by E. Walsh
Emily laughed. “Oh my god,” she said. “When I was eleven, I was still playing with my fashion dolls! Does that mean I developed at some abnormally slow rate?”
“Not at all,” Kira assured her. “Sexually speaking, some boys can develop faster than their female counterparts. Although my brother would fall under the ‘abnormal’ category, pretty much any way you look at him.” She grinned.
The sound of footsteps approaching the kitchen was followed by a voice calling out to them. “Ah, there you are!” Kira looked up and blinked. In the doorway that led to the formal dining room stood Emily’s father, Benton Carter. Tall, lean but fit, and classically handsome, he did not look like a man in his mid-forties. He had thick, sweeping waves of golden hair and striking, blue-green eyes. He had on a pair of dark slacks and a white dress shirt unbuttoned at the collar and cuffs with the sleeves rolled up. “Emily, darling,” he said, moving toward her with open arms. He had the same British accent as his daughter, his voice a rich baritone.
“Hello, Dad.” Emily met him halfway and they shared a tight embrace. Kira could see a lot of similar features between them, the high cheekbones and fair hair. Emily turned to make introductions. “Dad, this is my friend from Vassar I was telling you about, Kira Bishop. Kira, this is my father, Benton.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Carter,” Kira said. “I’d get up and shake your hand but I’m a little occupied right now.” She indicated the baby reclining in her arm while she held the bottle.
“Quite all right – and please, it’s ‘Benton.’” He treated Kira to a smile that could charm the socks off of Ann Coulter. “I suppose it would be ridiculous at this point to ask if you’ve come about the au pair position…”
Kira lifted her eyebrows in feigned innocence. “Whatever gave you that idea?”
“I saw you when you were upstairs with William in the nursery, through the room’s monitors. I could see and hear everything through the computer in my study. You took charge of the situation quickly and efficiently, and I appreciate that. I was caught up in an important call and would have had to interrupt it when the baby woke up, had you not been there to take care of him.”
“Oh, you mean that wasn’t a simulation?” Kira asked, mildly joking.
Benton leaned in toward Emily. “I like her,” he said, sotto voce.
“I thought you might,” Emily said, looking rather proud as she threw a wink in Kira’s direction. She gave her dad a nudge. “Go have a seat and talk to her. I’ll put the kettle on.”
“Brilliant idea,” Benton said. He walked over and sat down at the table across from Kira. “Well, then, Miss Bishop ....”
“Kira, please,” she said, paying him the same courtesy of starting out on a first-name basis.
“Kira.” He smiled. “What else can you tell me about yourself that my daughter Emily has not already gushed about in phone calls and text messages?”
“Dad!” Emily chastised from the sink as she filled the kettle with water.
“All right, maybe ‘gushed’ is a poor choice of words,” Benton admitted. “But she was quite enthusiastic in listing all your selling points in addition to sending along your resume. I took the liberty of running the standard background check and spoke to your references. Everyone spoke highly of you.”
“That’s good to hear,” Kira said, feeling her face heat up with a modest blush. “As for anything else?” She shrugged and shook her head. “I’ve always loved caring for children. I was the first born of four, so I had the role of Big Sister Protector thrusted upon me at an early age. I started babysitting at twelve and got my first real job working at a local daycare center my second year of high school.”
“And now you’re studying to become a child psychologist.”
“Yes,” Kira said. “I have a special place in my heart for abused and neglected children. I became aware of this problem during my childhood, when I found out one of my friends had been assaulted sexually by her brother. At the daycare, I worked with a boy whose father had physically abused him, his siblings and their mother. I wanted to be able to help these kids to find their way back to some semblance of a ‘normal’ life after the trauma they suffered.”
“That’s quite a noble calling,” Benton said.
“Thank you.”
They continued to chat over tea, with Emily joining in. Conversation shifted away from the interview process to various other topics, from school to music. Kira finished feeding William and offered him to Benton.
“That’s all right, go ahead and hold onto him,” Benton said. “After all, he should start getting accustomed to it…seeing as you’re going to be doing it quite a lot over the next three months.”
Kira’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. She looked over at Emily only to find her expression mirrored on her friend’s face. “What-Are you saying I got the job?” Kira asked, when she could speak again.
“If you’re still interested in accepting it, yes.”
“Yes!” Kira said. “Yes, I am – I will!” She shook her head. “Oh, wow! Thank you, so much!”
“You’re very welcome,” Benton said, and then let out a startled sound when Emily bounded around the table to wrap her arms around his neck in a tight hug. “Oh!” He laughed and patted his daughter’s shoulder. “And thank you for recommending your friend. You saved me the trouble of having to search through a sea of strangers to find someone I could trust implicitly with my family’s safety.”
* * *
Chapter 3
Kira moved in that day. That evening, Sofia came home from spending the day out with some of her friends. Kira could feel the temperature drop the moment Sofia walked into the room. She understood in an instant what Emily had meant by her condescending attitude from the way she reacted when Benton had introduced Kira as their new au pair. American by birth, Sofia liked to pretend she came from royalty. Not only was she cold toward Emily, but she showed little compassion toward her own husband, and the attention she gave William was a syrupy, over the top performance lacking any real empathy. Emily had not exaggerated about this woman: Kira could see right through that thin veneer of poorly-acted caring to the icy center of a pretentious bitch.
Emily stayed a few days while Kira got settled in before taking off on her summer-long trip to Europe. Staying in her friend’s old bedroom did not help Kira’s secret longing. Sharing the double bed with Emily had been torturous.
Caring for William helped Kira to take her mind off her unrequited desires. At seven months old, he was a great baby. Kira loved playing with him, bathing him, and dressing him up for daily outings with his stroller. Sofia would be on the phone, or just heading out. From what Kira could tell, she managed an art gallery and had a lot of clients to meet. She would kiss William on the forehead before taking off and would be gone most of the day. Kira found this to be very odd behavior for a mother.
Even stranger, she discovered, was Benton’s attempt to connect with the baby. One night, as Kira was feeding William in his high chair, Benton came into the kitchen dressed in a tuxedo and looking like James Bond. “Sofia and I are attending a gala this evening,” he said. “We shouldn’t be out too late.” He stood beside the high chair and reached out almost tentatively to stroke William’s head. The baby looked up at him, blinking.
Kira could not contain her observation a moment longer. “I hope you don’t think I’m overstepping my boundaries, here, but I’ve noticed you seem a little nervous about handling your son. I’ve read that sometimes when an infant is delicate there can be some hesitancy to touch it, out of fear of accidentally causing harm.” She cocked her head and peered up at Benton. “Are you having that problem?”
“Hmm? Oh, no – not, it’s not that.” Benton seemed startled, and Kira wondered if she had just put him on the spot with her question. “No…it’s just…” He took a deep breath and let it out again in a rush, shaking his head. “I suppose it might have something to do with the fact that I never expected to become a father ag
ain. I was twenty-two when Emily was born. It had been a difficult pregnancy for her mother. We lost two more children after that before we decided to just stop.” He pressed his lips together and looked down. “It took me five years after losing her to open my heart again to the possibility of loving someone new. That’s when I met Sofia. It was quite unexpected, she just came along…and before I knew it, she was telling me she was pregnant. Now here I am, a father all over again. My children are twenty years apart.” He nodded to William. “I’ll be close to seventy when he goes off to university.”
“You’re still young,” Kira pointed out. “Young enough to still enjoy time spent with your baby. Don’t deny yourself, or him, that joy.”
Benton stared at her. “You’re right,” he said quietly, “I shouldn’t.”
Sofia came into the kitchen, in the process of attaching a diamond chandelier earring to her left earlobe. “There you are,” she said, an edge of frustration in her voice. Her dark hair was twisted up in an elegant bun and she wore a full-length, bright red, off the shoulder evening gown. “Did you already send for the car?”
“Yes,” Benton said. “It’s waiting for us right now.”
“Good,” Sofia said. “Because we’re going to be late.”
“We’re fine,” he assured her. “We have plenty of time.”
“You look lovely this evening,” Kira said, hoping to diffuse the tension by playing to Sofia’s vanity. She offered a smile. “That dress is very flattering.”
Sofia shot a look in Kira’s direction but said nothing. She turned back to Benton. Kira saw the hard set to the older woman’s jaw and the way she glared at her husband before she turned on her heel and marched out of the room, high heels clicking sharply across the polished hardwood floor.
Kira winced. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“You have no reason to apologize,” Benton muttered. “Excuse me, now…I must be going.” With a brief smile and nod to Kira, he followed his wife’s retreat from the kitchen.
* * *
Chapter 4
Over the course of the summer, Kira found herself traveling with Benton, Sofia, and William, usually in conjuncture with an event Benton had to attend as a record producer. They would journey to Los Angeles and stay a week or more at a house he owned in Beverly Hills.
Kira sat outside on the patio with her laptop, William sleeping soundly beside her in his swing, and called Emily for a Skype chat. “Hey, girl!” she said, folding her legs in lotus and adjusting the screen for glare. “Greetings from sunny Southern California! It’s just me and William, chilling by the pool. Your dad is off to some meeting, right now.”
“What about Sofia?” Emily asked, saying the last word like it tasted bad.
“She grabbed the keys to the BMW and took off out the door as soon as get got here,” Kira said. “Off to Rodeo Drive.”
“Why does that not surprise me?” Emily shook her head and chuckled.
“How about you?” Kira asked. “Where are you, today?”
“Vienna,” Emily replied. “It’s beautiful. I really wish you could be here with me right now to enjoy it.”
“Next time,” Kira promised. “Or maybe when we graduate.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” Emily said. “So, where are you bound after this little sojourn to the west coast?”
“Back to New York,” Kira said. “And then your father said something about London.” She paused. “Maybe you could swing over, since we’ll be a lot closer.”
“Oh, that would be brilliant!” Emily enthused. “Maybe Dad will give you the night off, too, so I can show you around.”
“I can’t wait.” Kira felt a tug in her belly at the sight of her friend, and at the thought of being able to get together with her before they saw each other again for the new school year. She really missed Emily. Being away from her only made it worse.
Two weeks later, Benton flew the family and their au pair to England where they took up residence at a house near Kensington Park. They were scheduled to be there for two weeks. As she unpacked, Kira could hear Benton and Sofia engaged in a heated conversation in their bedroom. She could not hear any details, just the overall tone of their voices accompanied by the slamming of doors. Kira sent a text message to Emily.
‘I think they’re having a fight.’
‘Dad and Sofia?’
‘Yes.’
‘What about?’
‘Not sure. When are you coming?’
‘Tomorrow. Will text when I’m leaving.’
‘Can’t wait to see you.’
‘Me, too.’
Kira felt giddy, like she was sixteen again instead of twenty-one. The sound of more slamming doors followed by William crying cut through her excitement. Immediately, she launched herself from her room and went to the nursery to check on the baby. She gathered him up and started bouncing him in her arms and talking in a comforting manner. “Hey, easy…what’s going on, huh? What’s got you so upset?” She wandered out to the main rooms and looked around. She saw Benton pacing the living room, dressed in jeans and a buttoned down shirt, tails out and sleeves rolled to the elbows. He gripped the back of his neck with both hands in frustration. Kira cleared her throat politely. “Is everything okay?” she asked.
Benton whirled around, looking startled, as though he had forgotten she and the baby were in the house. He relaxed visibly and dropped his arms to his sides. “I’m sorry,” he said. He motioned to the front door. “Sofia just…left.”
There was a strange finality in that statement. She retrieved William’s pacifier from the diaper bag and gave it to him before taking him back into the nursery and placing him in his crib. He looked like he would sleep, now. Closing the door down to a crack, she returned to the living room. This time, she found Benton pouring himself glass of scotch from a decanter on a small serving cart. She watched as he knocked back the first two fingers before pouring another double. In the two months she had worked for him, she had never seen him drink. She had also never heard him and Sofia fighting. “Would you like to talk?” she ventured.
“My marriage is a sham,” Benton announced flatly, after downing half of the second drink. “It would appear my wife is still seeing the man she had been dating before we met. She made the mistake of leaving her mobile phone on the washroom counter. A text came in while I was shaving. It was him, telling her to meet him at a hotel room. I know I should have respected her privacy but I couldn’t stop myself from looking back through her text history.” He grimaced. “Half the time when she’s told me she was out with ‘friends,’ she was with him.”
Kira watched him finish the second glass and fill it a third time. She remembered what Emily had told her, how she had believed her stepmother’s infidelity, which came to the question of William. “What are you going to do?” she asked.
“What can I do?” he demanded. He sounded devastated. “We had a prenuptial agreement drawn up in America but we were married here in the United Kingdom, where there’s been some dispute about such contracts.”
“Well, I hate to say this – and I’m only saying it as a psychologist-in-training – but whatever your differences with your wife, there’s someone else you need to consider: William. Maybe the reason you’ve been reluctant to bond with him is because on some subconscious level you know he isn’t yours. If that’s the case, then you should probably have a paternity test to determine who his real father is.” She saw Benton go slightly paler than usual. “It’s better to do it now than to wait and let him grow up thinking he’s unloved, or to find out on his own that his whole life has been a lie. Because I can assure you that is what will happen.”
Benton splashed a fourth serving into his glass. “You know we haven’t had sex since he was born?” he asked quietly. “It had been a difficult pregnancy, and all I could think about was Emily’s mother and how I nearly lost her twice during miscarriages. Sofia suffered from severe post-partum depression, as well. I went so far as to have a vasectomy, so she would
n’t have to endure any contraceptives. But she refused to be touched.” He snorted bitterly. “At least, by me. Now I find out she’s been seeing him all this time…that other man…”
In a sudden fit of rage, he slammed the glass down on the bar cart, hard enough to shatter it against one of the bottles. Kira gasped. She rushed to his side and pulled at his wrist. “Let me see your hand,” she demanded. “I need to see if you cut it.” She checked his palm, turned it over, but found nothing. She breathed a sigh of relief.
She was still holding onto him when she felt his other hand come up and brush her hair back from her face. Surprised, Kira looked up. Benton was staring at her intently. The spike of adrenaline from the scare coupled with something else she could not name; Kira felt her heart pounding rapidly in her chest. “B—.”
He silenced her with a kiss, his mouth covering hers, pressing almost desperately, insistently. Kira resisted for all of a few moments. He slid his hands down around her waist and pulled her up close to him. Slowly, she wound her arms around his neck and returned his kiss, sucking at his lips, opening her mouth to admit his tongue.
It became a rush of movement and sensation from that moment. Benton worked his hands up under Kira’s shirt, cupping her breast through her bra and squeezing, making her moan. He undressed her, dropping clothes along the way as he backed her toward her bedroom. By the time they hit the bed, they were both naked. His uncut cock stood out from his body, long and curved upward. She wrapped her hand around it and stroked upward while nuzzling around the thick base. She had been with a couple of guys back in high school so she wasn’t completely inexperienced when it came to blowjobs. Benton raked his fingers through her hair and groaned as she licked up the underside to the tip.
