ChapterOne
It was hard to see anything through tears.
My favorite song was playing on the coffee shop speakers, but it felt like it was happening somewhere else, to someone else. Hard to believe this was the place I practically lived in when I wasn’t in class or at my apartment, bent over my laptop while sipping a chai and bobbing my foot along to the mellow beats.
“Are you waiting for the bathroom?” a guy asked.
I nodded while I looked the other way so he wouldn’t see my tears. What was taking the person in the bathroom so damn long?
I’d come straight to Stardust Coffee from Professor Decker’s NYU office. I didn’t know where else to go. It all still felt like a blur, like I couldn’t believe it had really happened.
Ever since I’d graduated, he’d told me to call him “James.” I was his studio assistant now, no longer his student. Even though he was a hotshot young NYU art professor who every student wanted to work with, he’d been generous enough to mentor me on my latest project, a series of colored-pencil illustrations based on the faerie tales my mother told me when I was a little girl. “James” had believed in my artwork so much that he even blocked off studio space just for me and ordered us takeout from crazy-expensive restaurants while he critiqued my work late into the evenings.
Until this afternoon, when he’d cornered me while I was working alone in the studio and lunged at me, saying he couldn’t keep fighting our mutual attraction…
Mutual? Was heinsane? Just because half the girls on campus had a crush on him didn’t meanIdid. All that time, the bastard just wanted in my pants. Professor James Decker was not going to be the first guy I slept with, that was for sure. Even the thought of kissing him made me shudder.
What a creep.
I’d come straight to Stardust Coffee. My home away from home. The comforting smell of cinnamon buns and the scream of the espresso machine.
What was taking the person so long in the bathroom?
I wiped the tears from my eyes.Get it together, Willow.A community message board spanned the wall next to the bathroom, and while I waited, I focused on the tacked-up business cards and colorful flyers for banjo lessons. Anything to get my mind off Professor Decker. Tae Kwon Do? Speed Dating?
Then I saw the small handwritten note, no bigger than a page off a sticky pad, tacked up in the upper-right corner.
Live-in Nanny Wanted
Salary and Apartment Provided
Call 202-819-2000
That was it. No contact name or anything about how many children, what part of town, what the job requirements were. It was so nondescript that it screamed “Warning: Potential Scam.”
Obviously, I wasn’t going to call. It was super sketchy. Any decent employer would go through a reputable nanny agency, not a coffee shop community board that also advertised tarot readings and had some weirdo’s manifesto about microchips in breakfast cereal.
But I kept staring at the ad.
There was no way I could go back to my assistant job for Professor Decker. I never wanted to set foot in that man’s office again. But without university employment, I couldn’t keep living in university housing.
So where was I supposed to go? Jobless, homeless, parentless. My bank account could barely cover a single night in a Manhattan hotel.
I pulled out my phone and dialed my best friend’s number. When she picked up, the sounds of loud conversation ricocheted behind her.
“Willow?” she yelled into the phone.
“Zara, listen, can I crash with you for a couple of days? I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t really important.”
Zara had the good fortune to have been born into an insanely wealthy family. The Olegevs had money in all kinds of Silicon Valley ventures. So it was nothing for them to pay for Zara’s one-bedroom apartment while she took grad classes at NYU, but they were also crazy strict. She wasn’t allowed any overnight visitors. Not even me.
But I was desperate.
“Willow?” she yelled. “I can’t hear you well. I’m at a charity benefit. You’ll never guess who’s here. Severn Wilde!”
I stared into the phone as if I had heard wrong. “Severn Wilde as in thebillionaireSevern Wilde?”
Everyone in New York—not to mention the entire country and probably the world—knew about Severn Wilde. He was only in his late twenties but already the CEO of Wilde Enterprises, the tech and shipping empire owned by his eccentric and mysterious family. All the members of the Wilde family were media darlings, constantly hounded by the paparazzi, appearing daily on gossip websites and magazines.And no wonder.Each of them was shockingly gorgeous and shared an ethereal look, even the adopted siblings. But none more than Severn. He was the city’s most sought-after bachelor yet was rarely ever linked with a girlfriend. Everything about him was shrouded in mystery.
