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Next door? “You’re not in the nanny’s quarters in the basement?”
She shook her head. “The doctor and I agreed it made sense for me to be close at hand when Jennie was ill.” Her gaze was very level. “Your sister agreed. The house has so many bedrooms—all of them empty. It seemed silly for me to stay two floors away from Jennie.”
“Of course.”
His lukewarm response caused her to say quickly, “I’m here to look after your daughter. As long as she’s happy and healthy, does it matter where I sleep?”
Nick could hardly confess that the thought of her living here—on the same floor as him, a short distance from the master suite—was going to drive him crazy.
At least, he supposed, his mind would be at peace knowing Jennie was well looked after. Even if his body was on red alert.
He suppressed a groan.
So much for getting any sleep…
Three
The next day Candace glanced at her watch for the hundredth time in the past five minutes. The minute hand had crawled to twenty minutes past noon.
Where was Nick?
On her lap, Jennie gurgled and gazed avidly at the two identically dressed boys on the opposite side of the doctor’s reception room, who appeared hell-bent on stripping the florist ribbon out of a flower arrangement. Their harried-looking father kept telling them to stop, to no avail. The twins had arrived half an hour after Candace, right on the heels of a little girl with a rash on her face.
That patient had already been sent in ahead, Candace having elected to miss Jennie’s scheduled appointment time and wait for Nick to arrive. Who was now forty minutes late. With every passing moment, it was becoming clearer that Nick had no intention of keeping the promise he’d made.
Candace had tried to call him several times. Only to get his voice mail. She should’ve expected this. He’d told her he was busy. But she’d blissfully thought this time he would put Jennie first…before work.
Had he ever intended to come? Or had he sent her on ahead with the chauffeur simply to get her out of his hair?
It didn’t matter what excuse he’d make later, it wouldn’t take away the ache of…of…disappointment…in Candace’s heart.
She told herself the emotion she was feeling had nothing to with her ambivalent relationship with Nick…or with the desire he’d awakened within her last night. She told herself it was all about Jennie.
By not arriving for the appointment, by not even bothering to let Candace know he’d bailed, he’d irrevocably let Jennie down.
With his round face and ruddy complexion, the snowy-bearded man seated behind the heavy antique desk twiddling a pen between his fingers looked like every child’s vision of Santa Claus.
Nick had been taken in by the air of jolly bonhomie when he’d first met Desmond Perry—until he’d discovered that the devil himself lurked behind that merry mask. Now he couldn’t figure out how he’d failed to notice the splinters of ice in the startling blue eyes.
“The final payment is done.” It had given Nick enormous satisfaction to come here, into Desmond Perry’s lair, to tell him that. He glanced at his watch and pushed back the chair he’d taken because Desmond had clearly expected him to stand. He rose now to his full intimidating height. “I won’t have a cup of coffee—” the older man hadn’t offered “—because I have an appointment.”
Desmond carefully set the pen he’d been twirling between his blunt fingers down on the leather inset of the desk. “You should know I plan to sell my stock in Valentine’s,” he said.
Nick said very softly, “You what?”
“I will be selling my share of your business as soon as Jilly’s estate has been settled.”
His share? For a moment Nick could only stare at his father-in-law in disbelief. Then reality sank in. Desmond was talking about Jilly’s stocks. The stock that in terms of their prenuptial agreement Nick had given to his wife. Stock that Jilly had then bequeathed to her father in her will.
With Jilly’s sudden death brought on by a virus, Desmond no longer needed to pretend any loyalty toward the son-in-law he’d bought for his daughter—but never liked. Mostly his own fault, Nick knew; he’d been unable to kowtow to the man, be the obsequious puppet Desmond had expected. For seven years he’d worked night and day to maintain the astronomical payments to repurchase the garden center Desmond had tricked Nick’s mentors, Bertha and Henry Williams, into selling.
By giving Nick a job, Bertha and Henry had saved Nick from sure trouble when he’d been a teen. And though he’d gone on to establish his own business, he couldn’t stand by and watch them lose the garden center they’d loved…and the home they occupied on the premises. And wily Desmond had known that.
