My (Mostly) Temporary Nanny: A Grumpy Boss Romantic Comedy Page 11

  Chris looked thoughtful for a moment. “Forgot about that. Still, I should buy one of these places. Call it Whacking Off With Chris Rose. Seriously, if I wasn’t in the football business. I think I could’ve been some kind of image or brand manager. I’ve got so many great ideas.”

  Damon shook his head in clear disappointment with his brother. “First of all, it’s a franchise. You can’t just name one you buy anything you want. Second of all—no. Forget it. I’m not even going to begin to argue why that’s a horrible name for a business.”

  “Oh?” Chris countered. The two brothers devolved into an argument off to the side. I stopped listening when Belle sat down and took a nacho, then scooped salsa, sour cream, guacamole, and topped it with a pickle from what was left of Chris’ hamburger.

  Belle caught us all watching her with mingled horror and amusement.

  “What?” she asked. “I’m eating for two. And baby likes pickles. So does mommy,” she added with a not-so-discreet glance toward Chris.

  Chelsea and I stifled a laugh, but Jack seemed distracted.

  I wanted to ask him about Ally. To speculate on how things might be going with her first night watching Ben. But I also knew he probably hadn’t told anyone else about what was going on and didn’t want to betray his trust by blabbing. So I bit my tongue and sat awkwardly, feeling very much like the third wheel of the group. Although, I guessed if I was the third wheel, Jack was like the rock in a nearby field—as apart as he could be while still being present.

  I got the impression that Chris liked Jack and Damon saw him as something between a cash cow and an investment. But I’d come to enjoy Chelsea and Belle’s company, so I was still glad I’d been invited.

  Jack’s phone rang a short while later. Damon and Chris were still debating—Chris had changed the name of his hypothetical business to “Grip The Shaft And Stroke It Good, With Chris Rose.” Damon was about as animated as I’d seen him as he tried to explain something about sponsors and expectations to his brother, who was hearing none of it.

  Jack picked up his phone. “Yes?” His face hardened, and he started to walk off.

  “Everything okay?” I asked him.

  “It’s fine. I just need to—” He cut himself off and hurried off toward the main building we’d come in through.

  I felt my stomach sink. What if that was Ally and something bad happened with Ben? Shouldn’t Jack feel like I deserved to know, too? What if I could help?

  Chelsea gave my leg a little punch and half-smiled at me. “Sorry to be that person, but you’re into him, right?”

  “Who, Jack?”

  “No,” she said dryly. “Our server with the brillo pad masquerading as a hair style.”

  I laughed, then decided there was no use in pretending. “Sort of. It’s complicated.”

  Belle nodded wisely as she stuffed another jumbo nacho loaded with a little bit of everything within reach into her mouth. “Been there,” she managed around a mouthful of food.

  “You know what I learned from Damon?” Chelsea asked. “Men are usually too stubborn to admit they want something that’s good for them. They think it has to be hard. That everything has to be about sacrifice and self-denial. But deep down, they’re happier when they learn to find a balance.”

  Belle swallowed. “Or they’re like Chris.”

  “Brain dead?” Chelsea asked.

  Belle tossed an onion ring at her, which Chelsea dodged easily. “Watch it. At least Chris doesn’t iron his underwear.”

  “That was one time.”

  “That we know of. Damon probably does inventory on how many eyebrow hairs he has every morning. I bet he even—”

  “Chris probably couldn’t even count how many eyebrow hairs he has,” Chelsea countered.

  I was about to be nervous when it felt like the argument was getting nasty, then both women laughed, smiling it off like it was a routine of theirs to trade insults. I guess it made sense when two women were married to brothers. Some of that sibling rivalry probably trickled down.

  “So he’s either too stupid to know what’s good for him, or too stubborn?” I asked.

  “Yep,” Both women answered in unison.

  I laughed. “Okay. And what if I’m not what’s good for him?”

  Chelsea shrugged. “You give it a shot because you clearly like him. For some reason,” she added in a tone that drew a laugh from me and Belle.

  “He has a soft gooey inner center. And a rough… abrasive outer exterior,” I said. “And he really cares about Ben. More than anything.”

  “Listen,” Belle said as she tried to rub nacho cheese from her belly and then gave up with a dismissive wave of her hand. “A successful relationship happens when two puzzle pieces that don’t match agree to jam themselves together. Somehow, some way. It’s never going to be a perfect fit, but what matters if you’re both committed to continue ramming into each other and enjoying the process.”

  Chris walked up behind Belle as she was giving her little monologue, all while waving a French fry wildly to emphasize her points. “Did I interrupt you giving the girls a recap of last night? She’s right,” he said, looking from me to Chelsea. “I thoroughly enjoyed ramming into Belle.” He bit her earlobe. “Again… and again.”

  Chelsea screwed up her face. “Aren’t you worried about hurting the baby?”

  “We’re being careful,” Chris promised. “Before I start, I get down low and yell, fire in the hole!”

  Chelsea made a disgusted noise, but Belle and I both snorted with laughter.

  Mis-matched puzzle pieces. I wondered if that’s what Jack and I were. More, I wondered if I was committed to “keep ramming into him” as Belle so eloquently put it. And I wondered if long distance ramming counted. As in, from Florida to New York.

  29

  Jack

  I came back home at eight after getting a call from Ally. She said something was wrong and I needed to hurry back, which meant I had to shoot off a hurried text to make sure Damon or Chris could make sure Nola got home safely.

  When I came home, my heart was pounding. I had visions of Ben hurt or in the middle of some kind of seizure. I pictured blood and screaming.

  I found Ally standing by the kitchen island, and I was fairly sure she’d changed clothes since she showed up a few hours ago. She was wearing a dress now that looked like it belonged at a ritzy party or even a darkened club with loud music. It was short, revealing, and instantly set off alarms in my mind.

  “You said there was an emergency,” I said.

  “I figured it out, sorry. I thought you were close enough to being home and didn’t want to text or call while you were driving.”

  I clenched my teeth. “You figured it out? What was wrong?”

  “Ben was freaking out. He said he always took his drawing stuff into bed with him and I said they needed to stay in the craft room. The bed is for sleep, not drawing.”

  I felt myself bristle. She’d been out of his life since the moment she handed him off as a newborn. Now she thought she could come on her first day back and make new rules for him? “Ben does take his sketchbook to bed. It helps him fall asleep.”

  Ally clicked her tongue, wincing a little. “That’s not good for healthy sleep habits. The bed is just supposed to be for sleeping. And, well,” She added with a not-so-innocent shrug and twirl of her blonde hair.

  I ignored what I hoped wasn’t flirtation. “I don’t want—”

  The door swung open, and I saw Nola. She was flushed and looked adorably sexy in the dark green cotton dress she wore. I had a brief but powerful urge to push her against the wall and kiss the soft, pale skin of her neck. To feel her hot breath against my ear as she let out one of those happy little sighs I’d coaxed from her a few nights ago.

  “What is she doing here?” Ally asked. Her voice was a few pitches too high, and I gradually started to suspect I’d been played. The dress she was wearing. The hint of flirtation. The timing of her re-arrival into my life and Ben’s. And
now the clear jealous indignation in her voice.

  “She saw me rush off from the date we’d been on,” I said. I wasn’t sure if Nola had considered it a date, especially since I’d been so preoccupied knowing Ally was watching Ben that I’d barely said a word to her. I’d also rushed off without even saying goodbye. “She probably wanted to make sure nobody was dead or dying.”

  Ally rolled her eyes.

  Nola made a small sound, then moved almost beside me, but not quite. I took it as a diplomatic move not to rub our togetherness in Ally’s face, and I felt a surge of respect for her rise in me.

  Ally was being jealous and spiteful. Nola was trying to be respectful, even if what was happening barely made sense to her and appeared to be in her worst interests.

  I put my arm around her waist and pulled her to my side, enjoying the soft bump of her hip against my thigh. Nola was stiff for a moment, then seemed to accept the unspoken message I was sending. We’re together. You don’t need to wonder anymore. You’re mine.

  “Is everything fine?” Nola asked Ally once our silent battle of body language was through.

  “We don’t need your expert help, sweetie,” Ally said, as though she was talking to the teenage babysitter who was interrupting two adults.

  “Nola has spent more time with Ben than you have,” I said. “And I’m not going to stand here while you talk down to her. So you can either start over, or leave.”

  Ally went rigid. A slow spreading red color entered her cheeks, and I thought I still knew her well enough to take it for barely contained rage and not embarrassment. “That’s what I’m trying to fix by being here,” Ally said stiffly.

  “Which part are you trying to fix? Not being here, or that Nola has been here doing the job you passed on?”

  Ally looked baffled, but she wasn’t as good an actress as she thought.

  “Well?” I said. “Is this about you and Ben, or is it about me and Nola?”

  “Her?” Ally asked, laughing. “No offense, sweetie, but I’m not threatened by your nanny. I’ve got two platinum records and I think most men would risk their marriages for a night with me.”

  “That’s telling,” I said. “Have you always put your value on how effectively you think you could break up happy relationships?”

  I thought I sensed Nola trying to hold back a grin at my side.

  Ally finally broke. I saw it all in a moment. The civility she’d been wearing like a mask since meeting me in the cafe the other day crumbled. Her lips curled up into the hint of a snarl and she shook her head, then punched her fists out to the side. “Why don’t you just pick, Jack? Would you rather have your fun with the nanny, or do you want to be with the mother of your child? The woman who rocked your world once and could do it again?”

  “You can leave,” I said.

  Ally waited, as if she’d misunderstood.

  “If you decide you want to be part of Ben’s life again, you’ll need to send your lawyer. That’s all I need to say to you.”

  She stomped past me and slammed the door.

  I let go of Nola and tried to read her expression. “I’m sorry you got dragged into that. And I didn’t mean to use you like a weapon, if that’s how it seemed.”

  She chewed the corner of her lip. “As long as you meant what I think you meant when you put your arm around me, I’m not complaining.”

  “Every implied word of it.”

  Nola laughed softly. “I’ve always been bad at reading implications. Could you spell it out for the slow people in the room?”

  “It means you’re mine. That I tried to fight my feelings for you and failed miserably. And that you had better not plan on going anywhere, because I’m not planning to let go.”

  She hesitated for a heartbeat, then smiled and hugged me. “Ditto.”

  “We should check on Ben,” I said after a few moments. I explained what Ally had said as we walked to his room, then cracked the door. His covers were bulged upward with the point in the shape roughly the size of a small child’s head. There was yellow light spilling through the fabric, but it shut off a second after the door creaked.

  “You okay, bud?” I asked.

  Ben threw the covers down, showing me the sketchbook he kept under his bed was opened with a half-finished picture. “Daddy!” He rushed off the bed and slammed into me with a hug. “Do I have to stay with Ally more?” he asked. “I didn’t like her.”

  “No,” I said. “Not if I can help it.”

  Ben saw Nola beside me, then reached his arm out to hug her leg and pull her in toward us. She silently mouthed, awww to me, and hugged him back.

  I was afraid to hope. I’d learned what hope did. Hope was like digging holes in your heart. Either the good things you wanted would come fill them, or they’d wind up like graves.

  Life was easier if you kept yourself closed off to everything, but I’d come to learn it was also empty that way. So I’d dug a massive hole roughly the size of my heart for Nola, and now the test would be figuring out if she’d be the thing that filled it.

  I wondered if this was what it would feel like to be a family. To be happy.

  If my history was any indication, this was just the tease point. It was the part where I got to see what it could feel like to be happy, if I was someone else. Next would come the crash and burn. The inevitable descent toward normalcy. The part where Ben and I got our lives turned upside down because we were foolish enough to think we could hope for better.

  I hugged them a little tighter.

  30

  Nola

  I kept replaying the interaction with Ally in my mind and the way it had felt when Jack slid his arm around my waist over and over. I wasn’t sure why I liked to torture myself with sad thoughts, but I wished I could sit my parents down and tell them all about Jack. I’d tell them how I’d felt lost ever since the accident and he was the first thing that had made me feel like I had solid ground to stand on.

  I was waiting in the car while Griff ran back inside for the fifth time to grab some obscure toy he had forgotten.

  I sat there behind the wheel asking myself over and over why I couldn’t just give up on Florida. I knew my parents. I knew they would’ve told me to. They would’ve said not to be ridiculous. That my own happiness was what mattered most, not some grand gesture to honor their memory.

  Except I wanted it too.

  I wanted to feel connected to them again. Going to Florida and renting out that building—which was still available, I’d checked just that morning—would be bringing them back, even if it was only a little. Every time I showed up to the restaurant and worked, I’d be able to close my eyes and imagine them there. I’d be able to hear the ghost of their laughter just around the corner and pretend they were only out of sight, not out of this world.

  Letting go of Florida would be like letting them go.

  When Griff got back in the car, he gave me a funny look. “Why are you crying?”

  “I’m not crying.”

  He squinted, then in a very un-Griff-like move, he appeared to decide not to push the issue. “Are you and Jack going to get married?”

  “What?” I asked. “Why would you ask that?”

  “I saw him looking at your butt the other day. For a long time.”

  I cleared my throat. “Maybe you just imagined that.”

  “No. Don’t think so.”

  “Grownup men like to look at grownup women sometimes. It doesn’t mean they are going to get married.”

  “But are you?”

  “No!” I said, raising my voice and turning toward him. “Jack is a very nice man, and he’s my boss. It would be inappropriate to marry him.”

  Griff chewed that over. “But you didn’t say you don’t want to.”

  “Okay?”

  Griff said hmm in an obnoxiously sassy way, as if he thought he’d proven something.

  “Besides,” I muttered, starting the car and resuming our drive. “It’s not like every time two grownups like each other
, they get married. Sometimes things are more complicated than that.”

  “So you like him?”

  “Of course I do. He’s a very nice man.”

  “And you look at his butt, too.”

  “Griff!” I said, gripping the wheel. “Do I need to take away that tablet Mr. Kerrigan got you? Have you been watching stuff you’re not supposed to?”

  “No, but you have,” he said with a shrug. “Butts,” he added with a whisper.

  Ben and Griff had built themselves a little blanket fort from chairs and the ottoman on the carpet. It meant Jack and I didn’t need to hide the fact that my head was on his shoulder and his arm was around me while we watched Home Alone, which was apparently Ben’s favorite movie. Jack said one of his sketchbooks held an entire battle plan for the inevitable day that bad guys tried to break into his house. Griff had found this concept fascinating and I was fairly sure the lowered voices in the tent meant both of them were doing more scheming than actual movie watching.

  For my part, I was doing way more soaking up the moment than paying attention, too.

  Jack felt like a fleeting thing. Like stepping out to get the mail in the evening and noticing the sky was some gorgeous shade of pink and orange. It made you want to look because you knew it was so temporary. It made you wish you could hold on because you knew you couldn’t. It was beautiful, but bitter because it wasn’t the sort of thing that could last.

  The more I moved through life, the more I started to wonder if that was the real recipe of it all. Good things couldn’t last. The best things hurt the most when they were gone. All we could do was keep walking forward and hope there would be another sunset or another glimpse at happiness, because lasting happiness felt more and more like an illusion.

  Jack tapped his thumb on my shoulder, getting my attention. “You look sad,” he said quietly.

  I smiled, shaking my head. “No. I’m okay. I mean, I was just thinking how nice this is. I guess you don’t realize how much you miss this kind of thing until you get it back.”