A Nanny for the Reclusive Billionaire Page 16

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Why?”

  “To say sorry.”

  Rhys looked up from the drawing to study his son. “You think I should apologize to Mallory?”

  “Not you, me,” Oliver said, his voice and expression deadpan, making him seem more solemn than any four-year-old had a right—or a reason—to be. “For getting her in trouble.”

  Rhys moved his chair closer to his son. “How did you get her in trouble?”

  “I was bored.” Oliver stared down at the table, his words spilling out in a jumbled rush. “Collins told her you wouldn’t like it if she took me to the movies. But I’d never gone before, and I wanted to go really, really bad. So we went. And you got mad at her, and she left.”

  “Who said I was mad?” Rhys put an arm around his son’s shoulders.

  “Collins.” Oliver pulled the picture back, picked up a yellow crayon, and started coloring again, probably adding some other New York City landmark to his already crowded drawing, like the Statue of Liberty or Times Square. “I heard him talking to Mrs. Flannigan. He said you were mad at Mallory for taking me off the island, and you used it as a ’cuse to chase her away because you were scared of her.”

  Not scared of her, Rhys thought, rubbing his neck, the two—or was it three?—days of stubble scraping his palm. Scared of his feelings for her.

  Was Collins right? Was that what he’d done? Pushed Mallory away not only because he was afraid of losing Oliver, but because he was afraid of losing her, too?

  “But you don’t have to be scared of her,” Oliver continued, scribbling away. His leaned forward and wrinkled his nose, all the four-year-old focus he could muster on the piece of paper in front of him. “She’s nice. She always let me have the last piece of pizza and she smelled like ice cream and strawberries.”

  “Ice cream, huh?” Rhys chuckled. “What kind?”

  Oliver put down his crayon. “Mint chocolate chip.”

  “Your favorite.” Rhys squeezed his son’s shoulder. “I’m not scared of Mallory, pal. And I’m not mad at her. Or you.”

  “Then why did she have to go away?”

  Good question.

  “It’s a grown-up thing,” Rhys said, taking the easy way out and ducking the issue. “I’ll explain it to you when you’re older.”

  Oliver puckered his lips and blew out a raspberry. “I hate grown-up things.”

  He switched to a purple crayon and went back to coloring.

  “So do I sometimes,” Rhys admitted.

  Like this time.

  He’d been an idiot. Let fear run his life. It had almost cost him his relationship with Oliver. Would have, if Mallory hadn’t come along to shake things up. And now it had cost him her.

  He should have taken more time to listen to her, to try to understand where she was coming from. Why had he been so quick to dismiss her concerns? Valid concerns based on her own painful history.

  Cancer. He couldn’t even begin to imagine how hard it must have been for her to go through that as a teenager. It had been rough on his mother, and she was an adult. Mallory wasn’t just bright and beautiful. She was brave, too.

  He’d be lying if he said the thought of loving someone with Mallory’s medical track record didn’t scare the shit out of him. But he was more frightened by the prospect of not having her in his life at all than he was of losing her.

  Rhys looked over at his son, still wrapped up in his artwork. The kid was right. Someone needed to apologize to Mallory. But it wasn’t Oliver.

  “All done.” Oliver held up his drawing.

  “Great job, buddy.” Rhys took it from him and placed it safely in the center of the table. Then he picked up his son and stood. “Now back to bed.”

  “Can we send it to Mallory in the morning?” Oliver asked, winding his arms around Rhys’s neck and pressing his face into his chest.

  “I’ve got a better idea.” Rhys laid his son down on the bed and pulled the covers up to his chin. Drastic times called for even more drastic measures, and there was only one way he could think of to make Mallory listen to him after how he’d treated her.

  “Why don’t we give it to her in person?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Mallory had to hand it to her mother. She sure knew how to throw a party.

  From her position behind a potted plant in the corner of the grand ballroom at the Worthington, Mallory sipped champagne as the cream of New York society ate, drank, and mingled. Waitstaff in crisp white shirts, black bow ties, and neatly pressed black pants circulated with trays of deviled quail eggs, bite-size bruschetta, and Veuve Clicquot.

  At the center of it all stood Brooke and Eli, looking sleek and stylish in an off-white stretch jumpsuit and impeccably tailored charcoal-gray suit. Her sister shifted from one Louboutin-clad foot to the other, clearly uncomfortable with either the spike heels or all the attention being showered on her as the fairer half of the main attraction. Or both.

  Eli slipped an arm around Brooke’s waist and bent low to whisper something in her ear. Brooke threw her head back and laughed, then took her husband’s face in her hands and kissed him, long and deep, both of them oblivious to or uncaring of the stuffed shirts looking on with shock and disapproval.

  Mallory sank into the nearest chair with a sigh and drained the rest of her champagne. Would she ever love and be loved like that, so thoroughly the outside world ceased to matter? Was that what she’d given up by leaving Flamingo Key?

  “Hiding again?” Her mother’s censure was like a bucket of ice water splashed in her face.

  “Not hiding, resting,” Mallory corrected, although there was a bit of truth to both. Yes, she was trying to keep a low profile. But she was also dead tired. The past few days had been a flurry of activity leading up to the reception. Fittings. Florists. Favors. No detail was too small to go unattended to by Pamela Worthington and her army of minions, including her youngest daughter. “Besides, it’s Brooke’s big day, not mine.”

  “Well, I need you to come out of exile and come with me,” her mother snapped. One hand fluttered to her throat, fingering the strand of pearls nestled there. “The Livingstons are here, and they’ve brought their son, Bryce. He’s an attorney. Highly respected. Intellectual property, I think. I told him all about you, and he wants to meet you.”

  Her mother was practically salivating at this last bit of news. With her eldest daughter successfully married off, she’d shifted all of the focus of her matchmaking efforts to the sole remaining target.

  Mallory.

  Mallory signaled a passing waiter and exchanged her empty glass for a full one. She took a generous sip of sparkling liquid before speaking.

  “I’m not really in the market for a boyfriend right now.” Especially one handpicked by her mother. Been there, done that, not doing it again, whether or not Rhys was still in the picture. And given the radio silence she’d gotten from him since she left Flamingo Key, she was guessing the answer was not.

  “But I promised his parents I’d introduce you two,” her mother fumed. Was it too much to ask her to be happy—or at least pleasant—for one day? “They want him to settle down with a nice girl. And that horrible Vivian Richmond is here. If we don’t move fast, she’ll get to him first.”

  “Leave her alone, Pam.” Mallory’s father came up behind his wife, who bristled at the shortening of her name. “Can’t you see she’s not interested?”

  “But…”

  “The photographer is looking for you,” he cut in. “Something about not having the right lens.”

  “Can’t anyone do their job without my help?” her mother huffed as she stormed away. “I’m surrounded by incompetents.”

  Mallory stared after her. “I feel sorry for that photographer.”

  “Don’t.” Her father pulled up a chair next to her and sat. “I made it up.”

  “You what?”

  “Made it up. He’s got all the equipment he needs, which your mother will find out in about thirty seconds.�
�

  “Why lie?”

  “To get your matchmaking mother off your back,” he answered with a conspiratorial wink, crossing an ankle over his knee.

  “I don’t understand.” Mallory gulped her champagne. She definitely needed more alcohol in her system for this surreal conversation. On the plus side, at least her father was talking to her again, even if it seemed like aliens had taken over his brain. “Mom has this bright idea if I start dating someone in New York I won’t want to leave again. I thought you’d want that as much as she does.”

  “I want you near, of course.” Her normally fastidious father loosened his tie and unbuttoned the first button of his dress shirt. The aliens at work again, she supposed. “But not if it means dating one of your mother’s hand-selected stooges.”

  If she weren’t already sitting, she would have collapsed from shock. Her parents always presented a united front. Her father’s jumping ship was like a Blue Angel fighter pilot breaking formation. Unheard of. “Are you sure you’re my father and not his doppelgänger?”

  “Maybe I’m getting soft in my old age,” he joked.

  Her father. Joking. She looked around for the cameras, certain she was being punked. “The hard-ass of the hospitality industry? Soft isn’t in your vocabulary.”

  His eyes shifted, and she followed his gaze to the dance floor, where Brooke and Eli swayed together as one, lost in each other. “Or maybe watching one daughter fall in love has made me want the same for the other.”

  Mallory stared into her glass, pretending to be fascinated by the bubbles in her champagne. It was too much to take in all at once. Brooke and Eli. Her father’s abrupt attitude adjustment. Her feelings for Rhys. “I’m not sure that’s in the cards for me.”

  “I won’t ask what happened in Florida.” She started to protest, but her father held up his hand. “Don’t bother denying it. You haven’t been the same since you came home.”

  He stiffened suddenly, his face blanching. “You’re not sick again, are you?”

  “I’m fine, Dad.” She put a hand over his and squeezed. “My last checkup was cancer-free.”

  “Thank God.” His whole posture relaxed, and some of the color returned to his cheeks. He leaned back in his chair and fixed her with a look of deep concern she’d experienced countless times throughout her childhood, usually from a hospital bed. “I want you to know there will always be a place for you here at the Worthington.”

  She squeezed his hand again. “I know, Dad. And that means a lot to me.”

  Not that she was going back there any time soon. She’d already had several offers from the staffing agency, and she was weighing her options. She was even considering opening her own business. Maybe something with kids in the kitchen. Oliver had loved it when they’d cooked together. Whatever she wound up doing, she wasn’t about to give up her newfound independence, not after what it had cost her.

  Her heart.

  “But if you’ve got unfinished business with this Dalton fellow…” Her father let the sentence hang.

  Mallory almost choked on her champagne. “Why would I have unfinished business with Rhys?”

  Her father arched an aristocratic brow. “On a first-name basis, are you?”

  She blushed and drained her drink.

  “Heaven knows I’m not one to give advice to the lovelorn,” he went on, risking a glance at her mother, who had finished with the poor photographer and moved on to some hapless waiter, wagging a finger in his face, no doubt berating him for some minor transgression.

  Mallory wondered not for the first time what her parents saw in each other. They acted more like business partners or not-so-polite strangers than lovers. With an example like that, it was a miracle either one of their daughters was in a healthy, committed relationship.

  She supposed it was too much to hope for lightning to strike twice.

  “I’m not lovelorn,” she lied, wishing her glass weren’t empty. Her eyes flickered around the room, trying to catch the one of the waitstaff. Instead, they landed on a familiar three-and-a-half-foot towhead. She blinked and shook her head to clear it, certain her mind was playing tricks on her.

  Nope. There he was, as real as the cake she’d spent half the night decorating, running toward her and calling her name.

  She jumped up, almost tipping over her chair. “Oliver?”

  “Mallory.” The little boy launched himself at her, wrapping his arms around her legs.

  Her father rose beside her and cleared his throat. “Who is this young man?”

  “I’m Oliver Trent Dalton.” He released Mallory and stuck out a hand to her father, looking like a heartbreaking miniature of his father in a navy-blue polo shirt, perfectly creased khakis, and shiny cordovan loafers.

  “Dalton, eh?” Her father took the boy’s eager hand in his and shook it, shooting a questioning sideways glance at Mallory. “Pleasure to meet you.”

  “Really, Mallory.” Her mother reappeared, lips pursed, her ire transferred from the hapless waiter to her youngest daughter. She glared at Mallory, then at Oliver, then back at Mallory again. “The invitation clearly said adults only.”

  Mallory ignored her, kneeling so she was eye level with Oliver. Her heartbeat thudded in her ears, and she wiped her suddenly damp palms on her skirt. Questions spilled from her trembling lips like chocolate from the four-tiered fountain in the center of the room. “What are you doing here? How did you get to New York? Where’s your father?”

  “He’s right here.”

  That voice. Deep, rich, and utterly male. It never failed to send a thrill quivering through her body, and this time was no exception.

  She dragged her eyes upward to see Rhys, dressed almost identically to his son, hands in the pockets of his khakis. His handsome face looked haggard, as if he hadn’t been sleeping any better than she had since she left Flamingo Key. But his whiskey eyes were as sharp and clear as always. They locked on hers, sucking the air out of her.

  “And he’s not leaving until you hear what he came to say.”

  …

  This was not how Rhys had envisioned this moment.

  It should have been easy. Fly to New York. Go to the address on Mallory’s employment paperwork. Beg, plead, and grovel, not necessarily in that order. Repeat as often as necessary until she forgave him.

  Instead, he and Oliver had gone on a wild-goose chase from Long Island to Brooklyn to Manhattan, finally tracking Mallory down at the hotel that bore her family name.

  Yet another surprise. His Mallory was a hotel heiress.

  If she was still his Mallory.

  He pulled at his shirt collar, not sure where to begin. The unfamiliar uncertainty clawed at his gut. In business, he was used to being in charge, having all the answers. But he was seriously out of practice in the romance department.

  The growing audience wasn’t helping matters, either. From the trays of canapés and cocktails, the fancy table linens, and the well-dressed attendees, it was obvious he’d interrupted some sort of celebration. The music had stopped, and the crowd was becoming aware of the drama playing out in the corner.

  “Dad,” Oliver prompted in a stage whisper, tugging at Rhys’s pant leg. “You’re supposed to ’pologize, remember? So Mallory will come back home with us. And don’t forget to give her the picture I drew.”

  “This is a private function,” a woman who looked like she’d been sucking on lemons said with a sniff, one designer shoe tapping impatiently on the plush carpet. “You’ll have to leave.”

  Mallory’s mother, he assumed. And he’d already annoyed her. He was off to a great start.

  “I’m sorry.” Not. But he tried his best to look contrite. “I need to speak with Mallory. It’s important.”

  “What’s going on?” A stunning brunette in a white jumpsuit joined their not-so-merry band, accompanied by a tall, equally dark-haired man with a possessive arm around her waist.

  “Your sister seems to think this is a block party,” Mallory’s mother huffed. �
��She’s invited half the neighborhood.”

  “Two people are hardly half the neighborhood. And I didn’t invite them. They just showed up. All the way from Florida. Without so much as a word of warning.” Mallory turned to him with wide, questioning eyes. “Phones not working on the island? Internet down?”

  Rhys shuffled his feet. “I thought it would be more dramatic this way.”

  “We wanted to surprise you,” Oliver chimed in, hopping up and down. “Did we?”

  “You sure did,” Mallory said, smiling down at him warmly. The invisible band constricting Rhys’s heart loosened. She couldn’t be too mad at him if she could look at his son like that, right? “Color me surprised.”

  “Oh. My. God.” The brunette—Mallory’s sister, Rhys figured—eyed him like she was sizing up a cut of prime rib at a butcher shop and squealed. Actually squealed, so loud he was surprised glass didn’t break. “You’re von Dreamy.”

  Rhys frowned. “Von who?”

  “Don’t mind Brooke.” Mallory shot her sister a glare that could have melted steel. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying when she’s off her meds. None of us do.”

  “Dad.” Oliver tugged at his pants leg again. “The ’pology. Quick. Before the mean lady makes us leave.”

  “Don’t worry, young man. No one’s going to make you leave.” A distinguished-looking older man in a tuxedo, who Rhys had deduced was Mallory’s father, took her mother by the elbow. “Come on, Pam. Let’s give Mallory and her friends some privacy.”

  “If they wanted privacy, they wouldn’t be having this conversation in the middle of a wedding reception, would they?” The toe-tapping stopped. In its place, Mallory’s mother tented her fingers, drumming them together to demonstrate her continued irritation.

  “Good idea.” Rhys gestured toward the door. “Why don’t we take this into the hall?”

  “It’s Oliver, right?” Brooke asked, addressing his son. “How would you like to try out the chocolate fountain with me?”