He enveloped her in his arms, tucking her head under his chin. She melted into his embrace, her warmth and familiar scent providing a fleeting respite from the chaos.
“This isn’t your fault,” he said, planting a soft kiss atop her head.
She sniffled against the hollow of his neck.
“But your career… your reputation… the girls…” she murmured.
She was astute; the same thoughts were cascading through his own mind.
You fucking idiot,he chastised himself.You absolute moron.
What he had just told Sunny was absolutely correct. This wasn’t her fault; it was his. He should never have allowed himself to cross the line with her. It was a moment of weakness, a desperate grasp for fleeting happiness after months of desolation. But one indulgent mistake had spiraled into a tangled web of complications that now threatened his family.
The hard truth was that Sunny should never have been in the house to begin with. It was too much of a temptation. The nanny should have been a matronly, grandmotherly figure — mature and strict. Someone with whom there was no chance of crossing the line. Liam had to come clean with himself. Hiring Sunny was about more than just her credentials, even if he refused to admit that at the time. Now look where that had gotten him.
Gently extricating himself from her arms, Liam scrubbed a hand over his face before running it through his hair.
“Maybe… maybe we should take a step back. At least until this blows over.”
The crestfallen look on Sunny’s face pierced his heart, but he knew it was for the best. Getting entangled in a messy public scandal could derail his remaining career and devastate his little girls.
She hitched a breath and straightened her posture slightly.
“I understand,” she said, her voice low as she swiped at the tears streaking her flushed cheeks. “I’ll start looking for another position.”
The thought of her leaving twisted his gut into knots.
“No, Sunny…” he blurted out, reaching for her hand without thinking.
But she recoiled from his touch, her shoulders hunched as she retreated into herself like a wounded animal.
Liam’s outstretched fingers grasped at empty air. He felt unmoored and unsure of himself. He could already envision the hurt and confusion on Maddie and Hailey’s faces if Sunny walked out of their lives as abruptly as she’d entered. Not to mention his own feelings. The clouds had only just started to lift from his life.
Fuck, fuck, fuck! What do I do?
What other choice did he have? Really? Risking his daughters’ well-being over some fleeting romantic dalliance was unacceptable, no matter how strongly he was drawn to Sunny’s light. She was the hired help, not family, as much as it pained him to echo Morgan’s cruel words.
Slumping back onto the couch, Liam dropped his head into his hands, digging the heels of his palms into his eye sockets until starbursts danced across his vision. This soul-wrenching torment felt all too familiar, a haunting echo of the grief that had consumed him after Kate’s death.
Only this time, the prospect of losing Sunny represented a different kind of devastation — one of his own making through selfishness and poor judgment. Fate seemed to have granted him a second chance at happiness, a lifeline in his bleakest hour, but it was an illusion. Amirage. It could never be.
The muffled sound of Sunny’s soft weeping pierced him like a shard of glass. He wanted nothing more than to gather her back into his arms, to shield her from the harsh realities they now faced. But that protective instinct — the need to be her rock — was a large part of what had landed them in this predicament.
Scrubbing a hand over his face again, Liam finally turned to face the woman who had parted the dark clouds engulfing him.
“Hey…” he rasped, the word catching in his dry throat. “Hey. You can’t leave.”
Slowly, she lifted her head, her eyes glassy yet still radiating a spark of the light he found so enthralling.
“But you said…” she began.
“I know what I said,” Liam replied, desperately needing her to understand. “Taking a break from… us… is for the best right now. But I can’t let you walk away from the girls. They need you, Sunny.”
He needed her too, though those words remained caught in his tangled branches of pride and self-preservation.
Sunny’s delicate features crumpled once more as fresh tears spilled down her flushed cheeks.
“You don’t know how much I care about them, Liam,” she admitted. “They mean everything to me.”
