Page 21 of Love Notes & Lifelines
From: Lottie
Subject: RE: RE: New Client!!!!
Stella,
I understand your hesitancy, and in any other circumstance, I would agree. However, you’re a perfect match, and I don’t have anyone else who even comes close at this time. Beck is yours.
Lottie
Freaking Lottie and her seventy-page personality assessment—does it really matter how well we align? According to her, yes.
Is it weird that I’ve never spoken to this woman in any way other than email? Yes. Is it weirder that I know nothing about her? Also yes. But when Elijah handed me her card, I jumped at the chance. She pays well, and she pays on time, and that’s really all I care about.
Well, that and how the heck I’m going to see Beck at the office and talk him down at night.Why did I give him a fake name?But I know the answer. In Lottie’s onboarding session, she said the number one rule was to keep a professional distance from our clients so they don’t become too attached, and I panicked when I heard his voice. Beck will see this as a betrayal—I know he will. So he can never, ever find out.
This has disaster written all over it—The Parent Traphad nothing on this.
CHAPTER SIX
BECK
The girls have beenin my home for three days now. That’s three days of them in my office, playing with Stella, which means three days of Caleb up my ass about her workload piling up.
But it also means three days in which Emmy has retreated from the world, and three days of no sleep for me. I exhale sharply and allow my head to hit the door behind me.
I own the most exclusive spas and luxury brand in the world, and I’m sitting on my ass in a hallway, in front of the girls’ room while they sleep. I have every type of baby monitor known to man, but I’m terrified of what will happen if I don’t hear them when they need me.
I scroll through my phone and respond to the emails I can, but Caleb’s right. Work is piling up, and I’m breaking down. How did Cally raise these girls herself?
It’s so damn hard.
Daisie Dog flops her big body over the top of my legs. At least I have her when all hell breaks loose. She’s turned out to be better than a magic trick when the girls spiral, which isn’t often, at least not Emmy. Ruby is on another planet, and I mean that in the best, most loving uncle-ish way possible. But they love Dog—well, Daisie Dog. Emmy doesn’t speak up often, but she will not call her Dog.
Daisie Dog paws at my leg relentlessly. Squinting one eye, I reach down with one hand and scratch her ears. “What am I going to do, girl?”
She makes a doggy noise I interpret as, “We’ve got this,” as I reopen my email app with my free hand.
Twenty-two emails from Caleb. Each one more important than the next, and all I can do is stare at them—even understanding their importance, I simply have nothing left to give tonight. I’ve spent the last twelve years of my life building a company I could be proud of, one that would restore the Hayes name and eclipse the crumbling Delacroix Holdings brand that was once Hayes and Delacroix.
And I’ve done it. They’re so far down the list they’re not even on the same page as me. How could Cally have seen something so different in them?
What did she see that I cannot?
A sound I don’t recognize has me jumping to my feet and tiptoeing into the girls’ room. Ocean sounds play while fish and waves dance and glow on the ceiling as they move around the room from a projector on the dresser. That was the best fifty dollars I’ve ever spent.
Both girls appear to be sleeping, so I check the corners and the closets while Daisie Dog sniffs behind me. I’m not sure what I’m searching for, but this is what Cally used to do for me, and she’s the only point of reference I have for this shit.
“Uncle Beck Daddy?”
That ridiculous name makes my chest burn every time, but I cross the room in two long strides. “What’s wrong, Emmy?”
Her giant green eyes brim with tears. “I miss my mommy,” she sobs. I can tell she’s trying to hold it in, so she doesn’t wake Ruby, and it slices me wide open.
I lift her from the bed and hug her tightly as I carry her to the family room. I hug her like I’ll never let her go. I hug her like she’s mine.
Like she’s mine.That log in my throat rolls over and jams itself into my esophagus.
“I’m so sorry, lovebug. I know you miss her.” Sadness pinches my words—real, extensively brutal sadness. “I miss her too.”
