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"See you in the morning, captain," he replies as he turns on his heel and stalks toward the big stairs, and disappears down the dimly lit hall. I hold my breath until he's out of sight, and then collapse against the wall, alone with my thoughts, my worries and—
The weird ghost of a feeling in me, imagining wrongly what it'd be like tomorrow if I wasn't a nanny, if I was someone that would walk the red carpet.
My eyes close and I can feel it, the sun beating down on me, the lights, the flash of cameras that are so intense and overwhelming it blinds me. The sound of the crowd, of a thousand voices talking at once until it becomes a mess of noise. Someone takes my hand. I look up. Benedict is there, holding my fingers gently in his.
"Are you coming?" He asks, and tucks my hand into the crook of his arm.
My eyes pop open and I jerk forward like I've been zapped.
The hall is empty and dark as ever. I'm alone. I turn and hurry up the stairs, leaving it behind, the ghost of a future that canneverbe.
12
Benedict
If there's one thing my brother is, that's predictable. A second thing? He's not able to say no to Maddie for anything. He might act stern, and he's thrown me around more than once (and fuck if I've given back as good as I got), but with his daughter, he might as well be a toasted marshmallow.
The best part is that he knows he's easy, what I'm doing tonight, and he's letting me get away with murder. He's probably betting on it being too big of a crowd at the movie premiere, that it's a children's comedy flick, and that'll keep me in line. No lie, I'd never do anything to make my niece feel uncomfortable. But a lot can go over a kid's head if you word it right.
I don't mind going to a children's show because the scriptwriters will pack it with things to makemelaugh. Double-fucking-entendre indeed.
Nothing's out of the ordinary as Maddie meets me after breakfast with a big hug and loads into the limo without a thought. She has two books in either hand and a pink backpack carried by a footman stuffed with even more.
I'm sure she gets her reading addiction from my brother. Her mother's not exactly the literary type.
Miss Bell appears a few moments after I've gotten settled in the back of the limo, Maddie under one of my arms. Miss Bell's got another backpack, and what looks like a thermos, in her hands. Her face is grim, like she's going to war.
I watch Miss Bell for a few minutes as Maddie tries to read to me, my fingers curling absently in her hair. The limo's already moving, and we'll be on my home turf soon enough, away from my brother and all his idiotic rules and pronouncements.
"I'm sorry your father couldn't come," Miss Bell says to Madeline, who lifts her eyes from her book for a moment before burying back into it.
"He's working," she says.
I'm not sorry at all.I don't say it, but Miss Bell looks at me like she heard my thoughts.
I know she's not a mind-reader. The fact she even got into this vehicle in the first place tells me she possesses exactly zero psychic ability.
She'd have handed in her resignation three nights ago if it were otherwise.
Unless she is psychic and is just fine with all the filthy thoughts I've been having about her—
We slow down in traffic, and Maddie's already three books into her stack that she's liberated from her backpack.
"Did you want to do the red carpet?" I ask her. She shakes her head, and goes back to her book. Is it just me, or does Miss Bellsag in relief against the back of her seat?
I grab a bottle of water for them from the fridge, and Miss Bell's eyes light up.
"Can I put her lunch in there?" She asks, not phrasing it right. It should have been, 'Can I put Lady Madeline's lunch in there?' but I'm not going to stand on protocol.
I hold out the bottle toward her, urging her to take it.
"Of course," I say. She reaches, her fingers brushing against mine.
So far watching her has given me electricity, made it hard to think when she's in the room, because all my thoughts turn to fucking.
Even now.
Which makes me a disgusting beast. I've been doing what I can to wrestle it to the side, because this is afamilyevent today, and I don't need another red carpet blunder for my brother to use an excuse to deny me taking Madeline anywhere.
