Page 20 of The Billionaire and the Nanny

Penelope

Ethan getsup to answer the door while I let go of the breath I’m holding.

We were about to have a moment, weren’t we? Because it sure felt like it. Even Lilly Belle seems to agree with her questioning eyebrows and pucker. It’s late, and I should escape upstairs, but I’m dying to know who’s at the door. I’m nosy that way. If it’s a woman here to see Ethan, I have to admit, I’m going to hateit.

It’s not like Ethan is anything to me but my employer, but I can’t help but feel that there’s more there. Varnish has hardened over his inner self, and it just needs cracking open. But should I be the one to crack it? I don’t see how things between us could ever work. Yes, it was nice, even for just two minutes, to feel like we were almost a family, but that doesn’t mean I should allow myself to fall forhim.

Scooping Lilly Belle into one arm and the bouncy seat into the other, I start heading upstairs while Ethan opens the front door with a scoff. I make my way up the stairs slowly, so I can eavesdrop on whoever is there.

Sounds like a woman alright, talking right after Ethan mumbles something, but he’s not happy to see her. “Ethan, darling, if I don’t visit you at this hour, I’ll never find you, that’s why. Please let mein.”

My stomach is in knots. He wouldn’t be dating an older woman, would he? Like, way older? Suddenly, I realize how little I know about him, except what I’ve read in the tabloids, heard from Wilson, or experienced myself in the bedroom.

“Mother, get in your town car and leave. Justgo.”

His mother. And that’s the way he talks to her? Terrible!

“You can’t keep her away from me,” the woman says, “It’s not right. She’s our granddaughter. Let me in this instant.”

“It’s that easy, huh? Just demand it and it becomes so? Doesn’t work that way. You had your chance, now leave.” Ethan’s voice is icier than ever. A thousand times worse than he is with me. If this is Ethan when he’s upset, then the way he speaks to me is pretty civil.

If he doesn’t want to let her, there must be a reason. Though I think it’s awful—just awful that he won’t lether.

“You are ridiculously stubborn, you know that?” Mother Townsend hisses angrily. “I’m prepared to adopt her. You know you’re too busy for a child. You don’t even have a wife, for Pete’s sake. Now, move before I break down thisdoor.”

“Like hell you will. I can’t believe you showed up here at this time, and drunk, no less, but some things never change. Get this through your skull—you will never adopt Lilly Belle,” he grits his teeth. “A nice couple who will spend time with her, raise her right, will do all the things you neverdid.”

Wait, what? Ethan won’t raiseher?

“I have the money, I have thehome…”

“You have nothing she needs. Never show up at my house again, you hear me? Now, go.” He shuts the door on the begging woman while I stand on the stairs feeling like I got punched in the lower intestines.

A nice couple will raise her? Did he mean himself with possibly someone else in the future? The whole conversation has left a metallic taste in my mouth, and that’s when I realize I was clenching my jaw so hard, biting through my lip, that I’ve drawn blood.

Ethan spins around in a huff, the face of a haunted man in place of the gentler one who spoke to me in the kitchen.

“Are you all right?” Iask.

He stops cold in his tracks and cranes his neck down to look up at me near the top of the stairs. “Were you listening the whole time? That’s unprofessional, not to mention insensitive, Miss Wallach.”

“I’m sorry. I was leaving, actually, but your voices were rather loud. Don’t you have custody of Lilly Belle?” I ask, totally outside of my business.

“Time for you to go upstairs,” he deadpans.

He’s not going to answer my question, that much is clear. He’s fuming and rattled from the encounter, and he’s not the type to open up and share his thoughts to feel better. It was stupid of me to ask in the first place, but at least my question is out there.

The man has ice water running through his veins to treat his own flesh and blood this way, yet I’m still checking on him. He should be grateful that someone cares. I want to tell him all this, tell him that family is the most important thing in this world, and he should be more respectful of his mother, but then I remember my own mother, and the mortgage and bills needing to be paid, and I keep my fat mouthshut.

Ethan points at me, or Lilly Belle, rather. “Keep her away from me. I won’t tell you again.”

I don’t agree, I don’t nod, nothing. I just storm upstairs and into Lilly Belle’s room, feed her the bottle, and rock my anger away. Within minutes, the baby is asleep. I lay her down, cover her with her light blanket, and hope to God that this poor creature gets raised better than Ethandid.

* * *

At night,I can’t sleep.

I lie in bed worrying over the things Ethan and his mother said to each other. Did he mean that he would be putting Lilly Belle up for adoption? Is my job as nanny a temporary one, not because Ethan will soon take care of the baby himself or because he has a girlfriend who’ll soon move in to raise her, but because he’s going to be getting rid of her, like an abandoned puppy at a homeless shelter?

---