by Susan Meier
Her heart sped up. Her fears washed over her like a bucket of cold water.
Danny took Rex. “This doesn’t have to be a big deal.”
“It is a big deal.”
“But it doesn’t have to be.” Carrying Rex, he led Marnie to the sofa, then sat beside her. “I talked to Jace for a minute at the wedding. I told him that I realized the wisdom of the advice he’d given me the day I went to his office to talk about you. I told him I agreed with him. That I totally understood that we needed to get ahead of your secret with an interview. He said he knows a hungry reporter who’d do just about anything to get the story.”
Her heart stopped. “You talked to Jace? Again?”
“After you said you loved me, it all came together.” He shook his head. “Marnie, you have to know we can’t go on living like this.”
“I thought we’d move to France...or Belgium or Spain or an island in the Pacific.”
“My work is here. My life is here.”
She licked her suddenly dry lips. “Danny, you’re not going to stay at Waters, Waters and Montgomery. Even if you don’t want to work for the family, you can be anything you want. Work anywhere you want.”
“No! I won’t give up my job. That’s the only solid piece of me I kept from my old life.”
“That and your parents—”
“Who aren’t really my parents. My relationship with them is back to being good, but it will never return to what it was. I’m different now. My profession—that choice is the only part of me that’s me.” He leaned back on the sofa, taking Rex with him. “I never put all that into words before, but it’s true. I didn’t wake up one day and say I wanted to be a lawyer. I worked to figure it out. I busted my butt in law school to be the best. It is like an anchor now—who I am.”
“And my secret is who I am.” Her words came out soft, discouraged. Because this was their real problem. As much as it felt like they meshed, their lives didn’t.
He caught her hand. “Your secret might be part of your past, but it isn’t who you are.”
“Isn’t it? It guided my career choice, caused me to change schools, kept me in the background no matter how much I wanted to leap forward.”
“And now all that’s going to end. With one succinct conversation with a sympathetic reporter.”
She closed her eyes as the feeling of finality squeezed her chest. “It doesn’t matter if the reporter is the most sympathetic person in the world. There are a million reporters and bloggers and podcast people who will jump on the bandwagon, speculate, call me names...”
“You can’t go on living a lie.”
“I don’t live a lie. I have a secret.”
“But if you told that secret, it would lose its power over you.”
She shook her head, imagining being mobbed on the street, seeing her own picture in tabloids, not even being able to buy a pastry without someone looking down his nose at her because no matter how clear she would be about what happened, people would embellish. It would be like high school all over again but a million times worse. And this time she wasn’t the only one who’d be hurt...
“No. No! I can’t do this.”
Rex fussed, crawling up on Danny’s shoulder. “Let me put him down and we’ll talk about this.”
“No.” She rose as he rose. “To me there is nothing to talk about.”
“Not even the fact that you love me, and I love you?”
She looked him in the eye. This time she didn’t want to remember what she saw there. Pain. Confusion. And maybe a little anger. She didn’t blame him. She was angry too. But when she saw herself talking to reporters, getting questions shouted at her about the night she lost her virginity or why there’d been a bet on who would get her virginity, her skin crawled. She remembered the bullies. The kids who’d thought it all nothing but a game and ruined her life. Reporters would consider it their jobs to get the truth—no matter how ugly. No matter how much it was none of anyone’s business.
She took a breath, fought back the torrent of images, found the strength to speak without tears.
“I always knew it was going to end. I just didn’t think it would be this soon.”
He caught her hand. “Give me a minute to put Rex down for a nap. I’ll be right back. We can make a plan.”
She smiled slightly but didn’t nod her head or verbally agree. She had enough trouble in her life. She didn’t need to add lying to it. When he returned, he would want to discuss outing her and she just couldn’t do it.
She’d be sixteen again. Alone. Vulnerable. So fragile she’d shiver every time she stepped out her front door. While vultures picked at her bones. Not caring if they shattered her.
As soon as Danny reached the nursery, she headed for her room, quickly packed her meager belongings and was gone.
Her phone rang a hundred times that night. Danny left at least ten text messages. She deleted them all without reading them.
He was better off without her.
In fact, his life would be good without her.
The truth of that shattered her.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
MARNIE WOKE THE next morning to the sound of traffic. She opened her eyes, saw her old bedroom at her mom’s apartment with the window raised to combat the late September heat.
Tears filled her eyes. Her empty soul billowed in the breeze left when everything she wanted had been yanked away. Her heart and mind were like a ghost town.
She sat up, positioned herself to rise, but she couldn’t. This was the moment she’d spent her life fearing. The time when her past would rise up, albeit privately, and cost her her future.
She hadn’t yet saved enough money to start her business.
She’d lost the man she loved. The child she loved.
There was nothing to look forward to. Nothing to hope for.
These walls and temporary nanny jobs were her future.
Nothing more.
The noise of the apartment door opening rent the air.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
And she was back to living with her mom.
Her door suddenly slammed open and her mom’s monster dog raced in, jumped on her bed and knocked her down. Judy flew in behind him.
“Charlie! Sit!”
The dog just looked at her.
“I’m telling you. Obedience school did not work.”
Marnie gave Charlie a quick pet before she nudged him off her bed. “He just needs more lessons.”
“We don’t have the money.”
“You can have the money I saved.” She lay down in the bed, a solid ball of misery. She didn’t have enough to start her business, and probably wouldn’t get another job with an inflated salary like the one Danny offered. There’d be no nanny business for her. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Oh, it’s pity party time.”
She sat up, gaping at her mother. “Look at the pot calling the kettle black.”
“I told you rich men were trouble. I warned you. But no. You had to go to Scotland with the guy, then Paris! You got a taste of all the money and things and then you thought you were in love.”
“I didn’t think it, Mom.”
“Sure. Sure. You fell solidly in love in three months...with a guy so far out of your league you probably didn’t even really have anything in common. Sure. I buy that.”
Disgusted that her mom had it all wrong, she toyed with a loose string on her worn bedspread. “Don’t worry. It’s not like I thought it would last. I knew it wouldn’t, so I saved most of my salary.”
Judy eyebrows rose. “Really? Most of your salary?”
Marnie laid back on her pillow. “I had an exit plan.”
“I thought I had an exit plan with your dad too—”
Her disgust returned, rising up so unexpectedly Marnie didn�
�t have time to combat it. “Mom, this is totally different! You and Dad were married. I worked for Danny.”
And I love him.
Thinking that made it hurt to breathe. She’d barely said it to him. Realizing that now only hurt worse.
“I have enough of a past that I knew I had to be smart. I didn’t let my thoughts go any further than that. You taught me that. Taught me not to dream.”
Judy’s face fell, as if Marnie had slapped her. “Oh, Marnie!” She pressed her fingertips to her forehead. “No. I never told you not to dream. I was warning you to be careful.”
“Well, I was,” she said, unexpected anger pouring through her. Her parents’ marriage had been a mess. Her mom herself had been a mess for decades before she finally pulled herself together. And right now, Marnie didn’t want anybody preaching at her. She’d finally, finally found what she wanted, a man she could spend the rest of her life with—and she couldn’t have him.
She didn’t need anyone reminding her that she’d lost something she’d never really had. She’d lived the last ten years with the knowledge that most good things would slip through her fingers.
“I am always careful, Mom.” She fought the tears that wanted to form in her eyes. She refused to give in to the misery of it. She’d long ago accepted her fate.
Judy shook her head. “Okay. I’m seeing something here that I don’t like.”
Marnie cursed her mom’s therapist for always phrasing things as if she were in a session.
“I never told you not to dream.”
“You never told me I could dream either, Mom.”
“It’s not the same thing.”
“Of course, it is!” Regret rattled through her. “And you can tell your therapist I said that. Because, you know what? Splitting hairs the way we always do, looking for the path of least resistance was great, but it caused me to stagnate.”
“I don’t think you stagnated! I see lots of progress in your life. You got your degree. You had a great job. Hell, you said yourself you have a plan.”
But she didn’t really have a life. She had a plan. Always a plan. Never a real sense that she was living. Only existing. Never the feelings she’d had in Scotland or Paris, where everything was simple and beautiful. Never the glorious freedom of being with the man she wanted more than her next breath of air.
The agony of his loss broke her, but when it did, something wild and bold poured from the cracked shell of her soul. In the same way that fear had always paralyzed her, this thing—this courage rising out of the ashes of loss—seemed to give her life and energy.
Charlie tried to leap on her bed again. Judy cried, “Charlie, no!” She grabbed his leash from the floor with a heavy sigh. “I’ll take him to the kitchen, get him a snack so you can get up and get dressed.”
Her mom left with Charlie, closing the door behind her, and Marnie squeezed her eyes shut. Without Danny, this was the rest of her life.
The courage that had puffed out of her soul whispered through her again. She hated this life. Always had. But she suddenly wondered if her mom did. Judy had always blamed being shoved into high society for ruining her marriage, and Marnie had simply thought that was an excuse for her drinking.
But what if she had hated high society life?
What if she’d feared being in the spotlight so much that she shrank from it with alcohol? She’d cleaned up rather easily once she’d been out of Eddie Gouse’s life. And had stayed sober as long as she was hidden—
And what if that’s what she’d taught Marnie?
That she’d only be safe if she was hidden?
Marnie pressed shaking fingers to her forehead. What if she’d handled her entire life, the big high school mess, all wrong by hiding from it?
* * *
Danny wasn’t surprised when Mary Poppins, real name Mary Grant, had shown up at his apartment the night before. She made short order of getting Rex to bed, liked the list of rules and hints Alisha had provided and got herself set up in the room that had been Marnie’s—
He squeezed his eyes shut. Even thinking her name hurt his chest.
He couldn’t believe she’d left without telling him, then wondered why that had surprised him. Revealing her secret would be painful, awful and oh, so public. Why would he be surprised that she’d run rather than even discuss it? He’d called a hundred times. She hadn’t answered once.
He forced himself to go to work, settled in his seat behind the big desk and told himself that having the weight of Marnie’s troubles lifted was a good thing, but he knew it wasn’t true. He might be able to replace her as a nanny, but he’d never connected with another human being the way he had with her.
The things he’d told her the night before about her life being a lie rumbled through his brain like thunder, and he took a long, slow breath. She didn’t really lie. She hid. But in a way, wasn’t that the same thing? When a person hid, technically, they were putting on a show, pretending, lying about everything.
The thought froze his brain. He didn’t want to believe she didn’t love him. If she lied about that, something inside him would die.
He knew it.
He didn’t feel like quite the idiot he believed himself to be when Mark Hinton announced he was his biological dad and all the progress he’d made at his job, all the promotions, all the accolades were actually the partners of his firm sucking up to their biggest client. Still, thinking through Marnie’s life, he felt sorrier for her than he did for his own loss.
What they had had together was amazing, and the loss bruised his soul, but her loss was worse. She’d never had a normal life. A normal anything.
His heart broke for her, but just as quickly he forced himself to think about work. Think about documents. Do something good for one of his clients.
The pages swam before his eyes. Not from tears, from exhaustion. He hadn’t slept the night before, torn between going after her and staying right where he was. If he went after her, persuaded her to tell her story to a reporter, it wouldn’t be her choice, her idea. He’d always wonder if he’d forced her hand. If things got bad, he’d be the culprit who’d convinced her to do something she hadn’t wanted to do.
The choice had to be hers, and when she’d left his penthouse, she’d made it.
And now he was tired. Tired. Hurt. Gutted.
He picked up his phone and called Nick. “Hey, Dude.”
Nick snorted. “Danny? Did you just call me dude?”
He laughed. “I’m exhausted today.”
“You must be if you let loose with a dude.”
He took a breath. “Look. I was thinking I’d like to get away with Rex. I want to go somewhere quiet and serene. I need a break.”
Nick chuckled. “Yep. I knew this was coming. At some point you all fall apart. There’s no shame in this, Danny. Finding out Mark is your dad was hard enough. Finding out you were adopted, your job was a setup—those hurt. Add back-to-back weddings in Europe and, yeah, you need a break.” He paused. “Let’s see. There are mountain cabins, a little cooler now that it’s the first week in October or there are island retreats. Still hot. But quieter because kids are back in school and summer vacations have officially ended.”
“Heat and sun sound good.”
“My recommendation? The house in the Florida Keys. There are Jet Skis and fishing boats. We even have a captain on retainer... Let me look. Yep. There’s a guy to drive the boat so you can drink beer and fish.”
“I think I’d like that.”
“Okay, then, give me two hours to get a jet ready.”
“That’s about how much time I’ll need to get Rex and his nanny packed—if she’ll go.”
He laughed. “Marnie enjoyed Scotland and Paris as much as we all did.”
Danny’s breath caught as he realized no one knew Marnie was gone.
Nick casually said, �
��How long are you staying?”
With thoughts of Marnie still washing through him, living without her, having the park, the bakery, even his home remind him of her, Danny stayed silent another second. When he spoke, it was quietly. “Not sure. Maybe forever.”
His heart officially broke as he said those words. But he was so tired. So awfully tired of the circus his life had become since Mark had entered his world. Clinging to his job hadn’t helped. So he’d leave his job. Take his child. Go off the grid.
And never think of Marnie Olsen again.
* * *
Marnie’s next assignment was nannying the twins of a very sedate banker and his pediatrician wife. She had a moment of pride when Dr. Sponsky told her she was doing everything right. That she was the first nanny Shirley had sent her who didn’t need coaching.
So, she was good. On target. The pay wasn’t as high as working for a Hinton heir—which was how she referred to Danny, so she didn’t have to think his name and have pain swallow her for days. And though she was in the same neighborhood, she’d heard he’d moved. Gone to the Florida Keys. Charlotte hadn’t been able to let Marnie go onto her next assignment without an explanation, so she’d called and that had been awkward.
But here she was, the first of December, eight weeks after the great loss, in the park where she’d walked Wiggles, now pushing a stroller with twin girls. Two cute-as-a-button sweethearts.
She rolled the double stroller up to her usual bench, turned it so she could talk to her darling girls and sat.
“So, good day today, right?”
Nine-month-olds, they could only babble. But she loved it. Sheila was a little more expressive than Sandra. She knew a few words. Nothing like Rex—
She stopped the painful thought. Rex had become like her own child. If she let herself think of losing him, she’d splinter again. And she couldn’t do that. Not again. Not anymore.
She tucked a blanket around Sandra. The day wasn’t freezing, but there was a chill in the air.
And she did not think about the Hinton heirs. Ever.
She leaned back, enjoyed the sun that poked through the clouds, enjoyed the final leaves that had fallen from the trees, dancing around her in the breeze, and started counting the months it would take to save enough to have first and last months’ rent on a tiny place she’d found. Knowing how much her mom’s opinions had impacted her, Marnie couldn’t live with her anymore. She hadn’t said anything. Didn’t want to hurt her mom, but she had to get out on her own. Be herself. Figure out who she really was.
