by Blake North
“Is that good?”
“Well, let’s just say I haven’t had sex with anyone at that school so it’s got that in its favor. It would be more in my field than being a nanny, which is one step closer to learning about how to administer an educational center.”
“You mean Benny’s Place?”
“That’s just the working name, but yeah. It’s what I’ve always wanted. And this would be an opportunity to learn more, get one step closer.”
“Are you going to do it?”
“No. I don’t know. I’ve committed to Lydia. I don’t feel right about walking out on her. It’s just reassuring to know that there are other jobs out there for me. That it’s not work for Ridge Carter or nothing.”
“It was never Ridge Carter or nothing,” Angela says.
Somehow I don’t agree with that statement. Because last night it sure as hell felt like I wanted him or nothing. That’s a feeling I’m just going to have to get over.
CHAPTER TEN
Ridge
It’s only been six minutes. I will not pull my phone out and check my email. I will not browse headlines. I will be patient and get my daughter to talk. I have been on blind dates less awkward than this. She answers questions with one word or not at all. She offers no information. The chatterbox Lydia I’m used to has closed off. It’s like she has absolutely nothing to say to me. It wrenches me, because I was the closest person to her in the world until a few weeks ago.
I’m uncomfortable. It’s silent. She hasn’t touched her carrots. I miss Reva’s cheerfulness, her stories and the way she got Lydia to do these animated retellings of things that happened on the playground. Lydia is scowling.
“I like your hair today. Is that a French braid?”
“Dutch braid,” she says. Two whole words, but she was telling me I’m wrong so I guess that calls for an extra word. She doesn’t even look up from her plate.
“Oh, it’s pretty. Did it take long?”
“No.”
“Okay. What did you play in PE today?” I ask.
“Tag.”
“Oh, did you get to be a tagger?” I ask. She loves to be a tagger.
“No.”
“We’ll practice for your spelling test tonight after supper,” I say.
“Already did.”
Two words again. This is excruciating. I want her to open up to me. At the same time, I’m both annoyed and bored. If she were anyone else, I’d be ignoring her and playing on my phone by now. I’m going to keep my focus on her, see if she’ll relax and talk to me.
“Okay, we can watch some Peppa Pig after supper if you like.”
“No, thanks,” she says.
“What about Trolls? I know I said I’d never sit through it again, but I’ll make an exception?” I offer.
She shrugs one shoulder. Like she can’t waste any more words on me.
“What’s wrong, Lydia?” I say.
Another shrug, “Nothing.”
“You’ve been like this ever since Reva moved out, sweetie. It’s been over a week. Talk to me.”
She eats a carrot to avoid answering me. That’s really not wanting to talk, considering she normally has to be bribed to eat those things. After her bath, I settle in to read to her. We finished a chapter book last night so I choose an old favorite. I open Alice in Wonderland and sit down in the rocker, waiting for her to join me.
“Read something else,” she says.
“This is your favorite!” I protest.
“Yeah, but you don’t read it right. You don’t do voices.”
“Does your teacher do voices?” I ask.
“My teacher reads us baby books,” she says derisively.
“So who does voices?” I ask. Then I know who it was.
“Reva reads it the right way. But she’s not here, because you made her leave,” she says hotly.
This is what I’ve been waiting for. For my daughter to rain her wrath on my head for sending her nanny to live elsewhere. She also doesn’t like Mrs. Farnsworth, the weekend nanny who makes her do calisthenics before she gets any screen time. Mrs. Farnsworth takes fitness very seriously, which isn’t a bad thing. She’s also seventy years old and not my type at all. So I have been expecting rebellion.
“And what I’m hearing is that you feel frustrated that she isn’t here. Right?”
“Yes! She did fun things with me like crafts. She didn’t make me do high knee runs!”
“I did high knees when I was in the military. It’s good for you.”
“I’m not even six. I still have baby teeth! I don’t need to do high knees!”
“I don’t think baby teeth have much to do with exercises, Lydia, but that’s a nice try.”
“I miss Reva. She was good at stories and tucking me in and she never tattled when I got up at night.”
“Since when do you get up at night?” I demand.
“Since always,” she says with all the contempt of a teenager, “I get hungry and need snacks. Mrs. Whitman always leaves me something on the counter in plastic wrap.”
“That’s for you? I always thought she just saved something for her coffee in the morning or that she was obsessed with plastic wrap. How did I not know about this?”
“You snore. You don’t hear me. Reva would get up and make me hot chocolate to go with it.”
“That’s not a good idea. You don’t need sugar in the middle of the night. You need to be asleep.”
“Not if I’m hungry,” she argues.
“Look, I’m not changing the terms of your nannies’ employment again because you want midnight hot chocolate.”
“There’s other stuff too,” she says. “The stories and snuggles. I love pot. We did pot together.”
“What? You did pot? As in you smoked? Reva smoked pot with you?” I storm to my feet, furious.
“The oven doesn’t smoke when you do it,” she says, bewildered. I try to breathe and calm down to listen, “You don’t heat it that much. Once you make the pot, you put it in and just cook it till it’s hard. Then you can keep stuff in it like change or paper clips.”
“Pots. Like pottery?”
“Yeah,” Lydia says, staring at me. I sit down.
The fury has subsided. I’m trying not to laugh. It was so ridiculous, that I assumed my kindergartener was smoking weed with her nanny. But I don’t let myself laugh about it. Because I’ve made a mistake. Lydia misses her nanny at night. I could give her that back. All I have to do is swallow my pride and ask her to return. Then keep my distance.
“Good night, honey,” I say.
Lydia has turned her back to me and doesn’t respond. She’s only five years old and she’s already giving her old man the silent treatment. I sigh. I can make this right for her. It’s just going to be hell on me.
This isn’t going to be easy. But anything is better than the sadness in my little girl’s eyes. I can’t let her go back to the Montessori school with the lax security. I can’t relax my vigil about keeping her safe. But I can let her have this. I can let her have Reva back. I kiss Lydia’s forehead and turn out her light.
Then I go dial the phone. This is not going to be a pleasant conversation. If offering her more money would work, I’d just try that. Anything to avoid the necessity of having to apologize to her. Or having to discuss the fact that we had sex on my couch. Really intense, incredible sex that I think about every single day in the shower, and sometimes at night in bed as well.
“Hello?” she answers immediately, “Is Lydia okay?”
“Lydia’s fine. She’s safe. But she’s not happy,” I say. I’m thankful she assumed I was calling about Lydia. I’m happy that she answered on the first ring out of concern for my daughter. I still hate having this conversation.
“Is something wrong?”
“She misses you. Apparently, you read Alice in Wonderland the correct way, and you gave her hot chocolate in the middle of the night regularly. The absence of these amenities has been noted and complained about,” I sigh
.
“I can record the book for her on my phone and she can play it back. Or I can Facetime her bedtime story,” she offers.
She’s so cooperative, so cheerful. She’s just doing this to make it harder on me. Because now I have to be really specific about what I need her to do.
“She wants you to come home.”
“I am home. I live at Angela’s. Also, when I was five I’m fairly sure I wanted a pony, which I never got. We don’t always get what we want,” she says in a singsong voice. God, she can be irritating when she wants to be. If I bit her lip, I bet she’d melt into me. I shake my head. I can’t think that way, not about her.
“I see. Well, Lydia has already had several disappointments with respect to her schooling, being uprooted from her previous friends, and having her activities restricted for security reasons. While I will not increase her app allowance or get her the hoverboard she wants, I find it reasonable to grant this request. She wants you to come back and live here,” I say.
“And what do you want?”
“I want what’s best for my daughter. For the time being, that seems to be you. Living on property and reading her bedtime story and being here if she wakes in the night,” I say.
“Will this be, what was the word…intolerable for you?”
“Quite possibly, but I’d endure anything to secure Lydia’s happiness.”
“So, having me live at your house is like being waterboarded? Or being burned with cigarettes or something?”
“Speaking of cigarettes, I understand that you and Lydia do pot together,” I say, grinning at the memory.
“Pottery. We do pottery. Good grief. She said that?”
“Yes. At bedtime. It’s one of the things she misses about you at the weekends when the respite nanny makes her do some exercises. She hates exercise, and she’d rather do pot.”
She laughs, “I bet a lot of people feel that way.”
It feels good to hear her laugh. Something in my chest seems to loosen and I find that I can laugh, too, about the things my clever but clueless child says. I can share this with her. I’ve missed telling her things like this, and more often, hearing the anecdotes she had after a day with Lydia. I shut my eyes and for a second I imagine myself back on the couch with her beforehand, when we had wine and we talked. It had been so companionable and natural, easy. It had felt right. The sound of her laughter takes me back to that moment, to the depth of emotion I felt.
I clear my throat, “We need to discuss the terms of your employment going forward. Your role in Lydia’s life.” I try to sound intimidating. It’s the same tone of voice I use when doing employee evaluations—scares them straight.
“I already accepted one change in terms. When you threw me out,” she says.
“I suppose I deserve that,” I say laboriously.
“Yes, and more.”
“Then if we have a continued conflict, we need to address it in our meeting. Will you come to the office or the house?”
“The house is fine since I report there anyway.”
“We can discuss the situation after Lydia leaves for school.”
“Fine,” she says and hangs up.
She hung up on me. She was done talking to me obviously. I’m accustomed to being the one to decide when conversations end, letting go first. It shakes me, irritates me. I feel keyed up. Because in some way, some masochistic, self-destructive way, I can’t wait to see Reva. It’s so dangerous, to be alone in this house with her, to invite her here knowing that it will be the two of us because it’s Mrs. Whitman’s grocery shopping day. That it will be silence and space and wicked privacy. That I can’t let myself crave that, crave her the way I do.
I barely sleep at all. I try to tell myself it’s because I’m worried about Lydia, but really it’s because I’m excited. I am flooded with anticipation of Reva—her smile and the perfume of her sweet skin and the sharp way she puts me in my place and makes me fight for primacy even though I’m the authority here—her boss and my child’s father. She challenges me. That challenge is the single sexiest thing I’ve ever experienced. I break out in a sweat at the thought of it. I do enough push-ups on the floor of my bedroom to win the approval of any drill sergeant I had in basic. If I exhaust my body, my mind will have to shut up, I reason. But it doesn’t.
In the early hours of the morning, I take a shower, give myself release with thoughts of Reva. The insistent grip of her hands on my shoulders, the way I long to put my mouth between her legs and eat her out until she screams. How she was sweet and demanding at the same time, how aware I am of her every move. We were so in sync that I felt I could answer her responses almost before she felt them, that I knew what her body wanted and she sure as hell knew mine. It’s embarrassing how fast I come with my hand around my cock and the memory of Reva pressed down into the couch below me.
After that, I sleep a little. When I wake, it’s with the feeling I’m preparing for battle. The same heightened restlessness I used to get when I was on a security mission in the service, the sharp alertness. I feel the urge to move silently, a stalking predator. Instead, I put on a suit, drink coffee, wait for Reva to arrive.
She breezes in, her hair loose across her shoulders. She’s wearing something clingy and bottle green in color that makes her look more golden and glowing than usual. I look away to keep myself from seizing her, crushing her in my arms, driving my tongue into her soft, willing mouth. I can see the swell of her breasts, and my palms curve with remembrance of their delicious, silken weight in my hands. I clench my hands into fists, take my coffee cup to the sink and farewell Mrs. Whitman on her way to the shops.
I busy myself with email and wait while Reva gets Lydia ready for school. I sit at the table with them. Lydia is bright and lively this morning, joking with Reva and giggling. She is more herself than she was last night, which comforts me. I’m doing the right thing for her, no matter how uncomfortable it is.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Reva
I’m ready to do battle. If Lydia needs me, I need to be here for her all the time. I have other options—the Academy for one—but my heart is here with this little girl. Her father’s rigid and cold attitude isn’t going to keep me from her. Maybe he can intimidate other people, but not me. I don’t work in his office, and I have other places to go if I need to. So I can stand my ground.
I didn’t seduce him. I reached for him to comfort him when he told me about his childhood. I succumbed to the attraction between us as much as he did, but I’m not some vixen who took advantage of him. So there’s no way I’m being cast as the villain here. He wanted this meeting, and I assume he has his own agenda for it. But I won’t be silenced. We should be on the same team, wanting what’s best for Lydia.
She eats part of her waffle and some berries. I make sure her backpack’s ready and quiz her on her three spelling words. She says goodbye to Ridge, and then we’re alone.
I hear the slam of the door like an echo. I turn to face him, smooth my green dress. I chose it intentionally—the most polished thing the shopper sent me—to go with leggings and knee-high leather boots. The heels on the boots make me even taller, and I have to stand up straight in them. I feel like an Amazon, strong and beautiful, powerful. I wish for a moment that I was one, that I had the Lasso of Truth to use on him, to make him tell me what he really feels. It’s a nice thought, but I have to focus.
“Please have a seat,” he says, indicating the beautiful wing chairs near Lydia’s portrait.
I sit, perched on the edge of the chair and sitting up straight, shoulders squared for confrontation.
“I find I should apologize for changing the terms of your employment drastically in what I can only term my overreaction to a lapse in judgment. I regret having caused distress to both yourself and my daughter as a result.”
“Are you saying you shouldn’t have kicked me out?” I say, flabbergasted. I expected to have to fight my way back in.
“Exactly. What happened that night was a s
erious mistake, but one I am determined not to repeat. If you find that you can return to the original terms as a residential caregiver, it would benefit Lydia. She prefers to have you here at night, and there are several meetings in the next week, which will require my absence in the evenings. I will retain Mrs. Farnsworth for weekends to provide you with time off, though you may…continue to reside here over the weekends if you wish.”
I gape at him. He wants me to come back and live here. I’ll still have weekends off. I can go out, I can take an online course in administration and use the downtime to learn more about nonprofit startups. Or I could take on some tutoring work to make extra money toward my Danny debt. I get to come home. This is home. I only lived here maybe six weeks, but it’s the only place I’ve felt at home since I left my parents’ house. I feel overjoyed to come back. The only thing restraining me is the fact that Ridge is doing his oppressive and frigid tone.
“I would like to return. It is better for Lydia this way, to have me close. She has a very narrow life right now—”
“By necessity, due to threats related to my work,” he says in his warning tone.
“Yes,” I concede, “and I’ll do all I can to make her childhood as normal as possible under the restrictions you’ve put in place.”
“Going forward, I intend for this to be a completely professional arrangement. There will be not so much as a personal conversation between the two of us. I am your employer. And I’m a father. I will do anything necessary for my daughter’s well-being, including behaving as an adult around her nanny. I should never have allowed the lines to blur to begin with. I did not seek you out to fill the position of wife and mother, but of full-time caregiver to my child.”
I grip the arms of the chair when he says that, reeling a little from the fact that he put into words what I’d thought all along. It seemed like a Hollywood-perfect set-up in a sense. Lonely, overprotective single father with strong-willed but adorable daughter—they just need the love of a good woman, right? That’s how the story would go, if it were a story, and not real life. In real life, he wants me to do my damn job and stay out of his way. Not overstep my bounds and never flirt with him or look at him too long.
