Ex-Convict Nanny and Billionaire Single Dad novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Lake Lady

Nate walks into Dot's diner with Lulu, who won't sleep or let Shelby touch her, and offers Holly a two-week trial as nanny on hard terms; she says yes to keep Lulu away from Shelby, and walks into his foyer to find her mother waiting with open arms.

"You're dripping on my floor again," Dot said on Monday.

"I'm washing your floor, Dot. It's supposed to be wet."

"It's supposed to be wet with soap. Not with you sulking into the bucket."

Dot Fenske had been my cellmate for three years at Gig Harbor.

She had a gray braid down to her belt and reading glasses on a beaded chain.

She'd gotten out fourteen months before me and bought half a diner in Ballard with her late husband's life insurance.

The day I walked out of the gate, she was in the parking lot with a thermos and a job.

"I'm not sulking," I said.

"You jumped in a lake for a kid on Saturday and haven't said ten words since."

"I said plenty of words. I said them on a pier in front of thirty people."

Dot leaned on the counter.

"And your sister said more."

I wrung out the mop.

Dot was the only person alive besides my mother and my sister who knew I hadn't been home that afternoon.

She had never once said it out loud since.

The bell over the door rang.

Dot straightened and took her glasses off her nose.

"Well," she said. "Look what the rain dragged in."

I turned around with the mop in my hand.

Nate Roarke filled the door.

I knew his name now. Everybody in Seattle did, apparently, except me.

The jogger had told me on the pier, after the ambulance left.

He was in the same dark coat, and he hadn't shaved.

His daughter was holding his hand.

She saw me and tore loose.

"Lake lady!"

She hit me at the knees so hard I almost went over into the bucket.

I caught her under the arms.

Her curls were tangled and there were dark circles under her eyes, purple as bruises on that pale skin.

"Hey, swimmer," I said.

"I'm not a swimmer. I sank."

"You sank very professionally."

She giggled into my apron.

Her father didn't.

"Can we talk," he said. It wasn't a question.

Dot pointed her pie server at booth six.

"Talk there. Order something or I'll charge you rent."

He sat. Lulu climbed in beside me instead of him and pressed against my arm.

He looked at that for a long second.

"She hasn't slept since Saturday," he said. "Two nights. She wakes up screaming that she's in the water."

My chest went tight.

"She won't let anyone bathe her," he said. "Shelby tried last night and Lulu bit her."

"I didn't bite hard," Lulu said.

"She asks for you," he said. "Not her doctor. Not me. The lake lady."

He put a folded paper on the table.

My name was at the top. Holly Anne Thornquist.

The charge below it. The sentence. The facility.

"I had you looked up," he said. "Fifty-four months. First-degree criminal mistreatment of a child. A three-year-old on Mercer Island. You told the police you fell asleep."

"You don't trust me," I said.

"I don't trust anyone I pay," he said. "My last nanny sold pictures of my daughter at her mother's funeral to a magazine. She had a spotless record."

"So you thought you'd try one with a dirty one."

Something moved at the corner of his mouth, and stopped.

Dot set down two coffees and a slice of marionberry pie with three forks.

"On the house for the swimmer," she said. "You pay full price."

She walked off.

Nate looked at me across the coffee.

"Did you do it?"

"I pleaded guilty."

"That isn't an answer."

"It's the only one the State of Washington ever wanted."

He was quiet.

Lulu pulled the pie to her side of the table and started on it with the biggest fork.

"Here's what I'm offering," he said. "Two weeks. Fourteen hundred a week. You live in. There are cameras in every hallway of my house."

"Bedrooms?"

"No. Not in bedrooms or bathrooms."

"Good to know where I can cry."

That corner of his mouth again.

"You don't take her off the property alone," he said. "Not for the first two weeks. If I see one thing I don't like, you're gone the same hour."

"And your girlfriend?"

His eyes went flat.

"Shelby's upset. She'll come around."

"That's not what I asked," I said.

He held my eyes.

I had every reason to say no.

My sister would be in that house. Our mother wouldn't be far behind.

I had six days of freedom and a mop and a room above a diner.

Then Lulu licked her fork and said, "Aunt Shelby says I'm a big girl. She lets me go all the way to the end of the pier by myself."

The table went still.

Nate turned and looked at his daughter.

I put my hand flat on the table.

"I'll do it," I said. "Starting today."

He let out a breath.

"You don't want to negotiate?"

"I want her to sleep," I said. "Negotiate with Dot. She'll want my shift covered."

From the counter Dot yelled, "Damn right I will."

An hour later his driver pulled through a gate in Medina and down a long drive to a house made of glass and cedar on the edge of Lake Washington.

Lulu had fallen asleep against my shoulder in the back seat.

The foyer was two stories of windows full of gray water.

Shelby stood on the stairs in a cream sweater.

And beside her, with one hand on the banister and her ash-blond bob perfect, stood our mother.

Kerstin Thornquist smiled and opened her arms.

"There's my girl," she said.

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