Page 80 of The Billionaire's One-Night Stand Nanny
And then…
Flora was there, silhouetted in the bright sunshine for a moment, a golden glow around her copper hair. Then she stepped inside, her eyes wide and blue and her cheeks flushed pink as she looked around at her surroundings.
Flowers. Hundreds of them. Thousands. Roses, and peonies, tulips, all the flowers I’d wanted to give her for the past four months–no, the past year.
I’d had to content myself for weeks and weeks with deliveries of one solitary flower at a time.
But Flora deserved all the flowers in the world.
“Flora,” I murmured, and she looked at me, smiling. There wasn’t much I could say with Maddie there in the room with us, but later, after dinner as three and a conversation I’d been rehearsing in my head for months–
“I was right,” came Maddie’s voice. She looked around appraisingly. Flora laughed, meeting my eyes over Maddie’s head.
“What?” I asked, and felt my heart stop and start again when my daughter said, matter-of-fact, “You like her. ItoldMiss Connelly you liked her, and I was right.” I closed my mouth to keep from gaping at her, my not-so-little girl. “And,” she said, folding her arms over her chest and looking around, “I approve.”
Flora bit back a smile, shaking her head and giving a minute shrug when I looked at her with a question in my eyes.Didyoutell her?
“I was going to ask Miss Connelly–Flora–to stay for dinner tonight,” I informed Maddie. “Unless you’ve beat me tothat, too?”
“Oh, really?” Maddie asked, turning to her former nanny. “Will you? Please?”
Flora nodded. “I’d love to.”
“Yes!” Maddie said, giving Flora a tight squeeze.
“Maddie, why don’t you go put your backpack in your room, and maybe you want to show Flora some of your more recent sketches? Bring down your sketchbook and you can look at them together in the kitchen as I get dinner ready. ”
“Right! Be right back!” she said and was gone, through to the living room. I watched her go, and listened for the clump of her sneakers up the stairs before I turned back to Flora.
I held a rose-scented breath for a moment before letting it out in a laugh. Flora giggled, too.
“Well,” I said. “I guess I don’t have to worry about how to break the news.”
“She’s smart, Maddie,” Flora said and walked through the flowershop of the foyer toward me, and then right up to me. I lifted my hands, hovering them over her hips, unsure, but she closed the distance, wrapping her arms around my neck.
“She’s smart,” I agreed, letting my hands fall onto her hips, then slide around her waist, pulling her against me. “But she doesn’t know everything,” I said. Flora fit so perfectly there, her body aligned with mine, her face tilted up for a kiss for which we’d both waited so,solong.
“Oh?” she said, just before our lips met, soft and sweet and the first of many,manykisses to come.
“Yes,” I said, nodding seriously. “She doesn’t know that it’s notlikeI feel for you, Flora.” I kissed her again, thinking of the small box I had hidden on a high shelf of my closet, waiting for the perfect summer day. “It’s love. I love you, Flora.Somuch.”
Maddie would know soon enough.
And Flora…
She smiled up at me, pressing her soft lips to mine. “I love you, too, Ryan,” she whispered.
I’d make sure she knew, too, just how loved she was. Every day, for the rest of our lives, I would make sure of it.
Epilogue
Flora
“Flora!Can you fix my hair? I think the tiara is sliding just slightly to the left–”
Maddie hurried over to me, her hand held to the elaborate crown of miniature white rosebuds and glinting crystals, and I took her by both shoulders, looking carefully at the girl in front of me. In her light, pretty makeup, her hair carefully curled, she looked like Maddie, but not like the Maddie I’d known. She looked like the Maddie she would become.
“Perfect,” I said. I brushed one stray curl back over her shoulder.
