Baby Benefits by Emily McKay

her. Kitty Biedermann had impeccable timing. A few minutes later and she might have discovered Raina and Derek naked in the back of his car. A few minutes earlier and she would have interrupted nothing at all.
    As it was, Raina had heard her strolling up the drive just in time to jump guiltily out of Derek’s arms. Just in time to ruin the perfect kiss Raina had dreamed about countless times over the past few years.
    Just in time to make her feel like the other woman. Dirty and shameful.
    If anyone should feel shameful, it was Derek. He’s the one who’d kissed her, not the other way around. However, when she’d steadied herself by brushing her hair back from her face and turned to glance at him, she found him leaning calmly against his SUV, his gaze guarded, his hands tucked into his pockets.
    Resentment spiked through her. How dare he look so unaffected by their kiss? How dare he apparently feel not even a glimmer of guilt?
    To avoid looking at Derek if nothing else, Raina turned toward Kitty, who’d stopped maybe ten feet away from Derek and the SUV. She wore a thin black skirt and blazer. Her feet were clad in the kind of spiky pumps that cost more than a semester of Cassidy’s college. Kitty’s sable hair fell sleekly to her shoulders.
    On Raina the outfit would have looked ridiculously mannish. Kitty, however, looked like a modern Lauren Bacall, curvy and outrageously sensual. Compared to Kitty, Raina felt like a twelve-year-old girl.
    A cheating, shameful twelve-year-old girl. Perfect.
    “You’re early.” Derek was the first to break the silence.
    “I caught an earlier flight.” Kitty wrinkled her perfectly straight nose. “No sense waiting around at the airport, is there?”
    She lifted her hand to her sunglasses and slowly raised them onto the top of her head. The better to survey her domain. Her gaze flickered dismissively from Derek to Raina before settling on the house, which sprawled over the meticulously landscaped grounds. “Well. It’s certainly large, isn’t it?” Somehow she made that, too, sound like an insult. Finally, her gaze moved back to Raina. Again her nose wrinkled as she looked Raina up and down, taking in the shorts and tank top, so practical in the heat, but so pedestrian compared to Kitty’s ensemble. “And you are…the dog walker? The nanny?”
    Raina clenched her hands into fists. “Derek’s assistant.”
    Kitty’s gaze darted to Derek’s. “Really? You’ve hired a teenager as your personal assistant?”
    Finally Derek straightened—apparently no longer struck dumb by the sheer joy of unexpectedly seeing his lovely fiancée…“Raina is my administrative assistant at work. She’s just helping out with Isabella this week.”
    “Ah.” Kitty eyed her. “So, Louraina, you’ve been demoted to nanny?” Kitty smirked. “And the child? Where is she?”
    “Isabella is asleep. Finally.” Derek crossed to Kitty’s side and—to Raina’s horror—brushed a kiss across her lips. “I’m thrilled you’re here. But you really should have called to let me know you’d made that earlier flight. I’d planned to pick you up at the airport myself.” He gestured behind him to the discarded cardboard box the car seat had come in. “I was just putting the car seat in so that I could bring Isabella with me.”
    Kitty waved a dismissive hand. “I hired a limo at the airport. It was much more convenient than having you pick me up.” The disdainful look she shot the car seat box implied it was actually more convenient than traveling with Isabella.
    Then she shot an equally scornful look at Raina. “The limo driver should be bringing up my bags. Tip him, will you?”
    Then Kitty threaded her arm through Derek’s and strolled up the winding walkway toward the house, concisely dismissing Raina. Relegating her to nothing more than the hired help.
    And Derek let her lead him away.
    Raina’s stomach rolled over in disgust. Okay, so technically, it wasn’t “into the sunset”