How To Wife Your Nanny A Billionaire Single Dad Romantic Comedy- Melinda Minx Page 0,47
like a schoolgirl, and I shot her my most winning smile. I held my hand out to her and shook it. “A pleasure to see you again, as always, Mrs. Bielefeld.
Mr. Bielefeld had died like twenty years ago. She’d never re-married, but she had slept around a lot, as she loved to tell me.
“So,” I said, “this is a pretty fancy cruise, huh?”
She offered me a seat on the couch. I sat down, and she slowly lowered herself down onto the loveseat adjacent to me.
She nodded to me with a tight-lipped expression.
“And Red Sun footing the bill,” I said, whistling. “Quite the nice deal.”
“I’m not married to you, Mr. Black. As much as I wish I were. I’m not though, and that means I can do what I want. Our contract has a two-book cancellation clause. I can switch to Red Sun if I’d like.
Cozy Cat Lady wrote about two books per year. If she wanted to switch, it would take her a year. Did she really want to switch over to another publisher when she was so close to retirement. No, I suddenly remembered that this was her retirement. She’d been a fucking electrical engineer up until her mid-60s, and she’d just started writing these fucking books for fun. Now they made her more than she’d ever made during her real career.
“Remember when I first met you?” I asked her.
She smiled wide. “Oh, I’d never forget seeing you for the first time, Mr. Black.”
“You were signing books at the library. There was a crowd forming. Everyone in the crowd was a little old lady, so I just peeked right over their heads to see what all the fuss was about. Those copies you made had these cheesy laminated covers. Bound by OfficeMax—”
“It was Michael’s,” she said. “Old people go to Michael’s, not OfficeMax. Do your research, Mr. Black.”
“Anyway,” I said. “The books themselves didn’t look like much, and the covers were just pictures of your cats, but I saw how much people loved them. I knew they had heart.”
I was trying to appeal to her nostalgia. I wanted her to remember the history we had together. What was a few more years of slightly higher earnings from Red Sun, compared to all the history we had between us?
“Well,” Beatrice said, “and now they make you a lot of money. Red Sun told me you could pay me more.”
I grimaced. Sometimes it felt like Red Sun treated this all as a zero-sum game. If they couldn’t steal one of our authors, they’d at least be smugly happy that they’d forced us to pay more.
“I heard you’re engaged,” Beatrice said. “Is that sweet little girl finally going to have a mom?”
I cleared my throat. “Maybe.”
“Don’t get cold feet, Mr. Black. A ring is a promise.”
I refrained from telling her the bullshit reason Lacey didn’t have a ring.
“You know what,” I said. “We could pay you a bit more. And we will. I’ll draft up a new contract and bring it over tomorrow morning. Can you please promise me that you won’t jump ship to Red Sun though? At least until you’ve seen my new offer? We like having you with us. Our cover artists love getting new photos of your cats to Photoshop into the covers. It’s fun. Your books are fun, and don’t ever tell Silas I said this, but I like reading them. I’ll try to make you a more fair contract. It might not be exactly as good as Red Sun’s, but it will be close. And you know we’re loyal to you, Mrs. Bielefeld. We will never abandon you.”
It was an easy promise to make, because the chances that she’d live for more than ten more years was vanishingly small. Still, I hadn’t lied to her. I did like her books. Not that I’d even admit that to Lacey. Even if I really did end up marrying her.
When I was done with Mrs. Bielefeld, I went back to the room. Lacey had Naomi in the bath. Well, it looked like the bath had ended a long time ago, but Lacey couldn’t get Naomi out.
I knocked on the door to avoid scaring Lacey as I walked in. She jumped anyway.
“Oh, Noah,” she said, smiling at me.
I smiled back. Damn, it always felt good to see her. I kept getting that fucking tingly feeling in my body. When was the last time I’d felt that?