Commuting to Thames Group in Midtown is everything I ever dreamed about working in New York City. The train rides from Brooklyn, the walking past Rockefeller Center, the hustle and bustle to grab coffee before the lines get too long.

Plus, spring has sprung, and even though it’s rainy this morning, it’s warm, and I’m so ready for a change.

Turns out I didn’t need to buy the coffee, because Thames Group has their own little café when you first walk in. A gorgeous older woman, Mrs. VonUriel, introduces herself as my supervisor, and after showing me off to all the people in her department, tells me that the entire café, complete with every type of coffee under the sun and its own barista, is strictly for employees. After that, I’m shown to a work room with cubicles and told that after work today, there will be a happy hour down at Lindgren’s.

“If there’s anything else you need, just let me know. Welcome to Thames Group, Miss Frasier. I hope you’ll be very happy here.”

“Oh, I know I will,” I reply, giving her a big first-day grin, and the moment she leaves, I sit and settle in. Looking around, I touch my computer keyboard, my drawers, my empty space, ready to be filled with spreadsheets and highlighters. Mrs. VonUriel said she would email me some documents to fill out, but in the meantime, I slowly set up my cubicle.

Yeah, it’s a cubicle, a tiny compartment in the work force, but it’s my own space, and I don’t have to clean any poop or make any organic baby food according to specs outlined in a PowerPoint. My smile fades as I realize how sad that makes me. I’d actually gotten pretty good at making organic baby food and changing diapers is never fun, but the look on Liam’s face when I was done and lifting him was always priceless, a little “thank you for taking care of me, babababa.”

The first thing I do is send myself one of the hundred selfies I took with Liam and make it my desktop image. A smile immediately pops up on my face, but now I’m so nostalgic and yearning for him, I wish I could call him up and talk to him over the phone. Relax, Alana, you knew that nannying would be temporary. Yes, nannying would be temporary, but nobody ever tells you that you fall in love with the kids. Well, not the girls I talked to anyway. Seemed they were always complaining about the spoiled brat kids, but Liam wasn’t there yet.

And Liam wasn’t spoiled.

Liam was a baby who needed a mother, needed his father, and has ended up in the hands of a man who never wanted him to begin with. A tear slips from my eyes and rolls down my cheek, but I wipe it before I get any more emotional on my first day at work.

“Is that your baby?” Another older woman pauses at my cubicle with a mug in hand.

“Huh? Oh, no. Just a boy I used to take care of.” Just a boy I love and miss.

“Babysitting?”

“Nanny job.”

“Oh. Well, he’s super adorable. Look at those big blue eyes! My gosh!”

“I know.” I stare at Liam’s gorgeous little face. Though he didn’t have Kase’s features, he could have easily passed for his son any day. Because of that handsome smile. “I miss him.”

“Reach out to the family,” the woman says. “Sometimes they’re totally fine with nannies coming back to see the kids again. In fact, it’s good for the kids, too.”

“Maybe I’ll do that.” I smile and hold out my hand. “I’m Alana Frasier.”

“Cassie Moran. From reporting.” She shakes my hand and smiles a lot. “Good luck on your first day. And watch out for the guys around here.” She looks around to make sure none of them are listening. “They all have the hots for you.”

The hots? Oh, she means they find me attractive. “Okay, I’ll watch out for them.” I smile awkwardly and shake my head. Are they wolves? Do they shoot you with a stun gun if they like you?

The day goes pretty much as expected—eating lunch alone, visiting the office café three too many times, and shuffling papers around so it looks like I’m doing something. I know there will be more to do soon, but the important thing is—I have a job. I should be grateful. It’s my dream job. I should be happy.

Still I can’t shake the feeling of loneliness. Nannying wasn’t perfect, Liam and Kase weren’t perfect, and we were always fighting or struggling in some way, but they felt like home to me. At Thames Group, I feel, at best, like a stranger in a strange land.

After work, I attend the happy hour knowing I’m going to feel awkward. All the guys that the woman told me about earlier seem to be there, all ranging from my age to about thirty. The older and probably married ones keep their eyeballs to themselves, but the younger ones all keep coming up to me and asking me how my first day was.

None of them are rude. None of them do I have to “watch out for.”

In fact, the worst one I had to “watch out for” was my previous boss, and as crazy ass-backwards as it sounds, I miss our dynamic. Some might call it dysfunctional, some would label it sexual harassment, but it wasn’t. It was entirely consensual and I miss it. These guys all seem like babies compared to Kase and after being with him, I know I could never date a younger guy (or one my age) ever again.

I like Kase and his dark, brooding ways, his commanding ego, and his moodiness. I liked knowing that he was hard to please but that I possessed the ability. These guys would probably come at the drop of a hat. I could see them salivating at my naked body. Kase’s eyes would flash but he wouldn’t salivate. He wasn’t a horny dog. He was a man—all man.

And for a very short time, he was mine.

* * *

When I finally arrive back at the apartment, it’s nearly nine o’clock. I’m so exhausted, I could go to sleep right now and stay in bed for two days. There’s an envelope slipped under the door. Seeing it’s from Le Nanny, I open it and pull out a check for twenty thousand dollars. A “bonus,” it says on the letter. From my former employer, Kase Hardwin, for “the great work and extra effort” I put in.

I don’t know what to think. By extra effort, does he mean all that sex? All those things?

Or, he could genuinely mean all the work I did for Liam and want me to be taken care of for a few months. In which case, while I appreciate the gesture, I don’t need it. I don’t need Kase’s money, and I sure as shit don’t need his charity. Like I told him, I had a job lined up before working for him, and now I’m back on track. The sooner I can wipe him from my memory, the better.

I’m about to tear up the check when my mother calls. “Hi, honey. How was your first day?”

“Fine, I guess.”

“Did you hear the news?”

“No, what news?” When my mother talks about news, she thinks everyone should know what she read about. Even feel-good stories about little kids giving up their allowance money to buy kids with cancer gifts constitutes news in her eyes.

“A woman, a caretaker, a home nurse I think, received a billionaire’s inheritance. Can you believe it? Google it, Alana.”

I roll my eyes. Of course, a story about a servicewoman being gifted a bunch of money from her zillionaire employer would make my mom’s radar. “Okay, I’ll Google it. What else?”

“What else?” She scoffs. “That’s pretty big. It’s the same as winning the PowerBall. She received his entire estate or something to that effect. Could you imagine the Hollands leaving us their entire property and money while we worked for them? Why doesn’t stuff like that ever happen to us? Right, George?”

In the background, I hear my father grumphing. I know how he feels. I wish my mother would change the subject too.

“That’s great, Mom. I prefer to earn it the old-fashioned way,” I say.

“Prostitution?” My mother snorts.

“What? Mom. I mean working for it.”

“Honey, ‘the old-fashioned way’ refers to prostitution. I sure hope you haven’t taken any money for sex.”

My father grumphs again and tells my mom to knock it off.

“Are you kidding me? I’m talking about working my ass off. I may not seem it right now, but you’re talking to a future banking executive right here.”

“Oh, honey, I know. I’m just kidding.”

She may be kidding, and maybe this is a sore spot, but sometimes I wonder what Kase and I were all about. Did I think there was more between us, but clearly, he only wanted extra services? The after-hours, nighttime kind? If that’s the case, then prostitution wouldn’t be too far a description from the truth.

Everything becomes clearer after a while. Hindsight is 20/20, as they say.

Great, I couldn’t possibly feel any worse right now.

After the enlightening phone call from my mom, I Google it, because…why not. Because the story is fresh, there are many articles from one hour old to one day old. I click on the most reputable source of them all and open the article. That’s when I see her—the black nurse who came to Kase’s house that day wheeling the old man, Kase’s father-in-law, Bert Roper. But he was so rude when he talked about the dynamics between employers and their hired help.

The article goes on to mention that the old billionaire was also part of a highly-publicized custody battle between Kase Hardwin and Raymond Silas, and there’s a link to their story awarding Silas with custody. The courts didn’t care that Kase had texts and emails proving Raymond to be a deadbeat dad for the first half a year of Liam’s life. In the end, because he came back and the paternity tests all came back as positive, they awarded him custody anyway.

A photo of Kase leaving the courthouse makes me stop everything and sigh.

Even if I never speak to him again, I will always feel sorry for him for losing Liam. I saw it with my own eyes—he loved that boy. He loved him like he was his own son, and that’s harder to do than being a biological dad and you have no choice. Adoptive parents, like stepparents, too, they have a choice. And they choose love.

Why, then, couldn’t he choose love for me?

Taking Kase’s check, I do a mobile deposit, but instead of putting it into my own checking, I put it in my parents’ linked with mine. Maybe they’ll never win the PowerBall, and maybe the Hollands would never give them their inheritance, but their daughter might earn a bonus for working hard, and I might be able to give back to them. Because at least I have my parents.

It’s the least I can do for everything they’ve ever given me.

Picking up the phone, my finger hovers above Kase’s name. I want to thank him for the bonus, but the real reason I want to call him—I miss him. I’m looking for any excuse to talk to him, but I can’t do it. He’s not the man of my dreams. I could’ve sworn he was. The sooner I forget him, the happier I’ll be.

Putting the phone back down, I let out a long sigh, enter the kitchen, and pull out leftover takeout instead.