Written with Regret (The Regret Duet #1)(14)

“What?” she asked, damn near giddy, all her frustration with my punctuality forgotten.

I made a show of looking around the empty space before curling my finger to signal her closer. When she got as far across the table as her torso would allow, I whispered, “I gave him Uncle Ian’s address.”

She burst into a fit of laughter, the crown on the top of her head shaking with her shoulders as she giggled.

Smiling, I listened intently, like it was the first and not closer to the billionth time I’d heard the masterpiece that was her laugh. It was moments like that that filled my chest with more happiness than I’d known was possible four years earlier.

How had it already been four years?

In some ways, it seemed like it was just yesterday that I’d held that tiny, squishy baby on my chest in the hospital. But, in other ways, it seemed like an eternity ago. I honestly couldn’t remember my life without her.

Technically, I didn’t remember much of the first four months of my life with her, either. Bringing her home from the hospital had been a culture shock. My life of coming and going as I pleased had been over. Even going to the gym had become a scheduling nightmare, and that was assuming I’d had the energy to do anything more than climb out of bed, fix a bottle, and get right back in bed to feed it to her. Sleep deprivation was no joke.

I hired a nanny for the first week, but I never left the house because I’d convinced myself that something was going to happen to Rosalee while I was gone and it would have been all my fault because I wanted to maintain my six-pack. A six-pack that’s only purpose was that of a hood ornament. It wasn’t like I had the time to entertain the idea of having sex again.

Veronica had sent me exactly one text message after that night we’d found Rosalee.

She asked if she’d left her purse at my house.

She hadn’t.

We never spoke again.

Whatever. I had more important things to worry about. Like counting how many dirty-versus-wet diapers I changed each day. I had no fucking idea you had to count that shit. Pun intended. The nanny had taught me a lot while I was obsessively hovering over her, questioning her every move, complete with dictating her answers into my cell phone for future reference.

According to the agency, this drove her crazy, and she ended up quitting after nine days.

After that, I entertained the idea of hiring a live-in au pair. It would have been nice to have someone to teach Rosalee about another culture and maybe even another language—fine, also someone who lived with me and was available to help twenty-four-seven.

Until I considered how easy it would be for that woman to steal my child, fly her to a different country, and sell her into human trafficking.

Then I realized how easy it would have been for anyone I hired to steal my child, fly her to a different country, and sell her into human trafficking.

And then I realized that I was going to have to burn Ian’s house down so he was forced to move in with me because he was literally the only person in the world I trusted with her.

In the midst of my drowning in fatherhood, Ian decided we should use the Kaleidoscope profit to dabble in private investing. Given our history of growing a multimillion-dollar company—regardless of how controversial it had ended up being—from the ground up, we were quite good at recognizing a smart concept and strong work ethic when we saw them. But there were too many days I could barely keep my eyes open. It was then that Ian defined the title of “best friend.” He started coming over every Saturday night and would stay up all night long walking Rosalee around my apartment, feeding her and changing her. And more than once, I’d caught him singing to her. He was great with her. But it didn’t matter who had her. Rosalee was this little ball of never-ending pissed-off energy.

Around the three-month mark, I’d been convinced something was wrong with her. She’d fall asleep crying, wake up crying, cry because she wanted to go to sleep but couldn’t. Colic was what the pediatrician called it—the twentieth time I’d taken her into the office in so many days. I must have looked like hell, because she’d suggested I hire someone for more than just Saturday nights. I informed her about the human trafficking thing. She blinked a lot. Then she gave me the number of her personal nanny who had never once sold her children in twelve years of knowing her.

This was how we met Alejandra, the goddess of child rearing. She was in her early sixties, had three grown children of her own, and was interested in picking up extra hours when the good doctor didn’t need her to help pay for her daughter’s college tuition.

She was incredible from the start. Kind and knowledgeable, and she had no qualms about reading me the Riot Act the one time I’d left Rosalee on the changing table to grab a diaper on the other side of the room. Within a few weeks, Saint Alejandra had my girl on a daytime schedule, which caused her to start sleeping in six-hour stretches at night. It was the most glorious thing that had ever happened to me. Not long after that, Alejandra started cooking me meals that didn’t consist of coffee and takeout. She even left a few in the freezer every Friday for the weekend when she wasn’t there.

Rosalee was young, but I could tell she loved Alejandra too. And I was coming to the realization that I couldn’t live without her. The twenty hours a week she was working for me just weren’t enough. It made me a horrible person. And I genuinely felt bad—for about two seconds. But when Rosalee was six months old, I offered Alejandra a full-time position that tripled what the doctor was paying her and included healthcare, a retirement plan, and college tuition for her daughter. A few months later, when I finally broke down and bought a house in Leary, New Jersey, two miles away from Ian’s place, Alejandra also got a private guesthouse with paid utilities and a Lexus so she could commute back and forth to see her kids.