AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Henley!” Lucy screams so loudly the window rattles.
She’s off the barstool and racing across the kitchen before I can spin around.
When my body finally listens to the signals firing from my tired brain, my mind is overloaded for the second time this year. Long legs, a sweltering midsection, and shorts—those goddamn fucking shorts—that should be illegal confront me.
Henley’s hair is back to its natural coloring, but the length remains the same as the last time I saw her. Excluding the faintest sliver of silver running across her delicate neck, she is without a single blemish.
Well, if you don’t class freckles as blemishes.
I don’t. Particularly when they belong to a woman as beautiful as Henley.
After bobbing down to remove the tears careening down Lucy’s face, Henley balances her on her hip like she didn’t turn the big six only weeks ago, before she slowly strolls my way.
The tension is still there.
The heat.
I just do a horrendously poor job of hiding it this time around.
My hand is so clammy, when Henley holds hers out in offering, it almost skids across her palm when I accept her friendly gesture.
After hiding her grimace, Henley greets, “Hi, I’m Henley Elsher. Your new nanny.”
Over Lucy’s ecstatic squeals, and while shaking Henley’s hand, I reply, “Brodie Davis. The father promising you will be way more than that.” Before I tug her in close and seal my lips over hers.
BONUS CHAPTER
HENLEY
Earlier…
I’ve never been one for stargazing, but today’s sky is a peculiar blue. It is almost translucent, meaning even with it being only a little after noon, several stars are poking through the haze of pollution that forever clogs city skylines.
Or perhaps it’s the wetness in my eyes that no number of “harden up” comments can dry.
I’m so sick of being trodden on and mistreated. It is an endless cycle of “do this” and “do that.”
My thoughts and opinions don’t matter.
Not even my mental stability does.
I’m just a prop to the people who brought me here.
A gimmick to be used and abused.
My father would roll in his grave if he saw how his colleagues have treated me. I’m tired of being puppeteered. I just want a minute to remember what it was like to attend a party without wondering if your so-called boyfriend is spiking your drinks or if you’ll stumble onto the man who killed your mother when you wake up hungover after not touching a drop of alcohol.
I want to live so badly that I’d even go back to the shameful teenage years if it were all that was offered.
I was one of those awkward-legs-too-long-for-their-body girls at school. I had no idea how to control the natural kinks of my snow-white hair and no desire to learn a good skin routine. Why suffer through unjust protocols when my mother’s teachings on self-worth assured me time and time again that even the ugliest duckling would eventually flourish into a beautiful swan?
Don’t shred her to pieces just yet. Her wording will forever be more elegant than mine. She raised me with a backbone strong enough to render me unscathed through my gawky teen years, but regretfully, that steel rod crumbled like chalk on a poorly constructed driveway when I lost her.
My wavy locks are now under control, and my makeup is appealing despite its blandness, but I haven’t known who I am for a long time. The shell is unchanged. It is as firm and presentable as the girl who stood on the front steps of a local police department, demanding to speak to someone in charge, like it wouldn’t be the last nail in my family’s coffin.
My insides are hollow.
There’s no warmth about me.
No spark.
My eyes are dull and lifeless… much like hers.
As my eyes follow a little girl’s trek across the courtyard reflecting the haze of a hot day, my heart rate kicks up a beat. Her nose is as cute as a button, her eyes as brown as the earth she should be terrorizing, but there’s no fire in her engine, no true signs of life.
She looks a little lost, and I wonder how similar our predicaments are when the man racing her across the empty courtyard drops to his knees to tie up her loose shoelace.
He’s doing everything right. The hair ruffle after securing her trip hazard, and the sneaky grin when she huffs about his overbearing nature, but he can’t give her the one thing she wants more than anything.
A mother.
Her little pout announces this, much less what the man says when his focus shifts back to the cell phone attached to his ear. “I was meant to be here by ten, but Lucy’s new nanny missed her train. Nancy said Ms. Seabourn won’t arrive until four.” He glances down at Lucy, who looked up when he said her name, before scanning the building of glass and steel several feet in front of her. “Grayson said I could bring her with me, but I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
