Page 51 of Falling for the Nanny

I didn’t bother packing my shit–I’d pay the hotel to do it. I went straight to the airport instead, but even though I searched high and low, I never found her. Now, hours later, I was finally back in Northern Virginia, and my adrenaline was still pumping as fast as it had been when I first saw her standing behind Jason.

For the first time, I resented DKI for the demands it put on me. If I hadn’t been the CEO, if this hadn’t been one of the most important weekends for the damn company, I wouldn’t have waited. Now she could be anywhere, but I still held out desperate, painful hope that I would find her where she belonged.

With me.

The sight of the Subaru still sitting in the driveway stoked that hope. She hadn’t left–maybe she was packing up right now, but I’d gotten back in time. Or maybe she wasn’t packing because even if she hated me right now, she loved Lily. And if she was staying, that meant I would win her back. I would tell her that I was done with all this secrecy shit. I wanted to tell Lily, I wanted to tell my mom, I wanted to tell anyone who cared to listen that Cat wasn’t just convenient.

That I was in love with her.

The realization had hit me like a cement truck somewhere around my second lap around the town center, and it was about as welcome, but it was true. I loved her, and I was going to figure out how to make it work out in the open. No more secrets, no more lies, no more fucking pool house. If I caught her in the middle of packing, all the better. It was time for her to move into the main house. Into my bedroom. She hated it? Thought it looked like a spartan prison? Fine–we’d make it ours. I’d put Chloe’s shit on the curb, and Cat could have the other closet.

Anything, as long as she’d stay.

I was so sure that was how it would go that when I shoved open the door to the pool house, her name was already forming on my lips. Seeing the pool house stripped of her, the same way the hotel room had been, was a gut punch that sunk far deeper than the blow of her empty hotel room. This was permanent.

I walked through it in the same daze I’d searched the hotel room. She’d left the same way–quickly, but not cleanly. There was her shampoo in the bathroom. That was her blanket over the back of the couch. I opened the dishwasher and found her favorite mug, the one she’d taken from the coffee shop she worked at in high school. I gathered it all up, not entirely sure what the hell I was doing, and walked into the house.

I was lucky my mother and daughter were out, because I couldn’t have explained myself just then. I didn’t have a reason for why I was carrying Cat’s shampoo up to my bathroom, or why I was spreading her blanket at the foot of my bed. And I sure as hell couldn’t explain why I was just sitting at the end of that bed, on top of that blanket, staring down at that damn coffee cup.

She was gone, but I was going through the motions of the fantasy I’d concocted on the way here anyway. Like if I put the pieces into place, she’d show up in the picture. I tried to remember if I’d done the same thing when Chloe left, but I couldn’t remember. I honestly didn’t think I had. I didn’t think I’d given a shit. I’d been pissed on Lily’s behalf, but her defection hadn’t crashed down on me like a wave.

I hadn’t been in love with Chloe.

The difference was painfully, starkly clear. I hadn’t been in love with her, and I hadn’t cared if she left, and hell, maybe that was why she’d left. Not because she overheard me bullshitting in a bar, but because she knew, even if I hadn’t.

And now I’d lost Cat, but it was the other side of the coin. I knew I loved her, but she’d never give me a chance to say it now. She’d heard everything she needed to hear, and now she was just as gone as Chloe.

My fingers tightened around the cup. Self-loathing choked me. What the hell was wrong with me? This wasn’t like me. I didn’t take defeat sitting down. I didn’t curl up under a purple chenille blanket that still smelled like her perfume and just let her get farther and farther away. I hadn’t built DKI into a multi-million-dollar company by letting a few setbacks take me out of the game.

I was going to find Cat tonight.

But first I was going to have to get past my mother, who had just pulled into the driveway.

* * *

I might have been able to blow off Francesca with a terse excuse about having to get to the office, but there was no way in hell I could do that to Lily. She was home for lunch between her prep classes, and she was so excited to see my car in the driveway that she started hopping around the driveway. I watched her from the window, some of the numbness melting away as my heart warmed at the sight.

I met them in the foyer, doing my best to avoid my mother’s sharp gaze.

“Where’s Cat?” she asked keenly, glancing around. “I know she had this week off, but I still thought we’d see her around.”

“I don’t know.” I picked Lily up and swung her around, then carted her back to the kitchen to get started on lunch. “I’m sure she’ll be back soon though,” I called over my shoulder. I aimed for breezy, but even I heard the note of determination in my voice.

My mother followed me down the hallway, watching me closely as I made sandwiches for all of us, cutting the crusts off of Lily’s. “You haven’t heard from her?”

“Like you said, she had the week off.”

“I bet she went to see her family,” Lily said brightly, somehow oblivious to the strange currents running through the room. “When does she come back?”

“Really soon,” I said, deciding it wasn’t a lie. I was going to move heaven and earth to make sure it was–tonight if possible.

We ate, then Lily ran upstairs to switch out her backpacks for her next class. I grabbed our dishes and hoped the sound of running water would keep my mom at bay. No such luck. She came right up next to me, like she might offer to dry, but when I tried to hand her a dish, she showed me her freshly done nails.

“Did you blow it?” she asked, her voice just loud enough to be heard over the running water by someone standing right next to her.

“Blow what?” I feigned ignorance. “The conference went great.”

She made an aggravated noise in her throat that I swear I heard more through the filial bond than my ears. “David Jonathan King, you know what I’m talking about. Did you blow it with Catherine?”

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