“It used to be bad. Now—” She paused, reached down, pulled up the leg of her blue jeans and extended it so he could see it—scarring and all.
He looked at her leg, then raised his gaze to meet hers. “It almost looks artificial.”
She let her pant leg fall again. “I know. It has something to do with skin grafts.”
“Did you have a lot of skin grafts?”
“I had a lot of operations. And therapy. Lots and lots of therapy.”
“Sounds hard.”
“It wasn’t hard as much as I feel like I missed five years of my life. Or I was set back five years. I’m twenty-five but in a lot of ways I still feel twenty.”
He nodded as things about her fell into place for him. She might have had a boyfriend who was a sort of fiancé but as she’d said, her growth had been stunted while she spent years in and out of the hospital. That more than explained why she looked at him differently.
And why she was the kind of shy that made men feel bold and brave and protective.
She didn’t like him. Well, she did. But not for the reasons he’d hoped.
Their conversation should have brought closure to the feelings rumbling inside him. Instead, disappointment joined them.
But he reminded himself that more often than not relationships didn’t work out. Especially his. So he should be glad she was wise enough, or in need of a job enough, that she’d wanted to talk through everything happening between them so she could keep her job and he could keep his nanny.
After lunch, she left him with the babies, taking Sunday off as they’d agreed. When she got home, he already had the kids in bed so she said goodnight and went to her room. He went to work on Monday with the sense that everything had gone back to normal between them.
But Monday evening she had Robert bring dinner down for both of them. As he shrugged out of his suit jacket, she set out plates and utensils. The kids sat in highchairs, banging rattles on trays covered with little round O cereal that they alternated between munching on and tossing.
He tried not to think about how much this felt like the scene he’d envisioned with him and Liliah after she’d told him she was pregnant. Though he hated to admit to the memory, he’d painted a picture in his brain of them as a happy family and Tory was stepping right into it.
A warning bell went off in his head. But he dismissed it. He was a grown man with twins who needed a nanny. He’d been too hurt by the twins’ mom to fall face-first into a fantasy. Especially not a fantasy with a woman who’d told him there could be nothing between them.
She pulled the top off the container of hot roast beef and gravy, and the scent filled the air, making his stomach growl.
“Nobody cooks like Cook.”
Tory eagerly agreed. “I know! I’ll probably gain fifty pounds before I leave here.”
He laughed. See? Normal conversation. He knew they could handle this. A little chitchat didn’t have to equate to either one of them getting too personal.
“Fifty pounds in eighteen years isn’t so bad. Some people do a lot worse.”
Dropping mashed potatoes onto her plate, she winced. “I don’t see myself staying eighteen years.”
“You don’t?”
In a voice that was soft and filled with regret, she said, “No. At first I thought I might, but the twins won’t need a nanny that long. Plus, I think I’d like to finish school.”
She handed the bowl to him and he took it. “Really?”
“Yeah, you know? Before the accident I was taking business classes.” She peeked over. “But I love your kids so much—I love everybody’s kids so much, that…well…now I think I’d like to be a teacher. I’ll need to go to school to do that.”
So maybe their conversations hadn’t been so great after all? If she was dropping hints about leaving and talking about going to school, maybe he was the only one who’d gotten comfortable?
Still, she was his nanny, not his girlfriend, not the twins’ mom. She had no responsibility to them. And after everything she’d been through she deserved to have a life, a dream.
“I think you’d be a great teacher.”
“I had some wonderful teachers in school. Especially elementary school. You probably won’t believe this but I was a shy kid.”
He eased back in his chair and grinned. “No kidding.”
“I was even more pitifully shy back then. But my first- and second-grade teachers really went out of their way to integrate me into the class.” She took a bite of roast beef sodden in gravy, then wiped her napkin across her lips. “That’s what I want to be.”