Chapter 1 - The Red Suitcase
At two seventeen in the morning, Claire Rowan found four-year-old Luke Mercer sitting barefoot on the marble kitchen floor with a red suitcase packed beside him.
Inside the suitcase were three dinosaur shirts, one sock, a plastic fire truck, half a sleeve of crackers, and a framed photograph of his dead father.
Claire stopped in the doorway.
“Luke?”
The little boy looked up.
His eyes were dry.
That frightened her more than tears would have.
“Where are you going, sweetheart?”
“I don’t know yet.”
He said it seriously.
Outside the forty-third-floor windows, Manhattan glittered with indifferent light. Inside Ethan Mercer’s penthouse, every surface was polished stone, smoked glass, brushed brass, and expensive silence.
Claire slowly knelt.
“Why did you pack a suitcase?”
Luke’s small fingers tightened around the handle.
“Because Uncle Ethan said people leave when things get difficult.”
Claire felt something cold enter her chest.
“When did he say that?”
“To the phone.”
Luke looked toward the hallway.
“He said Daddy left. Mommy left. Everybody leaves when you need them too much.”
“He wasn’t talking about you.”
Luke shrugged in the helpless way only a child could.
“Maybe I need people too much.”
Oh, God.
Claire sat on the cold floor beside him.
Luke had lost his father, Aaron Mercer, eleven months earlier in a highway accident. His mother, Rebecca, had spent the months after the funeral collapsing beneath grief, pills, insomnia and guilt until, three weeks ago, she entered a residential treatment center in Arizona and temporarily signed guardianship over to Aaron’s older brother.
Ethan Mercer.
Thirty-eight years old.
Founder of a luxury hotel company worth more money than Claire could imagine.
A man business magazines described as “ruthlessly self-sufficient.”
A man who slept four hours a night, ate most meals standing up and had once told Claire, without irony, that emotional dependence was “an expensive habit.”
And now he was raising a child.
Badly.
Not cruelly.
That would almost have been easier.
Ethan tried.
He bought Luke the best clothes, hired a pediatric nutritionist, replaced an entire guest bedroom with a custom playroom and scheduled appointments with three highly recommended child psychologists.
He simply did not understand that a frightened four-year-old could not be managed like a failing hotel.
Claire reached for the suitcase.
“Come on. Let’s unpack.”
Luke resisted.
“What if you leave?”
“I’m here tonight.”
“What about tomorrow?”
“I’ll be here tomorrow.”
“And after tomorrow?”
Claire hesitated.
She was a temporary live-in nanny.
The contract said six weeks.
She never lied to children.
“I don’t know yet.”
Luke’s mouth trembled.
“That means yes.”
“No. It means I won’t promise something I can’t control.”
He looked down.
“That’s different?”
Claire smiled sadly.
“Very.”
A voice came from behind them.
“What the hell is going on?”
Claire turned.
Ethan stood at the kitchen entrance wearing charcoal trousers, an open-collared white shirt and the exhausted expression of a man who had just returned from war, except Ethan’s wars were fought beneath recessed lighting around conference tables.
His dark blond hair was disordered. His tie hung from one hand.
Luke immediately pulled the suitcase closer.
Ethan noticed.
His face changed.
“What’s that?”
Luke said nothing.
Claire stood.
“You frightened him.”
Ethan’s gray eyes shifted to her.
“Excuse me?”
“He overheard you.”
“I was on a private call.”
“He’s four. Privacy isn’t a force field.”
Ethan’s jaw hardened.
“What did he hear?”
“That everyone leaves when they become too much trouble.”
“I never said that.”
Luke whispered, “You said people leave when you need them too much.”
Silence.
Ethan closed his eyes.
For one second, the millionaire disappeared.
There was only a tired man who suddenly understood what his words had done.
“I was talking about adults, buddy.”
Luke stared at his suitcase.
“That doesn’t make it better,” Claire said.
Ethan looked at her sharply.
“I wasn’t asking you.”
“Maybe you should.”
The air changed.
People did not speak to Ethan Mercer that way.
His executives certainly didn’t.
Claire knew because she had seen them arrive at the penthouse pale-faced for early meetings, nodding before Ethan finished sentences.
But Claire had spent eight years caring for children.
Children did not care about stock valuations.
Neither did she at two seventeen in the morning.
Ethan lowered his voice.
“You work for me, Miss Rowan.”
“Tonight I work for him.”
She nodded toward Luke.
“And right now he thinks needing people makes him a burden.”
Ethan flinched.
Claire almost regretted it.
Almost.
Then Luke asked, “Uncle Ethan, am I difficult?”
Something inside Ethan seemed to split.
He crossed the kitchen and crouched in front of his nephew.
“No.”
“You said—”
“I know what I said.”
For once Ethan had no polished answer.
He put his hands on his knees.
“You are not difficult.”
Luke studied him.
“Do I need people too much?”
Ethan swallowed.
“I don’t think a kid can need people too much.”
“Can grown-ups?”
Ethan looked at Claire.
There it was.
A question much larger than Luke knew.
“Yes,” Ethan said at last. “Sometimes grown-ups get scared of needing anyone at all.”
“Are you scared?”
Claire held her breath.
Ethan could have lied.
She expected him to.
Instead, he said, “Yes.”
Luke considered this.
Then he opened the suitcase.
“I packed crackers.”
Ethan stared.
Claire covered her mouth to hide a smile.
Five minutes later the three of them were sitting on the kitchen floor eating stale crackers at two thirty in the morning.
It was the strangest family scene Claire had ever witnessed.
And for reasons she could not explain, it frightened her almost as much as it warmed her.
May you like
Because Ethan Mercer looked dangerous when he was cold.
But he was far more dangerous when he was trying.
