Stuck With You: A Sweet Romantic Comedy

Part 11

Bianca

The evening I was moving out of my flooded apartment, Liberty and Adam picked me up early from work.

"Where are you going?" Chad demanded as I collected my bag while Adam stood shifting his weight from one foot to another and reminding me that Liberty was double-parked.

"I told you yesterday," I said to Chad. "I'm moving all my stuff out of my apartment."

"I thought you were staying with Rob and Camille."

"Can't stay," I said. "They've come back from Spain, and there's not room for me anymore."

"Where are you moving to, then?"

"She's moving on," I heard Adam say under his breath.

"What did you say?" Chad demanded.

Chad had never liked Adam. Adam was freakishly tall and very good-looking in a bookish, frazzled sort of way. Adam also had Chad beat in the IQ department by a good thirty points. Chad had never been one to appreciate anyone else's good qualities or superior accomplishments, not even mine.

Even though we'd been broken up for a while, I was still Chad's business partner, and arguably, essential to his own success, but he still resented it when I got something right. It was as if Chad was in a constant state of simultaneously rooting for me to both succeed and fail. It was exhausting.

"I said Bianca is moving on," said Adam. "She's moving into Timothy Franco's penthouse in the Mission Tower."

"What?!" Chad turned to me. "You know Timothy Franco?"

At first, I had a little trouble processing what Adam was talking about. Was Timo short for Timothy? That explained why my lackadaisical attempt at cyberstalking Timo had been fruitless. That and I'd thought Timo's last name was Porter.

The name Timothy Franco was vaguely familiar, but I couldn't call up when or where I'd heard about him.

Apparently, Adam was a lot more familiar with Timo's identity outside of his role as my brother's childcare provider. Were we even talking about the same person? Still, Timo himself had brought up the existence of the penthouse.

"Come on, Bianca," said Adam and practically dragged me to the elevator.

When we got to the car, I crawled into the backseat and pulled out my phone. When I searched for Timothy Franco, San Francisco, I got thousands of hits. At first, I figured that Adam had gotten Timo confused with another Timothy Franco, but then I looked at the pictures. Timo was definitely the Timothy Franco.

Timo was nearly ten years older than I'd have guessed, and about ten thousand times as rich. He'd sold out a tech startup five years ago for nine million dollars and was rumored to have made a killing on investing the money he'd liquidated.

"Why is Timo working as a nanny?" I demanded to no one in particular.

Liberty pleaded ignorance. Timo's alter ego as Mr. Moneybags was completely new to her.

Adam messed with his phone for a minute, then handed it back to me.

Former CEO Reveals the Real Secret to Happiness

I kept reading. It was an old interview, probably done just before Timo had started working for Rob and Camille. According to the article, Timo had given away ninety percent of his money and was hoping to return to what he called "real life."

He'd certainly managed that if you call changing diapers and dispensing band-aids "real life."

To hear Timo tell it, too much money was the root of discontent. Apparently, he was down to his last ten million and was embarking on a spiritual journey to "find the meaning of life."

I wondered if he'd found it, yet.

"We're here," said Liberty, as we pulled up in front of my old apartment. Timo was already there. I wondered if he'd taken the train to get there.

For the next five hours, we cleaned out my apartment and packed as much as we could into Liberty's station wagon. I'd hired movers to come pick up another small load in the morning. Most of the furniture was ruined, so we broke some of it up into pieces and stuffed it in the dumpster in the alley behind the building until my upstairs neighbor started yelling at us.

I'd just have to pay the movers extra to make one last trip to the collection station to dump the rest of the stuff that was ruined.

When we'd packed as much as would fit into Liberty's station wagon, Liberty suggested that we call it a night. She and Adam could wrestle my boxes into her attic in the morning before Adam went off to teach his third-hour class, and Liberty met up with Professor McNotty to discuss the progress she'd made on supporting documentation for his book.

I noticed that Adam rolled his eyes when Reginald McCall's (AKA Professor McNotty's) name came up. Liberty didn't seem to register Adam's obvious contempt for their colleague.

"I'll take you over to see the penthouse," said Timo. "We can order takeout and eat it on the terrace."

There was a terrace?

"Did you drive?" I asked.

Timo

I pointed down the street from the alley where Liberty had illegally parked her station wagon.

"The black Porsche?" said Bianca, sounding rather shocked, which made me wonder if she knew anything about me at all outside my life as a nanny. I wasn't surprised that she'd never seen the car. When I have the kids, I always drive Rob and Camille's minivan. My car stays safely locked away in a rented garage four blocks from the house.

We walked to the car, and I opened the passenger side door for Bianca, like some old southern gentleman. She got in gingerly as if trying not to let any of her grime-coated skin touch the luxurious leather.

"Why are you a nanny?" She asked as we pulled away from the curb.

"I get that a lot."

"I bet."

"I'll tell you over dinner."

We rode the twenty minutes back downtown in near silence. Bianca seemed to be brooding.

I was brooding, too. I was uncertain whether I had an ethical obligation to break it to Bianca that I was in fake negotiations under a fake name to buy out her ex-boyfriend's very real share of their business in a shady under-the-table deal.

At Mission Tower, we parked in the basement and took the elevator thirty-two stories up. When we got to the top, and I opened the door to the penthouse, Bianca looked a little stunned. You could have fit three of her basement apartments just in the living room, so I suppose it did come as a bit of a surprise that someone currently working as a nanny could afford such a place.

Bianca went to a window and looked out at the view.

"I am seriously confused," I heard her say, but I didn't reply. I was ordering dinner.

When my phone rang, I excused myself to the terrace to take the call. As I talked, I watched through the window as Bianca wandered around the living room, looking everything over with her hands clasped behind her back as if trying to resist the temptation to pick anything up.

I hoped Bianca wasn't going to remain that anxious in her new surroundings. When I'd offered to let her stay at my place, I'd meant to make her life easier, not create a situation where she was perpetually on edge.

Bianca was looking at a framed picture of my two boys in graduation gowns when I came back inside.

"Who's this?" she asked as she pointed to the picture.