Page 59 of Nanny for the Bossy Billionaire

“You heard what I said.”

“Of course, I didn’t cheat with you.”

“How can I believe that when you just lied to my face five seconds ago? I know June is alive, so why do you keep denying it?”

Fuck.

I sigh. I’m so ashamed of how things went down between June and me. It was my intention to lie my face off to cover the truth, but I can’t have Naomi thinking, even for a second, that I turned her into the ‘other woman’.

“Fine.” I take a long breath. “June is alive, but I didn’t cheat on her with you. We are divorced.”

“Then why are you telling people that she’s dead?”

“It’s a long story.”

She walks forward and sits in a chair across from me. “I have time.”

Given who I know Naomi to be, she’s going to sit here until I give her the answer she’s looking for or until she has to be carried out by armed security. I don’t have the patience to deal with the drama of having her hauled out of here. So I choose the other option.

“I don’t want June in either my life nor Ethan’s.”

“Why not?”

“Because she’s selfish. She cares about no one else but herself, to the point of neglect.”

Her eyebrows draw together. “What does that mean?”

For her to understand my position, she needs to understand the whole story.

“June and I met and started dating 12 years ago. It was a whirlwind romance. Both of us had been unlucky in love. So when we found each other, we latched on. We had so much in common; we were basically the same person. She was just as driven as I am. At the time I thought that was a good thing.

“Anyway, it didn’t take long before we got married. Although we knew we wanted kids, we were both busy building our careers and we put that on the back burner. Back thenHarris Techhadn’t made a name for itself yet, and I was determined that it became a household brand. At the same time, she was climbing the corporate ladder in the finance world.

“About four years ago we both decided that we were happy with where our careers were, and that it was time to have a baby. We tried for a while, and finally conceived Ethan. June was determined to have it all. She wanted to continue to work full-time and also be everything for Ethan. She was in a senior enough position that she could decide to work from home. To her, this meant she could work and take care of Ethan at the same time. She didn’t want any help from anyone. I insisted on hiring a live-in nanny several times, but she turned it down.

“She’s gotten everything she’s ever worked hard for. So she figured that because she wanted to continue full-time at work and be a mother at the same time so badly, that she could do it.”

I pause and Naomi is watching me with rapt attention. “What happened next?”

“Well, it didn’t take long before she started to crack. It started off small at first. I would walk into Ethan’s nursery and find him alone on the changing table while June was taking a work call. Once she was so distracted reading a report that she set Ethan down on the kitchen counter next to the electric kettle. He pulled it and the kettle fell. By some miracle none of the hot water scalded him. It was months and months of scenarios like this. The straw that broke the camel’s back was when she went to get something from the store and forgot Ethan strapped in his car seat with the windows up.”

I shudder at the memory of that day.

I pull my hand down my face and swallow hard, then continue, “If it hadn’t been for the man who walked by when he did and raised the alarm, Ethan would probably have died that day. He called the fire department who showed up promptly to rescue Ethan. They said if he had been in that car for five more minutes the results could have been disastrous.”

Naomi’s hand goes to her chest. “Oh my God. That’s horrible.”

I nod. “Of course, June was distraught, but I didn’t blame her because I felt like people make mistakes. It’s not like she did it on purpose. Child services were called and we were being investigated. However, when I woke up the next morning, I found Ethan once again on the changing table with June on the terrace on the phone. I lost it. It was as if she had learned nothing. That was when I decided our marriage was over.

“I let her know that I was going to take Ethan from her. She didn’t like that. She said she would fight me for him. So I hired a private investigator. Long story short, he found evidence of some creative accounting she had done at her company. The kind of thing that would send her to jail for a very long time. So I used that to blackmail her into granting me a divorce and signing over all of her parental rights. Then I disappeared from Austin where we lived and came down here because San Diego is whereHarris TechHQ is. I only moved to Austin originally at June’s insistence to be closer to her family.”

“Wow…” Naomi looks at the floor for a few seconds with wide eyes. Then she says, “I can see why you did what you did, but why lie about it?”

“Because I’m ashamed. Look at the kind of a woman who I chose to be my son’s mother. Then to get her out of our lives, I blackmailed her. Not my finest moment. I’m a monster. My son is going to grow up not knowing his mother and that’s because of me.”

“I think you’re being too hard on yourself. You did what you had to do to keep your son safe. It wasn’t ideal, but you did what you had to do.”

I chuckle. “You’re being way more understanding than I thought you would be. I thought if you ever found out about this that you would run for the hills.”

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