Chapter 10: The Voicemail

Conrad ended the meeting with one sentence.

"This is adjourned until the court date, and Miss Holliday keeps her position until then."

Odette's lawyer protested, and Conrad looked at him until he stopped.

"Miss Holliday," he said afterward, not quite meeting my eyes. "Take the night. I will put my daughter to bed myself."

Valen was already gone.

I found him on the boathouse dock, where nobody had told him he could not be.

He was sitting on the edge with his boots on the boards and his feet over the water.

I sat down next to him.

We watched a gull land on a post and think better of it.

"Tell me," I said.

"It's not a good story."

"I didn't ask for a good one."

He was quiet a long time.

"My brother's wife and I were together once," he said. "Before she was his wife. A year. I was twenty-seven. She was twenty-six."

I kept my face still.

"She ended it. Said I was too quiet. Four months later she was engaged to my brother."

"That's a rotten thing to do."

"I thought so at the time. I moved to Seattle for a while." He rubbed his jaw. "I came back for the wedding. I behaved.

"I gave a toast. I didn't speak to either of them for two years after, except at holidays."

"And the night she died?"

His hands went tight on his knees.

"She called me," he said. "Nine at night. First time in years. I looked at the screen and I let it ring."

"Why?"

"Because I was angry. Because I'd been a coward for six years and I was tired of being the one who picked up.

"I thought, she wants something, she always wants something, I'll call back in the morning."

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Nanny's Rules: Forbidden Desires from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.