25_Angels and Assists

by Mignon Mykel

  “Will do. I thought we could—”

  I interrupted again. “I know these are special circumstances, but I need you to be back by nine-thirty. I have an appointment.”

  “Can I talk?”

  I sighed heavily and looked down to my now empty plate. I didn’t want to talk.

  I didn’t want to lose my job.

  Lose the last piece of normalcy that I had.

  For years, my life revolved around Anderson Leeds.

  What was I going to do without taking care of him?

  I could only go to my CrossFit gym so many times a week, and sometimes, that tenth session in a seven day period was killer on your body.

  I could go to school.

  Before meeting Trina, I’d considered being an early elementary teacher.

  “Moll.”

  I looked up and over the counter at him. There he was, looking cool, calm, and collected in sleep pants, a t-shirt that stretched over his chest just so, and messy bed head.

  Oh, let’s not forget the dark stubble on his cheeks.

  Maybe it actually was best to step away now.

  Being here…having these thoughts and feelings…

  “You’re right,” I said, still not letting him talk. I didn’t want to hear it from his mouth. It was easier to be the one making the decision. “I mean, not that you’ve said it, but I get the feeling that the talk is about the fact I pointed out that Anderson is ten and probably doesn’t really need full-time a nanny anymore. I gotta be honest, I’ll miss him like hell but—”

  “Molly. Damn woman, let me talk.” Was that a half grin on his face?

  He thought this was funny?

  I clenched my jaw tight and slipped off the stool, taking my plate to the sink.

  “Yeah, Molly,” he started, and I could feel his eyes on my back. “You’re right. He’s probably getting too old for a constant caregiver, and I am home most of his day. You’ve been great help over the years and we both know that Anderson does really well with you. I don’t want you to leave his life.”

  I turned off the water to the sink and hung my head. “Oh.” I took my moment to try and calm myself, then turned to the dishwasher, drying my hands on the towel that was there.

  “I was curious though,” he started, but the tell-tale sign of a door opening stopped whatever it was he wanted to say.

  “Morning,” Anderson announced, walking down the short hall and into the kitchen, his feet shuffling along the tiled floors.

  I forced a smile on my face as I turned. “Morning, sleepy.” He came to me first, for a morning hug. A fact I was sure that Mikey didn’t miss.

  When Anderson walked to his father, Mikey ruffled his hair before hugging him back. “Morning, kid. What’d the doctor tell you?”

  And suddenly, I felt terrible for not reporting on that. Last night, it hadn’t been important enough to text him—Mikey had this fear, and it wasn’t irrational, whenever he received texts or calls during games. I didn’t want to add that stress to his life, not when it wasn’t time sensitive.

  “Sorry, Mikey,” I mumbled, but it might have been missed, with Anderson talking over me.

  “It’s fine,” Anderson continued on. “Not broken. But it’s kinda cool looking today, isn’t it?”

  Mikey chuckled and shook his head. “Sure thing, bud. We almost had matching shiners. I got into some words with a player last night.”

  Anderson smiled wide, a smile that was near-identical to his father’s. “That would have been cool.”

  “You two already look too much alike,” I butt in, which only made Anderson smile that mini-me smile even wider. “Your dad is going to go into the school to talk to the nurse this morning.”

  “And principal,” Mikey added.

  “And principal. Is there anything you need to say or add before he does? Anything you left out in your story yesterday?” I didn’t think there was, but now was a good time for him to get it off his chest, if there were additional details.

  Anderson shook his head. “Nope. Isaiah and his friends were teasing Ali, and they pushed her. So, I pushed back.”

  He said it so matter-of-factly, so strongly…

  He was headstrong, just like his father.

  I often wondered…if Anderson had Trina in his life, what qualities of hers would he have taken on, instead of being a little Mikey Leeds?

  “Well, I better change so I can go and get back,” Mikey said. “Molly has an appointment.”

  Anderson nodded. “Hair,” he offered with a shrug and a disapproving shake. “She’s gonna cut it all off, she said.”

  “Anderson.” My face probably looked bewildered.

  Mikey looked at me then, lifting his brows. “Why?”

  I shrugged, wishing Anderson hadn’t said anything but it was said so… “Just need a change. Donate it, maybe. Good cause, you know?” That, and I only got my hair done once or twice a year—much to my hairdresser’s distaste, of course. But I kept it healthy, even when I threw it in messy buns all the time. Why cut it so often if you didn’t need to? And it had been easily sixteen months since I cut it last. It nearly grazed my butt when wet. It was time for it to go.

  It needed to be done.

  Good thing I didn’t mention my doctor’s appointment to Anderson. Just what I would need—Anderson airing that too.

  After Mikey and I…had our moment that one morning…I tried like hell to keep my personal life very separate from my work life. And, for nearly two years, I succeeded. Or, at least, I thought I did.

  At any rate…

  I helped Anderson get breakfast together and, not much later, Mikey left for the school.

  “What are you going to do the rest of the week, other than that sumo-bar lifting stuff you do?” Anderson asked as he shoveled scrambled eggs into his mouth.

  “Ask after you’ve chewed, Anderson,” I warned with a smile, but then continued to answer him anyway. “I don’t know. Laundry. Sleep. Maybe go grocery shopping. The weekend will come too fast.”

  Anderson nodded, scooping another forkful of eggs. Before he put them in his mouth though, he asked his question, “Dad’s out of town this weekend, right? Saturday and Sunday?”

  “Yeppers.”

  “Cool. Maybe we can go see that new Marvel movie.”

  I laughed. “You’re supposed to be grounded.”

  Anderson lifted his brows, his forehead a wrinkled mess, as he shook his head and chewed quickly.

  “Don’t choke.”

  He swallowed hard before holding his fork in the air. “It wasn’t my fault. I think my sentence should be lessened.”

  “That’s up to your dad, bud.”

  “I think he’ll let me free.” He nodded a few times. “Yeah. I think after he talks to them, he’ll come around.”

  “What, you don’t want to hang around the house with me? We’ve gotta go out and do something, for you to be happy?”

  “Nah.” Anderson’s grin was infectious. “You’re fun. I just thought maybe going out would be fun too.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “That means, whether dad ungrounds me or not, we’re gonna go out.”

  My laugh was quick—startling, almost. “I said we’ll see. And that means, we’ll see.”

  Nothing flew by Anderson though.

  And his continuous smile was the proof. “Yeah. Right. We’ll see.”

  Chapter Five[MD2]

  Molly

  Turned out, I wasn’t going to have all that much time off, after all.

  Not only did Mikey issue an invitation to the Prescott’s for Thanksgiving dinner, Sydney Prescott, herself, did too. If it were just Mikey, I probably would have found a reason to say no.

  But you didn’t say no to the super pregnant wife of the team’s coach.

  And definitely not at a time when the family was going through so much. The Prescotts’ mom wasn’t doing so well, with a cancer she wasn’t beating.

  That family and cancer…

  Now, here I
sat, playing on the floor with Asher Prescott and her adorable twin girls, Peyton and Presley. They were seventeen-months old, and just about the most fun babies in the universe.

  Each had her own personality—Presley, stubborn; Peyton, sweet. And if you didn’t know them, they could pass as identical, but when you actually looked at the two of them, you could see there were differences, such as different chins and noses.

  “Up, up, up,” I said through a smile, lifting Peyton to “fly” over my head. She giggled, and I managed to dodge drool in the nick of time.

  “How are things at the Leeds’ house?” Asher asked, her eyes on her other daughter.

  Asher may have been a few years younger than me, but you could tell from looking at the girl, that her life made her older than her years. Her husband, Caleb’s youngest brother, only recently started playing in San Diego, but over the twenty-or-so months that I’d known her, I watched her become a more open person.

  “They’re going,” I said, flipping Peyton so she sat in the hole my crossed legs made. I held a soft book in front of her, and she began flipping through the pages. “I think I might be let go soon, though,” I admitted out loud, for the first time.

  “No.”

  I looked up at Asher’s voice, seeing the frown on her face.

  “He wouldn’t.”

  I shrugged. “He said we had to talk. And we started the conversation yesterday morning, but then Anderson woke up and it wasn’t the right time. I mean, I get it. He’s ten.” I looked down at the top of Peyton’s brown-haired head, reaching up to twist the waterspout pony in my finger.

  It was a running joke throughout the season that Jonny, the other Prescott, couldn’t tell the girls apart. Even though Porter got a kick out of it, Asher tried to make it easy by doing something different with the girls—such as today, Peyton had a ponytail at the top of her head, and Presley had folded pigtails.

  I had a feeling that Peyton’s was the folded top-knot style at one point too, but her hair was finer than her sister’s.

  “Who am I going to talk to at the games, if you’re not there?”

  It wasn’t a joke, either. Asher and I had found a friendship over the time they’d been in San Diego; the last few months, especially. It wasn’t that she didn’t get along with the other wives; it was more that she was much younger than everyone else.

  “Hey, maybe Fitz will start bringing a girl,” I tried saying, a forced smile on my face. “He’s not that much younger than you and Porter.”

  “Except his maturity level,” Asher scoffed, and I couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Yeah. There is that.” I shook my head, smiling, as I looked back down at the book Peyton was flipping through once again. I picked up another and held it out, but Peyton pushed it away, content with the one she had.

  “Well, damn.” Asher sighed, then said, “I wish he would have done it a year ago! We would have hired you.”

  Now, my smile wasn’t forced, but paired with a laugh. “Oh, come on. You love Emersyn.”

  Asher made a face. “Yeah. She’s good.”

  Still laughing lightly, I shrugged. “Maybe it will just be time for me to go back to school. Finish the degree I never really started. You know, I met Trina right before I started college. And then, the rest, they say—”

  “Is history,” Asher completed with a thoughtful nod. “What would you go for?”

  “Early elementary. Pre-k and kindergarten.” It came out of my mouth so quickly, I didn’t even have time to think about it.

  “You sound like it’s something you want.”

  “Honestly, I’d never really thought about it, not until Mikey first mentioned we needed to ‘talk’,” I said, lifting one hand in the air to make air quotes. I glanced around the living area to be sure he wasn’t around to overhear.

  Nope.

  He was hanging out in the kitchen with Porter and Eric Christensen, popping olives in his mouth.

  “You would be good at it. Heck, I’d beg the school to put the girls in your classroom.”

  “You think they’d listen?”

  Asher nods. “Porter can be persuasive when he needs to be. And for the girls? He’d do it. He listens to my demands.”

  “You’re a hoot,” I said around another laugh.

  I was glad I came.

  When I wasn’t with Anderson, I was hanging out at my apartment by myself. It wasn’t often that I did the whole girl-time thing, and usually, the only time I saw Asher was during a team function. “We should do this when it’s not attached to the team. You know, when I’m not invited anymore.” I tried really hard to make that last bit a joke, but I didn’t think it worked.

  “You’ll always be invited, Molly. But yes. I’d like that.”

  “Does Emersyn ever watch the girls alone? Or does she just do mother’s helper things?”

  “No, she watches the girls if I have to run to the store or something. She’s great with them. I just have nothing to do during the day, and Porter feels better having another set of hands in the house when he’s gone. It’s not nearly as bad as when the girls were baby-babies, but it’s been her schedule for the last year. Why change it, ya know?”

  I started to say that I understood that—especially from the nanny point of view—but Caleb clapped his hands loudly in the spot of the open floorplan that allowed everyone to see him. With the noise, the big kids—Caleb’s boys and Anderson—came out of the playroom, and the younger ones—Braelyn Prescott and Dylan Winski—turned to kneel on the couch, looking back at Caleb.

  “Dinner is ready,” he announced. “I slaved over the turkey, so my wife would not have to. I expect you all to eat.”

  Brandon, every bit his father at ten, clapped his hands too. “Just don’t eat the pie. Who knows which one ended up on the floor.”

  The room erupted in laughter, but Caleb was quick to point out that the pie that fell was in the garbage.

  I stayed close to Asher and the girls, even when Porter took Peyton from my arms, blowing raspberries on his daughter’s covered tummy. Briefly, I searched the room for Mikey—and caught him staring back.

  I looked down quickly, but all was forgotten—forcibly forgotten—when Anderson wedged himself in line in front of me.

  “What, you want the best plate?” I joked with him, putting my hands on his shoulders and shaking him from side to side.

  “I always get the better turkey, you know that,” he joked right back, and it was true.

  For years, I was the one making his plate.

  Don’t get me wrong, Mikey did a lot with Anderson.

  But this had always been my role.

  And it wouldn’t be for much longer.

  With that thought in mind, I let it be, giving Anderson a quick hug then pushing him forward as the line began to move.

  Chapter Six

  Mikey

  I never got to finish that talk with Molly.

  She’d driven herself to Thanksgiving and left before Anderson and I were ready to head out.

  She came back to the house that Saturday morning, right before I had to leave for the teams’ weekend trip.

  As in, right before I had to leave.

  My car was running and everything.

  She apologized profusely, but also refused to look me in the eye.

  If only I could find an eloquent way to tell her I wasn’t considering letting her go for performance sake, but because I wanted to explore other sides of, well…us.

  Not that that sounded any better.

  In fact, that almost sounded like work-place harassment.

  Then, on Sunday when I got home, it was to a voicemail—I brought Anderson to the Prescotts. Brandon wanted to play pick-up hockey. I figured you’d be home soon, and Sydney was okay with him playing for a bit. See you Tuesday after school.

  Only, by ‘see you’ she meant, once again, in a brief pass-by.

  An entire week of this barely seeing her, hardly passing off my kid…

  And I was…
<
br />   Irritated.

  That was the only good word for it.

  Fucking irritated.

  Leave it alone, Mikey. Just leave it alone.

  I should.

  I damn well should just leave it alone.

  Just because I’d been taking walks down memory lane the last few weeks—hell, months—didn’t mean she was.

  Just because I was aching for the loss of familiarity we had before I slept with her, didn’t mean she was. Hell, maybe she had a new boyfriend! Maybe that was why she’d been increasingly distant.

  Molly was a grown-ass woman. She certainly wasn’t running away from me because I told her we needed to talk.

  But hey, maybe she would rather a formal email.

  I wasn’t sure how well that would go down though:

  To Miss Molly Attwood,

  I hope you’re doing well. I am writing to you in re: to your employment in the Leeds’ household. Your services will no longer be needed, not due to your performance, but due to the blood flow in your boss’s nether regions.

  Frankly, he wants to fuck you.

  Signed, Michael Austin Leeds

  Yeah.

  That’d go over real well.

  In the end, I was better off just letting her go.

  Right?

  I couldn’t sleep with her when I was paying her.

  And hell, she probably didn’t want to sleep with me, regardless.

  So, I should let her go and try to move on.

  Because to be honest?

  I hadn’t taken a woman to bed in over twenty-three months.

  And the last one?

  A certain brunette with amber eyes, hidden dimples, and laugh lines when she smiled.

  Fuuuuck.

  Me.

  But c’mon!

  How was I supposed to find a woman—a puck bunny, really, at this point—when I knew what was standing in my house damn near five days a week?

  There was also that little fact that I wasn’t banking on a relationship with anyone else.

  I’d had that.

  I lost it.

  Been there, done that, didn’t care to go through it again.

  So, being so caught up in Molly Attwood was as strange as the fact I couldn’t find some easy woman to bed for one night. Why she had the hold over me…