distract me from her—if such a thing were possible.
At the very least, I was kept busy. The restaurant had needed me for longer hours.
And when I wasn’t working, I had spent time with Clara, attending holiday events, baking cookies, and preparing for our trip to New York.
Hannah was there, my awareness of her making it hard to concentrate on decorating fucking gingerbread men.
I had been treating her with more care, knowing what she was going through. Not that I should’ve had to know what she was going through to treat her with care.
I dreamed about her. Thought about her as I pumped my cock after reading the spicy scenes in the books she was also reading.
The smell of her seemed to seep onto my clothes.
As did the image of her flushed cheeks when our eyes caught.
Her smile. The way she’d let out a soft moan of delight while eating the pasta I’d made from scratch.
She had become less timid with me. Lingered when we were alone, met my eyes, asked questions. Complimented me on my cooking.
“You should do a cookbook or something,” she’d told me the other night.
I focused on the dishes, not the way her soft, husky voice caressed my fucking cock.
“Market is too saturated,” I grunted. “Too much work. Too much time away from Clara.”
I didn’t add that I’d already been approached. Or that I’d been in the process of signing contracts when Clara was diagnosed.
“Well, I’m here,” she murmured. “For Clara.”
My hands froze, hovering over the pot I’d been washing. It was a simple statement, but it opened the door to a fantasy. Of Hannah. Being there. For Clara. For me. Always.
I cleared my throat, aggressively scrubbing the pot.
“Not for much longer.” My response was louder and harsher than necessary.
Hannah stayed silent.
It had been a few months since we’d mentioned her leaving while Clara was around. But I needed to say it out loud to bring me back to reality.
Christmas without her had been hard enough. Clara was healthy, elated by the presents she’d gotten, including the ones left by Hannah. She was still riding on the high of being in New York with Hannah, the Natural History Museum, and Cole’s company.
But the excitement of that trip, coupled with our quiet, empty house, had been jarring for me. Luckily, Clara was too enamored with the magic of Christmas to be too upset.
On Christmas morning, she FaceTimed Hannah as soon as she woke up, keeping her on the phone as she opened all her presents.
She again requested to speak to her at Calliope and Elliot’s—where our modest Christmas dinner was held.
And Clara had run into her arms a few days later, when she arrived home.
I’d been jealous. Jealous of my five-year-old daughter because she was able to hug Hannah, to show her affection without second thought. She’d claimed Hannah as hers because it was natural. It was meant to be.
That’s why it felt like having boundaries with Hannah was going against nature. It was wrong, not being able to brush hair from her face, kiss the spot on her collarbone dusted with freckles. To not fuck her until she screamed my name, taste her on my tongue.
My restraint was tested, almost entirely decimated at Calliope and Elliot’s wedding.
Hannah had been invited—not as a nanny, but as a guest. She’d been nervous about going, so I watched her. I knew she struggled to navigate large gatherings.
Fuck, before she arrived, I hadn’t attended those gatherings myself. Yet my brother was marrying Calliope Derrick, and apparently, that came with a whole brood of families.
Hannah enjoyed everyone’s company, greatly valuing her friendship with Lori. I also knew she felt on the outside, felt more comfortable with the children than the women.
I didn’t know a whole lot about her past, but she’d alluded to a lot when she’d told me about her piece of shit ex-husband. She had struggled, hadn’t been treated how she deserved. And she’d been left with plenty of scars that didn’t show on her creamy, perfect skin.
Kindness was a novelty to her. Aside from Cole, I didn’t think she’d been treated with it.
The thought made me want to breathe fucking fire. Especially because I’d been one of the people who hadn’t treated her the way she deserved.
I’d been planning on being delicate with her the day of the wedding. To try to help soothe her nerves.
Even though my own nervous system had been going fucking haywire. Clara… in an enclosed, indoor space with a fuck of a lot of people.
Again, she had been cleared by her doctor. Had received a second opinion. And a third, at Calliope’s behest.
But still, there was a chance she could get sick. There was always a chance.
That small chance had taken up almost every corner of my brain as I got ready for the wedding, cursing the fucking suit I had to wear.
I’d tried to chase away the whispers of dread and focus on the present. Especially when the present was my daughter, twirling in a dress that probably cost as much as a used car—Calliope had it custom-made in France—while rehearsing her “role” for the wedding and generally floating on cloud nine.
She adored Calliope. She already considered her an aunt, and since she didn’t know its origins in suppressing women and concreting property deals, the pageantry of the wedding was romantic to her.
I’d let her romanticize it. Until the day some unworthy fuck tried to marry her.
And then, I’d walk her down the aisle.
Because she was going to have a future, and I’d be there for every moment of it. Or at least I’d try to be, not living in imagined pasts where the disease came back and my world was reduced to cinders.
Clara stopped spinning, her eyes widening in the direction of her door.
“Hannah, you look like a princess!” Clara declared, rushing forward.
I stared at Clara’s bed for five seconds, steeling myself. Hannah would be wearing a dress. It was a wedding. It was required. Hannah would look beautiful, because Hannah was beautiful.
I lived with her. Endured every day in which I had to subdue every one of my instincts when I looked at the curve of her ass, the swell of her perfect tits, her smile, her lips.
I could handle another day of Hannah looking pretty.
On that thought, I turned.
And I was proved wrong.
The second I laid eyes on her, my breath rushed from my lungs.
Hannah did not look merely pretty. She was the most stunning fucking thing I’d ever laid my eyes on.
Sin encased in a yellow silk dress that draped over her curves like a waterfall.
It melted over every peak, every valley as if it had been made for her.
The slope of her shoulders drew my eyes.
Her porcelain skin was littered with freckles from long afternoons in the sun with my daughter.
Sculpted into the perfect shape from lifting Clara, exploring with her, and planting flowers in my garden.
The angles of her collarbones were perfect. I wanted to explore them with my fingertips. My lips.
Then the dip of the dress, descending low—way too fucking low—to reveal two of the most exquisite breasts to grace this earth. Round, perky.
Her hair was piled up on her head, tendrils escaping in soft curls, framing her long lashes. When our eyes met, her cheeks pinked, her plump lips parting on an audible inhale.
My daughter was in the room. Hence why I didn’t have a physical reaction to Hannah. In. That. Fucking. Dress.
“Doesn’t she look like Belle, Daddy?” Clara asked me.
She looked like she could be the face that launched a thousand ships. The body that would lay ruin to cities, empires.
No, she did not look merely like a Disney princess. She looked like she would ruin and redeem a man all in one.
But I could not say that to my five-year-old daughter. To my five-year-old daughter, she was a princess, complete with magic.
To me, she was my daughter’s nanny. A woman barely out of an abusive marriage. A woman who had a few months left with us before she went and lived the life she deserved.
To me, she was also magic.