3
“Lim!” Naisha choked on the name once more, eyes popping, mouth open in shock. How? Why? “What are you doing here?”
William immediately stepped in front of Willa, who was staring from one to the other, looking perplexed. “Collecting my daughter. What are you doing here?”
“Earning a living,” she snapped. Who the hell was he to demand that she justify her presence? Who was he, after twelve years, to be looking at her like that?
She was the injured party. She had been the one who got hurt! He’d made her love him, made love to her, made her promises. Led her to believe he loved her.
And then he’d gone and married another woman.
Back then, she couldn’t believe it, even as the wedding was hastily planned and executed. She’d known it couldn’t be possible, because she and William—or Lim, as she liked to call him—were together. They were an item. They were inlove.
But hehadgotten married, hadn’t he? Even worse, the woman he’d married had been his younger brother, Alex’s, girlfriend. The man who was now enfolding Jacyn against him as if to protect her from the negative energy flowing through the room. Which made his sudden about-face doubly heinous.
William spun around to face Jacyn. “Thisis the woman you recommended to teach my daughter?”
Jacyn searched his face, as if looking for a reason why both she and William both seemed so upset. “William, I—”
“My answer is no,” William snapped.Who was he talking to,Naisha wondered?Jacyn? Willa? Me?
Didn’t matter. “Did you just refer to me as a woman with loose morals? Just some dumb model who spent her time getting drunk, getting high, and screwing around? Is that what your tiny neanderthal brain thinks of hard-working women like me who use our looks to create art? To bring value to clients like Jacyn?”
She saw a flush of red under Liam’s toasty tan, saw a flicker of embarrassment in his gold-flecked brown eyes, so very much like Willa’s. The child was her father in the flesh. He looked away, but she had no mercy.
“I’m not surprised. That’s just the kind of attitude I’d expect from a rich, pampered Count-in-waiting to have towards women who actually have to work every day for what they need!”
“My father’s dead,” he ground out. “Iam the Count!”
Alex put a calming hand on his brother’s shoulder. Naisha suspected that if he hadn’t, William would have had more to say.
She curtsied sardonically. “Well, bully for you, Your Excellency.” She reached out and plucked her resume from Jacyn’s fingers, which she had just moments before printed out, and tore it to shreds. “Good luck on your search for a governess who isn’t allergic to rabbits!”
To her regret, Willa began to cry. Not an anguished wail, not the angry railing of a spoiled brat, but a soft, pained sniffle that cut Naisha to the quick. She was being a bitch, she knew it. But the shock of seeing Liam again.Oh God.
William bent over and brought the child to him. “Shh, my heart. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” He threw a glare in Naisha’s direction, one that the child couldn’t see.
Immediately, Naisha apologized as well. “I’m sorry, Willa. I got angry. I shouldn’t have said what I just did.”
“But why? Why are you mad at my papa?”
Nobody said anything. It was Jacyn who broke the silence, stepping out of Alex’s protective arms and taking Willa by the hand. “Come, sweetie. I think I feel an attack of ice cream cravings coming on.”
“Is the baby hungry?” Willa asked, patting Jacyn’s tummy.
“I think he or she is starving! So shall we?” She paused to give her husband a look that saidCome with me, or else,and immediately Alex turned and stepped to her side.
“It’s good to see you again, Naisha,” Alex said before he left.
Jacyn threw irritated looks at both Naisha and William. “I don’t know what’s going on between the two of you, but you better sort it out. And stop dragging your dirty linens out before a child!”
With that, the three of them walked away, leaving William and Naisha alone in the room, each one avoiding the other’s gaze.
“I asked you what you’re doing here,” William repeated as soon as they were alone again. He knew it was a stupid question the moment it left his lips, but for some reason he needed some irrelevant conversational buffer to buy him time until he could recover from the shock to his system that her sudden appearance had wreaked upon him.
“Wasting time on a Saturday afternoon because there’s nothing on TV,” she answered sarcastically. Her lips twisted as she gave him a straight answer. “I’m working, William. Some of us have to do that, you know, to pay the bills and keep food on the table. We aren’t all born in castles, choking on diamond-studded spoons—”
“I work as well,” he said defensively.