At His Service: Nanny Needed: Hired: Nanny Bride / A Mother in a Million / The Nanny Solution

There was one thing no one knew about him, and for a moment it rose up in him begging to be released. To her. For a moment, the thought of not carrying that burden anymore was intoxicating in its temptation.

“Sometimes I pass gas in elevators,” he said, trying for a light note, trying to be superficial and funny and irreverent, trying to fight the demon that wanted out.

“You do not! That’s gross.”

“Real men often are,” he said. “You heard it here first.”

“Wow. I don’t even think I want to kiss you again.”

“That’s good.”

“Was it that terrible?” she demanded.

Could she really believe it had been terrible? That made the temptation to show her almost too great to bear. Instead, he gnawed on the now empty spoon. “No,” he said gruffly, “It wasn’t terrible at all. Your turn.”

“Um, in ninth grade I sent Leonard Burnside a rose. I put that it was from Miss Marchand, the French teacher.”

“You liked him?”

“Hated him,” she said. “Full-of-himself jock. He actually went to the library and learned a phrase in French that he tried out on her. Got kicked out of school for three days.”

“Note to self—do not get on Danielle Springer’s bad side.”

“I never told anyone. It was such a guilty pleasure. Your turn.”

“I don’t floss, ever.”

“You are gross.”

“You mean you could tell I didn’t floss?” he asked sulkily. “I knew if you really knew me, you wouldn’t want to kiss me.”

And then the best thing happened. She was laughing. And he was laughing. And they were planning cruel sequences that she could have played on full-of-himself Lennie Burnside.

It grew very quiet. The fire sputtered, and he felt warm and content, drowsy. She shifted over, he felt her head fall onto his shoulder. Even though he knew better, he reached out and fiddled with her hair.

“The part I don’t get about you,” she said, after a long time that made him wonder if she’d spent all that time thinking of him, “is if you had such a good time with your family on family holidays, why is your own company geared to the young and restless crowd?”

The battle within him was surprisingly short. He had carried it long enough. The burden was too heavy.

He was shocked that he wanted to tell her. And only her.

Shocked that he wanted her to know him completely. With all his flaws and with all his weaknesses. He wanted her to know he was a man capable of making dreadful errors. He wanted to know if the unvarnished truth about him would douse that look in her eyes when she looked at him, dewy, yearning.

“When I was in college,” he said softly, “the girl I was dating became pregnant. We had a son. We agreed to put him up for adoption.”

For a long time she was absolutely silent, and then she looked at him. In the faint light of the fire, it was as if she was unmasked.

What he saw in her eyes was not condemnation. Or anything close to it.

Love.

Her hand touched his face, stroked, comforting.

“You didn’t want to,” Dannie guessed softly. “Oh, Joshua.”

He glanced at her through the golden light of the dying fire. She was looking at him intently, as if she was holding her breath. Her hand was still on his cheek. He could turn his head just a touch and nibble her thumb. But it would be wrong. A lie. Trying to distract them both from the real intimacy that was happening here, and from her deepest secret, which he had just seen in her eyes.

“No, I didn’t want to. I guess I wanted what I’d had before, a family to call my own again, that feeling. I cannot tell you how I missed that feeling after Mom and Dad died. Of belonging, of having a place to go to where people knew you, clean through. Of being held to a certain standard by the people who knew you best and knew what you were capable of.”

He was shocked by how much he had said, and also shocked by how easily the words came, as if all these years they had just waited below the surface to be given voice.

“What happened to the baby?” Dannie asked quietly.

“Sarah didn’t want to be tied down. She wasn’t ready to settle down. I considered, briefly, trying to go it on my own, as a single dad, but Sarah thought that was stupid. A single dad, just starting in life, when all these established families who could give that baby so much stability and love were just waiting to adopt? My head agreed with her. My heart—”

He stopped, composing himself, while she did the perfect thing and said nothing. He went on, “My heart never did. Some men could be unchanged by that. I wasn’t. I couldn’t even finish school. I tried to run away from what I was feeling. I had abandoned my own son to the keeping of strangers. What kind of person did a thing like that?

“I traveled the world and developed an aversion for places that catered to families. Wasn’t there anywhere a guy like me could get away from all that love? I kind of just fell into the resort business, bought a rundown hotel in Italy, started catering to the young and hip and single, and became a runaway success before I knew what had hit me.”

Her hand, where it touched his cheek, was tender. It felt like absolution. But he knew the truth. She could not absolve him.

Silence for a long, long time.

And then she said, “Funny, that your company is called Sun. If you say it, instead of spell it, it’s kind of like you carried him with you, isn’t it? Your son. Into every single day.”

That was the problem with showing your heart to someone like Dannie. She saw it so clearly.

And then she said, “Have you considered the possibility that what you did was best for him? That he did get a family who were desperate for a child to love? Who could give him exactly what you missed so much after your parents died?”

“On those rare occasions that I allow myself to think about it, that is my hope. No, more than a hope. A prayer. And I’m a man who doesn’t pray much, Dannie.”

“Have you ever thought of finding him?” she asked softly.

“Now and then.”

“And what stops you?”

“How complicated it all seems. Just go on the Internet and type in adoption to see what a mess of options there are, red tape, legal ramifications, ethical dilemmas.”

Dannie wasn’t buying it, seeing straight through him. “You must have a team of lawyers who could cut to the quick in about ten minutes. If you haven’t done it, there’s another reason.”

“Fear, then, I guess,” he said, relieved to make his truth complete, wanting her to know who he really was. Maybe wanting himself to know, too. “Fear of being rejected. Fear of opening up a wanting that will never be satisfied, searching the earth for what I can’t have or can’t find.”

“Oh, Joshua,” she said sadly, “you don’t get it at all, do you?”

“I don’t?” He had told her his deepest truth, and though the light of love that shone in her eyes did not lessen, her words made him feel the arrow of her disappointment.

A woman like Dannie could show a man who was lost how to find his way home. Like being in a family, she would never accept anything but his best. Like being in a family, she would show him how to get there when he couldn’t find his way by himself.