“Ah,” Kitty purred. “So she is the nanny.”
Raina didn’t waffle for an instant. Kiss or no kiss, Kitty or no Kitty, she still had every intention of winning her bargain with Derek. Ignoring Kitty’s gleeful jab, she bumped up her chin and faced Derek head on.
“Of course I’m not breaking our agreement. I merely thought that with Kitty here, you wouldn’t need me.” He didn’t so much as flinch. So she narrowed her gaze and pushed a little harder. “After all, you can imagine how much I’d hate being a third wheel.”
Derek clenched his jaw, a sure sign he’d gotten her meaning and was trying hard not to let his irritation show. “You’re still my employee. And the last time I checked, you work eight-hour days.”
“Eight?” she scoffed. Ten to twelve was more like it.
He ignored her. “Besides, Kitty here is probably tired from her trip and will want to rest.”
Being dismissed was apparently too much for Kitty. She pulled herself from his grasp and propped her hands on her hips. She didn’t stomp her foot in protest, but Raina got the impression she wanted to.
“Honestly, Derek. Just let the nanny go home.”
“She’s not the nanny.”
“I’m not the nanny.”
She and Derek spoke at the same time, clearly equally annoyed with Kitty. For just an instant, her eyes met his. His lips gave the slightest twitch as if Kitty’s fit amused him. Loss tightened around Raina’s heart as tears prickled unexpectedly at the backs of her eyes.
She’d miss this. These moments of synchronization, of knowing exactly what he was thinking. How could she not? After nine years, she knew him so well. He was like another part of her. Like a leg or an arm. And after he was amputated from her life, she’d feel the ghost of his presence for years.
And yet she couldn’t stay. She just couldn’t. Certainly not now. She’d had her own reasons for leaving before. But now that he was going to marry awful Kitty Biedermann? Well, being in love with your boss was bad enough. But when that boss was married? That would end in nothing but misery.
And her best chance of breaking free of Derek permanently was to stick it out for now and win this damn challenge they had going. Then she’d not only be free of Derek, but she could go back to culinary school—half a continent away. Poughkeepsie, New York had never looked so good.
“Of course I’ll stay. After all, we have a lot to accomplish in the next week.”
“Oh, for goodness sake.” Kitty waved her perfectly manicured hands in a display of dramatic pique. “If you’re really not the nanny, then I certainly hope the first thing you plan to accomplish is hiring one.”
Derek opened his mouth to answer, but Raina beat him to the punch. She really wanted to deliver this news herself. “No, not at all. In fact, Derek just let the nanny go.” Kitty didn’t need to know it was a temporary situation. “He’s just determined to learn to do all of this on his own.”
“You can’t be serious.” Kitty’s lips curled downward in distaste when Derek didn’t deny it.
“Yep,” Raina said with a grin, feeling spitefully mischievous. “He’s completely enchanted with the idea of being a dad. He’s been staying up with Isabella all night long. Feeding her. Changing her dirty diapers. The whole shebang.”
At the phrase “dirty diapers” Kitty actually shuddered in revulsion.
Maybe she’d been laying it on a little thick, but—Raina justified to herself—Kitty deserved to know what she was getting into. And so did Derek.
“You know, I almost feel sorry for Kitty,” Raina murmured to Isabella as she leaned over to blow a kiss onto Isabella’s naked belly before tugging her onesie back into place after a diaper change.
After Isabella’s giggles of delight faded, she shot Raina a disbelieving glance.
“I said almost,” Raina protested. Still she felt the need to explain. “I’m just saying, when she agreed to marry a billionaire diamond magnate, she probably didn’t know she was signing up for a life of burp cloths and diaper genies.”
Raina rolled Isabella onto her belly and off of the towel she’d spread out on the office floor to change Isabella’s diaper. Isabella wobbled onto her elbows to watch as Raina folded the towel, then set it on the wingback leather chair beside the diaper bag.
From the executive bathroom in Derek’s office, she still had a good view of Isabella’s spot on the floor, so Raina gave her hands a quick wash in the sink and poured herself a glass of water.
Derek clearly needed a break from dealing with two such difficult women at the same time—the two being Kitty and Isabella, because Raina refused to consider herself one of the difficult women. It had been three days since Kitty had shown up. The heiress had spent so much of that time at the spa, Raina was surprised she had any surface left on her body to buff, polish or exfoliate. When she wasn’t at the spa, she’d devoted her time to disrupting the tentative bond forming between Derek and Isabella. The result of which were tears, pouting and temper tantrums. And Isabella wasn’t very happy, either.
The average man would have buckled under the strain by now. Derek, clearly no ordinary man, appeared to be getting by solely by clenching his jaw. Frankly, she was amazed he hadn’t yet cracked a tooth. Perhaps her last act as his assistant should be rescheduling his biannual dental exam. Just to be sure.
So Raina insisted she drive downtown herself to pick up the custody papers Derek’s lawyer had drawn up. She’d absconded with Isabella before Derek could protest. The documents were safely tucked into her briefcase and now she and Isabella were killing time hiding in Derek’s office.
By the time Raina had made it back from the bathroom, Isabella had wiggled forward a good four inches.
Raina grinned. “Man, any day now, you’re going to be crawling. Then it’ll be, look out world!”
Isabella shot Raina a look of defiant arrogance so like her father’s, Raina couldn’t help chuckle. “Yeah, I know, I’m stating the obvious. Of course you’ll be crawling soon. I’d never dream of implying you wouldn’t be.”
She plopped down on the floor beside Isabella. Studying the infant’s flawless skin and bright blue eyes, Raina felt her heart contract.
“Honey, you could not be any cuter. That Kitty’s an idiot. Anyone would be thrilled to be your stepmom.”
Isabella grinned as if to say she thought so, too. Then she wobbled forward with a jerk. Raina moved to help the girl onto her knees. Isabella mewled in protest as if to insist she could do it herself.
“You are just like your father. A nice healthy dose of that Messina independence.”
As soon as the words left her mouth, a pang of loss sliced through her chest, killing her good mood. How in the world was she going to leave him?
To Isabella she said, “The only thing I don’t understand is why you don’t see it.”
Isabella had grown to tolerate Derek’s presence, but only just. By the end of his first week of taking care of Isabella, he’d mastered all of the basics: feeding, swaddling, and yes, even car seat installation. Raina almost would have believed her job was done. That she was a shoo-in to win the challenge. Except for two things. First off, Derek was still approaching fatherhood with all of the enthusiasm of an inmate on death row. Secondly, Isabella would hold out her arms and smile eagerly at anyone who walked through the door, except Derek.
“I can only assume you’re just as stubborn as he is.”
Isabella looked annoyed. As if to prove Raina wrong, she tried to wiggle forward again, only to fall flat on her face.
“Ouch. That had to hurt.” Raina snatched Isabella up in her arms and waited for a howl of pain that never came. Isabella merely clenched her toothless jaw and wiggled to show she wanted back down.
“Like I said, stubborn and determined. And apparently, holding a grudge.”
“I assume you’re talking about Derek?”
Raina jerked her head around to find Kitty standing in the office doorway. As always, she was dressed like the vamp from some forties noir movie. Which only made Raina more aware of the inadequacies of her own, very practical wardrobe. But hey, at least when Isabella spit up on her, it only ruined a fifteen-dollar T-shirt from Target.
With a patently false smile, Kitty slinked into the room, shutting the door behind her. “I hope you don’t mind me butting in on your morning. When Derek mentioned you’d come to the office, I decided to take the opportunity for us to talk. Woman to woman.”
Raina gritted her teeth and returned Kitty’s smile. She had no intention of being won over by Kitty’s platitudes, but Kitty didn’t need to know that.
“What exactly did you want to talk to about?”
“Why, Derek, of course.” Kitty perched on the very edge of one of the leather wingback chairs. “And this foolish notion he has about raising that child himself.”
The way she said the words “that child” as if Isabella was a vial of the small pox virus made Raina feel like Kitty was grating her inch-long acrylic nails across Raina’s bare nerves. Even Isabella must have noticed the slur, because she reached a hand out to Raina as if seeking reassurance.
Raina held her close. “I’m not sure I agree that it’s a foolish notion. Family is very important to Derek.” Then, because she couldn’t resist, she added, “You of all people surely know that.”
A flush crept into Kitty’s cheeks. “Of course. But Derek mentioned that his brother—Dexter is it?—is very fond of the child, as well. Wouldn’t he and that fiancée of his be better suited to raise the girl?”
Not wanting to tip her hand, Raina carefully kept the outrage from her voice. “Are you suggesting that Derek give custody of Isabella to Dex and Lucy?”
Kitty forced another overly benign smile. “You can see, I only want what’s best for her, can’t you? If Dexter and Lucy care for the girl, why shouldn’t they raise her? After all, she is Isabella’s aunt.”
“And Derek is her father,” Raina said clutching Isabella to her chest. “I’ve always felt the best environment for children is with their parents.”
“Well, normally, of course.” Kitty shot Isabella a dismissive glance.
“Derek wants to parent her,” Raina said. She believed it, too, but she couldn’t deny the question nagging at the back of her mind. Did Derek honestly want Isabella or was he just doing what he thought was right? Always the right thing for the family.
“But Dallas is so much more wholesome than New York. It’s a much better place to raise a child, don’t you agree?”
The apparent change in topic rocked Raina back on her heels for a moment. “Well, yes, but—”
“Then you see my point. I knew I could rely on you to be sensible.” Kitty stood, clutching her bag under her arm. “You’ll talk to Derek for me then?”
“Talk to Derek? I don’t understand.”
“Explain to him that Isabella should stay in Dallas with Dexter.”
“But Derek lives in Dallas, too.”
Kitty chuckled as she headed for the door. “Of course he’ll always keep a house in Dallas. But he’s certainly not going to live here once we’re married.”
Nine
“Are you sure this is necessary?” Derek didn’t quite growl the question, but there was a definite grumble to his voice.
“Huh?” Raina snapped her gaze back toward Derek. Through the haze of her distraction, she’d picked up his tone, but not the gist of his question.
“This.” He scowled as he waved a copy of The Foot Book. Isabella sat on his lap, her back to his stomach, her feet thumping the leg he’d propped up on his other knee.
The three of them were sitting outside by the pool as a concession to the beautiful day. The sky was a crystalline-blue, the sun bright, the breeze faint, the heat bearable.
Kitty had spent less than three minutes glaring at Raina and Isabella on the back patio before declaring the sun “entirely too bright” and the temperature “ridiculously hot” before storming back inside to—as she’d put it—take a sleeping pill and a nap. Kitty’s absence was no doubt a large part of the patio’s appeal.
Raina might have felt guilty for driving Kitty off if Kitty weren’t obviously pure evil. But since she could put comic book supervillians to shame, Raina wasn’t too concerned.
Derek, however, seemed less than thrilled with the arrangements. He held up the book for her to see.
“Ah,” she said. “The reading. Yes, it’s necessary.”
Derek’s scowl deepened, but he eased back against the chair, settled Isabella against his chest and began reading again.
The sight of them together tugged mercilessly at her heart. Their faces wore identical expressions of serious concentration. Isabella sat, nestled in the crook of his arm, her tiny hands clutching his forearm. Her lower lip wobbling occasionally as if she might jump in and pick up reading where he left off.
Who was Raina kidding? If she wasn’t careful, Derek plus Isabella would send her straight to heartbreak without passing Go or collecting two hundred dollars.
How did Kitty not get this? How could she be in the same room with them for even five minutes and not see how much they needed each other?
Obviously, Isabella needed her father. Because her mother, Jewel, clearly wasn’t prepared to step up to the plate, it was all the more important that she have a loving father in her life. Raina knew firsthand that when you’d been abandoned by one parent, you really needed the support and love of your remaining parent.