Page 5 of Wait for Me

She expelled her breath.

I had no choice.

“Miss Marie!” The nanny panted, catching her breath.

Miss Marie?

Miss Divorced Marie is who I am.

“Mrs. Ping, how are you?” Marie replied evenly.

Compartmentalize.

Her real name was Amanda Ping, but everyone called her Mrs. Ping. The fifty-five-year-old live-in nanny had been widowed for six years before Marie hired her.

Mrs. Ping had an interesting background that made her more of a bodyguard than a nanny. However, by the time Marie and Logan met her, she had retired from her past life and was running a dry cleaning business in metro Atlanta with her husband.

Soon, all her children had grown and moved away, and she was unable to run the dry cleaner by herself without her husband. Her children refused to help. Consequently, the business folded, and Logan took his suits elsewhere, but not before Marie hired Mrs. Ping to be Jonas’s full-time nanny.

Eventually, Mrs. Ping stayed, while Marie lost her job as mommy.

Or had she?

Once a mother, always a mother, right?

“Mommy, I’m so happy you came.” Jonas’s voice was muffled in Marie’s blouse, but she could hear him. “Please don’t leave me again.”

Was that a plea?

Someday, when Jonas grew up—if Marie was still alive—she would sit down with him over a cup of tea and explain everything to him.

She would hold nothing back, unlike what she had to do with Logan.

I had no choice.

Chapter Two

Onboard theAlaskan Queen of the Arctic Seas, their lunch was served buffet-style. Jonas was too excited to eat. Antsy and unable to sit down, he wanted to explore the children’s activity center.

That sounded way too boring for Marie, so she let Mrs. Ping take Jonas.

As she sat alone by the window in the lunchroom, Marie wondered about her one-piece carry-on luggage that the stewards were taking to her stateroom at this moment. There wasn’t anything in it save for her clothes, toiletries, and her books to be read, but still…

Then again, she had talked to the captain before coming to this deck for lunch.

Nothing to worry about, really.

She told herself that several times. It didn’t help. She felt naked without her favorite Sig Sauer handgun. The sidearm was already in the safe in her stateroom. The captain of the ship knew who she was and why she carried it with her.

So much for this vacation.

She stared at the plate in front of her, at the calamari, mixed vegetables, stir-fried beef, and toast with strawberry jam, all huddling for space.

What in the world did I put on my plate?

It must be the jet lag.

She hadn’t eaten anything since she had flown out of Lyon to Seattle by way of Paris and San Francisco. It had been a long flight, but the only one she could get.

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