by Callie Hart
“That’s right. Thanks, Hilary. Ophelia, come and sit down. Let’s go through a few house rules, shall we?” Cool as ever, Ronan sauntered into the room and sat himself down on the sectional, throwing one arm over the back of the sofa. His body wasn’t as rigid as it had been back in New York, but there was still a reserved quality to him that made him seem remote and detached from everything around him. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but that standoff-ish quality was all at once both so overwhelming and so incredibly subtle that it made my head spin.
I went and sat on the other side of the sofa, perching myself on the edge, knees pressed together, hands resting on my thighs, back ramrod straight.
“You look very uncomfortable,” he said. “Don’t be. This is your home now, Ophelia. For the next six months, anyway. Relax. You’ll be miserable here otherwise. And I don’t want that.”
He was right, but it was going to take me a little longer than five minutes for me to start throwing my feet up on the furniture and lounging around in my sweats. Still, I leaned back into my seat, trying not to be so stiff. “You said there were house rules?”
“Only one or two. Simple, obvious things that don’t need saying, I’m sure. For the sake of clarity, however, it’d probably be better to just get them out of the way and then we can both move on. Agreed?” I hadn’t noticed the way his cheeks dimpled before. Probably because he hadn’t smiled once during our meeting in New York. Now, with the faint suggestion of amusement teasing at the corners of his mouth, they were just about visible. Connor had inherited the feature from his father. It was crazy how alike they were.
“Firstly,” he said, holding up his index finger. “I wanted to thank you. I know…I know I’m not an easy person to be around, Ophelia, and I also know that I wasn’t very…” He seemed to grope for the remainder of his sentence. It took him a while before he continued. “I wasn’t very pleasant at your interview.”
“No, you weren’t. You were a jerk.” The words tumbled out of my mouth before I could stop them. Oh, shit. Where the hell did that come from? Too late to clap my hand over my mouth and shut myself up. Impossible to claw the words back into my mouth where they belonged. What was wrong with me? Ronan’s eyebrows lifted slowly, his eyes burning a hole in the side of my face. I couldn’t look at him. Not directly, anyway. I could only manage a pained sideways glance. He looked a little stunned.
“Wow. No one has been that frank with me since Magda died,” he said.
“I’m sorry. That was out of line. I shouldn’t have—”
“No, no, please. I was a jerk. I behaved in a very jerky manner. For that I apologize. I’m not in the habit of being nice to people anymore. I should probably have had someone else interview you.” His voice was rich and smooth, like warm coffee. The accent I’d had such a hard time placing on him when we first met made a little more sense now, here on the island, where it seemed nearly all of the occupants were of Irish descent. It was barely there, but a couple of words he said were faintly tinted with a little brogue. Listening to Ronan speak was an unexpected pleasure that made my toes curl inside my shoes.
“I doubt you would have allowed someone else to make an important decision like that for you,” I said. “You don’t strike me as the sort of person who would entrust the care of his children with just anyone.”
He looked at me for a long time. And then: “You’re right. I wouldn’t. So here I am, apologizing, and here you are, so far from home. A stranger in a strange land.” He turned and looked out of the window beside him, eyes fixed on something in the distance. “I suppose that leads me to the most important rule I’d like you to adhere to. You don’t know anyone here on the island. It would be tempting, I suppose, to try and make friends. Guy friends. Maybe someone special to spend time with. Romantically,” he added on the end, as if his point wasn’t being made quite clearly enough. I was hearing him loud and clear, though, and I was already squirming in my seat.
“Ronan, believe me. I’m not planning on shimmying down a drainpipe to go and hit first base with a local. I’m here to look after the children. That’s it. I have no interest whatsoever in meeting people, male or otherwise.”
He gave me a tight-lipped, awkward smile. “I’m sure that’s true. But like I said. Best to just get these things out in the open and then we can move on. I don’t want any guys brought into the house at any point, okay? I definitely don’t want you to have guests in your room. I don’t ever want there to be a situation where Connor or Amie might find a man they don’t know wandering around in his underwear, okay?”
My cheeks were crimson; they had to be. A mixture of outrage and embarrassment fired through me, fizzling just under the surface of my skin. I felt like I was burning up all over. “I’m not that easy,” I snapped. “I wouldn’t just invite a guy back to my room to hook up, if that’s what you’re implying.”
Ronan shook his head, now looking down into his own lap. “I’m not implying anything. I’m just stating what the rules are. I’m sorry if you find that offensive, Ophelia, but my children are very important to me.”
“I know. Of course they are. But—”
“The only other thing I ask of you is that you don’t ever let them down onto the beach by themselves. Somehow swimming lessons seemed unnecessary in New York. Stupid, I know. I plan on dealing with the matter, getting them enrolled in classes as soon as possible, but for now if they’re outside, don’t let either one of them out of your sight. Agreed?”
I wanted to defend myself further—it was insane that he thought I was going to be throwing myself at random men, left, right and center—but I could see backtracking and arguing with him over this wasn’t going to serve any greater good. “Yes. I’ll be very vigilant of them, you have my word.”
“Good. Now, the library on the top floor is at your disposal. There’s a home movie theatre in the basement that you can use to watch movies with the kids. You can use that for your own personal use in the evenings as well, once the children have gone to bed, but you should always keep your ear out for them. Amie’s usually pretty good at going to bed and staying there, but Connor’s a night owl. He’ll be up and wandering around in the middle of the night if he can get away with it.”
“Yes. Not a problem. I can handle that.” My mind was still reeling from the prospect of an entire library upstairs along with a movie theatre downstairs to register much of the other house features that Ronan then explained to me. I did get something about a guest quarters. A lap lane swimming pool, also downstairs, that the children were allowed to play in while supervised, since it was only four feet deep.
“The only area of the house that is off limits to you is my study,” Ronan said. “I have a lot of sensitive documents in there. I could literally go to prison if unauthorized people caught sight of them. It’s really important that Connor and Amie never go in my study, Ophelia. Never. Under any circumstances. Promise me right now that you’ll never let them inside.”
An intensity had overtaken Ronan, a fierceness shining in his eyes as he spoke about his office. His tone was sharp, harder than I thought it probably needed to be. So sad that the guy was so desperate to lock himself away in his study away from his children all the time. I knew lots of parents that were like that back in California, though. There were an awful lot of investment bankers and people working in the financial quarter back in Manhattan Beach, and a lot of them had very little time for their sons and daughters. In Ronan’s case, the loss of his wife must have had a lot to do with his reluctance to spend quality time with his kids. I hadn’t seen a picture of Magda, but it would be strange if her children didn’t carry some piece of her in the way they looked, the way their voices sounded, or the things they said. It had to be hard for him to even look at them sometimes, even now.
“I promise I won’t let them into your study. Ever,” I said. “Over my dead body.”
Ronan winced—a flutter of uncharacteristic emotion that made me cringe myself. I should really have learned
by now to think before opening my mouth. I had no idea how his wife had died. It could have been an accident. It could have been some awful, fatal mistake that had cost her her life, and here I was making over my dead body jibes. God. Way, way too soon.
“They’re very well-behaved most of the time,” Ronan said. “If you tell them not to do something, they usually obey. You won’t need to reprimand them very often. If you do have to punish them for acting up, I’ve found the most effective way to do that is to have them sit down and write me a letter, explaining what the problem is and why they’re not on best behavior.”
Not what I was expecting at all. Most parents confiscate their kids’ technology to teach them a lesson these days. It was the most unimaginative way to control the way they conducted themselves, and yet it was also the easiest route. The kids weren’t going to kick and scream or create a scene in public if you took their iPads. They were going to be silent as church mice until you gave that shit back. If you threatened to take cell phones away, you could practically work miracles with a child’s attitude.
Ronan didn’t operate like that, though. He wanted his kids to sit down and reflect on their actions, to process them, and to communicate their feelings as best they could. For Amie, only five, writing down her thoughts was probably still next to impossible, but it was a refreshing ideology, that was for sure.
Ronan got to his feet. “I’m glad we got that ironed out. If you don’t have any questions, then I’d say it’s time to meet the little hellions, wouldn’t you?”
CHAPTER SIX
Angels and Demons
Connor and Amie Fletcher were both part angel, part demon. I knew I was going to have fun wrangling them into touch the moment I laid eyes on them. Connor sat across from me in his bedroom, feet hanging off the end of his bed, and he refused to meet my eye. Amie, on the other hand, couldn’t stop staring at me, like I was some sort of ghost.
“You don’t look like Mommy,” she said. Turning to her father, she pouted, staring at him accusingly. “Hilary said she looked like Mommy. I heard.”
“No, he said she reminded him of Mommy. That can mean a lot of different things, sweetheart. If someone speaks or acts or talks in a similar way to another person, you can say that they remind you of them. Understand?”
Amie nodded; she looked like she’d just had her heart broken by this news. Two seconds later, she was running around, giggling in a high-pitched voice, playing with a plastic toy Stegosaurus like the disappointment hadn’t even occurred. Connor sat quietly, staring at his sneakers, chewing on his bottom lip.
“Connor, please stand up and say hello to Ophelia. She’s going to be taking care of you a lot over the next few months. You’re going to like her, I promise.” Great. I really wished he hadn’t said that. If kids wanted to be difficult for the hell of it, they’d go against whatever you told them, regardless of whether it made any sense to them. Connor might have thought I was the coolest teacher cum nanny there ever was once he got to know me, but the moment Ronan told him he was going to like me, to get along with me, he pretty much guaranteed that Connor was going to rail against the very idea of me.
“I don’t even get why we had to come here,” he said under his breath. “I hate this house. None of my friends are here.”
“It’s okay, bud. School’s going to start soon, and you’ll make plenty of friends.”
“What is she going to be doing with us then?” he asked quietly.
“Ophelia’s going to get you up in the morning. She’s going to be make your breakfast and take you to school. And when you get back from school, she’ll take you for a swim downstairs. She’ll play with you. She’ll help you with your schoolwork. That will be okay, right?”
So he really had meant it when he said he didn’t want to be distracted. According to his list of the duties I was expected to carry out, Ronan wasn’t going to have a single interaction with his kids from one day to the next. Didn’t even sound like he planned on sticking his head through the door and kissing them goodnight.
The whole thing seemed incredibly strange. Connor slid off the edge of his bed and slumped down onto the floor. He picked up a Lego Star Wars fighter jet and began to dismantle it piece by piece. “It’s too cold here,” he said. “It’s nothing like New York at all.”
Ronan shook his head, bending down in front of his son. Connor didn’t look up, but it was pretty clear he was waiting with baited breath to see what his father would say. “It’s just as cold in New York as it is here,” Ronan informed him. “But no, you’re right. The island’s very different to the city. You’ve got fresh air here. Places to run and play outside. Doesn’t that sound like it would be a fun thing to do? You could even learn how to sail in the summer time. You told me you wanted to do that.”
Connor looked up, over Ronan’s shoulder, straight at me. Only for a second, but the eye contact was long enough to see the fear in his eyes. “I don’t like new people,” he whispered to Ronan.
“It’s okay. Ophelia will only feel new for a little while, and then it’ll be normal that she’s here. Okay?”
Connor didn’t look so sure about that. I’d had to win kids over every single time a new school year started, so I wasn’t worried about tackling that challenge. If I could find a level to connect with him on, we’d be fine. At least that was how it was with normal seven-year-olds. This was a unique situation, though. Connor had lost his mom, and that turned everything on its head.
Ronan seemed completely in love with his children, and they were equally besotted with him. It was surprising: I’d assumed he’d be awkward and irritable around them considering his desperation to spend the next six months locked away in his study while I looked after them, but the opposite was true. He collected Connor up in his arms and sat him in his lap on the floor, chattering and asking him questions about the menagerie of plastic animals he was lining up like they were about to walk two by two into Noah’s Arc. Amie eventually went and sat with them too, using her Stegosaurus to attack Connor’s lions, giraffes and zebras.
Cold, cold Ronan laughed and played along. It seemed he had a warm heart after all, even if it was reserved for some people over others. I couldn’t stop myself from softening to him as I leaned against the wall by the door, watching them quietly play. Then again, I didn’t exactly try and stop myself. Ronan, despite our rocky first meeting and his casual way of implying I wanted to sleep my way through the inhabitants of the island, was weirdly growing on me.
“You’ll probably want to go and get settled now,” he said, catching me off guard when he looked up at me and spoke. “Your room’s the one at the very end of the hall on the right. I had one of the cleaning girls fetch some shampoo and soaps. A hairdryer. That kind of thing. I figured you wouldn’t have time for grocery shopping for a couple of days. The fridge is fully stocked as well. It’ll probably take you the next week to adjust here. After that, I’m sure you’ll have found your feet.”
“They didn’t need to do that. I brought a bunch of stuff with me from home. And don’t worry about grocery shopping or anything like that. I can manage. I’m very capable.”
Ronan gave me an odd, distracted smile, eyes directed right at my face, though I couldn’t help but feel as though he was staring straight through me. “Oh, I know that, Ophelia. That’s why I hired you.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Note
My room was something out of a hotel brochure, all white linens and soft, luxurious throws. A comfortable reading chair was angled by the window to catch the light, and a small desk against the wall was stacked high with books—Causeway Island Wildlife, A guide to East Coast Islands, Patrick Kavanagh and Other Remarkable Irish Poets of the Twentieth Century. It seemed Ronan wanted me to fall in love with The Causeway, and had provided with me enough reading material to make it happen.
I didn’t join the family for dinner. Ronan wanted to spend time alone with the children before I got to work tomorrow, and to be honest I was relieved. I used th
e expansive kitchen on the first floor to cook up a fresh fillet of salmon, some greens and carrots, and I camped out in my room, watching unfamiliar TV shows on the huge flat screen TV in my bedroom. At around eight thirty I tiptoed downstairs to make sure everything was okay—the huge, echoing house was full of shrieks and screams, loud enough to wake the dead. When I stuck my head through the door to the lounge, what I saw made me laugh.
A den, colossal in size, configured out of sofas and bookcases, blue and white and pinstripe bed sheets all pegged together to create one vast canopy that draped down over the lumpy construction. Amie was darting in and out of the many openings in the sheets, screaming at the top of her lungs while Connor chased after her, followed by Ronan, who, surprisingly, was wearing a black patch over his left eye and snarling something in a broad, comedic pirate drawl about tossing them both overboard.
Ronan saw me, our eyes making contact, but he didn’t really acknowledge my presence. His focus was on the children. I left them to it and went back to bed, and the shrieks continued on for at least another hour before silence claimed the house.
Just after eleven, there was a knock on my bedroom door. I was already in my PJs—just perfect. I needed Ronan to see me in my fluffy white and pink flannel nightwear like I needed a hole in the head. I answered the door, trying to hide as much of myself behind the wood paneling as possible. Thank god I hadn’t washed my face and brushed my teeth yet. A ridiculous thought to have, but still…Ronan seeing me without my makeup on? No thanks.
“Hey. Is everything okay?”
He hovered in the hallway, looking far more disheveled than he had earlier. The fire that had possessed him when he was with Connor and Amie seemed to have gone out now, replaced by a general weariness that made him look like he was half asleep on his feet. “Hey, no, everything’s fine.” He rubbed a hand against his jaw, then his forehead. “I just wanted to check in and make sure you were still okay for getting the kids up in the morning. They need to be up at seven.”
