by Serena Bell
This one guy.
Something curdles in my pit of my stomach.
Liv crosses her arms, all businesslike. “Is that it? Are we done? Because I should head home.”
Ignoring the disturbance in my gut, I say lightly, “You live here. It is home.”
“Temporarily. And my stuff is still at Eve’s. I can come back whatever time you need me tomorrow morning.”
“Seven thirty?”
She winces. “Mike’s doesn’t open till ten.”
“I was thinking about going in early to do some strategy work, but if that doesn’t work for you, no biggie. I’ve gotta try to figure out how to win back some of the business we’ve lost to Big Win. You know, that new superstore?”
“Are they taking a bite of your business? Shit, of course they are. Maybe I can help you brainstorm strategies.”
“That would be really cool.”
“You got it.”
I walk her to the door. I reach out to shake her hand—it feels like we should seal the deal we’ve made—and she leans in for our usual quick hug. Somehow we end up doing both at the same time, which means my hand gets crushed against her breast.
My brain goes into instant shutdown at the softness, like I’m thirteen and not twenty-eight, like I’m copping my first illicit feel.
Also, something about the weird way we fell into the hug puts my face in her hair, which smells amazing, like apples.
I jump back because I can feel myself getting hard, and the last thing I want is anything between us, no pun intended.
She slips out the door.
I stand there for a minute, trying to absorb everything that’s happened in the last few hours. Was that some kind of moment? Or was it just me acting like a teenager?
I lock the front door and climb the stairs to make sure Katie’s all tucked in. I kiss her forehead and pull her covers up, then head into my bedroom, shed my clothes, brush my teeth, and get into bed.
I congratulate myself on my good work. Katie’s going to love having Liv here. Liv’s going to help me figure out hair-braiding and friendship bracelets and fairy princesses and give me some much-needed marketing wisdom. And I gave Liv a temporary job and a place to live.
What’s not to love?
Only: I can feel it there, still swirling in my gut, my surprised reaction to the unexpected contact between us. I’ve shut it down hard, but like the browser window you don’t want your coworker to see, it’s still open down there, somewhere.
Chapter 6
Liv
When I knock on Chase’s door the next morning, his voice comes from deep inside, “Door’s open! We’re in the kitchen!”
I let myself in and find them there, Katie squirming and tear-streaked in a chair and Chase standing behind her with a brush in one hand, a pink elastic in the other, and a frazzled expression on his face.
“She wants a braid,” he says, and the desperation in his usually hyper-competent voice makes me laugh.
“You can do this,” I tell him.
It would be easy for me to take the brush and the elastic and do it for him, but that’s not what I want for Chase and Katie.
“Is it brushed?”
He shakes his head. “I keep making her cry.”
“The trick is to hold it above where you’re brushing.”
I take the brush and show him, then hand it back to him. He gets through the rest of her hair without sending her into sobs again.
“Now put the brush down so you have both hands free,” I instruct.
He sets it on the table.
“Divide her hair into three parts.”
The fine corn silk of Katie’s hair catches on the roughness of Chase’s hands, on the tiny curls of hair below each knuckle and the callused skin of his palms.
“Right side over center, then left side over center—no, the new center. See how the right is the center now?” I step close behind him and put my hand over his. He smells fresh from the shower, and my spidey senses identify Ivory and Old Spice, two of my favorites. Funny; I guess whenever I’ve hung out with him before, it’s been in the evening.
I show him how the braid works.
“Oh!” he says. “I get it.”
He winds the hanks around each other with surprising dexterity. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Those are hands that tie flies from tiny feathers and filament strands. A braid is big work by comparison. Right over center, left over center—I realize I’m staring, almost mesmerized.
He fumbles again trying to get the elastic on, and I have to step in to show him. “Over, twist, over again. Like so.”
He takes the elastic from me, and his hand brushes mine. I’m suddenly hyperaware—of that touch, but also of how male he is. It’s one of those moments of attraction that happen from time to time between people, when you can feel the chemistry prickle through the air, one body speaking to another. Only, Chase’s body doesn’t usually—doesn’t ever—do that to mine.
I shrug it off. It happens, right? You don’t have to imbue every pheromone that successfully jumps the gap with meaning.
He successfully ties off the braid, then turns to me with a grateful smile. “This is exactly what I needed,” he says.
“Well, happy to provide the service.”
He sets the brush down, dries Katie’s tears with the bottom of his T-shirt, and gives her a big hug. “You look beautiful,” he says.
I grin to myself. It’s a little lumpy, but whose first braid is perfect?
“I guess I should get going.”
“Yup! We’ll be fine. Playground in the morning, and then we have a fun plan for the afternoon.”
“Wish I could hang out with you guys instead of going to work.”
“Well, you can’t,” I tell him, merciless.
I shoo him out and help Katie into her sturdy play sandals. We head to the playground, where we keep ourselves busy most of the morning. Then I take Katie back to the house and give her a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich and apple slices for lunch. When she’s done, I explain my shopping project.
“Your dad is a great guy,” I tell her. And then I outline his shortcomings in this one, teeny-tiny arena and how we’re going to remedy them.
She totally gets it and she’s completely on board. She’s practically bouncing in her seat from excitement.
We spend most of the afternoon putting our plan into effect. We go to Target and Pier 1—Katie is fascinated by both stores and keeps hopping from item to item. She can’t believe there are stores this big with this much stuff. (I’m not sure where her mom shopped with her, but maybe she did most of her shopping when Katie was at school or activities—Chase has always told me Katie’s life with Thea was very programmed.) Anyway, Katie takes her job very seriously, carefully considering every choice I give her, finally pronouncing her decisions with great ceremony.
She clearly carries the making-things-beautiful gene, even if her dad doesn’t. I make a mental note to tell Chase he has to make sure to leave some room in her life for the pretty and the fussy, even if he scorns both himself. The first two foster homes where I lived were plain-Jane cozy and homey, but my third foster “mom” took Martha Stewart to the nth power—and that was where I learned to pay attention to the details. I hadn’t realized anything was missing from my life before, but I really blossomed under her tutelage—learning how to cut and arrange flowers; stitch curtains, pillows, placemats, napkins, and coasters; use a hot-glue gun to embellish anything and everything, and make the small space allotted to me—just a corner of one bedroom—my own.
Next, Katie and I go to the grocery store. While we’re picking produce, my phone buzzes. It’s Eve.
Had an idea for someone to take over w K when u leave. Gillian Hollis. Mom she wks for lost her job & laid G off.
Gillian is another col
lege friend of ours who nannies. She’s a warm, delightful, and responsible human being. I’ve seen her with kids before, and she’s terrific with them.
And she’s exceptionally pretty.
That last bit isn’t relevant, of course. It just popped into my head.
“Liv!” Katie tugs on my hand. “Stop texting!”
“I am finding you a really wonderful person to be your nanny after I move to Denver.”
“What’s her name?”
“Her name is Gillian.”
“That is the prettiest name I ever heard!” Katie says, beaming.
I should probably be sad that I’m so easily replaced, but the truth is, whatever makes this easiest for Katie—and Chase—is what I want. I text Eve back.
She would be perfect.
She’s in Chicago at her parents’. Back last wk Aug. There’s a contact attached to the text.
“Give me one more minute,” I tell Katie. “I want to text Gillian and arrange for her to come meet you before it slips my mind.”
This causes Katie to bounce up and down on her toes in the middle of the berry section.
I drop Gillian a text, and Katie and I finish up at the grocery store.
We head home and put our plan into action.
When Chase comes through the door at the end of the day, we’re ready for him.
“Daddy!” she crows. “We made a table!”
“You—?”
Chase’s hair is rumpled and there are circles under his eyes. But he still looks great in his T-shirt and light-brown Carhartts, which seem to be his work uniform. “You made a table?”
“Come see,” she says, tugging his hand.
He shoots me a confused look but follows her into the kitchen, where comprehension dawns. He narrows his eyes at me. I shrug innocently.
We’ve made him dinner—a steak salad with loads of marinated, grilled sirloin, and little bits of those crispy fried noodles, and plenty of chopped veggies. The steak salad is served on a gorgeous (new) serving platter, and next to it there’s a (new) basket, lined with a (new) cloth napkin, full of fresh crusty bread. There’s a little covered butter tray (new) and a sweet little blunt butter knife (new). There are (new) candles burning in their holders (new) in the center of the table, and each place is set with a (new) cloth placemat, a matching napkin, and a full table setting. I’ve poured us drinks in wineglasses (new).
“Daddy, doesn’t it look beautiful?”
Out of the mouth of babes.
“It does, honey. It’s so beautiful. You did an amazing job. Did you and Liv do all this?”
He says my name like it’s a dirty word, and I have to swallow my giggles.
“We went shopping,” she says proudly. “We went shopping and we got all the things. I picked the best ones. And then we got the food at the grocery store and we cooked it and we set the table.”
“Sit down,” I tell him.
He glares at me, but sits, and I serve him steak and salad and bread.
“Is this going on my tab?” he asks.
I smirk in his direction. “The food is.”
“And the rest of it?”
“It’s a gift.”
I say it knowing it’s going to make him crazy. He’s definitely an old-fashioned guy in that respect—we had a whole conversation about it on our “date” when he tried to pay for me. (I won, on semantic grounds. I said that since we had concluded that dating could never happen between us, the thing we were on was technically not a date, and therefore it made sense for us to each cover our own half.)
“I can pay for it,” he says stiffly.
I have to hide another smile, knowing this battle is mine to win, with Katie beaming at him from behind her plate, eating bread and the noodles and raw veggies out of her salad and, after I cut it into pieces for her, small bits of steak.
“I bought this stuff for Katie,” I say, and you should see the dirty look he gives me then.
“Not fair,” he mutters, and of course it isn’t, and I won’t make a habit of it, of course I won’t, but Katie’s still smiling and I catch the corner of his mouth tipping, the tiniest bit.
Chapter 7
Chase
It’s pretty much impossible to be annoyed with Liv, which annoys the shit out of me.
I mean, she’s completely messing with me—beautifying my kitchen when I’m not around to defend myself—and she set it up so there’s no way I can possibly object without hurting Katie’s feelings or acting like an ogre.
On top of that, they both look so happy.
When Celia was here, Katie never looked this happy. I mean, she wasn’t outright miserable and crying, but sometimes I thought that was just because Celia had succeeded in placating her with sweets or numbing her out with TV or a movie. At best, she seemed subdued.
But today she’s like a little bird, twittery and bright, all smiles, chirpily telling me what she and Liv did, how they went to all these stores and Liv let her choose everything—the placemats, the napkins, the candles. How Liv let her swipe the credit card in the machine and push the cart, how they went to the grocery store and then Liv pushed a chair up to the counter so Katie could help with the cooking, how Liv let Katie set the whole table all by herself because she’s a big girl.
And Liv is so damn pleased with herself, like the cat that swallowed the canary. It looks good on her, too. She has this secret smile, a slight soft curve to her lips. Her cheeks glow pink with satisfaction. She’s wearing her hair straight today, a long fall of glossy copper.
God, Liv is pretty.
I mean, that’s not news to anyone. I’ve known it since she walked into that overpriced restaurant. She’s gorgeous, I thought, and then—it was like a body blow—She reminds me of Thea. Not Liv’s sweetly rounded face or her runaway curves or the hair like a new penny, but—just the way she was. The way I felt when I saw her, instantly awed and then bristly because of it. Like Thea, she was so put together, so polished—like a stone you pick up on the beach and run your fingers over and over.
Too perfect.
“Daddy, we got your favorite kind of cake,” Katie says.
Nope, can’t stay annoyed with either of them.
Liv and Katie clear the table and bring the carrot cake to the table. Liv lets Katie slice it and then helps her tip the slices onto dessert plates. I already owned those plates, because my parents gave me more or less a full set of dishes when I graduated from college. I think they were figuring that I was such a fuck-up that there was absolutely no chance I would ever stumble into marriage and a wedding registry. My mother might actually have been worried that I wouldn’t eat at all if they didn’t stock my cabinets.
The carrot cake is amazing, which melts all my remaining irritation. Not that there was really any left. That said, I think Liv should watch her back. I am going to take my revenge wherever I can. Clearly we are locked in a war over whose vision for the world will dominate…When she least expects it, low maintenance will launch a counterattack…
“Daddy, will you play princesses and fairies with me when you’re done with your cake?” Katie asks, bouncing up and down in her chair.
I am not afraid of anything. I swear. I can smash or capture, your choice, those half-dollar-sized hairy-legged spiders. If necessary for the protection of the smaller, weaker, or meeker, I will fight (with fists or words) any person, male or female. I can MacGyver my way through pretty much any survival scenario outdoors with only things I can carry in my pockets (it’s helpful if one of them is a paper clip). In the middle of the night, if something makes a noise, I will leap out of bed to go investigate, hoping it’s an intruder in need of being taught a lesson.
But Katie’s make-believe games terrify me.
I make the mistake of glancing toward Liv. She gives me a look that if I didn’t know better, I wou
ld say is a smirk.
“If Liv doesn’t need me to help with the dishes?” I say weakly.
“I’ve got it totally under control,” Liv says, biting her lip in what I’m pretty sure is an effort not to laugh at me. “You guys go knock yourselves out. I’ll be there in a few.”
“C’mon, Daddy!” Katie calls, as she heads for the living room. “I’ll get your costume!”
“I suck at princesses and fairies,” I whisper.
Liv grins.
“Man up.”
Chapter 8
Liv
When the kitchen is clean, I step into the living room, where I discover Chase wearing a pink tutu and a green straw hat and talking in a high-pitched voice.
“Well, Elsa, where should we go on our adventure?”
Aw. He really is such a good dad.
Chase hasn’t noticed me yet, so I draw back against the stairwell and pull my phone out to photograph him in all his glory.
The click of the fake shutter draws Chase’s eyes away from Katie—who’s wearing an Elsa dress—toward me.
He lunges.
I pocket the phone, laughing like a fiend, ducking out of reach. “Best daddy ever!”
“Just for that, you need to wear a costume, too,” Chase says, eyes narrowed. “Katie, who’s Liv going to be?”
“Who’s your daddy dressed as?” I ask Katie.
“Princess Daddy.”
“Princess Daddy,” I repeat. “Oh, my. I’ve got my Facebook caption, then.”
Chase glares.
“Not good for the outdoorsy-guy image?”
He gives me the finger outside of Katie’s line of sight.
Katie gestures at me to crouch down, and she begins draping me with green fabric that I think was once a Peter Pan costume. “Am I Peter Pan?”
“You’re a frog. Hop.”
“Wait, what?”
“You’re a frog,” Katie says patiently. “A really, really, really ugly frog. Hop.”
