She also had to ask Mitch about the dog.
Taking a deep breath, she rose to her feet as he closed the truck door behind Joshua and started around to the driver’s side.
“Mitch.”
She waited until he came back, out of Joshua’s earshot, one brow raised in query.
“It’s about Digger. I can’t keep him.” The reason didn’t need stating—a dog couldn’t be packed away in a storage box. “I was thinking that a dog might be good for Joshua.”
“It would,” he said slowly, but his expression remained closed. Not the good-idea-Emily smile she’d hoped for. His eyes met hers, hard and direct. “But right now he needs something more than a dog. He needs you, Emily. We both do.”
Three
Living with Chantal and Cameron Quade wasn’t as bad as Emily had imagined. Allowed to housekeep and cook, she didn’t feel like a complete charity case, although she had spent the last forty-eight hours on tenterhooks, waiting for her nearest neighbor to resume his recruitment campaign.
He’d been surprisingly silent during the fraught trip from Gramps’s to her new temporary residence, although Joshua compensated with his mile-a-minute chatter. She hadn’t helped them shop and she hadn’t seen either since, yet she remained hyperaware of their presence, a mere mile away, closer, across the three paddocks that separated the farmhouses.
Was it any wonder she jumped every time someone walked into the room?
This time it was Chantal. Yawning widely as she came through the kitchen doorway, she seemed sleepy enough from her afternoon nap not to notice Emily jump. Unfortunately, Chantal had been a lawyer all her adult life and a Goodwin even longer. Even half-awake, she noticed.
“You have to stop doing that while you have a knife in your hand. You’ll have a finger off.”
Emily studied the paring knife in her hand. No blood. And her fingers were all intact. “I’m sorry. I was thinking of something else and you startled me,” she said unnecessarily.
“Well, I kind of hoped I didn’t look that frightening.” With one hand resting comfortably on her pregnant belly, Chantal hitched herself up onto a kitchen stool. “Not with another two months to grow even fatter.”
“You know you look beautiful.”
“You know you have a friend for life,” Chantal countered. Then her expression turned ominously serious. “Is that incident with the jerk at the hotel making you jumpy?”
“No,” Emily replied truthfully. Probably too truthfully, seeing as Chantal would now go digging for another explanation. She was very much like her brother in that way.
“What are you making?”
“This soup.” Emily pointed to the recipe card on the bench. “Is that all right?”
Chantal laughed. “Anything I don’t have to prepare is fine by me.”
Emily continued chopping vegetables. What-are-you-making-for-dinner had been a diversion, to settle her down. Questioning would resume shortly.
“I was talking to my brother earlier,” the inquisitor continued with a deceptive casualness that didn’t deceive Emily.
Her knife skidded off the side of a carrot. She didn’t dare look up, to see the smug satisfaction on Chantal’s face at finding the answer to her why-is-Emily-jumpy riddle so easily. Her brother, as always.
“He’s concerned about Joshua.”
Emily’s gaze flew up. “What’s wrong? He seemed fine on Sunday.”
“He is…and he isn’t.”
Keep dicing and slicing, Emily. Don’t prompt… “Because I won’t take my job back?” she blurted, unable to help herself.
Chantal’s pause was measured. “Have you almost finished there?”
“For now.”
“Great. Get yourself a drink and we’ll sit somewhere comfortable. This stool is not big enough for the pregnant version of my butt.”
With shaky hands Emily poured two glasses of apple cider and followed Chantal—with crackers and Brie—into the lounge. Easier to hide behind a glass than a knife, she reasoned, should her hostess’s cross-examination prove too savvy.
“Let’s start at the beginning,” Chantal mumbled around her first bite of cheese. “Which, I guess, is back when Annabelle fired you.”
“She didn’t fire—”
“She didn’t find fault with everything you did? She didn’t suggest you’d be happier somewhere else?” Chantal waved a dismissive hand at Emily’s how-the-heck-did-you-know? look. “Not so clever of me. She was impossible to please.”
Emily’s heart thudded hard as she wondered where Chantal was going with the history lesson, but she couldn’t not listen. Like a moth to the flame.
“Anyway, Mitch took an in-studio job so he could be home more regular hours, and Joshua went to day care, and they didn’t need a live-in nanny.”
“Until Annabelle left.”
“And while Mitch chased around the world trying to talk her into coming home, Joshua was shuffled around between grandparents and aunts.” Chantal looked up as she reached for another cracker. “You know how that feels, don’t you?”
Throat tight with compassion, Emily nodded. Oh, yes, she knew all about shuffling. From mother to stepfather to mother to the next stepfather with only Gramps making her feel as though she had a secure home and a modicum of love.
“Which is when you came back into the picture, Emily.”
Oh yes, this part she knew all about. The day after his other sister, Julia’s, wedding to Zane O’Sullivan, Mitch had come to see her. Less than a week after Gramps’s funeral, lost and alone and at her most vulnerable, she’d taken her old job back and prayed that her infatuation with her boss would die…or at least not live long enough to humiliate her.
“What happened after I left?” she asked, eager to skip the humiliation part. Hoping Chantal couldn’t hear the skittery beat of her heart.
“Oh, we talked him into getting another nanny. She was hopeless. The next one—”
“There were more?”
“Two more.” Smiling wryly, Chantal shook her head. “I suppose you’ve noticed that my brother is somewhat attractive?”
Somewhat? Emily made a noncommittal sound, sort of a cross between an uh-huh and clearing her throat. Now seemed like the perfect time to hide behind her glass.
“Nanny number two…” Gaze narrowed in concentration, Chantal tapped a nail on her chin. “Her name was Monique, from memory, and she misinterpreted the live-in part of the clause.”
While Emily choked on her juice, Chantal laughed with genuine amusement. She reached across and touched Emily’s arm, compatriots in gossip.
“Can you imagine Mitch when he found her in his bed?”
“Um…not really.”
Liar. She didn’t have to imagine, she knew. He’d look stunned, then so uncomfortable he couldn’t meet her eyes. There’d be a softly muttered expletive, some stony-faced silence, and, finally, with her nerves stretched to snap point, he would start asking questions.
She wondered if Monique had handled them any better than she had done.
“The third nanny is the one Joshua ran away from at the mall?”
Chantal nodded. “After that episode, Mitch accepted my offer to take over the lease on Korringal. We all thought