Page 22 of Contracted and Claimed By The Boss

Max sat beside her, placing their drinks on the coffee table. Paige reached for her tea, cupping her hands around it.

‘I wish you could have known what she was like.’

Paige’s heart stammered. ‘Your wife?’

He stared at her, confusion briefly visible in his symmetrical features, before he shook his head once. ‘Amanda. Before...this.’

Paige sipped her tea, hating herself for feeling relieved, but the truth was she didn’t want to talk about his late wife, nor to think about the woman. ‘I can imagine.’

‘She was so sweet. I mean, I don’t know the faintest thing about raising kids, despite the books I read after Lauren died, but somehow, Amanda was so great anyway. Just her, I guess. And now...’ He lifted his palms up, staring straight ahead. The moon formed a perfect slice of silver across the ocean, rippling as the waves churned. The fact he’d read books did something funny to her emotions. She blinked away quickly.

‘She’ll get through this.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Why?’

She sipped her tea. ‘My first nannying job was in Dubai, and there was a teenage daughter in the house. She was different from Amanda, but the moods, they were similar.’

‘Why Dubai?’

She toyed with the fabric of her shirt. ‘I liked that it was different from what I was used to.’ She wasn’t so well known there, and she’d sought refuge in wearing a hijab—she’d craved anonymity, and in Dubai she’d found it. ‘My first clients were an American family, so it didn’t matter that I didn’t speak the language. But slowly, I learned to speak some Arabic, in the time I was with them, so my next job posting was to another family in the same city, and then my next job too, and so on and so on.’

‘You stayed there until now?’

She nodded.

‘You must have been very young when you took your first job.’

Paige’s smile was wistful. ‘In fact, I was only nineteen myself.’ She tilted her head to the side. ‘I felt older.’

‘Nineteen seems way too young to be looking after kids.’

‘Maybe it gave me an advantage. I really could understand what Carrie—their daughter—was going through. She sort of looked up to me as well,’ Paige admitted but with a hint of reluctance because she didn’t want to tell him that, in fact, she’d been worshipped by all the children, idolised because her fame was still relatively recent and, as Americans, they’d grown up with her in films. They couldn’t believe they had a real-life celebrity as their babysitter. ‘So while she would have these awful moods with her parents, she connected with me right away. That helped.’

‘And Amanda?’

‘It’s going to take some time. I guess, losing her mom the way she did, she’s probably pretty good at keeping people at a distance.’

‘She didn’t used to.’

‘People change.’

He frowned. ‘Without reason?’

‘Sometimes, but I’m sure there’ll be a reason. Even if it’s just growing older and becoming newly conscious of what’s missing in her life and feeling the burden of that injustice.’

He was quiet, drinking his coffee, before he placed it on the table between them.

‘What made you decide to become a nanny?’

She almost dropped her tea, so moved it to her lap, employing both hands to keep it stable.

‘Opportunity,’ she said, after a slightly too long pause. ‘I was offered the job.’

‘You didn’t want to go to university?’

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