AllFreeNovel
Share Us
And for Abe she had made this hellish night so much better.
‘Do you ever get asked to stay on?’ Abe asked.
‘All the time.’ Naomi nodded and then took the last bit of her pizza and he waited, watching the column of her pale throat as she swallowed, before asking another question.
‘And do you ever consider it?’
‘Never.’
‘Ever?’ he checked, for she sounded so adamant.
‘Never, ever.’
‘Why not?’
She looked into the fire and wondered how to answer him. Naomi never told her employers her real reason for declining.
She would never even consider staying on. In fact, it was stipulated in the terms of her employment that a permanent nanny be signed to take over before Naomi commenced her role. And should that fall through, it was specified that an agency be used, for she would not be extending her contract.
No matter how wonderful the terms or the family.
Actually, because of just that.
‘Why don’t you stay in one place?’ he asked again, and now he did probe, because suddenly Abe really wanted to know some more about her.
‘I guess because I’ve never stayed in one place for very long. We do what we’re used to, I suppose. Revert to type...’
But he shook his head at her excuses.
Abe wasn’t buying it.
‘Why?’ he asked again.
He was brilliant at maths, but she didn’t add up.
Abe wasn’t one for sitting talking by a fire, but she’d made him feel at ease, she made the place feel like a home, yet she chose not to have one for herself.
‘You want to know why?’ She looked at him then, blue eyes on black as they held the other’s gaze.
‘Yes.’
‘Because I’d fall in love with the family,’ Naomi said. ‘And then one day it would be time for me to leave.’
Her blue eyes were serious, and there was no trace of tears, which told him this was no revelation, she had known this about herself for a very long while.
Naomi twisted his heart in a way no one else could, and a hell of a lot had tried.
She twisted a heart that Abe hadn’t even known he had.
He wanted to reach for her.
It was as instinctive as that.
And he wanted to chase her loneliness away in the only way he knew how.
Abe looked down at her full lips, all shiny from the food they had shared, and he wondered about her pepperoni kisses and just laying her down and taking her by the fire.
He wouldn’t.
