Broken Daddy: A Single Dad & Nanny Romance

by Blake North

  “I mean, when you asked me yesterday what all this was about,” I began uncertainly. “I was wondering. Would it be easier for you if you knew the truth?”

  “It’s always easier,” Hayley said directly. She sat up, eyes open. “It’s better to know, Beckett,” she continued, voice quiet. “Please, I want you to tell me.”

  I sighed. “Could you come up to my office? Only, it’s out of the way and I don’t need anyone overhearing us.”

  “Okay,” she said. She had a little frown between her brows and I wondered if she was not, after all, regretting that she had asked to know the truth. But she was right. It would make it easier. And ultimately, it could save her life. If it ever came to that, that was. I shuddered.

  I don’t want to think about it ever coming to that.

  The depth of my response surprised me. Hayley had been in my life for two weeks. But already she meant so much to me. I sighed and led the way up the stairs to my office, at the leftmost corner of the house.

  “Right,” I said once she was inside. I shut the door behind her. I motioned her to the seat at my desk, but she stayed where she was, standing and with her back to the door. I shrugged.

  “Beckett, please.”

  “Okay,” I said. “The truth.”

  “Please,” she said again, and those caramel-brown eyes pleaded in a way that reached deep inside me. I sighed.

  Faced with her, I found it almost impossible to contemplate what I had to tell. I turned away. Looked out of the window. Took a big breath and, pretending she was not there and I was talking to myself, began.

  “It started when I was a teenager. Carry this, fetch that. Pass this note. I made good money doing it. I was excited. It meant I could get things for myself. Things my hardworking, store-managing father couldn’t buy for me. So I carried on.”

  I sighed. Behind me, Hayley was standing silent, barely breathing. I glanced at her. Her eyes were huge as she watched me, pools of silence and rapt with attention. I drew in a breath and continued shakily.

  “I was seventeen when it finally sank in what I was doing. By then it was too late. I was the group runner, with too many connections. Too much insider knowledge. I had one of two choices. Either join them, or leave town. I couldn’t leave town. I was in my final year of high school. I joined them.” I paused. “I knew it was wrong. But by then I was in too far. And the more I tried to get out, the more I tried to tell them I didn’t want a part of it any more, the harder they pushed me into staying. And the money helped. I decided to stay. Just until I finished high school. Then college began,” I sighed.

  “Beckett,” Hayley said gently. She reached out. I recoiled. I didn’t want her to pity me. I didn’t want her to feel bad for me. I wanted her to understand who I was. Then the spell would be broken. She would hate me. My own trap would lose its marvelous bait and I, at least, could walk free of it. I was not its intended victim: they were. I continued to tell my story of them and how I had come to be involved.

  “They threatened. They asked me. They bribed me. And yes, I wanted that. I was at college, working hard. My dad couldn’t pay for everything, so I had to earn money for half of it. I worked, but working for them was what kept me financially comfortable. In my final year, I bought my first flat.”

  “Beckett…”

  “Let me finish. Please. I have to.”

  She stepped back, closer to the door. I drew in a shuddering breath. I was coming to the hardest bit to tell.

  “I started to build my business. From that flat, I accumulated rent. Used the rent money to buy the next one, and the next. By the end of two years, I owned a small block. It was great. I went into partnership with a friend; who had the great idea of converting the place into holiday apartments and, later, into a hotel. The first Sand Hotel was born. From there, we invested more. Built up a board of trustees. Bought the next complex. And the next. Built the first official Sand Hotel from scratch. We built up the chain, piece by piece.” I realized my voice had risen and lowered it. “That’s when they came for me.”

  “They?” she asked, voice a whisper.

  “The old guys. The ones I’d run for when I was a kid. They came to find me, demand their share. I’d used them, they said. Taken their hard earnings and put them into my own business. They had a share of those profits, they said. Or they’d tell everyone who I really was. What to do?”

  I paused. I realized I was shaking. I had never told this whole story before. Cameron knew it, but no-one else. I sat down.

  “Beckett, you don’t have to tell me any of this,” Hayley said softly. “Telling me is hurting you. I can see that.” She sighed. “I am sorry I made you do it.”

  “You didn’t make me do it,” I said gently. “I wanted to. It’s good for me,” I laughed sadly. “Besides, you have to know.”

  “Okay.”

  I picked up the tale. “I was at a bar when they came to find me. I agreed to pay them a sum every month. Not too much, not too little. Enough to keep them quiet. We went back to their place and I signed. I started to pay them to keep them quiet. Just a bit each month. No one would miss it, I told myself.”

  “Oh?”

  “She found out.”

  “She?”

  “My wife. My ex-wife. Lacey. She was talking to our accountant, wanting to see the books. She wanted to start her own business, you see—her own perfume range or something. Anyhow,” I sighed. “She saw the missing amount. She wasn’t stupid, my wife. Far from it. She put the information together, came to her own realization.”

  “She thought…”

  “She thought I was paying for another woman,” I said. The pain of that still hurt. She had trusted me so little, believed me so little. No matter how much I had protested, she hadn’t taken my word. And I couldn’t really blame her. I couldn’t tell her where the money was going. How could I face her with the truth: that I had started off carrying drugs for a street gang? She’d despise me.

  “What did you do?”

  I sighed. “I had to let her believe that,” I said. “In the end, what could I do? I couldn’t tell her the truth. She’d have hated me. What could I do?”

  “She left you?”

  I nodded. Somehow I couldn’t bring myself to say the words. They stuck in my throat, as if I choked on acid. I cleared my throat.

  “That was when we divorced. Estella was eight years old at the time. She had no idea of what was happening. I wanted to shelter her from it. Lacey wanted to take her and I asked to have holidays. I was granted that, at least,” I said with a soft laugh. It was not a happy sound. I cleared my throat.

  “Beckett…”

  I waved her aside. “It was my fault. I deserved that. I should have told Lacey right in the beginning, or not at all. I knew she’d despise me for who I am,” I said bitterly.

  “What happened next?”

  “Well, they went away. Or seemed to, anyway.” I gave a helpless laugh. “I thought I’d fixed it. Then they came back for more.” I ground my teeth. “They said they didn’t trust me anymore. My wife had found out. I had to do something, before someone else found out. They accused me of trying to get them stitched up. Would you believe it! So I came up with a plan.”

  “What plan?” Hayley asked dully, though I think she guessed.

  “I would marry again,” I said tightly. “I would let it be known that the mysterious woman I’d had in the background for years was finally coming into the limelight. I had asked her to marry me. That way, I had created a plausible explanation for the missing cash, and they couldn’t accuse me if anyone found out. I would use Lacey’s assumption as a cover.”

  “You put me in your story, as your afterthought, your wife’s worst enemy?”

  Her voice was stiff. I felt my body tense then.

  “Now Hayley,” I said briskly. “Don’t you…”

  “Don’t speak to me like that!” she snapped. “I’m not your wife. But nor am I your convenient excuse, the woman who broke up your happy life. I can
not believe what you let me walk into! You have made a fool of me, just to cover up your dark secrets! I can’t believe it!”

  As I watched, she turned and walked out of the room.

  “Hayley,” I begged. I grabbed her wrist. She turned around, her eyes flashing. I let go.

  “Don’t you dare touch me,” she said, very quietly. “Leave me alone. I can’t believe you did this to me.”

  I watched her turn and walk out of the room. She walked slowly, back straight, body poised. I waited until I heard her shoes on the tiles, heading to the stair way.

  Then I sat down in my desk-chair and rested my head in my hands.

  “Hayley,” I said aloud. “I’m sorry.”

  I blinked, fighting back tears. It was all suddenly too much for me. Lacey, the way she had reacted, the fact that I had never actually felt close enough to her to tell her the truth. The tension of the past few days, the pain that I felt, realizing that I was falling for Hayley. And now, just as I opened out to her, she betrayed me too.

  Not that I blamed her. Seeing it from her side, I could understand her viewpoint.

  She had no idea of the role I had crafted for her. And she walked into it as herself. She won’t ever be able to shake this story now.

  She would be known as the woman who drove a wedge between Beckett Sand and Lacey Lanning, his much-loved, beautiful wife. There were many who would think badly of her.

  I set her up for that and now she will hate me and I don’t blame her at all.

  After all, I had been paying a drug cartel every month to hide my dark past from the world. I knew what it meant to have people think about you in a certain light, and how much people would invest to maintain that illusion.

  By saving my own skin with the press, I had ruined her.

  I sat in my office at the top of my house and felt a tear run down my cheek.

  I had wanted to protect an illusion, and sacrificed someone I had just learned to love. At that moment I couldn’t have felt more awful if I had tried. By trying to save myself, I had carved a knife into my own heart.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN – HAYLEY

  I went downstairs to the dining-room. I finished my coffee. Then I went upstairs again to my room. I felt as if I was on autopilot. Inside, I was furious. But I was also really calm. It was as if a cold wall of rage possessed me, driving me through the motions of living while keeping my heart frozen inside me.

  I am leaving. I can’t believe he did this to me.

  I closed my eyes. Breathed in the soft, rose-scented air. Breathed out.

  All the memories of the last two weeks flooded my mind. Beckett in town, kissing me in the car. Beckett on our sham-wedding-day, kissing me. Beckett in the office, teasing me. Grabbing the newspaper from my hand. Beckett at breakfast, gentle and kind. Beckett at the play. In the office, confiding in me a story he had never told anyone before.

  Beckett trusted me.

  I paused. Of all the things that had filled me when he told me first—rage, pain, hurt—that fact had settled into my mind more slowly. But it was true.

  Beckett Sand had told me a secret that could ruin him. He told me because he trusts me.

  I sighed. Of all the things that had worried me—my reputation, the fact that he had set me up without telling me, the ridicule that I would potentially face from former colleagues—all of it disappeared. He had told me a secret he hadn’t told anyone.

  Beckett Sand loves me.

  I knew it. The look in his eyes, the way he touched me. His lips as they stroked over mine, so tenderly, so loving.

  He loved me as much as I loved him.

  The realization drove through my heart like a fast train, hurtling down the track. I leaned back in the chair, letting my body relax as that sank in.

  He loved me and he trusted me. And I had lost my temper with him. Walked out on him.

  I didn’t know what to do. The clock said it was ten-thirty. It was Sunday. I should go and find him, try and talk to him. But what can I say?

  I sighed again. There was no easy way to go back from what I had done. When someone trusts you, there is only one chance to live up to that. Once you’ve reacted so badly, going back again is pretty hard. I looked at my face in the mirror. I looked haggard.

  My mirror showed me a long, pale oval face with huge eyes, gray rings stamped around them like they were drawn in dark ink. My dark hair was wavy, falling about my shoulders. I looked disheveled and defeated.

  I’m not going to make a good impression like that. I chuckled sadly.

  Mourning my lack of expertise, I opened the drawer, which had carefully been stocked with the best studio-quality make-up anyone could wish for. I cast my mind back to my theater days and reached for the concealer, painting out the rings of fatigue bracketing my dark eyes.

  A good ten minutes later I bit on a tissue to seal the color of my lipstick, and wearily got to my feet. During the time it took to fix my makeup, hide the tears and the stress written on my face, I had come to a plan.

  I went up to his office. Knocked on the door.

  “Beckett?”

  I paused.

  “He isn’t there,” a voice called from the hallway. I turned to find Estella, at the top of the stairs, wearing leggings and a long pullover, hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. She saw me and grinned at me. “Sorry, Hayley, but he just went out jogging. Later than usual too. Lazy fellow,” she grinned.

  “Have you just been?” I asked, taking in her outfit. She shook her head. “I’ve just been in the gym,” she explained.

  “Oh,” I said mildly. I should have known there was a gym here, but I hadn’t. She looked at me with those bright blue eyes.

  “You’ve used the gym before, right?”

  I shook my head.

  “It’s awesome. I am trying to persuade Daddy to get one of those new all-in-one exercise machines, but you know how he is. Stubborn as a brick.” She laughed.

  I laughed too. The description was refreshingly apt. “Quite so.”

  “Come on,” Estella said, taking my arm in a confiding manner. “Let’s go have breakfast.”

  I smiled. “I’ve had some toast,” I said carefully.

  “Toast.” She pulled a face. “That’ll help a lot,” she said sarcastically, then laughed at my surprised expression. “I’m sorry,” she said more gently. “I’m just starving.”

  “I’ll come and have some coffee while you have breakfast,” I suggested. I didn’t really feel like it, but it wouldn’t seem polite to leave her there on her own. Besides, I was feeling miserable and I felt like company.

  “Okay! Great.”

  We went downstairs together, her taking them two at a time, her trainers surprisingly loud on the marble-tiled surface. I hurried after her.

  “Is your dad liable to be out for long?” I asked, sitting sipping coffee in the warm, close space of the dining-room.

  “Depends,” she said, licking some muesli off the spoon and then reaching for her own coffee. She was a hearty eater, which made me smile. “Sometimes he stays out for an hour, sometimes more. He’ll be back for lunch, though. Unless business comes up.”

  “Oh.” I nodded. I leaned back, feeling somewhat relieved. As soon as I saw him again, I would discuss this.

  He didn’t come in for lunch. By six o’ clock, I was starting to worry. The sky was darkening fast out there, the clouds gathering. I thought there might be a storm.

  Beckett Sand, so much for your weather-prediction ability.

  I smiled grimly to myself. I so badly wanted him to come back. Even if all he did was shout at me, tell me to get out, I wanted him to come back. I wanted to see him again. I needed to make peace with him before anything else happened.

  “Looks like it’s going to rain soon,” Mrs. Delange commented quietly.

  I was standing in the sitting-room, looking out through the windows that faced the drive. It was the fourth time she’d found me in here, staring out of the curtains, waiting for him to come back.

&
nbsp; “It does,” I agreed. “Mrs. Delange?”

  “Yes?” she asked, drawing the curtains and turning around to face me, hitching her apron back to her shoulder carefully.

  “You have seen him stay out this long before?”

  “I’ve seen him stay out all day and come back next morning,” Mrs. Delange chuckled. “It’s always like that—expect the unexpected. But he’ll come back.”

  I nodded. “I’m sure he will.”

  I leaned back on the couch, tried to read a magazine. But the content and the photos and gossip bandied about just served to remind me of why I hated the media so much and I leaned back, looking at the ceiling. I closed my eyes.

  I have to talk to him.

  I had dinner with Estella, who told me she was going out with friends. We enjoyed ourselves—laughing and chatting and talking about school and the people she knew, her friends—and then she was heading off, leaving me alone in that vast, empty house.

  I sighed. It was seven o’ clock. I had texted him a few times during the day, but he had not replied to my messages and by sometime around midday I’d given up. He wasn’t going to get in touch.

  I went for a short walk in the garden, but I could smell the rain and the electricity in the air and it felt eerie and threatening so I went back inside. I went upstairs to my room and settled down in a chair, trying to read a book.

  At last, I managed to find some peace. I was immersed in the book I was reading, caught up in the excitement of the plot, when a crash of thunder erupted, making me jump.

  Outside the window lightning splintered the sky and I whimpered. I had always been scared of storms. The thunder lashed through me again and I sat down on the bed feeling completely exhausted and finished. I had betrayed someone who trusted me. I felt like the worst person on earth. The craziness of the storm only served to highlight my sadness. I curled up in a ball on the bed and wept.

  He arrived as the storm broke. Just as the thunder deafened me again, I heard another sound. A small one, familiar and close to me. Knocking. On my bedroom door.