Page 50 of Falling for the Nanny

Normally, I’d have backed off. Just now, though, I wasn’t worried about her temper. Heartbreak had anesthetized me. “Fine isn’t happy,” I said, poking the bear.

A storm gathered on her face. “Whatever you are isn’t happy either,” she pointed out.

I nodded, perfectly willing to concede the point. “No, I’m miserable,” I agreed readily. “I feel like my heart has been stomped on. Torn up. It’s awful.”

Alyssa glared at me. She hated that I had no trouble admitting my emotions. In our younger years, she’d called it self indulgent. Maybe she still thought that. I didn’t know, but I didn’t care anymore. I wasn’t like her and David–I didn’t have the option to bottle up my feelings. The pain and grief would ferment into something poisonous, eat right through the bottle and seep into my bloodstream.

I watched Alyssa struggle between being mad at me and being my best friend. As I knew it would, my best friend won out. “What happened?” she asked finally.

I took a deep breath and, over another glass of wine, told her everything. Ending, of course, with where it ended. When I overheard David telling the man that I didn’t mean anything to him.

Alyssa winced. “That asshole.”

And then, to my surprise, another voice weighed in. “See, Lys? At least I claim you in front of my friends.”

We twisted around in unison to see Parker leaning in the open frame of the sliding glass door. He had a half grin on his face, like he was expecting her to laugh. Instead, Alyssa shot him the coldest look I’d ever seen. “Lucky me.”

Even though my irritation had spiked at Parker’s unwanted intrusion on our conversation, I couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for him. He wasn’t trying to be a jerk. He was just one of those unlucky people to whom it came naturally. In his head, this had been funny.

“Anyway,” he said, changing course. “I think this conversation calls for more wine. I’ll open another bottle.”

After he retreated into the kitchen, Alyssa reached over and pulled the sliding glass door closed. “Sorry about that,” she said, but her voice was filled with hostility more than apology. “He’s an idiot.”

If she’d said it with any sort of affection, I wouldn’t have said anything. But something about the way she was acting around him made me think of how David described Chloe. For her, he had been convenient. Good looking. Rich. He’d ticked off the boxes, just like Parker ticked off Alyssa’s. And neither of them had bothered to add love to the list. It hadn’t been fair to David.

“Lys, are you in love with Parker?”

She shot me a sharp, startled look, like I’d caught her doing something wrong. “Of course,” she said defensively. “I mean, not in that sappy, desperate way you were in love with your boss, but yeah. I love him.”

Her speech started out impassioned and ended almost flippantly. Yeah, I love him.

“Don’t you want to love someone in a sappy, desperate way?” I asked, unoffended. I was genuinely curious. I couldn’t imagine loving someone any other way.

Alyssa looked away. “That doesn’t seem to be working out for you.”

“You didn’t answer the question.”

She jerked her shoulders, refusing to look at me. “I don’t know. I mean, yes, sometimes I get bored with Parker, but I never have to worry with him. There’s no risk.”

“That’s…” I swallowed the word lousy and replaced it with, “safe.”

“Yes,” Alyssa said almost defiantly. “It is. And it’s a good thing I am playing it safe or you’d be drinking wine on a stranger’s balcony, about to be arrested.”

Despite everything, I couldn’t help laughing. It made her crack a smile, too, and I knew the worst of the tension was behind us. And maybe the worst of the pain, too. David was lodged in my heart like a giant thorn I couldn’t pull out, but now I had seen that it could be worse. I could have not let him into my heart at all. I could be in Alyssa’s place, safe in a relationship that bored me, saying unconvincingly, yeah. I love him.

I had really loved him, even if I hadn’t admitted it to myself until just now.

And that was worth the pain.

CHAPTER 30

DAVID

I’d lost her.

I cursed myself every step I took as I searched that town center high and low for a glimpse of her golden-brown hair, a flash of blue eyes, but she was nowhere to be found. Not only did I not find her, I wasted precious time looking. By the time I got back to the resort, she was gone. The door that adjoined our rooms had been shut and locked from her side, and when I convinced management to open the room for me, she was gone.

The manager politely averted his eyes as I cursed a blue streak, yanking open closet doors as if I’d find her hiding in one, looking under the bed as though she’d fit in the five-inch space between the dust ruffle and the wooden base. She’d left in a hurry. There was a pair of sandals kicked under the desk that she hadn’t bothered to retrieve. There was a tube of mascara on the small ledge in the bathroom.

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