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“Did you meet my Uncle? He doesn’t know anything about dinosaurs, but I been teaching him.”
I try to force a smile on my face, but I’m having trouble. “Hey, Jaxon,” I say. I feel like I just ran a marathon. My breath is coming in quick gasps.
I glance at Harrison, then Jaxon. “Actually, I need to go to the bathroom before we start playing. Wait just a minute, okay, buddy?”
Jaxon walks me to the bathroom, bouncing up and down on his toes.
Once I’ve shut the door behind me, I try to breathe out all the tough emotions. I want to call Vivi. I want to tell her what’s just happened, but I can’t. Not right now.
I have a job to do, and Garrett was right.
I desperately need this job.
I breathe in and out slowly, and I feel the ball of emotion in my throat start to release. I can deal with these thoughts and feelings later. Jaxon goes to bed in three hours, and then, I can cry my soul out in this bathroom, away from all the cameras if I want.
But until then, I’m going to paste on my Jaxon’s best friend mask and get to work.
One more slow, deep breath later, I open the door.
“You didn’t flush,” Jaxon tells me, making me laugh right away.
I go back in and flush, then follow Jaxon to the living room that is now devoid of Harrison and Garrett. Some of my anxiety returns as I imagine them talking… about me.
Chapter twenty
Harrison
“You hired Breanna?” Garrett asks me as soon as I start backing out of the garage.
He should be admiring how my car runs. Yesterday, when I showed him both of my cars, he was prattling about models and years. We made a great connection about cars, even though I’m not as much into them as Garrett is apparently.
But now, Garrett is scowling like I have personally affronted him.
“Well, let me see, my nanny decides to leave because my three-year-old behaves like a three-year-old and has tantrums sometimes. I need to hire a new one. Let me just ask about all of her exes. That would be an appropriate interview question.”
“You know, maybe you should have. Did you ever stop to wonder why she suddenly appeared here? She knew who you were.”
I pause at the end of the driveway to put in the coordinates for the bar that Garrett picked out. I don’t answer him right away which gives Garrett the chance to continue to explain how everything I’ve done up until this point in my life is all wrong.
“She has to know your last name. You have a contract or a check or something, right?”
I nod.
“Well, there you go. She researched you. She found you and targeted you because you’re my brother. You can’t pretend she didn’t know. We share the same last name and basically the same face.”
I roll my eyes at Garrett, annoyed by this mini temper tantrum he’s throwing. We do have similar looks. I’ll give him that. But he’s also put on about thirty pounds since I last saw him and it has softened his jawline, making him look completely different.
I want to believe that Breanna didn’t “target” me. It doesn’t seem possible, not with what I know now of her character.
“Okay, let’s play with your theory for a minute,” I say, turning left out of the driveway and starting on the twenty minute drive. “Let’s say she did decide to come here and infiltrate herself in my life. How could she possibly know my nanny was going to quit with no notice?”
“She made her do it,” Garrett says, pulling this idea out of thin air. “She offered her money or… something good enough to make her quit.”
I shake my head, not buying it. “No way. She’s not going to find another position that pays as much as I do.”
“Maybe Breanna offered half of what you pay to her and is only keeping half for herself. Would you quit a job if you could still get half the pay for doing nothing?”
I lick my lips, imagining the scenario.
