“So what does that mean then? You’re just going to hire nannies?”
“That was my thought. I was wondering if you would like to take a position as Leena’s nanny.”
“You what?”
Jada couldn’t believe the man was serious. The nanny? To her own child? An employee of the man who was stealing everything from her?
Leena was her light in the darkness. She was everything to her. Being her mother had become the entirety of Jada’s identity. And her daughter had become her whole heart.
And he wanted her to be an employee. One he could fire at a moment’s notice. A termination he could delay until a later date. A date he saw fit.
“Did you just ask me to be the nanny to my own daughter?”
“As a court ruling just declared, she is not your daughter.”
“If you say that one more time so help me I will—”
“It is up to you. Hang on to your pride if you wish, but I’m offering you a chance to see your daughter. To be a part of her life still.”
“How can you do this to me?” she asked, the words scraping her throat raw. Everything in her hurt. Everything. He had come in, taken her newly repaired life and shattered it all around her again, and she didn’t know how she would reclaim it. It had taken so long to rebuild, to repurpose, to find out what she would do, who she would be.
She’d loved her husband, but he couldn’t give her children. And every time other options came up, he shut down. It was a reminder, he’d told her, of all he could not give her. Of what she would have to get from someone else. No, there would be no artificial insemination. She wouldn’t carry another man’s baby. Adoption had been something he’d said they’d consider, but he never truly had. All the brochures she brought him, all the links to websites she sent him, went ignored.
When the dust had settled after her husband’s death, it had been the thing she’d latched onto. She wasn’t a wife anymore, but she could be a mother.
And now he was ripping it from her hands. Leaving her arms empty.
“I’m not doing anything to you. Leena is my child and I am claiming her, as is the responsible and right thing to do.”
“You have a warped sense of right, Mr. Vasin.”
“Alik,” he said. “You can call me Alik. And my sense of right seems to match that of the justice system, so one might argue that it is you with a warped sense of justice.”
She blinked. “My sense of justice involves the heart, not just laws written on paper, unconnected to specific people and events.”
“And that is where we differ. Nothing I do involves the heart.” She looked at his eyes, black, soulless. Except for that moment in the courthouse when he’d been holding Leena. Then there had been emotion. Fear. Uncertainty. A man who clearly knew nothing about children.
And he wanted her to be the nanny. He wanted to assume the position as Leena’s father and demote her to staff. This man who had been living his life, a full complete life apart from Leena, now wanted to come and take the heart from her.
“She’s all I have,” Jada said, her voice trembling, emotion betraying her now “All I have in the world.”
“So you say no because of pride?”
“And because I am not my child’s nanny! I am her mother. The idea of simply being treated as though I’m paid to be there…” It hit at her very identity, who she was. She had been Sunil’s wife, and then she had become Leena’s mother. She couldn’t be nothing again. Not again.
“I would pay you to be there. I can hardly ask you to forfeit whatever job you might have and come be her nanny for free now, can I?”
“How can you…”
“I will of course allow you to live in whatever house I install her in. It will be simpler that way for all involved. I have a penthouse in Paris and one in Barcelona. A town house in New York, though I suspect you would find it rather too busy… .”
“And what about you? Where will you be in all of this?”
He shrugged. “I will go on as I have. But you have no need to worry about Leena. As the judge pointed out when he opened up my file—I am a wealthy man.”
“Somehow all of your wealth and power doesn’t impress me very much, not when your idea of raising a child is to install her in a house somewhere in the world while you leave her with staff!”
“Not just any staff. You. You would be very well-trusted staff.”
“You bastard!” No. She wouldn’t do it. She couldn’t do it. Couldn’t allow this man who didn’t even want to live in the same home as his daughter to come in and steal everything she had built for herself. For Leena.
“No,” she said, the word broken, just like everything inside of her.
“Excuse me?”
“No. Stop the car.”
She didn’t know what she was doing. Until the moment the car pulled up to the curb and she looked at Leena, and back at Alik. She thought again of the fear in his eyes as he’d held Leena at the courthouse. Of the way Leena had struggled to escape his arms.
And she knew.
“No.” She opened the door to the car. “I am her mother. You can’t simply demand a change of job title. If you think you’re her father because of a magical blood bond then you go and you take care of her.”
Her heart was in her throat, her stomach pitching violently. But it was her hope. Her only hope. And it was all born out of some insane idea that what she’d witnessed in this hard, inscrutable man’s eyes was truly fear.
And if she was misreading him, there was every chance she would lose her child forever.
But if you don’t, he’ll always have the power. He has to know that you’re right. That he needs you.
She closed the door to the limo, the gray sky reflected in the tinted windows, obscuring Alik, obscuring Leena, from view. Panic clawed at her, tore her to shreds inside.
She turned away and closed her eyes, trying to breathe. She couldn’t. A sob caught in her chest. And then Jada started walking away. And she just prayed that Alik would follow.
CHAPTER TWO
ALIK HAD FACED DOWN terrorists hell-bent on blowing him into pieces and scattering his remains in the ocean. He’d dogged his way across enemy lines, into an enemy camp, to save the life of a friend. He’d spent hours calculating tactical strategies for nations at war, finding the smart way to get in and win the battle.
None of it had shaken him. A welcome burst of adrenaline, the rush of having survived, he got all of that from it. But never fear.
He felt
