Innocence (Tales of Olympus #1)(14)

“So when I left home and came to the city, I didn’t have any paperwork. I didn’t even think about it. I didn’t know you needed that kind of thing to get a job. But it turns out it’s really important.”

“But you still got the nannying job.”

She shrugged. “They were fine with paying me cash.”

“And they didn’t require references?”

“They told me they’d have a nanny cam on me at all times and I got along really well with Timmy during our trial play date. Plus I wasn’t asking for as much money as other nannies, I learned later.”

And it had been Paul who’d interviewed her, not Diane. Cora shuddered. Was that the real reason he’d hired her? Because he found her attractive and had hoped to have an affair with her?

“Well first of all, we need to start the process for getting you a social security card. You’ll be crippled for life without one.”

Cora’s mouth dropped open. First by the we and second by how confident he sounded that she could actually get a social security card. She’d looked into it on the internet a few times but almost everything that came up was only for how to get documents for babies born at home while they were still babies. Not when they were nineteen.

She’d thought about going to the social security office and asking but had gotten afraid. What if she got in trouble for not having the documents? She couldn’t actually prove she was who she said she was. She couldn’t even prove she was a citizen and with how crazy everything had been with immigration lately, what if they tried to deport her to a foreign country? Yes, she was good at thinking in terms of worst-possible-scenarios. After living with her paranoid mom all her life, it was usually her knee jerk reaction.

Besides, she’d gotten the nanny position so it didn’t seem so important and definitely not worth the risk.

Feeling stupid even as she asked it, she couldn’t help herself. “Doesn’t that seem, I don’t know…risky? How would they prove that I am who I say I am?”

“I’ll have my lawyer look into it, but I imagine it will involve a series of affidavits by your mother and people who knew her while she was preg—”

“No,” Cora said sharply.

Marcus’s eyebrows went up.

Crap. How to explain this? “My mom and I didn’t part on the best of terms is all.”

Marcus nodded, looking thoughtful.

Cora took another bite of her food if only for something to busy her hands with when Marcus asked, “Have you ever done any modeling?”

Her eyes bulged and she choked, grabbing for her napkin and dabbing at the red sauce she was sure was all over her mouth.

She hurriedly chewed and laughed. “Ha ha,” she said. “Funny joke.”

He wasn’t laughing, though. His features were set with their stone intensity again. “When I’m telling a joke, you’ll know it, Cora.”

She scoffed. “I don’t look like a model.”

How many times had her mother picked on her appearance? Why won’t you let me cut bangs again? Your forehead is obnoxiously huge. It needs to be covered. And what have you been eating? I’m surprised you can make it through the door with those hips.

Marcus’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t be one of those girls who pretends she doesn’t know she’s beautiful.”

Cora’s cheeks flamed. Oh gods, did he think she was fishing for compliments? She waved a hand at him but he persisted.

“I have a friend who’s a fashion designer, Armand, and I know he’d love to get his hands on you.”

Her mouth dropped open again, the second time in as many minutes. Get his hands on—

“Not like that.” Marcus tilted his head, his grey eyes turning dark. “No one will ever lay hands on you again.”

The way he said it had a quality of finality that probably should have disturbed her. And was it just her or did she read an implicit, “Except me,” in his eyes in the silence after his statement?

“But it would be work I think you’d enjoy,” he went on. “You’d get to meet people your age.” He smiled in a way that made her feel every one of the years between them. “And wear pretty clothes.”

She rolled her eyes. “I’d feel more comfortable in overalls and flannel. Farm girl, remember?”

Although more than once, she had snuck into her mother’s closet and tried on the heels hidden in a box at the very back. She’d about broken her ankle the first few times she tried walking in them but had eventually gotten the hang of it. She’d dreamed about the sort of life Marcus was describing, but in the same way she dreamed about knights and castles from her books. Not as anything that could ever be real.

“You own businesses, right?” she asked. “Why can’t I work for you?”

“Out of the question,” he snapped and Cora shrank back from the table.

Marcus swiped at his mouth with a napkin. His eyes were on her again. “I own bars. Hotels that aren’t in the best parts of town. Not where an angel belongs.”

Cora frowned a little. She wasn’t sure she liked being thought of as an angel all that much. The more she got to know Marcus the more she thought she might like to be right down here on the earthly plane with him. For him to see her as a woman.

A chair scraped and Marcus’s shadow fell over her. “Cora,” he took her hand and it happened again, the electricity, but far more intensely this time. Warmth pulsed up her arm, her blood simmering, the flush spreading over her chest and rolling down. Cora gasped and Marcus’s forehead crinkled. “Cora?”