Page 123 of The Nanny and the Hothead
He was acting like he’d been smashed in the head with a hammer, but he couldn’t tamp down his excitement. A warmth spread through him just thinking about his plan. “Could you send me every picture you’ve taken since you’ve become Oscar’s nanny?”
Confusion marred her features. “You want the pictures?”
“I do. I want to see what you see,” he explained.
She observed him closely, confusion still clouding her expression. “Why?”
“Because even though you aren’t in any of them, you’re in all of them. Your honesty, your openness. It’s in every shot. It’s mesmerizing.”
Panic flashed in her eyes, or perhaps he’d thrown her for a loop. But she blinked it away. “You want to see the pictures I’ve taken since I met Oscar—since the day we went to the cabin in Telluride?”
He couldn’t fault her for asking for specifics.
“Yes,” he answered.
As a professional photographer, there were surely images she’d taken for clients that she couldn’t share. He got that. But if photography was what filled her heart, he wanted, no, needed to see what she saw. Like a scholar hungry for knowledge, he wanted to see this side of her. And that started with the photos she’d taken since she’d become Oscar’s nanny.
She shifted in her seat. “Sure, I can email them to you. Do you want them now?”
“Yeah, my email is my first and last name at Crystal Cricket dot com,” he answered, fueled by this desire.
She picked up the camera and tapped the display screen.
He watched her work. “Do you still have the old camera? The one from Harper’s grandmother?” he asked as the screen lit her face in a white glow.
“I wish. I sold it to an antique shop in Denver a few months ago to pay for a zoom lens for this camera,” she replied. “I didn’t get as much as I could have because I carved my name on the bottom.” A sweet smile pulled at the corners of her mouth. “I wonder about it. You know, who’s using it now? Where is it in the world? Seeing it again would really be like going back to the beginning.”
Back to the beginning.
There it was again—that phrase that bound them together.
“There are hundreds of images. It might take a few minutes for the email to go through,” she said, setting the camera on the table. “But while we have some time, and now that Oscar’s asleep, I wanted to show you this.” She removed a folded sheet of paper from inside her notebook. “Oscar’s teacher gave it to me. It’s a letter.”
He frowned. “From the teacher? Is there a problem?”
When he was a kid, a note from the school was never a good thing.
“No, it’s a letter written by Oscar. It was an assignment. The kids got to choose to write a letter to anyone. He addressed his to his mom, to Holly.”
Holly.
The sound of her name didn’t shred his heart the way it used to. But that didn’t mean the pain had disappeared. He steadied himself. “Oscar didn’t mention a letter.”
“He doesn’t know that she gave it to me. But I’m glad she did. I think she’s keeping a close eye on him with the changes he’s been going through in such a short time.”
“The information about Holly’s death is probably in the file from his school in Telluride,” he added.
Charlotte nodded. “I think so.”
He focused on the folded sheet of paper as his stomach twisted into knots. “Is it bad?”
“Just read it,” she answered, sliding the sheet across the table.
With his heart hammering, he unfolded the page. It was the first time he’d seen his son’s handwriting. He concentrated on the carefully formed letters, reading each word as his pounding heart jumped into his throat. “He thinks I’m nice,” he read, his voice barely a whisper.
Charlotte nodded.
“I have a Charlotte now,” he said, quoting his son.
