Page 4 of Magnus
“As I told you then, and I’ll repeat now, several of our charges come from contentious family backgrounds,” Allison soothed. “It’s the way of the world nowadays. It’s the reason we have a security guard on duty during the day.” She nodded to the man standing off to one side of the hallway. “As well as cameras strategically placed to ensure we know the children are safe at all times in their classrooms.”
Which was the main reason Sapphie had chosen Buzzy Bees Nursery when Angel expressed a wish to go to playschool and be with other children when they arrived in London six months ago. But something had obviously gone wrong with Sapphie’s own security measures, either here or at the building where they rented a small apartment, for this man to have made an appointment to come here this evening to talk about Angel specifically.
Sapphie frantically tried to think of how or what she might have done to draw attention to herself and her beloved daughter.
She honestly couldn’t think of a damn thing. But she must have done something, or this man wouldn’t be arriving at the nursery school in?—
God, five minutes!
Which meant she only had that amount of time to collect Angel from the playroom and get the hell out of there.
“I tried to call you several times this afternoon, but your cell kept going to voicemail,” Allison apologized. “I left a message each time.”
Sapphie always turned her cell phone to silent when she was working in the library, as a courtesy to the other people there. The phone had been sitting on the desktop this afternoon as she worked. She must have been too distracted to see it light up with Allison’s calls. She’d then been late leaving the library, which was why she hadn’t checked her messages either before hurrying here to pick up Angel at five thirty.
“Besides,” Allison continued with a frown, “I was curious about the fact Mr. Wynter’s initial query was if a Miss Francesca worked here, before he even got round to mentioning Angel.”
A fact that puzzled Sapphie too, but it in no way lessened her feelings of panic.
Or the way her mind was still racing as she inwardly cataloged all that she had to do before they could leave London.
She always arranged their lives in such a way that she and Angel could, if they really had to, leave with just the clothes on their backs and their passports and money in the backpack Sapphie always carried with her.
But she would prefer, for Angel’s sake, not to have to do that.
Her daughter was going to be upset at them having to move yet again. Leaving behind what few personal possessions they had would only increase the trauma of the situation.
“Mr. Wynter didn’t sound threatening,” Allison tried to assure.
As Sapphie knew only too well, most monsters didn’t. Not initially, anyway.
In any case, it really didn’t matter what or who this Magnus Wynter was. The fact he had mentioned Angel by name was enough to set off all of Sapphie’s finely honed survival instincts.
She and Angel needed to leave London.
She would take the time to collect their two small packed to-go bags from their apartment on the way to the railway station. She’d decide their destination once they got there. Whatever train was leaving the station next!
Unfortunately, before Sapphie could put that plan into action, she saw a black SUV turn into the driveway.
Its windows were tinted so that the people inside couldn’t be seen as the vehicle parked directly in front of the door of the nursery building where she and Allison were standing. But Sapphie instinctively knew the driver would be Magnus Wynter.
CHAPTER TWO
Magnus knewthe moment he looked at the two young women standing in the doorway of the Buzzy Bees Nursery building that the slender one on the left was Angel’s mother.
She looked to be aged in her early to midtwenties, wearing skinny jeans and a purple T-shirt. She also had the exact same white-blonde hair in a ponytail at her crown and the same delicate facial features as her daughter.
Magnus wasn’t close enough to see the color of her eyes, but he would take a guess on them being the same unusual violet as her daughter’s.
Whatever the color of her eyes, just looking at her made Magnus feel as if he had been hit in the chest with a four-by-four.
He had never felt anything like it before. Certainly not just from looking at a woman. But there was no denying that right now, his chest actually hurt, preventing him from breathing properly.
In contrast, Angel’s mummy—he desperately needed to know her actual name, damn it—took one glance athimas he stepped out of his SUV before she turned to hurry down the hallway in the opposite direction. As if the hounds of hell were snapping at her heels.
Or as if she intended to collect her daughter before they bothran.
“Hold it right there,” he instructed loudly enough for her to hear as he strode purposefully toward the building.
