Also…I wasn’t sure I wanted to break the spell. Being called Olive’s mom, especially in the context of “mom and dad” with Nick…well, there was something so thrilling about that, and I didn’t want to lose it only seconds after it was thrust into my hands.
After taking the stage hundreds of times over the course of my life, I’d thought I knew what electricity felt like. I’d also thought I knew what deep satisfaction and belonging felt like. I thought I’d known what home was.
I’d been dead wrong on all accounts. I knew that now, because those concepts never became real to me until that moment. Until that ice cream clerk looked at me and Nick and saw Olive’s mom and dad.
Chapter 12
Nick
“ONE MORE STORY, Daddy,” Olive said through a yawn.
I brushed her bangs back from her forehead. “You said that three stories ago, Munchkin.”
“I really mean it this time.”
“All right. Just one more,” I conceded. I knew I shouldn’t really be caving, let alone almost immediately, but I couldn’t help it. Her little face was just so cute. I’d probably have to watch that tendency once she got to the age where she realized more fully how she could use those big baby blues to manipulate me, but while the requests were still as harmless as one more bedtime story, I figured it wouldn’t hurt too much to give in.
“Which story do you want, baby girl?”
Her eyes drooped. “Tell me the story of Evelyn’s play.”
Hmmm…that was a surprise. “We don’t have a storybook of that one, Olive.”
Her face scrunched up, and she spoke in an uhhhh…okay, then tone when she replied. “Why do you need to read it, Daddy? Just tell it to me. You were there.”
It was a fair point.
The fact that she wanted to rehash the experience of the play so soon after seeing it told me that it had been a big deal to her—had lived up to her expectations, maybe even exceeded them. I saw this as a good opportunity to find out what was going on in her head.
“So, you had a pretty good time tonight, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“It was fun?”
“Yeah. I liked Evelyn singing. It was pretty.”
“Yeah, it was.” I paused. I knew I wanted to move forward, I just wasn’t sure exactly how. Since her mother’s death, Olive had developed a sixth sense for when I was trying to get her to open up and talk about her feelings, and it made her clam right up. If I wanted to know what was really going on with her, I had to come at it sideways.
“So, Evelyn’s pretty special, huh?”
Olive shrugged. Again, I knew I had to tread carefully. If she got the idea that I was pushing Evelyn on her, it might destroy the trust she was developing. It broke my heart that my baby girl had such deep trust issues at such a young age, but I understood them. The one person she’d trusted most to be there for her, the one she’d opened up to about anything and everything, had disappeared. Been ripped away from her in the most painful way possible. To Olive, it must’ve felt like getting the rug ripped out from under her.
I knew how she felt. Jen had been the foundation of our little family, and we’d been on shaky ground since she’d been gone. The difference was, I was an adult and understood that Jen’s death didn’t mean it was dangerous to trust anyone else—or at least that was what I told myself. When I looked at my history the past couple of years, I could see that probably wasn’t true.
That was something Olive and I had in common, then. When it came to trust and opening ourselves up to new people, Evelyn was the first for both of us.
“Well, I think she’s pretty special, anyway,” I said, making it sound like just a throwaway comment.
“Yes. She sings good, and she reads me stories. She made me cheesy mac.”
I had to smile. If that wasn’t a perfectly well-rounded list of reasons to like a person then, damn it, I didn’t know what was.
“I think she’s a pretty nice friend, too. She listens when you talk to her.”
“Yes,” Olive confirmed. “She reads me whatever book I want. She plays the games I like. And when she puts me to bed, she reads me as many stories as I want.”
I chuckled. I took the pointed hint, and said, “All right, all right. I get it. You want your story.”
“Yes, please,” she confirmed.
I did one last tuck-in of the blankets around her, and then launched into the plotline of the play, as best as I could remember it.
I realized after about the tenth time Olive had to correct me that I hadn’t really been paying attention to the story. I’d been entranced by Evelyn’s performance, and by the star-struck look on Olive’s face. But as for the plot? I had a fuzzy recollection, at best.
Finally, Olive smacked her hands down on the blankets and sighed in frustration. “Daddy, just get me a book, okay?”
I nodded. It was probably for the best. “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie?” I asked, rattling off the name of one of her favorite picture books.
“Yeah. Good.”
As I read through the chain of events that could potentially be set up by handing that mouse that cookie, it struck me that our lives were not unlike the story. The mouse asks for a cookie, then milk, then a mirror to groom himself…and on and on, one thing leading to the next, until he finally sees the refrigerator and gets thirsty for milk, ultimately coming full circle by asking for a cookie again.
Was that why she’d always loved this book so much? Because the sequence of events, while silly, was completely logical? One thing led definitively to the next. No surprises. And at the end, the little mouse was right back where he started. Safe, and asking for that cookie.
Maybe I was reading too much into it, but as I thought about it now, it did occur to me that she’d been asking for the book a lot less since Evelyn had come into her life. Maybe she felt secure in her life now in a way she hadn’t before.
My gut clenched. I had to protect that for her, with everything that was in me. I knew that life was uncertain. There would be things in her future that I wouldn’t be able to protect her from no matter how much I wanted to or how hard I tried, just like there had been in her past. I couldn’t help that. But for the knocks and bruises that I was capable of providing a buffer, or at least a safe landing place, for—well, I damn sure would do everything in my power to do that.
She’d connected with Evelyn. She’d seen something in her that she hadn’t seen in anyone else, even people who already cared about her, like Belinda. Even people who loved her, like me.
I understood it. I saw something in Evelyn, too. It had solidified when I’d watched her onstage—she was magic. Not just her talent, but her. She’d drawn me out, and she’d brought my little girl back to life, and continued to do it a little bit more every single day.
Magic.
I looked over at Olive as the mouse asked for that last cookie and saw that her eyes were closed, her breathing deep and even.
I put the book back on the shelf, dimming the lights as I walked out of Olive’s room and eased the door shut behind me.
She was perfectly happy in there at that moment, sleeping peacefully. It was my job to keep her that way: happy, and peaceful. And I was going to do my damnedest to make sure that was how it stayed.
Chapter 13
Evelyn
OLIVE’S HEAD POPPED up, her focus immediately pulled away from the puzzle we’d been working on by the sound of a car door slamming in the garage. Her eyes widened. “Daddy’s home!” she cried, clapping her hands together in front of her and hopping down off of the chair.
My heart jumped in my chest. Not only at the knowledge that Nick was about to walk through that door. It was also Olive. The way she lit up at the idea she was about to see her dad told me everything I needed to know about how she felt about him—and what kind of father he was to her.
I couldn’t help the butterflies that seeing that brought up in my belly. It said so much about who Nick was as a person, and how he was with t
he people he loved: kind, protective, nurturing.
Every quality that was making me fall for him, against my better judgement. I knew, in my more rational moments, that this wasn’t going anywhere. Correction: couldn’t go anywhere. Did I really think this man was going to upend his entire life to start dating the college student who babysat his daughter?
A girl, incidentally, that he’d initially met during a drunken “pretend to be my boyfriend” situation?
Even as someone whose entire world was pretending that the fantastical was real, I couldn’t quite make that compute.
And yet…sometimes, when he looked at me, I saw something in his eyes that made me wonder if it was so out of reach. If maybe…just maybe…
The front door opened and Nick walked in, looking as handsome—scratch that, Ev, be real…looking as HOT—as I’d ever seen him.
My eyes shot to his biceps, which were covered in intricate tattoos. Of course, I had noticed them before, but today it seemed like I was seeing them with new eyes. The way his muscles rippled under the skin, almost making the ink come alive.
I had to struggle to catch my breath.
“Daddy! I knew you were home, I heard the car!” Olive exclaimed as she jumped into his arms.
“See? That’s what makes you smart,” he teased, and bopped her on the nose.
She wrinkled her face up and drew back. “No, it’s not. My brain is,” she corrected.
The edges of his lips twitched. God, I recognized that dilemma from having spent time with Olive—when she said something so cute, and you wanted to laugh so bad, but you couldn’t because she’d been completely serious and would be highly offended at even the suggestion that what she’d said had been funny. It was pretty much an everyday occurrence.
Nick was good at playing that game. He nodded, face solemn, and acknowledged, “Fair point.”
Olive wriggled down from Nick’s arms and ran over to me. “We were putting a puzzle together, Daddy,” she informed him, climbing back up onto the dining room chair. “Do you want to help?”
He crossed to us and rested his hand on Olive’s curls. “I think that sounds great, sweet pea. But I’ve got to start dinner.”
She tilted her head to the side, considering that. “Well, I am hungry,” she conceded.
“Maybe we can work on the puzzle after dinner.”
She looked up at me. “But Evelyn won’t be here after dinner. I want her to work on it, too.”
Nick looked at me, brows raised. “Unless…I don’t know. Would you like to stay?”
My traitorous breath left me again in a whoosh and I had to struggle to get it back in line. I knew I was probably reading too much into that one line. Would you like to stay? My brain was very solid in that knowledge. It was my body that was infusing a world of meaning into the words, and letting me know it through my wobbly knees, racing heart, and trembling fingers.
Damn. I’d spent so much time and effort in acting exercises over the years, trying to put myself in a deep state of emotion and make it real, trying to fool my body into doing exactly what it was doing right now. And I realized that any success I’d thought I’d achieved had been just a blip on the radar. I’d managed to get myself to a two…maybe a three on a good day. Nick turned me up to an eleven.
I shrugged, trying to seem casual. “Yeah, I guess I could. I mean, yes. Sure. I don’t really…um…I can…yeah. Sounds good.”
So, yeah. That whole “seem casual” thing wasn’t what you could call a rousing success.
Olive looked up at me, head tilted and brow wrinkled. “Soooo…are you staying?”
My cheeks burned. “Yes. I am.”
She clapped her hands again and then turned back to the puzzle. I sat down next to her and started fitting the pieces in, chatting with her as we worked. Except for the fact that there were now background noises of dishes being moved and the delicious smells of marinara sauce drifting in from the kitchen, everything was exactly as it had been before Nick walked through the door.
Except, inside me—where it counted—everything was completely different. Every nerve ending was on edge. My skin was flushed. My heart was racing.
And all of that contrasted with a deep feeling of satisfaction and contentedness that had settled in my belly, like the calm eye of a raging storm. Despite all of the signals my body was sending me that told me I was an absolute bundle of nerves, the foundational core inside of me told me that wasn’t true. That I was completely safe, and exactly where I was supposed to be.
This is what home is, a little voice in the back of my head whispered. This is family. This is where you belong.
Nick carried in a big, steaming serving bowl filled with pasta and set it down on the edge of the table. “Okay, ladies. Let’s get this puzzle cleaned up.”
I grasped one side of the puzzle mat the pieces sat on and said, “Olive, can you help me with this? It’s kind of big.”
She hopped down and took the other side of the puzzle mat in her chubby little fingers. My heart swelled as I watched her tiny face, screwed up with concentration as we slowly moved across the living room to the coffee table, working so hard to keep it level so the puzzle pieces wouldn’t fall. It was flat-out adorable.
By the time we took our seats at the table again, Nick had laid out place settings for all three of us, and a large salad bowl had joined the fragrant dish of pasta. With a flick of my wrist, I unfolded my napkin with a snap before spreading it out over my lap. “This smells amazing.”
Olive grabbed her napkin and did her best to snap it the same way I had, then spread it over her lap, studying mine to make sure it looked exactly the same. “Yes. Amazing,” she echoed.
I glanced at Nick and we shared a quick smile. Our gazes locked for a brief moment. My cheeks flushed and I had to snap my eyes down to my plate to keep from giving everything away with nothing but what was flickering in my eyes.
Sharing a glance with Nick over something cute Olive had done…damn. It felt so intimate. So connected.
It feels like you’re her parents.
Wow, that little voice really had my number. Yeah, that was exactly what it had felt like.
But what I had to remember was: we weren’t her parents. Nick was her dad. I was her babysitter. That was going to have to be enough, even if every single day it seemed more and more like it never could be.
Chapter 14
Nick
AS THE END credits of The Little Mermaid rolled across the screen in my darkened living room, the only other sound besides the soft music coming from the TV set was the rhythmic snoring coming from my little girl.
She’d probably seen The Little Mermaid a hundred times. Hell, maybe twice that. But she kept insisting on it because Ariel was her favorite princess. Probably something to do with the red hair they shared.
I looked over at Olive, sleeping soundly and sprawled across Evelyn’s lap. I put my hand on the back of her head, stroking her silky curls with my thumb. The urge to protect her overwhelmed me. Of course, she was my baby girl. My protective instincts were always on high alert where she was concerned. But it seemed like they were on hyperspeed whenever I watched her sleep. She just looked so little, and innocent, and vulnerable.
She was my Achilles’ heel. I knew that for sure. The one soft spot in the otherwise impenetrable armor I’d had to develop when the world had thrown all its crap at me. She was the vulnerability that I just couldn’t put up a hardened wall around.
I looked up at Evelyn and saw that her eyes were on Olive’s sleeping form, too, a small, affectionate smile on her face. My heart leapt in my chest. I saw so many things in her expression. Affection. Pride. Love, even.
Of course, Olive was amazing. It didn’t exactly surprise me that someone—especially someone with as big a heart as Evelyn—could fall head over heels for the kid as quickly as she obviously had.
What was surprising me at the moment was how quickly I’d fallen head over heels for her. Or at least it was heading in that dir
ection.
I knew I couldn’t act on the feelings, for reasons I had to remind myself of over and over again every day. But, still. I couldn’t deny that the feelings were there, and they were growing stronger with every minute we were around each other.
Moving my eyes back down to Olive, I noticed how close my hand was to Evelyn and it made my heart stutter a little.
God, I wasn’t even touching her. All that had to happen, apparently was that I came within half an inch of touching her, and my heart went crazy.
This was getting out of control. I had to break up the silence.
“We should put her down,” I whispered.
“Yeah,” Evelyn whispered back. “I’ll carry her up. She’s fallen asleep on me like this before. I find it’s the easiest way to get her up the stairs and into bed without waking her up.”
I nodded and she slid her arms around Olive, standing up smoothly despite the dead weight in her arms. I could tell it was a well-practiced move.
When we reached the top of the stairs, I maneuvered ahead of her and opened the door to Olive’s room, turned down her bedding, and switched on the nightlight.
Evelyn laid Olive down onto the bed slowly and gently, careful not to disturb her. I was glad that we’d had the foresight to get her changed into her pajamas before starting the movie, otherwise we would’ve had to wake her up, there would’ve been no way around it. Well…Evelyn’d had the foresight. Credit where credit was due. It hadn’t even occurred to me.
Watching her now, as she fluffed the pillow around Olive’s head, smoothed her hair down, and tucked the blankets around her, I was struck by one thought: She’s a natural.
I had to shake my head a little to clear it of the thought. It was a dangerous one. If it wasn’t right to start thinking seriously about bringing Evelyn into Olive’s and my life in a more permanent way—which I’d already decided a thousand times that it wasn’t—then it wasn’t even safe to have those impulses. I had to nip them in the bud.
The only problem was, my bud-nipping ability seemed to be pretty shitty.
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