Page 61 of Sexy Bad Daddy

“Get in the car,” Callum orders, pushing me until I slide through the open back door. He jumps into the front and the car rolls forward, cruising slowly along the drive until we clear the crowd.

I sink into the supple leather as we leave the clubhouse behind us. Undoing my tie, I bunch it up in my fist.

“What a mess.” Callum shakes his head. “You should have told me about this guy. It would have been nice to be prepared. I could have spun this our way.” His phone is going mental. It hasn’t stopped ringing since we got in the car, or maybe I hadn’t heard it over the hubbub of the horde crowding us. He takes a moment to switch it off. “We could have limited the damage.”

“She never told me about him,” I say. Not unless I want to count her phone conversation that first day she showed up at my apartment where she mentioned her bad luck with sleeping with an unavailable baby daddy. Even supposing she wanted to keep her employment issues quiet, if we meant as much as I thought we did, surely she would have told me about him. I don’t know why she didn’t, and that bothers me more than I want to admit.

***

“Can you please quit moping? We need to work on saving your sponsorships or you’ll be putting yourself through the PGA tour next year.” Callum stands in my kitchen, sipping French roast from my favorite mug —the one Erin preferred before she disappeared from Abby’s and my life. “You lost Range Rover this morning.”

“I’m surprised it took them this long. Was over driving their SUV anyway.” It’s been eight days with no sign of Erin. None, nada, zilch. Not even a lousy card saying, Sorry, but I’m in love with my previous employer. Though she did send Danny to collect her things while I was out, so she’s probably staying with him. Only there’s no listing for him anywhere. It’s like the guy doesn’t exist, and Evie, who’s been a lifesaver in all this by dropping her waitressing gig to take over nannying, never actually went home with him, so she couldn’t tell me either. “Do you think she’s with him? Was he right about her? Or is she avoiding me because she’s worried about the media? Or because I didn’t tell her how I feel?”

Callum rolls his gaze to the ceiling then puts down his mug. “Have you listened to a word I said?”

“Yeah, yeah, of course.” I lean against the wall cupboards. I’m not sleeping well. There’s too much space in my bed. “My sponsors are rats abandoning ship. My career is in the toilet.”

“We need to make a decision about how you want to play this.” Callum exhales audibly, a tic jumping in his jaw. “I can possibly—probably—drum up new sponsors, but only if you come out and admit fault. They will want to see remorse and they will want to see change. And they need you to tell the world that your affair with the nanny is over. Of course you’re still going to take a hit. This season is over for you. Next season is going to be a struggle.”

“So do you think she wants to tell me what happened, but she’s too scared of the media?” I take my cap off and twist it between my hands. “Am I ever going to see her again?”

“There are other nannies out there, Garrett. Like the one in the other room, for instance. And, quite separately, more beautiful women who want to date a professional athlete. But right now, you need to focus on your career.”

“Daddy?” Abby wanders into the kitchen. Under one arm she carries that long-legged goat Callum bought her, under the other she has one of Erin’s shirts we found in my room. She’s dragged it around with her since the day Erin didn’t come home, and no amount of cajoling by me or Evie can make her give it up. I scoop her up and squeeze her. “You’re missing the point, Callum. I just don’t care. Not when my family is broken. Without at least knowing why Erin hasn’t come back, I can’t concentrate on anything else.”

“You’re really not ready to make a statement that your relationship is over?” He studies me for a long moment. “I can’t talk you out of career suicide?”

“Nope.” I press a kiss to Abby’s head. “I’m not going to agree that what Erin and I had was wrong. At least not until I hear an explanation from her own lips. So unless you’re actually going to help me work out how to fix this mess”—I point at Abby and myself—“you may as well leave.”

“Christ,” he says, shaking his head then he pulls out a stool at the counter. “You two should go get cleaned up and send in that waitress, nanny, whatever.”

“Evie.”

“Send in Evie. I need an assistant. And if you have any dirt on Peter, now’s the time to spill it.”

“I don’t.” I wish I had. From our short interaction, I only know that she dated him when she was nannying for his family, but he seemed unstable at the golf course. The media doesn’t seem to care that he appears to be obsessed with her. They’ve been eating up his story. Who doesn’t like a tale where the bad boy actually turns out to be bad and the underdog gets the princess?

“It’s a shame we don’t have Fiona Davenport on our team. That woman could dig up the dirt on an angel.”

“Actually.” There’s a spark of hope. “Maybe we do. Call her and tell her I want to make a deal.”

By the time I clear the kitchen with Abby, Callum’s on the phone.

***

“I can’t believe my baby brother is getting married this evening.” I nudge Paynt in the ribs. Hard to believe we were standing in this very spot the first time he met his fiancée, then his neighbor. Although it wasn’t, was it? They’d met a night earlier when my crazy, but incredibly lucky, brother bought her a stripper.

“You find the right one, you marry her,” he says with a shrug. “Or at the very least you tell her how you feel about her.”

“You think I’m an idiot, don’t you?” I lean on the railing and watch Abby trot through the yard with Spot by her side. She still asks for Erin, though after these past two weeks, it’s about time we both faced the fact that she isn’t coming back. “Don’t answer that.” I have no idea if she saw the press conference or if it was too little too late. Does she even know that her stalker was found within forty-eight hours of the press conference and that his family had him committed to a facility in another state?

Fiona came through for us big time. It might have been purely because of Danny’s threats the night Erin left me, but she dug up every scrap of dirt on that whack job, right down to the brand of socks he wears. Then she made contact with the ex-wife.

It turns out Peter Wilkins was advised to seek professional help for his mental health issues. His family, the kids, even the ex-wife encouraged him to do so. The former Mrs. Wilkins told Fiona that Erin had worked for them for a while, how they’d been her first employers, and Peter had formed an attachment, an obsession really, to the poor naïve girl. Erin wasn’t entirely without blame in the matter; she had after all admitted she believed they were in love after he flipped out over her decision to quit nannying for the family. But that had been the end of it.

Did Fiona think Erin was in actual danger now?

“We all fuck up,” Paynt says. “Can’t be helped.”

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