Page 31 of The Billionaire and the Nanny

Who the hell did she think she was?

I couldn’t believe I’d had to stand there and take her abuse. In my own house! No one had ever called me such names. Not to my face at least. And all because I called her out on her actions.

My aunt tried to speak to me as we left Tia’s room, but I was too furious to listen to her. She followed me into my room before I could shut the door in her face.

“Leo, stop running away,” she snapped, and I stopped in my tracks.

“I’m not running away! I’m walking away from you, Aunt Fee, because I don’t want to say something that might hurt your feelings,” I said, through gritted teeth. “Because it’s not your fault that you were taken in by that master manipulator.”

My aunt stared at me with something very close to pity.

“Does she scare you so much?”

I reared back as if she had slapped me.

“She doesn’t scare me. She disgusts me! I don’t know what game Tia and her brother are playing, but I want no part of it, Aunt Fee. I just want to be left alone to raise my daughter in peace.”

She nodded slowly.

“And what if she isn’t playing any game? What if she’s telling the truth?”

“Then…” I trailed off, not knowing what to say.

Because if she was telling the truth, then I really was a blithering idiot. If Tia was telling the truth, then I had overreacted to a small error, and I knew why I had done that. It was because I was running scared. Scared of a woman who was at least eight inches shorter and fifty pounds lighter than me, and who fit into my arms as if she was made for them.

No. I wasn’t scared of Tia. I was scared of what I felt for her. Because it was such a cruel stroke of fate that I should fall for a woman who was so closely connected to the man who was responsible for my wife’s death. Who was I really mad at? At Tia, for something that wasn’t her fault? She couldn’t help who she was related to, because we didn’t pick our families. Was I mad at Arjun Monani for having an affair with my wife? Was I still mad at my wife for cheating on me and driving home drunk from a party with her boyfriend?

Or was I mad at myself for wasting my life on a piece of trash like Natalie who’d had no love to spare for her husband or her daughter? But if I hadn’t married her, I wouldn’t have had Maddie, who was the best thing that had happened to me. I had loved her from the moment I set my eyes on her wrinkled, red face in the hospital.

If Tia was to continue working for us, I had to find a way to forgive her for the small mistake she’d made three years ago when she had slept with me without telling me who she was. It was strange how that tiny betrayal had cut me more thanNatalie’s. Maybe because even then, in just one night, I’d seen a glimpse of what Tia and I could be, and I had felt cheated of that future when I discovered that she had known my identity all along.

Natalie was a closed chapter, and Arjun was nothing to me. But Tia was… Tia mattered. I didn’t know why or how. But she mattered to me. For the past three years, she had been a thorn in my flesh. The woman I couldn’t forget, no matter how hard I tried.

I took a long, cold shower and got into bed, but sleep seemed to evade me. After tossing around for some time, I got out of bed and headed for the den to play a few frames of snooker to clear my head. The den was in semi-darkness, with only a single light on near the snooker table. And leaning over the table, the dim light gleaming off the smooth skin of her legs was Tia.

I stood in the doorway just staring at her, taking her in, trying to pinpoint exactly what it was about her that had bewitched me. Was it her beauty? Maybe, but Natalie had been just as beautiful and she had never driven me to madness the way Tia did. Was it her crooked smile? Her sexy body that just demanded to be worshipped?

“Stalker much?” she asked without turning around, and I smiled.

Maybe it was her biting sarcasm, I decided, stepping closer. And maybe I was a glutton for punishment, drawn to what I knew had the power to destroy me, body and soul.

“If you lean over a bit more, you’ll find yourself sprawled across the table,” I warned.

Tia straightened up and turned to glare at me.

“Why are you following me?”

“Don’t flatter yourself. I’m here to play,” I replied, rolling my eyes.

“This table is broken, and you need a longer stick,” she complained.

“It’s called a cue, and my table is perfectly fine, thank you very much,” I snapped, grabbing the cue from her hand.

“The table is too high!”

“You don’t know how to play,” I countered. “You have to use a cue extender if you can’t reach across the table.”

“Hmph! I still say that table is broken,” she grumbled.

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