Page 42 of Morally Black Betrothal
Again, not a surprise. Especially after I’d emptied my savings account to pay half the debt she owed. My guess was she took Kylie back to Providence, but really, who knew?
She’d be back sooner than later. I’d given her a key, after all. And there was still the rest of that debt to take care of.
Several glances at my phone told me she still hadn’t bothered to call. Or apologize for leaving me with Kylie all morning. Or tell me where she’d gone, either. With a heavy feeling in my chest, I went to work cleaning up the chaos my sister had left in her wake, focusing my energy on scrubbing the kitchen, putting the sofa back to order, changing my sheets, and getting ready to take an extra load to the laundromat.
At least it was my night off from the bar. That meant time for baking too. It was still work, but it was the best kind.
The kind I actually wanted.
Just as I was pulling out the twenty-five-gallon bin of flour I kept under the worktable in the center of the kitchen, the buzzer to my apartment went off. I frowned. Selena had probably already lost her key.
“Hello?” I answered.
“Simone Bishop?” The voice was female. And definitely not my sister’s, considering it sounded British.
I pressed the speak button. “Yes.”
“I’ve got a delivery for you, ma’am. Can I bring it up, please?”
I frowned. I wasn’t expecting anything. “What is it?”
“It’s a gift, ma’am.” Definitely British.
A gift. From who?
For some reason, Brendan’s chiseled face flashed through my mind. Those dark green eyes. The lurking soul behind the coldness. The yearning for something—compassion, maybe—he didn’tquitelet out.
No, it couldn’t be from him.
I buzzed the delivery in. A few minutes later, there was a knock at the door.
I opened it to find a smiling woman who looked like she was in her mid-to-late sixties.
“Ms. Bishop?”
“That’s me.” I looked around her. “Where’s the delivery?”
The woman’s smile broadened. “Ginnifer Holland, at your service, but you can call me Ginny, dear. Is the little girl at home?”
“What? What little girl?”
Ginny looked over my shoulder into the apartment, then back at me with some confusion. “I was told you had a four-year-old niece that you needed some help with.”
My mouth fell open. “I—she’s not here right now, but—I’m sorry, who told you that?”
Ginny didn’t look surprised at my dumbfounded response. “Oh, dear. He didn’t mention me, did he?”
“Who didn’t tell me what?”
“God love our Brendan, sweet as candy, he is, but he never did learn to communicate.” She patted my shoulder kindly. “I’mthe gift, lovey. From Brendan Black. Told me to come here straight away, said you might need help caring for a little girl.” She procured a piece of paper from her shoulder bag and held it out to me. “That’s my résumé, which includes the years I served as nanny to the Black family. Raised all three boys and the girl myself, if I do say so. Since then, I’ve worked for other families they knew, but I retired with my Barney five years ago. He just passed, God love him, and I do feel the need to work every now and then. It’s good to keep occupied, I think. Got to have apurpose.”
I stared at the résumé as she rattled on. It listed her work history along with the contact numbers of the most famous families in Boston. The longer I looked, the more I thought it was a joke.
“Brendan Black sent me hisnanny? Like Mary Poppins?” I almost asked her if she floated in on the East Wind too.
Her kind brow wrinkled. “I’m sorry, love, do you not need one?”
I looked behind me at the empty apartment, then back at her. “Er, that’s…complicated. But I don’t think?—”
