“I don’t know,” the woman replied. “It was supposed to be Nancy Pelosi, but they said she canceled at the last minute.”
“Great.” Trish pulled out the water bottle she’d hidden in the sleeves of her master’s gown and took a long drink.
As the university president and student body president made remarks about everyone’s dedication in achieving their chosen master’s degrees—the undergraduates were graduating tomorrow—and how their true potential could now be unlocked and so on and so on and so on, Trish only paid the bare minimum of attention. She was running through her plans.
Somehow, Stanley had tracked her down in the library. He’d brought her three checks—one for twenty grand and another for two hundred and fifty thousand, made out to One Child, One World. The last one had been her security deposit from Mrs. Chan. All he’d said when he found her was, “You doing okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine. Nate, is he okay?” she’d asked in a rush. “Is Jane okay?”
“She’s fine.” Stanley had given her a look that she couldn’t interpret before saying, “And Nate, well, he’s been better.” Stanley handed her a padded envelope. Then the tattooed, pierced man was off again, leaving Trish alone with a vague sense of guilt as she looked at the hundreds of thousands of dollars in her hands.
She’d opened the padded envelope to find her phone and the charger. The phone was charged and she had a waiting text message.
Just in case. Nate.
She’d sat staring at the phone for a good twenty minutes. Just in case.
Just in case she wanted to call him. Just in case she changed her mind.
That was almost as unbelievable as the rest of it. All those men her mother had “loved”? All of them had had someone on the side. None of them had ever kept their promises, except for Tim.
Except for Nate.
Then she’d all but sprinted to her bank. Because she was now rich, comparatively, she was going to buy an actual plane ticket to Rapid City, South Dakota, instead of taking the bus. From there, she’d figure out a way to get home. It might take her a few days, but she’d make it there one way or another.
And after she’d been home for a few days...well, she had to see how it went. She didn’t plan on staying on the rez, but she had no apartment in San Francisco to come back to. After today, she had nothing to tie her to this city except Nate. If her father still lived here, she hadn’t found him and he hadn’t found her. She could make a fresh start somewhere new—somewhere with cheaper rents—or...or she could come back to Nate. If he’d still have her.
“I’ll wait for you,” he’d said when he’d closed her car door. She desperately wanted to believe him but at the same time, she was afraid to get her hopes up, afraid to think that there really was a future between them.
Because how would it work? She didn’t even have a proper job lined up. If—and that was a big if—she went back to him, she wanted to walk up to that door on her own merits, not because she was crawling back.
But she had no idea how to level the playing field—the huge, gaping playing field—that existed between them.
She was getting ahead of herself. Before she could even think about that, she had to get through the next few days. The idea of getting on a plane was a terrifying one—so terrifying that, when the commencement speaker was announced, she didn’t hear the name. But someone behind her whooped and then the crowd was cheering. Trish looked up to see...
Nate.
Nate Longmire, wearing a fancy cap and gown, strode out onto the stage and shook the university president’s hands.
Oh, God, was all she could think before he stepped up to the microphone. What was he doing here? This couldn’t be a coincidence—could it? No. This was intentional. This was because of her.
“Congratulations, graduates!” he said with one of those tight smiles that she recognized as him being nervous. “I know you’re all disappointed that Congresswoman Pelosi was unable to make it—” There were a variety of muffled groans from the audience. “But,” Nate went on, ignoring the noise, “I had such a great time here about two months ago that I jumped at the chance to talk to you one more time.”
Sporadic applause erupted. Someone wolf-whistled.
“Today I want to talk about the power each and every one of you possess,” Nate continued. Even she could see him blushing at this distance. “You may be sitting there, asking yourselves, ‘now what?’ You may have student debt. You may not have a job. Maybe you’ve got someone, maybe you broke up.”
“Oh, hell.”
She didn’t realize she’d spoken out loud until the woman sitting on her left said, “What?”
“Oh. Sorry. Nothing.” Nothing except that her last—her only—lover was up on stage, slowly circling his way through a commencement speech that was all about her.
“You may not think you have any power to change things—to get a job in this economy, to find the ‘right’ person, to affect change in your surroundings. I’m here to tell you that’s not true.”
“You okay?” the woman on her left asked. “You don’t look so good.”
“I’m—fine. I’m fine.” Trish forced herself to look away from Nate and smile at her neighbor. “I just can’t believe Nate Longmire is up there, that’s all.”
The woman smiled. “He’s even better-looking in person.”
“Yes,” Trish agreed weakly. “Better in person.”
“I recently spent some time with a SFSU graduate by the name of Trish Hunter,” Nate was saying. As he talked, he searched the crowd until his gaze fell upon hers. The corner of his mouth moved and she knew he was glad to see her.
She wasn’t sure if she was breathing or not—she was definitely light-headed. What was he doing?
“I was impressed with her education but more than that, I was impressed with her dedication. Despite a limited amount of funds, Ms. Hunter has single-handedly run a charity called One Child, One World, which provides school supplies and meals to Native American children living in poverty on reservations in South Dakota.”
The audience settled back into their heat-induced stupor as he went on about her charity, her awards and, yes, her dedication. Trish couldn’t do anything but gape at him. This wasn’t happening, was it? Maybe she’d just had a heatstroke and was hallucinating this whole thing.
He was really here. He was—well, he was fighting for her. No one had ever fought for her before, not like this. She’d known he wasn’t the same kind of man her mother had always chased—but this?
He wasn’t going to run away. He wasn’t going to hide behind lies.
Something Tim, her stepfather, had said to her the last time they’d talked floated back into her consciousness— “There’s something about being with her that makes me feel right with the world. And when you’ve seen as much of the world as I have, you know that’s no small thing.”
The epiphany hit her so hard she jolted in her chair. Her mother—her flighty, careless mother who chased after any man she could catch—had been happily married for almost seven years to a decent guy who wouldn’t even let Trish give him back a security deposit. She’d stayed married to him because they made each other feel right with the world.
Nate had said it himself. “You make me feel like everything’s finally right in the world,” he’d told her during the last few moments she’d stood before him and wavered.
And Tim was right—it was no small thing. It was something huge. It might be everything.
Would she really keep pushing herself away from Nate just because her mother had a long, scarred history of making bad choices? Or was Trish forcing herself to make a bad choice, just because it was the opposite of what her mother would have done?
Did Nate make everything right in her world, too?
“And so,” Nate finally said, “I am happy to an
nounce that the Longmire Foundation will be awarding two endowments. The first is to establish a scholarship for Native American students who enroll in San Francisco State University. The other is an endowment of ten million dollars to One Child, One World to help prepare those Native students for college and beyond.”
Trish shot to her feet and tried to ask him what the hell he was doing, but all that came out of her mouth was a gurgling noise.
“Ah, yes, there she is, ladies and gentlemen. Please give Ms. Hunter a round of applause for all her hard work.”
The crowd broke out into what could only be called a standing ovation as people cheered for her. She barely heard it. All she heard was Nate leaning forward and saying, “Ms. Hunter, if I could speak to you after you graduate?”
“That’s you?” the woman on her left said. “Girl, you better move.”
But Trish couldn’t because she was trapped in the hell of having a last name that started with an H. All she could do was go through the motions. The rest of the graduation passed in an absolute blur. Trish didn’t remember hearing her name called, barely remembered walking across the stage to get her diploma. She did, however, have full recall of when some university higher-up pulled her out of the line that was moving back toward the seats and ushered her off the stage. “...Very exciting,” he was saying as he led Trish to where Nate was waiting. “An endowment! This is excellent news...”
Nate was waiting for her in the shadows under the stands of the stadium, cap in hand and gown unzipped. He had on a button-up shirt and a tie and he looked so good.
Suddenly, Trish was very conscious of the fact that she was in cutoffs and a T-shirt. Just another way they didn’t match up.
“What did you do?” she demanded the moment Nate was in earshot.
He grinned at her as if he’d expected her to say that, but then he turned to the official. “If I could have a moment with Ms. Hunter...”
“Oh, yes. Yes, of course!” The man hurried back into the sunlight, still muttering, “Excellent news!” as he departed.
And then she and Nate were alone. “What did you do, Nate?”
“I removed the money from the equation.”
“By giving me ten freaking million dollars? Are you insane? That’s not removing it—that’s putting it front and center!”
“No, I didn’t. I gave your charity the money, free and clear. No strings attached. You’ll be able to draw a salary as the head of the charity and do all those things you wanted to do—basketball courts and after-school snacks and computer labs. All of it.”
He hadn’t forgotten her wish list. Why did that make her feel so good? “What do you mean, no strings? You just gave me ten million dollars!” Her voice echoed off the bottoms of the stands.
“No, I didn’t,” he repeated with more force. “I divested myself of some of my money to a worthy charity. I do that all the time.”
“But—but—”
He touched her then, pulling her deeper into the shadows. “I gave you a choice.”
“What?”
“I want you to come back to me,” he said, dropping his voice down. “But I don’t ever want you to feel that you’re not my equal, that you’re not good enough for me. And I sure as hell don’t ever want you to feel that I hold all the cards. So, here we are. I give your charity money that I’ll never miss and you’ll do so much good with it—and you’ll be able to pay yourself a salary.” He grinned. “Knowing you, it won’t be very much, but still.”
“I don’t see what this has to do with you giving me a choice, Nate. How is this not the same deal as before?”
In the safety of the shadows, he trailed his fingers down the side of her face. “This money is for your charity. It’s not contingent on you moving back in with me. That’s what no-strings-attached means. I won’t take this money back—in fact, I believe certain government regulations would frown upon that. No matter what happens next, the charity gets the money. That’s the deal.”
“But—”
“If you want to come back to me—or if you want me to come to wherever you are—then you and I will both know that it’s not because you couldn’t say no to the money. You won’t have to rely on me. You will be your own woman. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“I want...” She had to lean away from his touch. “But it won’t change the fact that the money came from you.”
“I doubt that any of those kids on the rez will give a damn where the money came from,” he said in a matter-of-fact voice. “And you’re missing the if. If you come back to me. It’s your choice. It always has been.”
“Nate...”
“I messed up the negotiations last time,” he went on. “A good negotiator always knows what the other side wants and the first time, you wanted funding. It was easy to give it to you because all I needed was a nanny. But the second time, that’s not what you wanted and I should have known it because I didn’t want you as a nanny anymore. The situation had changed.”
“You...didn’t?”
“You wanted something else—you told me yourself. You didn’t want to lose yourself in me. I didn’t figure out what that meant at first.” He grinned and despite the fact that she’d been yelling at him, he still looked thrilled to see her. “But I think I’ve got it now.”
“What?” Her words failed her. She knew she was repeating herself, but she couldn’t get a grasp on this situation.
“I think you wanted a promise,” he said, going down on one knee in the shadows under the stadium bleachers. “A promise that I would honor your wishes—that I would honor you—with no strings attached. I didn’t give that to you then. But I’d like to try again.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, bright blue box. The size that usually held a ring.
The air stopped moving in her lungs as he opened the box. “What are you doing, Nate?”
“Making you a promise,” he said. A splendid pear-shaped diamond was nestled on a silver band. “Trish Hunter, will you marry me?”
Her mouth opened, but no sound came out as she looked from the ring—the promise—back to him.
“I want to marry you. I hope you want to marry me.” He cracked a nervous little grin. “It usually works better that way.”
“But I was going to go home!”
“I want you to go.” He stood and, taking her hand in his, slipped the ring on her finger. “I want you to think about this, about us. I don’t want you to come back to me because you’re worried about Jane or you think you owe me. I don’t want you to lose yourself. I want you as you’ve been. You push back when I do something dumb, you teach me how to do things. You make me a real person, Trish—not some caricature of a billionaire geek with too much money. You give me a purpose. You make everything feel right in my world and that’s something I honestly wouldn’t ever get back.”
“You’re not that—not to me,” she told him, her words getting caught in the back of her throat. “You’re just Nate and you’re a wonderful man. I’m—I’m afraid, Nate. I’m afraid. I don’t have any great role models for how to make a relationship work. I spent so long not being in one that to suddenly fall in love with you? You were my first. And when I was with you, I didn’t feel like the same person I’d always defined myself as—the poor American Indian woman, the responsible daughter of an irresponsible woman. You—you make me feel right, too. And I felt it so much it scared me. It still scares me because I could love you so much. So much.”
He grinned down at her. “There’s that word again—could.”
“I...” she took a deep breath. “I do love you. You’ve shown me what a man can be—not someone cruel, not someone who comes and goes. A man who’ll stay, who’ll do the right thing even if it’s hard. Even if...”
“Even if it scares me. Like taking a baby home with me.” He took a step in and touched his
forehead to hers. “I hired the Polish grandmother, by the way. She’s very efficient. Just so we’re clear—I’m not asking you to be a nanny. I’m asking you to be my wife.” He grinned. “My permanent wife.”
“Oh, Nate.” She kissed him then, a light touching of the lips.
He wrapped his arms around her and held her tight. Suddenly, everything that had been wrong about the past few days was right again because Nate was here and she was here and they were together. “I missed you,” she whispered. “I was already thinking about calling you after I made it home.”
He squeezed her tighter. “I couldn’t wait that long. I couldn’t let you go without knowing exactly how much I need you. I want you to come back to us because you know that you belong with me.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “You’re right. Loving you doesn’t mean I lose myself. I feel like, for the first time, I’ve found myself.”
He tilted her head back and stared into her eyes. “I’m already yours, Trish Hunter. Will you be mine?”
This was what she wanted. To know that love wouldn’t destroy her like it always had her mother, to know that Nate would fight for her. For them. “I’m yours, too. You’re the only man I ever want.”
He kissed her then, full of passion and promises. “Come home,” he said when the kiss ended. “Sleep in my bed with me. And tomorrow we’ll work on getting you out to the rez, okay? That’s the plan.”
“Tomorrow,” she agreed. “But tonight...”
He kissed her again. “Tonight is ours.”
That was a promise she knew he’d keep.
* * * * *
If you loved THE NANNY PLAN, pick up Sarah M. Anderson’s A MAN OF DISTINCTION
A wealthy Native American lawyer must choose between winning the case of his career and reuniting with the love he left behind—and the child she kept a secret.
Available now from Harlequin Desire!
And don’t miss the next BILLIONAIRES AND BABIES story,
TRIPLE THE FUN
from USA TODAY bestselling author Maureen Child.
The Nanny Plan Page 17
