Page 72 of The Billionaire's One-Night Stand Nanny
Maddie tugged on her sleeve. “Mom, we’re going to be late.”
Her mom nodded. “Right. Sorry, love. Flora,” she said, “I’ll be sure to pass along your thank you to Ryan. And tell your sister… Tell your sister we enjoyed the food at the engagement party very much. Michael and I. Ryan, too. And his date did, too, right Maddie?” She turned her head to her daughter, but her eyes were still fixed on me when Maddie spoke.
“Yeah, I did,” she said. “ButMom, we need to–”
“Right,” Ms. Talford said. “Well. We’ll be going then. Have a nice weekend, Flora, and I’ll tellRyanyou said hello.”
I stood, staring after her, until the cold had worked its way all the way through my jacket, and I could no longer tell if the chill I felt was from the shock of Maddie’s casual confession–yeah, I did–or from the winter wind whipping icily through the school’s empty courtyard.
CHAPTER34
Flora
It didn’t matter,in the end, if Charlie kept our secret.
I couldn’t.
I spent the train ride back to Brooklyn with my heart racing like I’d drunk way too much coffee. I was still feeling unsettled by the time Edie showed up outside of my building, the building that had once beenourbuilding, in a low black car. She looked, as I watched her from my tiny window, like she’d been born to it, like she’dalwaysbeen chauffeured around the city. I buzzed her, the wine she’d pulled from James’s wine fridge, and the Thai take-out she’d picked up on her way over up to my apartment, where she landed on my familiar couch with a sigh and a smile.
“I missed this place,” she said, and I smiled back.
“No, you didn’t.”
“I did!” she said, holding a hand to her chest in mock offense. “Do I miss my apartment downstairs? No. Butyourapartment, yes. You always have bourbon.”
“You have bourbon at your house, too, Edie.”
“But I don’t haveyou,” she crooned sweetly, fluttering her lashes at me. “Hey, I heard you’ve been killing it at work! Congratulations.”
“Really?” I asked, frowning. “Who told you that?”
“Oh, Charlie,” she said. “James’s brother.”
“I know who Charlie is,” I said.And he knows me,I thought. Or at least, he’d seen me naked. And he’d recommended me to the school, for no reason that I could think of besides that Ryan had asked him to.
“It’s at the school Ryan’s daughter goes to, right?” she asked, hopping up from the couch and squeezing in beside me in my cramped kitchen. She opened my dishes cabinet and grabbed two mismatched glasses as she continued. “That’s so cute. I bet she loves seeing you at school every day, even if you aren’t her homeroom teacher or whatever. Do fifth graders have homeroom, or is that middle school?”
“That’s middle school,” I croaked, staring distractedly into the silverware drawer.Ryan had gotten me the job, he’d landed Hazel a career-making catering gig, he’d taken Maddie to his ex’s party–that was what she’d been telling me, wasn’t it? Why? She didn’t know, she couldn’t–
“You get to see her, though?” she said.
“What? Oh, yeah,” I said, forcing myself to pick up two forks, two spoons. “Do you remember how I told you we had sewing lessons this summer?” Edie nodded. “She stopped by my classroom yesterday just to tell me that she’d worn what we made and gotten compliments.”
“Socute. Wait–” she said. “You mean the skirt from Tally’s engagement party! Shetoldme she’d made it, but I didn’t realize that was her project withyou–”
I accidentally shut the drawer on my finger, dropping the silverware on the kitchen’s ugly tile floor with a loud clatter.
I hissed, shaking out my smushed fingers.
“Oh no!” Edie exclaimed. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I croaked. Edie held out her hand. “I’m fine,” I insisted.
She snatched my hand, pulling it toward her, looking first at the insides, then the backs of my fingers.
My eyes filled with tears, my vision blurring until I couldn’t see Edie anymore, and instead, it was Ryan’s gentle hands and caring eyes looking back at me. A different kitchen. A different clumsy mistake.
“Oh, Flora, ohno,” Edie said, and I blinked until she rematerialized in front of me, looking worried. “Do you think it’s broken?”
