“Your wife is—?”
“Yes. She’s been gone since Daniel was just a month old. She was killed in a car accident, too.”
“But I thought…The agency told me your wife was away to a funeral or something,” Melissa explained faintly.
“They obviously got their facts mixed up,” Charles said. “But it sounded pretty hectic at the agency when I called this morning. It’s my permanent nanny, Mrs. Butters, who’s away at a funeral in New Orleans.”
Melissa was sick with shame! She’d told him Brad was dead to avoid revealing the embarrassing truth. She didn’t want to admit that Melissa Richardson Baxter had made a shambles of her life. That she’d been duped and dumped on by her husband for more than a decade before finally seeing the light and getting a divorce. That she, the stupid, deluded half of East High’s golden couple, had continued being stupid and deluded for twelve long years! But Charles’s wife had really died!
“I’m sorry, Charles,” Melissa said feelingly. “So sorry.” But he had no idea how sorry she really was, and for more than he could ever imagine. She’d claimed falsely to have endured a tragedy that Charles had actually lived through.
“It’s been a while,” Charles said with that slight, crooked smile of his again. “I’ve got great memories, but I’m doing fine now. And so are the kids.”
Emboldened by the sight of his older brother having fun despite the presence of a stranger in the house, Daniel squirmed out of his father’s arms and started skipping around the living room in his towel. Sarah couldn’t resist, either, and got down to chase him.
Charles watched the playing children for a moment, then turned his gaze back to Melissa, his smile slipping away and his eyes darkening with renewed concern. “But how are you doing, Melissa. It can’t have been very long since—”
Melissa shook her head vigorously. “Please, Charles, I don’t want to talk about it. I’m sorry, but I just can’t.”
“Nothing to be sorry about,” he assured her. “I understand completely.”
But Charles didn’t understand, and Melissa was going to make sure he never did. It was going to be difficult, but for the next week she was just going to have to live with her horrible lie and hope Charles respected her wishes never to mention Brad again.
After a sober pause, Charles took a bracing and cheerful tone. “Why don’t I fill you in on our routine around here as I give you a tour of the house, Melissa? We’ll go to Daniel’s room first so we can get some clothes on this little rascal.” He grabbed Daniel as he scooted past, the toddler now naked as a jaybird because Christopher had stolen the towel and was swinging it over his head. Sarah giggled.
Melissa agreed to Charles’s suggestion with a nod and tried to smile, but she couldn’t meet his eyes.
GEEZ, I REALLY BLEW THAT! thought Charles as he led the way to the boys’ shared bedroom. She’s probably still too grief-stricken about Brad’s death to talk about it. I’m not going to say another word about him unless she brings up the subject first.
Not talking about Brad was actually fine with Charles. He was sorry the guy was dead, but he’d never liked him in high school, and the main reason was because of Melissa. If she only knew how he’d bragged in the locker room about all his sexual exploits with other girls, laughing indulgently at Melissa’s old-fashioned notion about “saving herself for the wedding night.” Brad had announced that it was fine if Melissa wanted to wait till marriage for sex, but he didn’t share the same viewpoint. And if Melissa wasn’t willing, there were plenty of other girls who were.
Yeah, Brad Baxter was Charles’s idea of a first-class jerk back then. But Melissa had stayed married to him for all this time and now found it too upsetting to talk about his death, so the guy must have changed over the years. People did change. In fact, hadn’t Charles’s own physical appearance altered so much that Melissa didn’t recognize or remember him when she’d first showed up?
But who was he kidding? Charles thought with a secret, self-deprecatory smile. Melissa might not have remembered him even if he’d looked exactly the same as in high school. After all, it had taken her no time at all to completely forget his existence the moment their tutoring sessions were over. She’d promised to come by the house with her special-recipe, chocolate chip cookies as a thank-you for his help, and Charles had waited for days afterward, sitting at home when he could have been out with friends, making sure his hair was combed, his teeth brushed, his clothes neat and clean.
But she’d never showed up.
And he never saw a single cookie.
He got over it, though. He realized he’d been a fool to allow himself a crush on the school’s most pretty and popular girl, anyway.
Still…she really should have made him those cookies. It was funny how he still remembered that little slight, and how it still gave him a twinge of irritation and disappointment. After all, he’d given up outings with friends and his own study time to help her with her math. But as sweet as she could be—and he remembered she could be very sweet—Melissa was pretty self-absorbed back then. Or maybe he should say, Brad-absorbed.
Charles shook his head. High-school crushes…what a joke. In the big scheme of things, they usually didn’t turn out to be very important.
While Charles dressed Daniel, he quickly explained to Melissa his busy schedule for the next week. He was relieved to notice, as they talked, that the children were warming to Melissa and she to them. Sarah, usually the most shy, had climbed up on Melissa’s lap and was confiding something in her ear.
However, this didn’t stop Christopher from butting in with his own questions.
“What do we call you? We call Mrs. Butters, Mrs. Butters. Are you a missus, too?”
Christopher had already jumped off the couch and had been playing and pretty much ignoring the adults when Melissa told Charles about Brad’s accident.
Melissa darted a glance at Charles—it was the first time she’d looked directly at him since the dead-husband debacle—before she answered Christopher. “Yes, I’m a missus, too. But you can call me Melissa.”
“Missus Melissa?” Christopher laughed. “Sounds funny.”
“No, just Melissa,” Melissa clarified with an amused smile.
Christopher nodded. “Okay. Are you a good cook? Mrs. Butters makes the best blueberry pancakes. How old are you? Mrs. Butters is real old. More than fifty, even. Do you have any other kids, Melissa?”
“That’s enough questions for now, Christopher,” Charles said. “You’re going to tire Melissa out before she’s even here an hour.”
And Melissa did look tired. Oh, she was as pretty as ever, and while pregnancy became her, he knew the last month could be a trial. Annette’s three pregnancies had made him well aware of that fact.
He just hoped she could handle the kids and all the work that went with them. If she stayed through Saturday, as arranged, she’d be within a week of her due date.
What was the agency thinking, anyway, sending out an eight-and-a-half months pregnant woman for a job like this? Charles wondered,
