Page 49 of The Billionaire's Temporary Governess (French Conquests 2)

He cringed, feeling something shrivel inside. It killed him to see her in pain like this. Cut him to the very soul to witness her anguish. This tangled web that had been woven so many years before was still ensnaring them all. He had to fix this. He needed to tell her the truth now. “No,” he began.

She snorted, raising a hand. “Keep it, William. I’m tired of being lied to.”

“I haven’t—I didn’t–” Where did he start?

There was a sound behind them, and there was Willa, standing next to a tall, slender girl. They were both looking uncertain, eyes flicking from him to Naisha as if she had picked up on the fact that they’d been fighting. William realized his hand was still on her shoulder, and he drew it back sharply.Not a caveman,he reminded himself.

He cleared his throat. “What is it, Willa?”

Willa gave Naisha an anxious look, but addressed him after a moment’s pause. “Uh, Petal’smamanhad an accident on the way over.”

“What?”Naisha interjected.

“C’est pas grave,”Petal said coolly. “She says she was sideswiped by a teenager taking driving lessons. It is nothing serious, but she will not be able to come get me.”

“That’s okay,” he assured her. “As soon as the others are gone, Willa and I will take you home, okay?”

Naisha interjected. “It’s fine. I’ll go with Willa.”

He wasn’t sure of that. There was still an active threat out there. “I don’t think—”

“I can handle it, William,” she insisted. “It will give Willa and me a chance to debrief. Party gossip, you know?”

Reluctantly, he conceded. “Fine. But I’m sending a security escort with you.” There was a niggling feeling in his gut still, but he didn’t want Willa to be anxious. Before Naisha could protest, he admonished, “And I don’t want to hear any arguments.”

She nodded almost formally, as if the intimate relationship they’d built over the past weeks had ceased to exist. “Yes, Boss,” she said.

17

Willa was asleep with her head in Naisha’s lap. Naisha was hardly surprised, considering that at about three-thirty that morning the girls had decided to binge on candied almonds and gummy bears and gotten so hopped up on sugar that they’d begun tearing around the château. Naisha had been forced to play the bad guy, yelling at them to get back into Willa’s room and threatening to cancel the rest of the party if they didn’t pipe down and get some sleep.

They’d known she didn’t mean it, of course, but they’d trooped meekly inside and gotten three or four hours of sleep before getting back up at dawn to continue the festivities.

So it was no wonder that the moment they’d left Petal’s driveway after dropping her off, and headed in the direction they’d come from, Willa had keeled over as if she’d gotten a butt-dart loaded with lion tranquilizer.

She looked down at the sleeping face of the child and stroked away the strands of hair that framed her face. Willa had been so happy that she’d made friends. Her life at the château must be so lonely.

Naisha was going to miss this child so, so much.

Because Willa and her friends weren’t the only ones who hadn’t had much sleep last night. Naisha’s mind had been whirring, so many thoughts just spinning, spinning, spinning.

Where was Abe now? Had he gone back home since that last flurry of texts? It was impossible to tell, but what she did know was that she was going to confront the bastard, whether he was here or back home. She’d send him a message to smoke him out, get him to reveal his position.

And then she was going at him with all guns blazing—metaphorically, at least. Let him know she was done, never coming back to him, didn’t want to see him again—ever. Tell him that the texts he’d sent her constituted a gross invasion of privacy. Quite possibly, several crimes had been committed, and if she so much as received a single emoji from him, she was going to a lawyer or the cops.

That ought to do it. He was full of bravado, but at heart, the man was a coward.

Which left William. Naisha sighed so heavily that the security guard seated in the back of the limo with her and Willa gave her a curious look, dropping for a second his pseudo-military stoicism.

She looked away, out the window, not wanting to engage him. William had insisted that not only these two men accompany them on such a minor errand, but that one should stay in the back while the other, the one seated behind the smoked glass partition, drove.

She knew he was trying to protect his daughter, but jeez, it was too much.

She looked down at Willa again. His daughter. The child he’d conceived with Sofia while he and Naisha were still in a relationship. While he was still picking flowers for her in the lavender fields that surrounded the family properties and smuggling her into the summer house to make love.

The betrayal. The deceit. The lies! She couldn’t stay with him. Not after this.

The idea of leaving him—leaving everyone. Madeline, Jacyn, Alex, his whole wonderful family—caused her physical pain. Hurt her head, hurt her heart. But it had to be done, and if something awful needed to be done, it needed to be done quickly.

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