How To Wife Your Nanny A Billionaire Single Dad Romantic Comedy- Melinda Minx Page 0,62

with him, and I was out of the door in less than a minute.

Fortunately he didn’t follow me from there.

I got an Uber to the ferry, and in about an hour I was back at my apartment.

“The hell?” Natalie asked when I came in.

She was in her underwear and had music blasting in the living room.

“The hell?” I echoed back at her, looking at our completely transformed living room. All my favorite furniture was gone, and she’d re-arranged everything. The TV was in a different corner, the couches were re-arranged, and our little kitchen nook had a new table in it.

She looked at me, and then down at the bag in my hand. “I thought it was my place now?”

I took in a deep breath, ready to sigh, but as soon as I exhaled, I burst into tears instead.

Natalie came up to me and wrapped her arms around me. “What happened? What did he do?”

I pushed her off me. “Look at this. You’re celebrating that I’m gone.”

“I’m not, Lace. I’m sad you’re gone. Uh, are you gone?”

I looked over in the kitchen and saw an open bottle of wine.

“What is behind you? Natalie?”

“Nothing,” she said, holding a hand behind her back.

I jumped around her and, she spilled the glass wine all over the floor trying to hid eit from me.

“Damnit!” I said. “You really are celebrating.”

“I’ve never had my own place, Lace. It’s not celebrating that you’re gone, it’s just...I had my own place. I’m glad you’re back though. Let’s get you some wine.”

She got another glass out and poured me one, then she refilled hers.

I took the glass and looked down at it. “I don’t like to drink when I’m sad. It just makes me more sad.”

“That’s when you drink alone. You’re going to drink with me. I’ll make you feel better. So come on. Dish it out. Shit talk him. But let me get dressed first.”

I waited until she came back, and then I let it all out. “He was so good! Natalie. He was perfect.”

“I don’t know where you learned to shit talk, but this is a very poor start. You gotta manage something more biting than him being perfect.”

“Okay, so he was a huge dick. He turned into this raging asshole out of nowhere. He accused me of something that I didn’t even really do.”

“Did you tell him that?”

“Tell him what?”

“That you didn’t really even do it.”

“I mean, he didn’t really give me room to? He looked like he’d already decided that I did it.”

“What did you do?”

I explained the whole thing to her. It was complicated and stupid, but she listened to it patiently while sipping at her wine.

“So, you kind of did do it?” she said.

“Huh?”

“You did meet with that lady. You did consider her contract. You kept her card, Lace.”

“I wasn’t going to though! I really wasn’t. I forgot the card was even there. Noah was being very standoffish right until we landed back in New York City.”

“You said he was perfect.”

“Not like really standoffish—”

“You said very.”

“Okay, stop being pedantic. Anyway, he was being maybe a little skittish and making me feel insecure about our long-term prospects, so I had been kind of considering this other publisher as a fall-back, in case Noah wasn’t willing to commit. The thing was, I had been willing to commit. It was only a fallback if he wasn’t going to be willing.”

“Why didn’t you just tell him that back on the ship then?”

“Oh, come on! You’re supposed to be on my side! You know how men are. Do you go around telling guys that you are into and who you are afraid of committing that you are super into them and want to marry them and be with them forever? In what alternate reality does that ever work.”

“Hmmm,” she said, “point taken.”

“When we got back to New York, everything had gotten good. It’s like he’d made a decision, and he was ready to commit. He invited me to move in with him. He was sincere. I should have shredded that card to pieces at that very moment.”

Natalie just looked at me.

“You going to give me any advice?” I asked her. “Say something? Agree with me? Tell me he’s an asshole?”

“Yeah, I was just thinking it over. Reviewing your options.”

“I think I should just go back there right now. Tell him everything. Be up-front and open about it. This could just be a big, silly misunderstanding that I’m blowing completely out of proportion. Maybe he was mad about