At His Service: Nanny Needed: Hired: Nanny Bride / A Mother in a Million / The Nanny Solution

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For the first time in a very, very long time, the sense of loneliness within him eased, the sense that no one really knew him dissipated.

“When you gave your son up for adoption, it wasn’t really about what you needed or wanted, Joshua,” she said gently. “And it isn’t now, either. It’s about what he needs and wants. What if he wants to know who his biological father is?”

And suddenly he saw how terribly self-centered he had always been. He had become more so, not less, after he had walked away from his baby seven years ago. He had layered himself in self-protective self-centeredness.

And he was so glad he had not taken that kiss with Dannie to where it wanted to go.

Because he had things he needed to do, roads he needed to travel down, places he needed to visit. Places of the heart.

For a moment, sitting here by the fire, exchanging laughter and confidences, eating off the same spoon, slurping spaghetti, he had thought it felt like homecoming.

Now he saw he could not have that feeling, not with her and not with anyone else, not until he had made peace with who he was and what he had done.

A long time ago he had given his own flesh and blood into the keeping of strangers. He had tried to convince himself it was the right decision. He had rationalized all the reasons it was okay. But in the back of his mind, he had still been a man, self-centered and egotistical, knowing that child would have disrupted his plans and his life and his dreams.

Ironically, even after he’d made the decision that would supposedly set him free, he had been a prisoner of it.

Dannie had seen that right away. Sun. Son.

A nibbling sense of failure, of having made a mistake in an area where it really counted, had chased him, and chased him hard. He had barely paused to catch a breath at each of his successes before beginning to run again. He had lost faith in himself because of that decision.

And no amount of success, money, power or acquisition had ever absolved him.

But Dannie was right. It was about the child, not about him. If he found out if his boy was okay, then would the demons rest? If he was able to put the needs of that babe ahead of his own, then was he the man worthy of what he saw in Dannie’s eyes?

Joshua realized when he had come back into this cabin, after Michael had roared away in the motorboat, leaving them here together until morning, he had thought his mission was to get her to trust him again, the way she had when she had told him about her disastrous nonrelationship with the college professor. The way she had when she had told him about a wedding gown that she had spent all her money on and that she would never wear.