Page 40 of One More Baby for the Boss

Alex stared at him.

“Is this really how you feel?” she asked him at length. “You really think I can’t care for Jack without being his parent?”

No. Of course that’s not how I feel.

But that little voice was shouted down by the anger he was feeling. He didn’t want to be logical right now. He just wanted to quiet her. He wanted to make her stop saying the things she was saying, because he didn’t want to have to deal with them.

She sighed and shook her head. “If I’m just the nanny, I shouldn’t be here,” she said quietly. “If that’s really all I am toyou, all I can be to him — I already care too much about him for that to be it, Elijah, and it’s not good for either one of us to form these attachments to each other if they’re not going to last and be respected. If you’re not going to treat me like an important person in his life, I don’t think I should stay in his life.”

“Wait a minute,” Elijah said. “What are you saying right now? You’re not talking about quitting, are you?”

“I think I have to,” she said quietly. “I don’t want to leave Jack, but if I’m not going to be allowed to have any kind of say in what’s best for him—”

“That’s not fair. I’ve listened to you plenty of times. What you can’t do is wait until I get home from work and then give me hell for making a choice you wouldn’t have made. You’re acting like—” He stopped. He had been about to accuse her of acting like she was his wife, and that wasn’t going to make this any better. Things were bad enough as they stood. He changed tack. “You can’t walk away from Jack,” he said. “Don’t do that to him.”

“But I have to,” she countered. “Before things get any worse, Elijah. I can’t let him become reliant on me. And I can’t letyoubecome reliant on me either. If me being around is an excuse for you not to spend time with your son, I have to go.”

They stood staring at each other for a few moments. Elijah couldn’t quite believe this was happening. After all his attempts to keep her here, he was going to lose her after all.

And the most heartbreaking part was that Jack was going to lose her too — and Elijah knew that was entirely his fault.

CHAPTER 19

ALEX

The night seemed interminable, and Alex didn’t sleep a wink. She wished she could just get in her car and drive away right now, get the whole thing over with, but she knew she couldn’t. She couldn’t do that to Jack, who had already lost his mother unexpectedly. She couldn’t just disappear on him. He had to have an explanation.

But it wasn’t going to be easy. She knew Jack had come to care about her as much as she cared about him, and it would hurt him that she was leaving now. He wouldn’t understand why.

God, how awful of Elijah to have put them all in this position!

All night long, she went back and forth in her mind, wondering whether she was really doing the right thing. Did she have to go? Maybe she could take back the words she’d said last night.

But as she watched the sun begin to rise out her bedroom window, she knew she wouldn’t take it back. She couldn’t stay here if Elijah was going to push back the way he had last night. There should have been no argument, no question about who was in the wrong. He should have been at that family day event.If he didn’t see how important it was to Jack to have him there, he wasn’t the man Alex had believed him to be.

She was falling for him too hard and too fast to stay here if that was true. She could be honest with herself and admit that.

Of course, that meant it was her own fault, not Elijah’s, that she was going to have to leave Jack behind. If only she’d kept her distance from his father, this wouldn’t have happened. She was wracked with guilt at the thought that he would lose someone he had considered important enough to put on his family tree.

I’ve been so careless with him. If I was going to take care of Jack properly, I should have made sure that nothing Elijah could do would hurt me enough to make me leave.

Her one consolation lay in the fact that this really would be better for both Jack and Elijah in the long run. Elijah really had taken to heart the idea that he needed to spend more time with his son. The problem was that he had a nanny to lean on, and he didn’t always prioritize Jack the way he should. With Alex gone, he would have to put Jack first. She just hoped he wouldn’t go back to his old ways, locking himself in the office all the time and allowing his son to run wild.

She sighed, got up, and got dressed. There was no point in tormenting herself like this. She had made her decision, and the only thing to do now was to see it through.

And that meant having a very hard conversation with Jack.

She found him in the kitchen, gloomily running a toy car back and forth along the edge of the table and ignoring the stack of pancakes that had been placed in front of him. Alex swallowed hard. He was obviously still upset from what had happened yesterday, and that was going to make this more difficult.

She sat down opposite him. “Hey, Jack,” she said. “Not very hungry this morning?”

He shrugged and didn’t look up.

“Jack, I need you to look at me, okay?”

He lifted his head and met her eyes, and Alex felt as if her heart might shatter. It was hard to admit to her feelings for Elijah, knowing that she shouldn’t have let herself go there. But she couldn’t pretend not to know about her feelings for the sweet little kid sitting in front of her. He had captured her heart in a way no one had in years — since the loss of her own family.

She needed to be strong right now. This was going to be hard. She squared her shoulders. “Jack… today’s going to be my last day here with you and your dad.”

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