“The room will do fine,” she said at once.
He looked doubtful. “Are you sure? The others have their own kitchenette, but this does not.”
Willa was already hopping excitedly. “Yes, yes! You’ll be right across from me. We’ll be sleep buddies!”
That alone sealed the deal. “I’ll have these items removed,” William indicated the baby things with a tilt of his head, “and ensure that it is prepared appropriately for you immediately.”
Naisha wondered if there was some cellar deep within the building where these baby things would lie, unused. The idea made her heart hurt.
Bastard.
Twenty or thirty minutes later, Naisha was fully ensconced in her new room, after having stood back and watched in a daze as no less than five servants appeared to prepare it for her. The sheets were stripped, curtains changed, carpets swiftly vacuumed. And then her bags unpacked and clothing neatly refolded and placed in the drawers of a large, antique armoire.
One woman, whose name she quickly learned was Yvette and who was the chief housekeeper, even asked her if the art on the walls and the small assortment of statuary was to her taste. If she didn’t like them, Yvette suggested, she would have them removed and replaced with something more suitable.
Naisha responded in French that the décor was lovely and she wouldn’t want it any other way.
Yvette made no secret of her delight at Naisha’s fluency, and made sure she understood that whatever she wanted, whenever she needed it, all she had to do was call and it would be hers.
As a final touch, a beaming young maid walked in with a large bouquet of fresh spring flowers, which Naisha suspected had been spontaneously gathered on the family estate. She bent over them, inhaling deeply, drawing the scent into herself almost greedily. The smell of the typical Provençal flowers took her way back, back to the happy summers she’d spent here.
Back to her time with William, her ‘Lim’, as she’d called him.
He’d long since taken his leave, and Willa had trotted off to greet her grandmother, but still, Naisha looked around, ensuring that her shiver of awareness had nothing to do with his presence.
Satisfying herself that she was indeed alone, she plopped onto the huge bed and fell backwards, feet still on the floor, back pressed into the fresh-smelling sheets, which were surely a million-count Egyptian cotton.
Since the day she’d signed that contract, she’d resisted asking herself the question that had hovered insistently at the corner of her mind: What the hell had she gotten herself into?
Not only had she returned to Provence, but she was in William’s house! The site of her sexual awakening, of her first experience of love and of heartbreak.
Was she crazy? Especially now that grown-up William had fulfilled every promise of manhood he’d shown as a youth. Whose devastating presence, power, and masculinity surrounded him like an aura. Filled every room he entered.
How could she exist this close to him and not be drawn into his orbit?
He may be grown up,she reminded herself,but so are you.You’re a woman of the world. You’ve traveled, enjoyed luxury, experienced the joys and pains of relationships, both good and bad. You got this. All you need to do is ignore his devastating influence. Don’t let him get to you.
And, speaking of relationships, she couldn’t forget that the main reason she’d come out here was to get away from Abe and his persistent intrusions into her life. She’d managed to put an ocean between them. She hoped that would be good enough.
William stepped out of his mother’s suite, having spent a pleasant half hour with her bringing her up to speed on his visit to the States. He could still hear Willa’s voice as she chattered on about her own adventures. Her trip to the US with Papa, Ton Alex and Tante Jacyn, and her escapades at the amusement park in Paris.
Of course, she was full of stories about her new governess, and showing off her funky new braids.
He loved hearing the sound of her laughter. It had become increasingly rare. It wasn’t lost on him that the second the child had entered the compound her mood had shifted, and she had become as somber and withdrawn as she had been since she’d lost her mother.
The flashes of the bubbly daughter he knew were short-lived, and it pained him to know that the home of her ancestors had become a source of unhappy memories for her. He wondered if there was any way to save her from that pain.
He also noticed that when Willa was with Naisha, that old spark came back into her eyes. It was as if the two had a certain chemistry, the kind of bond that could be forged in an instant, and yet hold strong and true.
That alone, he reminded himself, was reason enough for him to have hired her. That alone was enough to alleviate the uncertainty he felt about allowing her back into his life.
“Notmylife,” he reminded himself under his breath. “Mydaughter’s.”
No matter how desirable Naisha was, how much she had bloomed into a beautiful, confident, successful woman, it was up to him to keep her at arm’s length. Surely, he could do that.
He wandered around the large, well-manicured garden, brooding. The animal topiaries—rabbits, kittens, puppies—that he had loved as a boy, the twisting maze that took up most of the lawn, brought him no joy. He was restless and uncomfortable.
He needed to do something about that.