“And what I want… is you.”

Those words echoed in my mind as I brushed passed him in the hallway. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. My heart was fluttering and my stomach was churning and my soul felt like it had been set on fire and rolled down a canyon. I felt like life itself had just started. For the first time since the death of that little child, I felt free.

For the first time since I had started living in basic squalor, I felt like I had an actual purpose.

Clara was napping, and I needed some space. Mr. Blake and I had developed a good rhythm with one another: I made breakfast, he made lunch, and we would both make dinner. We sidestepped one another as if we had been doing it for years, and taking care of his daughter alongside him made me feel, I don’t know, a part of a family. It wasn’t that I was estranged from my family. They just… didn’t quite understand me. I’ve always been headstrong: independent; fiercely loyal. They couldn’t understand why I would choose a profession that put me as someone’s subordinate. My father saw me as an entrepreneur and my mother saw me as a… well… mother. She saw herself planning my ultimate wedding, and my father saw me winning the bread for that family to whom my mother would marry me off.

They were always so critical: of my clothes; of my lack of makeup; of the way I talked. I didn’t care if I left the house without a bra. For god’s sake, I was just going to the grocery store to get some ice cream.

Why does that require lipstick?

So, when I skipped my own graduation to travel with a family to New York City to become a live-in nanny while doing my graduate studies in Psychology, needless to say, they weren’t very happy. I tried talking with them occasionally, but all they wanted to do was convince me to come back home. My dad would say he could take care of me until I found my own way, and my mom said she could take care of me until I found a man who would.

Neither of them understood I was capable of taking care of myself.

We just… stopped talking, I guess: no massive falling out; no bodacious argument; no tensions that wrapped the family too tight. Just two parents who didn’t understand their daughter and didn’t want to.

I stopped calling, and they never made the effort to call me.

When I got the call for the job, I saw it as a form of redemption, as a way to prove to myself that the death of that one child wasn’t my fault. Of course it wasn’t, I was just the nanny. I was the one waiting for them to get back from a vacation, so I could continue on with my job of taking care of their little one –

– Their beautiful, vivacious little one.

When I got the phone call that their child had died, a part of me died, too. I had raised that child for almost five solid years, and then the child was just… gone.

To this day, I still can’t say that child’s name. I can’t– can’t even acknowledge its gender.

It clutches a part of me that threatens to cut off my air supply.

So, when I heard that same family gave me the referral that sent me here, I took it as their apology. Their apology for cutting me off and not allowing me to come to the funeral and bury a child I had just as much right to bury as they did.

And it felt like my taking of the job was telling them I accepted.

But now… with Mr. Blake looking at me the way he did and… and saying what he just said.

It felt like we were becoming a family.

And it was just too much.

I shut my bedroom door behind me quickly and leaned up against its cool strength. My body hummed for him. The natural tune of my body reached out for the harmonization of the chords only his body could provide. It was as if my physical form was intentionally seeking him out. My skin puckered at the sound of his voice and my knees wobbled at the glance of his eyes. My stomach rolled at the sight of him holding his daughter and my lips crooked into a grin whenever we danced around each other in the kitchen.

But my soul was doused in gasoline when his skin touched mine, and when I was finally able to taste his lips, it threw a match onto the pyre that set my entire body into a roaring flame.

My body was completely ready to relinquish itself to him, and I didn’t know how to stop it.

I slid my ass to the floor before tears started rolling down my face. My body was trembling and my soul was shrieking for him. It was as if my body was physically upset with my mind for walking away from him.

“Throw me at his mercy!” my skin shouted.

“Let him have his way!” my hormones growled.

“Sink your teeth into those arms,” my mouth craved.

“You could lose everything…” my mind whispered.

Just… the faintest whisper that yanked me back into reality. Into the life I’d lived up until this point. Into the loneliest facets of my being did that voice whisper and breathe.

It tapped into the most fearful parts of me, and I knew I’d made the right decision.

Right?

I don’t know how long I sat there, but Clara began to whine and I scrambled to my feet. I brushed the backs of my hands along my dampened cheeks, and I felt a little bit of crust drying where tears I didn’t know I had cried had already dried. God, I must’ve sat there for ages just staring at the damn wall in the dark.

But before I could get my door open, a low voice rumbled through the door.

“Hello there, beautiful girl,” Mr. Blake murmured.

I inched my door open silently and stuck my head out, taking in his body in the dimly lit room. He scooped Clara up from her crib and held her close to his body, and I couldn’t help but feel that I might have been intruding on a very private moment. He bounced her lightly and Clara let out a high-pitched giggle, and I watched as Mr. Blake brought her up to his lips and kissed her forehead lightly.

“Did you sleep well?” he asked her.

I felt the familiar rolling of my stomach as I watched the scene unfold. This man – this brute of a human being, with the shoulders of granite rock and the muscles of chiseled sandstone; this man, who single-handedly ran one of the most profitable businesses in all of New York City; this man, who made women sink to their knees and made even the strongest of businessmen tremble, who stared fierce men in the face every single day and simply grinned his cockiest smile –

– this man was smiling down at his daughter as her hand reached up and grabbed for his nose.

“Did’ja get my nose?” he teased. “Did’ja get it?”

I heaved a silent sigh before I leaned my frame against the doorframe. In that moment, watching him with his daughter, I saw his eyes light up. I saw true, unadulterated love etch itself across his face, and it brought tears to my eyes as he slowly swayed his body side to side. He was singing something lowly to her. Something I couldn’t quite place.

But then, he started to talk.

And as I listened to what he had to say, I knew I was doomed –

– Doomed to be yet another woman that fell at the feet of Derek Blake.

“I don’t know what’s happened to your mother, and I don’t know if she will come back for you. I don’t know if you like it here or if you miss her, and I don’t even know if you can understand me. What I do know, though, is this: you will never want for anything. If you’re cold, I’ll give you my jacket. If you’re hungry, I’ll give you my food. If you’re sick, I’ll cancel whatever I need to in order to take care of you, and I’ll sacrifice whatever I have to in order to make you happy. I sure as hell don’t know what comes next, and I have no idea what I need to do from here on out. But what I have is yours, and it will always be yours.

And no matter what… you will always come first, Clara Blake.”

“I don’t even know if that’s your name,” I heard him snicker. “But you’re my daughter, and I love you.”

I sniffled as I watched him bring her forehead back up to his lips, and I guess I must have sniffled again a bit too loudly. He turned around and his eyes flickered up to mine, and I couldn't help but allow the tears to cascade down my cheeks. I had just spied on one of the most intimate moments a new father will ever have with his child, and part of me felt guilty…

… And dirty…

… And like I had ruined the moment.

But it had been such a beautiful moment, and it showed me a side of Derek I had never seen before that. It showed a compassionate side capable of empathizing with the plight of another human being.

It didn’t matter if that human being was only a few months old.

It was then I realized he was walking towards me: slowly; surely; with his daughter cradled protectively against the body into which I wanted to sink mine. His eyes locked with mine and the tears continued to pour, and for once I didn’t care if anyone saw me weak.

Saw me vulnerable.

I didn’t care of the most powerful man in New York City watched me crumble at his feet.

He stopped and smiled lightly down at me before he handed me his beautiful little girl, and for the first time since I had lost that precious little child soon after first coming to this city, I felt invited…

… Included …

… Like I belonged somewhere.

“I don’t know where to go from here,” Derek said lowly.

To be honest, I didn’t either. There were still so many things to do: we had to find her a pediatrician and try to figure out if she needed shots. We needed to start researching schools in the area, or maybe trying to track down what happened to her mother. We needed to figure out how to socialize her around the city without compromising her safety, and surely Derek would start running a new work schedule now that he had a child at home.

A child he had wholly and completely bonded with during these last three weeks.

But when I cradled Clara’s giggling body into my bosom and slowly craned my neck to look up at him, I smiled kindly as I drank in his body. I took in his dominant eyes and his protective stance. I took in the sinewy muscle that draped his shoulders and the veins that ricocheted down his neck.

I gulped down the man I would no longer be able to resist, no matter how that compromised my job.

“We’ll figure it out,” I said lightly.

And for the second time that day, I watched his eyes light up with joy.