Baby for the Billionaire(33)

“Do you thank all your nannies this way?” she demanded.

“Only you.” His voice roughened. “I can’t explain it.”

“You promised not to touch me again.”

He deliberately released her and took a step back, amazed at the strength of will it required. “Better?”

For a split second he thought she was about to say, “No.” That she’d be the one to take that forbidden step into his arms and finish what he’d started. Then she nodded and deliberately turned away. The next instant acute tension tightened the muscles of her back and shoulders. A single look told him why.

Isabella had stopped eating and stared at them with unmistakable intensity. He couldn’t tell whether their embrace had upset his niece or pleased her. Maybe she wasn’t sure, either. After an endless moment she smiled, giving her seal of approval. A small dimple winked in her cheek. Until that moment, he didn’t even realize she had a dimple, so rare were her smiles. That’s what Annalise had managed to accomplish in just one short day.

Jack returned his niece’s smile. Whether his dear nanny knew it or not, his niece’s smile had just sealed Annalise’s fate.

The next several days flew by. Annalise proved to be right on several fronts. Getting away and devoting his full attention to Isabella made a noticeable difference. Of course, it didn’t solve all her problems. There was still the occasional tantrum, but to his relief they were few and far between. It also helped that the two adults presented a united front, making it clear that such behavior wouldn’t be tolerated.

To Jack, the most telling change came when his niece stopped painting her face in swirls of black, red and violent purple, but switched to more cheerful pastels that reflected her improved outlook on life. Not that the war paint lasted for more than an hour or two each day. Their twice-daily beach visits washed it away almost as soon as she applied it. On the fifth day, she forgot to wear it altogether, and that was when hope took hold.

Maybe, just maybe, there was a pathway out of the darkness.

Jack had to admit that his favorite times were in the evenings when the three of them curled up on the couch together and chose a DVD from the extensive selection stocked on the shelves surrounding the wide-screen TV. There in the darkness, he could relax his guard and simply enjoy this moment out of time.

“I think she’s nodded off,” Annalise whispered during one of their nightly sessions.

He’d sensed as much ten minutes ago when his niece’s breathing had slowed and deepened and her muscles had gone lax against his chest. “I’ll take her to bed in a minute.”

“You like having her fall asleep on you, don’t you?” The lights from the TV flickered, allowing him to catch the brief glitter of compassion reflected in her eyes. “Does it remind you of when you and Joanne were Isabella’s age?”

Jack released a harsh laugh, one that had Isabella stirring in his arms. He traced a reassuring hand along his niece’s back and forced himself to calmness. With a small, inarticulate murmur Isabella settled. “Not even close,” he stated quietly. “My father would have considered this sort of activity a complete waste of time.”

“Oh.” That single word spoke volumes. “And your mother? Would she have also considered it a waste of time?”

He hoped the darkness concealed his expression, but he could hear the pain creep into his voice. “She was different than my father. Before their divorce she tried not to show her emotions, since he’d use any sign of weakness against her. She changed later on.”

“How old were you when they broke up?”

“Eight. Nine, maybe. Joanne was two years older.”

“And how did your mother change, afterward?”

“She softened, became more openly affectionate. Of course, it’s hard to say if she was like that all the time. I can only base it on the time I saw her.”

“What do you mean?” Annalise straightened, and he could feel her attempting to penetrate the darkness in order to read his expression. “Didn’t your mother have custody of you?”

“No, only Joanne. My father took me.”

He caught Annalise’s soft gasp. “They split you up?”

“Yes.” A wintry coldness settled over him. With that one single decision, every scrap of love and kindness had been removed from his life. He still felt the loss to this day. “My mother never spoke to me about that time, but Joanne once explained that our father threatened to take both of us and prevent our mother from ever seeing us again if she didn’t agree to his terms.”

A strobe of brilliance flashed across the screen, allowing him to see that Annalise was visibly shaken. “Could he have done that?”

“Considering I didn’t see either my mother or my sister again until I turned thirteen, I’d say not only could he, but he did precisely that.”

“How …?” Her voice thickened, betraying her emotional reaction to his response. “Why …?” She shook her head, unable to formulate the questions she clearly wanted to ask.

Jack leaned his head back against the couch cushion and stared blindly at the old Star Trek movie that was Isabella’s current favorite. “How? With some of the most powerful lawyers money could buy. Why? Because he was—and is—a total bastard who used me to hit out at my mother.”

“But you did finally get to see her,” Annalise said on a note of urgency.

A smile of satisfaction tugged at his mouth. “That I did.”

“I assume he finally relented?” she asked tentatively.

“Not a chance in hell. The summer I turned thirteen, Dad took off overseas on an extended honeymoon with his latest trophy wife. I was supposed to go to camp. Instead, I hitchhiked to Colorado, where my mother was living with her second husband.”

“Dear God, Jack!” She reached for him, her hand clutching his arm. “Do you have any idea how dangerous that was? Anything could have happened to you.”

He regarded her with a hint of amusement. “That’s what my mother said. It was worth it, though. I stayed with them for most of that summer.” A summer filled with magic and hope. A summer unlike anything he’d experienced before or since. A summer that had ended in the death of dreams. “Until my father found out, that is. But those couple of months were quite eye-opening.”

“In what way?”

His brows tugged together reflecting a hint of the bewilderment he’d experienced during that time period. “They were all so happy. They laughed almost all the time. And when they fought …” He struggled for the right words to explain. “I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it never did.”

“You mean when they fought, you weren’t worried that they were on the verge of divorce.” Her hand shifted, rubbing his arm in a soothing motion. He doubted she was even conscious of her actions. “They were never nasty toward each other.”

“Exactly. They were—” he reflected on it for a moment “—casual. As though the way they interacted—the laughter, the tears, the squabbling, the open affection—was a normal, everyday occurrence.”

“It probably was.” She tilted her head to one side, sending a swath of curls tumbling across her shoulder. “How often did you get to visit after that?”

“I didn’t. My disobedience that summer earned me a trip to military school. I didn’t see Joanne again until I turned eighteen and my father no longer had any say in where I went or who I saw. Unfortunately, my mother and her husband managed to drive themselves off an icy mountainside a few months beforehand.”

“Oh, Jack! How awful.” He caught the betraying glitter of tears and felt something shift inside him, something deep and powerful. Something he wanted to protect himself from because it came from a wellspring of emotions he preferred to deny. “What happened to Joanne? Did she move back to Charleston to live with you and your father?”

“No. She was in college by then and flat out refused to have anything to do with our father.”

“Or you?” she dared to ask.

He refused to acknowledge the hit. For years he’d believed just that, until Joanne had finally set him straight. But by then he’d found a way to insulate himself from the sort of emotional pain that came from sentiment and familial attachment.

“We managed to revive our relationship, despite my father.” His mouth twisted. “Hell, Jo even found it in her heart to forgive him, not that he ever believed he required forgiveness. Ironically, Dad helped her find the lawyer who handled Isabella’s adoption.” Jack stood then, careful not to wake his niece, while putting an unmistakable period to the conversation. Annalise’s hand fell away, leaving behind coldness where once there was warmth. “Time I put our little one to bed. I’ll be back in a minute.”

He took his time settling his niece, needing those handful of minutes to rebuild his barriers. He’d told Annalise far more than he’d shared with any other woman, opening parts of himself that he’d sealed away for almost two full decades. He didn’t ordinarily let people in, didn’t dare. That sort of closeness often became messy, risked creating emotions like the ones that had sent his parents’ relationship spiraling into vicious arguments and acts of revenge.