Page 45 of The Billionaire's One-Night Stand Nanny
I rolled onto my side, staring at the empty pillow beside my own. “You want to know if I’m, what, hooking up with the nanny to get back at my ex-wife?”
“I guess so. I mean, you’re too young for this to be your midlife crisis.”
“Am I? I’m thirty-six, Flora.”
“Young,” she said.
I didn’t agree, but I didn’t argue. “To answer your question, no. This isn’t about Tally. I hope you aren’t worrying about that. I didn’t know she was getting engaged until just now.”
“Wait, you mean– Oh, I’m so sorry, oh my god,” she stammered, “I didn’t–”
“I mean, this isn’t how I thought I would find out,” I said. A smile grew across my face. “Moments after havingsmoking hot phone sexwith the woman who’s been driving me wild for weeks. But it’s not the worst way to find out, I guess.”
“Oh my god, Ryan,whatcould possibly be worse,” she laughed. “I can’t–”
“You could have told meduring,” I said, laughing now, too.
“Ryan!” she scolded through giggles. “No, don’t! Don’t ruin this for me. My one and only phone sex experience and it’ll be tainted forever!”
My one and only,my one and only.I replayed her words in my head. I wanted to remember just the way they sounded in her pretty voice.
“We can do it again,” I said, and she hummed again, sounding sleepy.
Lying in bed with Flora’s breathing low and soft on the other end of the call, the time we had together seemed vanishingly short. How many more weeks was it before school started again? Before–
Before Flora started a new job,I thought.Before Maddie went back to school.
I didn’t think about the other thing:Before Flora and I were over.
I couldn’t think about that.
It hurt too much.
CHAPTER22
Flora
“So,”I said. “You only call your big sister when you need money, huh?”
Hazel narrowed her eyes at me. “That’s not true and you know it. I’ve just been…” She sighed. “I’ve been busy.”
I nodded, looking closely at my sister over the minuscule tabletop in my tiny apartment. She looked tired, with faint blue circles under her eyes. I should have called her to check in. I should have set up a standing date with her, or something… but then again, she worked restaurant hours, nights and weekends, and I worked weekdays, early mornings and all. When would we even have the chance? It was no excuse, my guilty conscience told me. I had time for a coffee with my sister–in my apartment, rather than one of Brooklyn’s thousand coffee shops, because we were both saving money.
“Howiscatering going?” I asked, helping myself to one of a pile of biscotti she’d brought over. It was studded with cranberries and walnuts and drizzled in dark chocolate and made even my home-brewed drip coffee taste like it was a seven dollar pour-over. “If you’re so busy, what’s with the two thousand dollars?Wow, Hazel. These…”
“They’re good, aren’t they?” she smiled sadly.
“They’re incredible.”
“Thanks. Now if only I could get people tobuythem.”
I sighed. “If people justtastedthem…”
She nodded. “I know. You don’t have to tell me. That’s why I’ve been giving them away.” She looked up at me, cringing like she thought I was going to scold her.
“Ah,” I said. “This is where the two thousand dollars comes in, I guess.”
She grimaced and nodded. I gestured with my biscotti:please, continue, and also I need about five more of these, thanks.She slid another one off of the little tray she’d brought and onto my plate. “I’ve been trying to get some more corporate business. I have a couple clients like that–offices. They’re repeat customers and they want baked goods, for morning meetings or whatever.” She shrugged, but I knew her well enough to see that she was excited. Hazel was too good for the boring, impersonal office catering she’d been doing recently, I thought: she shone brightest when she was given a chance to explore and experiment, to apply her meticulous eye for detail to the kind of elaborate dishes you found in fancy restaurants, not office meeting rooms. Sheshouldbe catering fancy parties, or running her own Michelin-starred kitchen, but pastries were better than sandwich boxes, at least. “So I’ve been dropping off coffee and biscotti around Midtown pretty much every afternoon. Different buildings. I always leave a bunch of my cards. But…”
