She put her hands on my cheeks.
“Okay,” she whispered close to my face. She poked the inner corner of my eye. “Why are you crying?”
“I’m afraid you’ll forget.”
“I won’t.” She put her fingertips to my lips then twisted them. “I’ll take it, lock it.” Her fingertips went to the breast pocket that wasn’t there. “Put it in my pocket.”
I laid my hand over the place where she’d put my love. “Keep it forever.”
“I will. It’s pink. I don’t throw away pink things.” She ripped a square of toilet paper off the roll. “Here.”
“Thank you.” I dabbed my eyes, but I still cried inside, because I loved her and she wasn’t mine to love.
CHAPTER 69
CARA
The private lounge had leather couches and a dedicated bartender. The concierge had set aside a corner for us and placed subtle barriers between Brad Sinclair and the rest of the world. He sat with his back to the rest of the room, and his mother read last month’s YOU magazine. She folded her magazine, stood up when she saw me, and met us halfway across the lounge.
“Grandma, can I get a donut?”
Before I could say no, Erma did what grandparents do.
“Of course!”
Nicole bounced to the buffet of sweets. It was for the best, anyway. I had no say in the matter.
“Is everything all right?” Erma asked.
“Yeah. Just tired.”
Nicole leaned over the metal table and tapped her chin. So many possibilities. So many colors.
“Kids will do that to you.”
“I can’t go to Thailand,” I blurted out. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Oh, no no no . . .”
“Yes, I’m sorry but—”
“This is last month’s!” She held up the magazine.
“What?”
She flopped it open to show me the date, but all I saw was Brad’s picture with the costar of his last movie. She was whispering in his ear and he was smiling.
“See?” Erma said, gleeful. “No, wait. These come weeks before the date on the front. So it’s the month before last!”
I took the magazine. When that edition came out, I was still working with Willow and Jedi Heywood, who I loved. Always. He hadn’t even met me when he was dating Geraldine Starrck. They were beautiful together.
He’d replace me in a minute. Was I all right with that?
I had to be.
“I want the sprinkles!” Nicole called out.
“Yes, dear,” Erma called to Nicole before turning back to me. “It’s hard to see this, but he cares about you.”
I folded up the magazine.
“Get a plate and use the tongs to pick it up,” I told Nicole, then brought myself back to Brad’s mother. “Have you ever been to Thailand?” I asked.
“No. Why?”
Her brows knit together and she tilted her head. With every word, every expression, every breath I let pass, I got closer to the point of no return.
“Do you have a passport?” I asked.
“I had to show it to get the ticket.”
I was going to cry again. I felt my mouth contort and tasted the salty rush of tears in the back of my throat. Erma put my hand over hers.
“I’m sorry to do this to you,” I choked out. “I’m putting you in the middle and inconveniencing you terribly. But I can’t go to Thailand. I don’t want to send Nicole with a nanny who’s a stranger.”
“It’s not the magazine, is it?”
“No. I don’t care about that.”
I wasn’t going to tell her why I was leaving. What would I say? Her son was a liar? He’d denied his daughter and never admitted it? I couldn’t trust him. He was her baby. I was nobody but the first woman he was with when he started the process of changing his life. I was the one who was too mad to forgive him.
Nicole came from the buffet with a donut in each hand. One chocolate. One vanilla. Both with rainbow sprinkles spotting the paper napkins they sat on. She had a dot of chocolate cake on her cheek and a blue sprinkle on her chin. She’d obviously already sampled the sweets while standing at the buffet.
“I brought you donuts. Grandma gets to pick first because she’s older.”
I cleared my throat. Some of the gunk rattled down, only to be replaced by a fresh lump to remind me I could cry any second.
“I’ll take the white one.” Erma plucked up the pastry and the napkin. Nicole held out the chocolate.
“You can save it for the plane if you’re not hungry. Or you can give it to me if you want. I can wait until we’re on the plane.”
I never saw a kid want a donut more. But it wasn’t about the donut. Not for me. It was about the plane.
I crouched in front of her.
“I don’t think I’m going to be on the plane with you.”
“Why not?”
Because I did something stupid. I did exactly what I avoided doing with every other father I’ve worked for. I fell in love, and that’s going to impact you.
“I have to stay home.”
“I can stay home with you.” She shrugged. This was easily solved, of course. “I don’t want to go to Thailand anyway.”
I was doing this backward, and it was going to suck. I had to go talk to Brad and— “Hey. What’s going on?” Brad asked from behind me. Perfect. He’d heard me talking to his daughter, of course.
Erma glanced at me, then at her son and put a big fat southern smile on her face.
“Let’s go look out the window, honey! I think that big plane’s taking off!”
“Wait!” She handed me the donut. I took it. Nicole and her grandmother walked away to see the planes in the big window.
“The concierge said we’re boarding in fifteen minutes.” He said it suspiciously, relaying information he’d seemingly lost interest in. “What is this? You’re not coming? You all right? You afraid you’re going to puke or something?”
He was going to make me say it. He knew damn well I wasn’t going to puke. I tried to be mad at him so I could really cut him and leave, but he’d taken his jacket off and I could see his arms. I remembered how they tensed when they held me. How the hard biceps felt under my hand when I gripped them.
It was his eyes that almost took my resolve. He trusted me. He knew I was angry, but he trusted it was a bump in the road, and I was betraying him.
“I think it’s best if I stay behind.”
“With Nicole?”
“You should take her.”
“I’m working all day.”
“Your mother will go. She ag—”
“What the fuck is going on?”
This was bad. Very bad. I was bailing, and I was the worst kind of coward. But as perfect and beautiful as he was, as much as I admired what he’d gone through in life to get where he was, I couldn’t see past the lies.
“You denied her. It’s just going to eat at me. And you know what? Keep it a secret. Never tell her. Let Paula put it in the papers now before Nicole can understand it, then never mention it again. By the time she finds out, she’ll love you so much.”
He straightened his hand into a plane and thrust it in my direction.
“This is bullshit.”
“I’m sorry.”