The blankets were thick enough and the room dark enough that the light from the room barely penetrated the space, so she clicked on David’s flashlight. As she sat cross-legged, her head at an odd angle because of the height of the art table she was under, she felt the irritation and frustration coming back. Adam had real demands of his work, but he had a family too. He couldn’t just not do the job—she understood—but he couldn’t just not raise his children either. They were only with him a short time, and then they’d be back with their mother. It all made her feel helpless, more helpless than she felt about her own life. For her, it was just a matter of doing something else and finding her way. This job would end, and she could take a different path in life. But with Adam, this was something he’d built and worked very hard to achieve. She couldn’t expect him to just give it up. He had a huge house to pay for, bills, children to support. A hopeless feeling snaked through her chest.
A book on workaholics would offer suggestions on how to get the person to stop working so much. That wouldn’t help. A book about balancing family and work certainly couldn’t address the problem of having a career that demanded more than someone could offer. The more she thought about it, the more Carrie realized that Adam’s problem wasn’t an issue of choice, it was an issue of time. He only had twenty-four hours in the day, and that wasn’t enough time to get it all done. He wasn’t being standoffish or heartless; he wanted to be able to do it all, she could tell, but he just couldn’t. What bothered her was that he didn’t realize that having children who didn’t know their father was worse than having to give a little at work. As the thoughts went around in her head, confusion mixed with anger. Almost every time she put him in the path of his children, it backfired. She felt like she couldn’t be what the children needed her to be because she’d always been able to make the children she cared for happy and well behaved. She’d never faced an obstacle like this one, and it tortured her that she couldn’t find an answer. She wanted to be angry with someone—at him—but she couldn’t.
The side of the sheet went up beside her, startling her. When she saw who it was, she took in a sharp breath, her heart going wild. Carrie hadn’t expected to see anyone in the playroom—the family was all downstairs and Adam had been in his office until this very minute when his head poked through the opening in the fort. To her surprise, he crawled in beside her. On a regular day, he had such an authoritative presence that it was almost intimidating, but when he let down his guard, there was a realness to him that she loved. She ached for him to talk in a soft voice like he did with the children, that curiosity in his eyes, that smile on his lips. She wondered what he looked like asleep with his eyes closed, when he was the most vulnerable, when there was nothing pulling on him, nothing consuming his time.
The beam from the flashlight hit his face in a harsh way, showing the exhaustion on his forehead and under his eyes. He had on a sweater that made his eyes more blue, jeans, and socks—one was inside out, and Carrie had to swallow her smile. This gorgeous, wealthy man, who worked at a job she probably didn’t even understand, had put his sock on inside out just like she probably would if she were in a rush. Even though his inattention to his family made her crazy, something as simple as that could make her smile. She tried to hide it, but she knew that her emotions were showing on her face. The heat of the splotches began to tickle her neck, and she felt her breathing speed up as a result. Her pulse was up in her ears, and she couldn’t get a breath.
He looked at her curiously, his eyebrows furrowing just a little, and in a different way than they did when he was working, as if he were responding to her smile, which he hadn’t ever done before. It was clear that he was thinking something, like something was registering, but he wouldn’t let it show.
“What are you doing in here?” he asked. His gaze roamed around her face. It made her feel anxious. She didn’t know how to be anything more than a nanny—she wasn’t practiced, she hadn’t read up on it at all. She didn’t know how to respond to a look like that with anything more than utter confusion. She didn’t know how to be charming and flirty, even though when he looked at her like that, she wanted to know how. She’d have to go with her gut, and it scared her. There was a part of her that thought she wasn’t good enough to catch the eye of someone like Adam Fletcher. She worried that she was misreading him, but he had definitely responded to her smile, and it was clear by the softness in his eyes that he was trying to ease her nerves. What he didn’t realize was that by looking at her like that it was making them worse.