The Nanny (A Billionaire Romance)

by Naomi Niles

  "I don't care what you want. We're going to the nursery now, all of us," he said, forcibly removing the twisting child with pure force of muscle. He threw her over his shoulder and carried her up the stairs as she kicked and punched his torso, but he never flinched.

  My heart broke as I watched the wrenching scene. Being a parent was much harder than I ever knew. I had judged Tate too harshly for letting Missy stay, and if I hadn't been the one to kick her outside the safe walls of the mansion, she'd still be alive.

  I walked slowly behind Tate as he carried Halle up to the nursery and sat with her on his lap in the big rocking chair. Slowly, he explained to Halle that Missy was never going be able to eat breakfast with them again, and tears of grief flowed from both sets of identical hazel green eyes.

  I realized at that moment that I was a stranger in this household. Tate was Halle's father, and Missy was her mother; I was nothing more than a nanny, and now Tate's girlfriend.

  By all rights, I should have been the one to leave, but as I watched the father/daughter scene before me, I knew that I couldn't. I loved them both more than I ever thought possible. I loved them as much as I loved my own mother. They were becoming the people that came to mind when I thought of the word family, and they were in pain. They needed me, as I needed them; who knows, maybe one day when Stuart was finally captured, and there were no more obstacles getting in the way, I could be more than just a nanny and a girlfriend. Maybe one day, I could be a wife and a mother.

  Whether that dream ever came true or not, I would be there for them both in their time of grief. I wrapped my arms around them both and held them in a loving embrace, not saying a word, just giving comfort as best I could.

  Chapter Seventy-Two: Tate

  "He's waiting in your office to talk to you." Rachelle's sweet voice penetrated the deep fog I was lost in, pulling me from my morose thoughts and back into the present.

  I was sitting on the edge of Halle's bed. She'd finally fallen asleep after crying for what felt like hours. Her young face looked so peaceful at last, no longer ravaged by grief, but the streaks of dried tears still lined her cherubic face.

  "Tell him I'm busy," I snapped and immediately felt bad. It wasn't Rachelle's fault that Missy was dead; it was mine.

  Video from security surveillance cameras confirmed that Missy had come back to the mansion in the middle of the night and stood in the dark by the road outside the gate. A bullet from a silenced gun could be seen piercing her chest, and Stuart picked up her dead body just at the edge of the camera's range of view before lowering her into a drain grate that leads up into the garage.

  The cars in the garage hid him from view, but there were glimpses of him reflected in some of the side-view mirrors, and it was clearly Stuart hauling Missy's body up to the door leading from the garage to the house, but when he was unable to get inside, he gave up and fled, leaving her body behind.

  Blake Barnes felt responsible for his team not seeing the elusive murderer and letting him get that far, and Rachelle felt Missy would still be alive if she hadn't kicked Missy out of the house, but I knew that ultimately I was the one to blame for her death.

  After all, I was the one who had hired Stuart, bringing a madman into my home and all our lives. I was the one who had an affair with Rose, igniting his murderous rage. I was the one he wanted revenge against, and so he had killed Missy Stevens, the mother of my innocent child.

  I had always known that someday I would have to tell Halle that her mother was dead. Missy's aberrant lifestyle of drugs, crime, and homelessness had practically guaranteed it. In fact, I had prepared myself to give this speech to Halle many times, even going so far to write it out before lighting the paper on fire and leaving the ashes in the trash can. I had imagined in countless fantasies what it would be like to deliver the speech to Halle, telling her about her mother's death – but nothing could have prepared me for what it was really like.

  The realities of Missy's death were nothing like my imagination had thought they would be. I always feared she would die in the streets like a rat, not just outside my house while I was sleeping. I thought the cause would be by her own hand, having overdosed on drugs, suffered from alcohol poisoning, or even been beaten to death by one of her abusive boyfriends or some drug dealer she owed too much money to. Never, in any of my wildest fantasies, had I ever imagined that she would die as a result of my actions.

  I was the one who had magnanimously brought Missy to live in this mansion, convinced it was the safest place for her and my child. I condescendingly looked down at her drug use and drinking, while defending my own sexual deviations as harmless fun. I cruelly told her that one day her careless way of living would result in her death, when in reality, it was mine.

  I had killed Missy just as surely as I had Rose; it was the one thing Stuart was right about. Oh, he was the one who had actually taken their lives, but I was just as responsible for their deaths as though I had murdered them myself.

  I felt Rachelle’s gentle hand on my shoulder as she kissed my cheek and said, "You should go talk to him. If you want, I can go with you. Morton will be here in case Halle wakes up."

  "No. She should see your face when she wakes. I'll talk to that son-of-a-bitch alone. There are some things I want to say to him that you shouldn't hear."

  Rachelle started to object, but I didn't want to listen to her soothing words telling me to be calm. I was mad as hell and wanted him to know it.

  With loud stomps, I strode from the nursery down the hallway to my office, to find him sitting at my desk. His slovenly clothes were more stained than usual, with a rip along the edge of his untucked shirt. His brown eyes were grim, and I swear his bald spot was taking over more of his thinning brown hair every day.

  He stood to greet me and held out his hand with a sympathetic nod. "Mr. Holland, I want you know how sorry I am for your loss."

  "Mitch Miller, you've got a lot of nerve calling yourself a detective. Why the hell is Stuart Haynes still on the loose?" I came in swinging with both fists. "It's because you're too incompetent to have done your job right. You let him go, and I had to tell my daughter her mother is dead because of you, you fucker."

  Miller was surprisingly agile for a man of his weight and age. He artfully dodged my punches, caught me by the wrist, and swept my legs out from under me.

  Within seconds, he had me pinned down with my hands wrenched behind my back and my face smashed flat against the top of my desk.

  I yelled out a slur of curses at him, shouting out, "It's your fault. You didn't do enough to protect her, to protect any of them. You should have done more to stop him. You should have seen how dangerous he was and kept him far away. Halle and Rachelle could be next, and it's all your fault. You did this..."

  My angry shouts turned into a senseless rant, and it became clear that I was no longer talking about Detective Miller, but myself. I stopped yelling and just concentrated on my breathing until I regained my composure, but my emotions were still raw.

  Seeing I had calmed, Miller let me go and stepped back away from me. In that gruff voice I'd come to hate, he said, "I know you're grieving, and you're not the first guy to take a swing at me, so I'm willing to let this go as long as you don't try anything else."

  Standing up, I straightened my jacket and squared off to face him with an angry scowl. My words were biting, as I said, "You might be willing to let things go, but I'm not. What the hell is your department doing to stop Stuart Haynes from striking again?"

  Miller sat down hard in the chair across from my desk and rubbed his scarred face with his rough hands. With a regretful sigh, he said, "I know it doesn't look like it, but we're doing a lot that I can't disclose to you, and it's working. We came close to capturing Haynes several times, but he managed to slip away. Now we know he's using the drains in the streets to get around the city. I'm confident that the next time he surfaces, we'll get him."

  "The next time?" I could no longer hold onto my temper and started throwing thi
ngs off my desk, smashing them onto the floor as I raged. "The next time, he could kill Halle or Rachelle. He's already murdered two women at my home. This is outrageous, and I won't stand for it."

  My office door swung open, and Blake Barnes came running in, with Rachelle right behind him.

  "Is everything alright?" Barnes asked with his gun drawn. Miller nodded yes, and he quickly holstered it. Rachelle just stood in the doorway, staring at me with a shocked expression that would have broken my heart if I hadn't been so upset.

  I pointed at the two them and shouted at Miller, "See, that's what immediate, swift response to a crisis looks like. Your men haven't done shit as far as I can tell, and now a woman is dead. I want your resignation by morning so we can someone in your position who can actually do the job of protecting my family."

  "Fortunately, I don't work for you." Miller got up from his chair with a surly expression. "And believe it or not, Mr. Holland, I'm doing everything I can to protect your family, just like you are. I understand your fear and frustration, but letting those emotions take over is how this asshole wins. You've got to stay calm. That's how we'll stop him together."

  Miller gave Barnes a meaningful glance, and Rachelle crossed the room to put her arms around me, saying softly, "Calm down. It will be okay."

  "Get the fuck off me." I shirked off her embrace roughly. Raging against the room, I yelled out, "Everybody needs to get the fuck out of here. All of you, fucking leave. I need to be alone."

  "Detective, I'll escort you out," Barnes said to Miller, but the heavy-set detective just smiled.

  "I know my way out. We'll stay in touch when the forensics come in on the body, and I'm sure I'll have some questions about your briefing report and the video surveillance you handed over. We'll get this bastard before he can do anything else."

  "Anything to help, Detective." Barnes shook his hand as both men left, leaving me and Rachelle alone. She wrapped her hands around my shoulders and caressed my firm jaw with her delicate hands.

  "It's been a long day. You should rest. I'll lay on the bed with you, help you relax." She smiled seductively and moved in to kiss me, but I pushed her away a little harder than I meant to, and she staggered back, hitting the wall.

  "Get the fuck out of here. I told you to leave me alone!" I shouted, trying to hide my embarrassment at having acted so monstrously when all I really wanted to do was hold her and tell her I was sorry.

  "Fine. Goodbye, Tate," Rachelle said in a strong voice, and the tears that were brimming in her beautiful blue eyes refused to fall. Then she was gone, and I was utterly alone.

  Chapter Seventy-Three: Rachelle

  I held my spine straight as I strode from Tate's office and shut the door firmly behind me. As soon as I heard the lock click, I broke down, trembling and crying in the hallway.

  Halle stuck her head out of the stairway in a cloud of dark cocoa curls and looked right at me. Looking so grown up, she marched solemnly down the hallway to take my hand in her little chubby ones.

  "Don't cry, Rachelle. It will all be okay," she said, and I had no choice but to break into a huge smile. She was so wonderfully sweet, so incredibly loving, and so beautifully kind; just hearing her say that wiped away all the pain I was feeling and filled my heart with sunshine.

  So what that Tate had lost his temper and thrown things. So what that he had refused my attempts to soothe him and even rejected me by throwing me out of his office. It was a difficult time, and we were all grieving. Perhaps it was best to give him some space and let him sort out his feelings on his own.

  I could certainly understand the need for that. My own mind was swirling with a barrage of intense emotions, so loud they were deafening. There was of course disgust at the gruesome crime scene of Missy's dead body. Hers was the first corpse I'd ever seen, and remembering the squishy feel of her blood-soaked hair in my hands nearly made me vomit every time I thought of it.

  There was relief that it had been her instead of me, or Halle or Tate, and fear that something might still happen to any of us. There was guilt that I was responsible for Missy's death for being the one who had kicked her out of the safety of the mansion. If she had been inside with us, Stuart wouldn't have had the opportunity to shoot her and leave her dead body in the garage.

  According to Detective Miller, the evidence showed that Stuart had tried to use Missy's fingerprints to unlock the garage door, but he couldn't access the house thanks to Blake Barnes having already removed her from the system.

  When the rotating guards came back around, Stuart had panicked, dumped the body at the doorway leading from the garage to the house, and fled through the drainage system. She lay there all morning, hidden from view by the cars, until I found her the next morning. By then, he was long gone and could now be anywhere. Logically, I knew Stuart Haynes was the one responsible for her death and I had no reason to feel guilty, but it was a hard feeling to shake.

  Most of all, I felt grief for the loss of life of a woman who had never quite found happiness and peace in this world, and yet had given birth to the sweetest little girl I'd ever had the pleasure of knowing. Without Missy Stevens, there would be no Halle Holland, and I never would have met Tate and fallen in love with him. Missy was the one who had given me the happy life I now treasured, and for that, I was eternally grateful to her, and so mourned her passing.

  Now, as I watched Halle walk with Morton back into her nursery, holding the big man by the hand, I came to a startling realization. If this little three-year-old girl who had just been told a little while ago by her father that her mother was dead, could have the strength to tell me not to cry, well then how could I selfishly indulge in my own self-pity? Halle was so brave and courageous; she deserved to have to adults around her charged with her care to be just as strong. So, I would smile for her, and do everything in my power to make her feel safe, and loved, and cherished.

  "Are you okay, Rachelle?" Blake asked from a respectful distance, and quickly, I stood up and exhaled a cleansing breath. We were alone in the hall, and he walked up to me, but didn't get too close.

  "I will be. I'm sorry if I was rude to you the last time we talked. I hope you understand it's nothing against you. It's just..." I couldn't find the words to finish my thought, but he just smiled and handed me a tissue.

  "You don't need to apologize. I always had a crush on you, but I could never work up the guts to ask you out. Now, I'm too late. You love Tate Holland. But if you ever change your mind, you know where to find me. Until then, I won't pressure you; I'll just wait and dream for that day to come."

  I used the tissue to wipe the tears from my eyes and smiled at him. "One day, you'll make some lucky girl very happy."

  "It looks like Morton already found the girl of his dreams," Blake joked about the hulking bodyguard's fondness for Halle, and the laughter helped lighten the mood. He indicated the nursery and said, "She's waiting for you."

  "Thanks. I'd better go," I said, and we parted in the hall. Back in the nursery, I saw Halle sitting on her bed looking morose. I took some crayons and construction paper down from the shelf and set them on her tiny table set. Smiling down at her, I said cheerily, "What do you say we draw some nice pictures for your mommy?"

  Her hazel green eyes flecked with gold brightened with excitement, but that light quickly faded. "Daddy said Mommy won't be coming to see me anymore. I can't show her my drawings because she had to go to heaven."

  "That's true, she did go to heaven, but that doesn't mean she can't see your pictures. When people go to heaven, they can look down and see the people they love anytime they want, and I know your Mommy will be watching you lots because she loved you so much. Plus, there's going to be a funeral, and if you want, I'm sure your Daddy can have your drawings placed in her grave so she can have them."

  The thought made the little girl smile, and we sat and drew for a long while, sharing stories about her mother and the happy memories Halle could keep in her heart forever. We also talked a lot about heaven and w
hat it must be like up there. I tried to steer the conversation clear of what would happen at the funeral since I didn't know what plans Tate had made for the service, but when Halle had questions, I answered them as honestly as I could. I owed her that much.

  As the sun started to set, I gave her a bath, and we sang songs as I dried her hair and dressed her in her pajamas. She was just selecting a book for me to read from her shelf when finally Tate entered the nursery, looking haggard with dark circles under his red-rimmed eyes. It was the first time I'd seen him since that ugly scene earlier that day, and I felt a sigh of relief escape my lungs as a weight was lifted from my heart.

  "Daddy! I'm so glad you're here. Your yelling earlier was scary, and I'm glad you're okay," Halle cried out happily, giving voice to my exact thoughts.

  She ran into his arms, and he scooped her up into a big hug as he kissed her cheeks.

  "I'm sorry about the way I behaved earlier," he said gravely, looking over the top of her head at me as he did so. "I was just really upset, but that's no excuse to throw a tantrum. I promise it will never happen again."

  Tears sprang to my eyes as I understood the words were meant for me, and I smiled and blew him a kiss from across the room so he knew I accepted his apology.

  Halle also thought the words were spoken for her as her daddy held her and rested her cheek on his broad shoulder. In an adorable whisper, she asked him, "Will you stay with me forever, Daddy?"

  "Of course, I will. Sometimes I may have to go to work or out somewhere, but I'll always come home to you every night. I'll never leave you," he vowed, and I felt like he was promising too much.

  I knew Stuart had shot Missy when she was standing at the edge of the driveway right by the gate. Tate went up and down that same driveway every day on his way to and from work. It could have easily been him Stuart had shot, instead of Missy.