17. Saint
SEVENTEEN
SAINT
I wake in my own bed, alone, with Wrenley’s tropical perfume still clinging to my skin.
Now I lie here, staring at the ceiling, my body aching in ways that confirm last night wasn’t some fever dream. Wrenley beneath me, around me, calling my name like she needed me to breathe.
Fuck. What have I done?
I should regret it. Should be planning damage control. Erin starts tomorrow and I’ve just complicated everything by sleeping with the woman who just wanted a quaint small town to escape to for a while and instead got herself ensnared by the town’s brooding chef .
All I can think about is going back to the guesthouse. Waking her properly. Seeing if she tastes as sweet in the morning light as she did in the dark.
I’m so fucked.
By six, I give up on sleep. Ivy won’t be up for another hour. I pull on sweatpants and a T-shirt, then head to the kitchen. Cooking has always been how I process. My hands know what to do even when my mind is being an idiot.
I’m halfway through mixing batter when I hear the back door open. My heart jump-starts against my ribs.
Wrenley stands in my kitchen doorway, wearing those goddamned hot pink pajama shorts and thin top, her hair a beautiful disaster. The morning light turns her gold at the edges.
“Hi,” she says softly.
“Hi.”
We stare at each other across the space where everything started. Where she wandered in that first night for a simple dinner that changed everything.
“I was just...” She gestures vaguely toward the door she just walked through. “Going to shower and change, then leave, but I saw the light on and didn’t want to go without saying goodbye.”
“Stay.” The request escapes before I can stop it. “For breakfast. I’m making—” I look down at the bowl in my hands, realizing I’ve been operating on autopilot. “French toast, apparently.”
She hesitates in the doorway, arms wrapped around herself. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why not?” I set the bowl down, trying to read her face. Last night, she was open and exposed. This morning, she’s all walls .
It’s unsettling to see my own defense mechanism reflected back at me.
She takes a breath. “Because we both know what last night was.”
“It’s just breakfast, Wrenley. Not a marriage proposal.”
She flinches at my tone, and I hate myself for it. But this is easier than whatever the fuck happened to me last night. Easier than admitting I watched her sleep for an hour before forcing myself to leave.
“Fine.” She moves to the counter but doesn’t sit. “Erin starts tomorrow.”
“I’m aware.”
“So this...” She gestures back and forth between us. “It doesn’t change anything.”
I set the bowl down with too much force. “I remember what I said.”
“Do you?”
“Crystal clear. You needed to get it out of your system. Mission accomplished.”
Her sharp intake of breath tells me I’ve hit the mark. Good. Better to be the asshole than the pathetic fuck who almost begged her to stay ten seconds ago.
“Papa?” Ivy’s voice drifts down the stairs.
“Go,” I say without looking at Wrenley. “Out the back.”
For once, she doesn’t argue. The door clicks shut just as Ivy’s footsteps hit the kitchen tiles.
“Morning, baby.”
“Are you making French toast?” She climbs onto her stool, then looks around. “Where’s Miss Wrenley?”
“Not here.”
“But she always?—”
“Not today, Ivy. ”
My daughter studies me with those eyes that see too much. “You’re using your mad voice.”
“I’m not mad.”
“Yes you are. You’re whisking angry.”
I look down at the bowl, realizing I’ve been attacking the batter like it personally offended me.
“I’m not mad,” I repeat, forcing myself to slow down.
“Did you and Miss Wrenley have a fight?”
“No.”
Yes. Maybe. I don’t fucking know what that was.
“Then why’d she leave without breakfast?” Ivy’s voice gets smaller. “Is it ‘cause Miss Erin is coming tomorrow?”
I plate the French toast with mechanical care. “Eat your breakfast.”
“I don’t want Miss Erin.”
“Ivy.”
“She smells like too much perfume, and she talks to me like I’m a baby.” She stabs her French toast. “And she looks at you weird.”
“What do you mean, weird?”
“Like how Madison’s mom looks at you during school pickup. All smiley and giggly.” Ivy makes a disgusted face. “It’s gross.”
Christ. I mean, I’d noticed. I just didn’t care enough to deal with it.
“Miss Erin is qualified.”
“Miss Wrenley sings songs and knows about art and doesn’t care when I get dirty.” Ivy’s eyes fill with tears. “Why can’t she stay?”
Because I’m an idiot. Because I hired someone else instead of dealing with the fact that Wrenley makes me feel things I swore I was done feeling. Because last night I had her beneath me, around me, and this morning, I let her walk away thinking it meant nothing.
“It’s complicated, mon trésor .”
“I hate complicated.” She pushes her plate away. “I’m not hungry.”
“You need to eat.”
“No.” She slides off her stool. “I’m going to my room.”
“Ivy.”
“I want Miss Wrenley!”
I dump both plates in the trash, appetite gone. Through the kitchen window, the guesthouse sits quiet, morning light catching on its windows and preventing me from seeing inside.
Do I even want to? Is she still there? Packing her things into those mismatched suitcases she arrived with? Where will she go after she leaves here?
My phone buzzes. It’s a text from Erin confirming she’ll arrive at six tomorrow morning. Professional. Punctual. Qualified.
Everything Wrenley isn’t supposed to be for this job.
Except, Wrenley was never just the nanny, was she?
Not from that first morning when she stumbled into my kitchen with that random pink streak in her hair and startled deer eyes, cracking something open inside me I thought was dead.
Something I’d buried with Celine and promised myself I’d never risk again.
I pour coffee with hands that want to punch something, the familiar ritual doing nothing to bring calm. A burn on my palm from a few days ago when I was distracted—thinking about Wrenley—reminds me of what happens when I lose control in the kitchen.
When I let myself feel too much, care too much, want too much .
Upstairs, Ivy’s crying shifts from angry to heartbroken, the sound yanking my heart straight out of my chest.
Fuck.
I take the stairs two at a time, coffee abandoned on the counter. Ivy’s door is closed, her sobs muffled but steady. I knock softly.
“Go away!”
“Baby, please.”
“I said go away! You ruined everything!”
I lean my forehead against her door, listening to my daughter fall apart because of the choices I made.
The smart choices.
The safe choices.
Choices that were supposed to protect us both.
My phone vibrates again.
Rome: Ivy left her riding gloves here. Want me to drop them by?
I stare at the text, remembering yesterday. How Wrenley looked on that horse, tentative at first, then confident. How she laughed when Penny tried to eat her hair. How she fit against me when I helped her down, like she was meant to be there.
Through the hallway’s window, I catch movement below. Wrenley’s car pulls away from the guesthouse, heading toward town. Not headed toward the highway.
Okay, so she’s not leaving permanently. Not yet. Just ... leaving.
That fact sparks a tiny light in the dark concave of my chest.
“Papa?” Ivy’s voice comes through the door, smaller now. “Is Miss Wrenley really not coming back?”
I close my eyes. “Miss Erin starts tomorrow.”
“That’s not what I asked. ”
My too smart daughter. Always seeing through the bullshit, just like her mother would have.
“I don’t know, baby.”
The crying starts again, quieter this time. Defeated. It’s so much worse than the anger.
I head back downstairs, needing to move, to cook, to do something with my hands before I do something I can’t take back, like drive to town and tell Wrenley that last night meant everything.
That I’ve been slowly falling for her since she walked into my life.
That Ivy isn’t the only one who needs her.
Instead, I take Ivy to a playdate to cheer her up and start prep for dinner service at my restaurant. Three hours early, but who’s counting? I dice onions with unnecessary force. The knife’s rhythm is usually meditative, but now it’s just marking time.
How long before Wrenley finds somewhere else to go or leaves town entirely? A week? Two? How long before I run into her at the Merc or Libby Jude’s and we have to pretend we’re strangers who never shared a bed, who never?—
The knife slips. Not enough to cut, but enough to remind me why I don’t cook angry. Why I built walls in the first place.
And why I never should have let Wrenley Morgan through them.