Page 46 of Morally Black Betrothal
“What?” I asked.
A shy smile emerged that just about cracked me in two. “Your accent. I noticed it at the hospital when we met. It comes out when you’re emotional, doesn’t it?”
I scowled. Emotional? I didn’t getemotional. I wasn’t some teenage girl on the rag.
My response only seemed to amuse her more.
“So, um…you got me a nanny,” Simone said.
I nodded. “I did. You seemed to need one.”
I’d called Ginny after getting Simone’s address from our PI and immediately sent her over.
That lush mouth opened and closed a few times, taunting me. It was everything I could do not to slip my finger in and tell her to suck like a good girl before she got down on her knees for the real thing.
Fuck.
“I do,” she finally said. “I mean, I kind of did. I don’t know, maybe I will.” She cocked her head like I was a puzzle she was trying to figure out. “But it’s not exactly a cup of sugar, is it?”
I shrugged. How could I tell her that to me, Ginny’s salary really was no more significant than a cup of fucking sugar without sounding like a self-important prick?
Answer: I couldn’t.
Behind her, a buzzer went off, and she turned toward the sound.
“You’re baking,” I said. “Bread?”
Simone turned back with a shy smile. “Yes.”
My throat felt thick again. It was hard to swallow. “It smells…good. Like a home.”
Fuck, what waswrongwith me?
But she didn’t tease. “I’ve always thought so.”
My heart seemed to skip several beats before I pounded a fist into my chest and frowned. “Can I come in?”
I didn’t wait for a response, just barreled my way inside. I knew I was being impolite, but I couldn’t wait any longer. What I was about to ask this woman was anything but polite. Better she know what she was getting from the start.
Simone closed the door behind me. “Um, okay. I just need to take out the bread.”
I looked around the apartment. It was just one large room that was about three-quarters kitchen. The exposed brick walls were just as crumbling as the exterior, and the leaded windows looked like they hadn’t been cleaned for at least a decade. There were signs of water damage and cracked plaster on the ceiling, and the ancient wood floors creaked under my tread, but the rest of the space seemed clean, if cluttered with secondhand furnishings and cheery yellow paint.
She gestured to a stool on the other side of an enormous wood table in the center of the kitchen, the surface of which was just as battered as the floors, though it shined with new polish.
I took a deep breath as I sat down. It took everything I had not to reach across the table and wipe the flour from her nose.
“So, aside from the sudden need to kiss me,” Simone teased as she moved to an industrial-sized oven. “What brings you and your former nanny to my side of town?”
I could barely breathe when she opened the oven and the scent of bread flooded the room all over again. What the hell did she put in it? I felt like a kid in a nursery rhyme, except instead of the sound of the Pied Piper, I was entranced by a childhood scent.
“Brendan?”
I shook my head as she set a tray of golden-brown bread loaves in front of me. “Shit. I’m sorry.”
Sorry. Again.
I was really cracking.
