Jason’s face was a mess. An hour after the game and his eye was almost swollen shut and a purple bruise had invaded his cheek. The team doctor gave him six stitches in his lip but even though he looked like he’d gone a couple rounds with a gorilla, he felt triumphant. His fight with Garrison had fired the team up and they’d gone on to win, 4-3. After the game, his teammates slapped him on the back. The trainers and equipment guys congratulated him. However, in the underground parking lot where the players parked, Tim flagged him down.
“Dude, nice shiner,” Tim said.
Jason shrugged. “I’ve had worse.”
“So have I,” Tim said with a laugh. “Which is why I’m glad I caught you before you left. I scared the shit out of Anders once. The next morning and when he saw me, he screamed and started crying. He insisted I wasn’t his daddy and where was his daddy and it was awful. I felt like a shit heel. He even had a nightmare.”
“Damn. Really?”
The last thing Jason wanted was to frighten Aria.
“Yeah. I was persona non grata with him and Erin for a while. So you might want to make yourself scarce until you look human again.”
“Thanks for the advice. Will do.”
When he pulled into the garage at home, it was midnight. The house had been dark, so it was likely everyone was sleeping.
Hoping that was the case, he eased the door open and crept inside. The lights were on in the kitchen. He was just hanging his keys on the hook when Finley’s head peeked out from around the corner.
“Oh, hi. You’re up,” he said.
“I can’t sleep,” she said. “It’s eight o’clock in the morning at home so I thought I’d make myself a cuppa.”
As he walked toward her and into the light, she gasped and backed up, her hand over her mouth.
“You look a fright,” she said.
“Yeah, comes with the job sometimes.”
“I saw the fight on the telly. Does it hurt?”
“A little. Is the baby down?”
“She is but I expect she’ll wake up soon. I was going to take my tea up to the nursery until then and try to go back to bed.”
“Jet lag’s a son of a bitch. I should know. I deal with it every time I fly across the country. I have some melatonin gummies I use when I travel. They help a lot. Also, tonight, in the early evening, try to get some light exposure. Your body still thinks it’s the wee hours and you have to trick it into thinking it’s daytime.”
“Yes, I’ve never left the country before. It’s all one time zone in the U.K., so this is all quite new.”
He scratched his head thoughtfully. “I really should have given you a day to get acclimated, but I wasn’t thinking, and I’d give you that day now, if I could, but I’m in a pickle.”
“How can I help?” she asked.
“Well, you can see how I look. A teammate told me Aria might be scared of seeing me like this. He said I should stay away from her until I look more like myself.”
“That might not be a bad idea,” she said.
“I’d appreciate it a lot. Tim said his son had nightmares after seeing him all beat up and I don’t want that happening with Aria. Not if I can help it.”
Glenna left the next afternoon and as he stood with her near the security check point, she got teary.
“I wish I didn’t have to go,” she said, sniffling. “I’m going to miss you both so much.”
“I’ll miss you too, Mom.”
“But you’re going to be fine as long as you let poor Finley do her job. Don’t hover over her every moment of the day. It’s insulting, whether you realize it or not.”
“I don’t buy that. Like I told her, the coaches watch every move I make. You just have to not take it personally.”
“Don’t argue with me. I’ve managed far more people at my store than you ever have. In the non-hockey world, if you don’t show a certain measure of trust to your employees, they begin to resent you for it and you end up losing them. If you really don’t trust her, you should get rid of her and find someone else.”
On his way home, he mulled over his mom’s words. She was right. She’d been a boss almost as long as he’d been alive. She rarely had problems with her employees. He wasn’t sure if it was intuition or skill or a measure of both. Either way, over the years, her staff were indisputably reliable and trustworthy, so he’d have to be stupid to disregard her advice.
He might be contumacious but he wasn’t stupid.
When he got home, he heard guitar music coming from upstairs. Not the kind coming from speakers either. This was live. It had to be Finley, didn’t it? But she hadn’t brought a guitar with her.
He went up to the nursery and there she was, sitting on the edge of the rocking chair, gently strumming “Let It Be.” Aria was in her bouncy seat, her eyes on Finley, who was still wearing that drab asphalt grey uniform. He wondered how many of them she had.
She glanced up at him and nodded without skipping a note, and he nodded back. He felt a little like Captain Von Trapp discovering his kids serenading the Baroness. A warmth spread through his chest as she coaxed the soothing music from the instrument. Funny, she looked almost pretty as she played the classic Beatles’ song and he noticed she had freckles on the bridge of her pert nose.
When she finished the song, the last chord hung in the air, he saw that Aria had fallen asleep. Her tiny mouth working like she was sucking on a bottle. Finley set the guitar aside and moved as if to pick up the baby.
He opened his mouth to say, “Don’t. Leave her there,” but he was too slow. He’d attempted this same feat only to have the baby wake up when he moved her. So he’d rock her in his arms until she got sleepy and tried again. Sometimes this ritual went on for a half hour and his stomach would be tied in knots the entire time. So now, he just left her in the bouncy seat and then worried that she wasn’t getting good sleep because she wasn’t laying down.
He watched nervously as Finley unstrapped Aria from the seat and laid her in the crib. Jason tensed when the baby fussed but instead of scooping her back up, Finley soothed her with a gentle hand and some soft murmurings. After a few moments, the baby miraculously settled and with a nod of satisfaction, Finley gently clicked the crib rail into place, picked up an empty bottle and left the room.
“How…how did you do that?” he asked in a low voice when they were safely in the hall. What he’d just witnessed was fucking Mary Poppins magic.
“Do what?”
“Get her to go back to sleep.”
“She never woke up,” Finley said, a frown of confusion wrinkling her brow.
“Yes, she did. I saw her fussing.”
“I beg your pardon, but there’s a world of difference between fussing and wakefulness. On a scale from one to ten, one being slack-jawed sleep, I’d wager she was at about a three or four. If she’d been at a five or six, I’d have employed a dummy.”
“A dummy?” Jason wondered if she’d had one stuffed in her suitcase. Did Holford have courses in ventriloquism?
“You know, a…” She put her fingers to her mouth and mimed sucking on something. “A pacifier.”
“Ah,” he said, understanding.
“I always keep one in my pocket.” She produced a binky, brandished it in front of him then put it back in her pocket. Regarding him coolly, she said, “I gather you have difficulty getting her down for a nap.”
He cursed the embarrassed flush that warmed his cheeks. “I do,” he confessed. “It usually takes me forever. It must be a woman thing.”
She bristled. “A woman thing?”
“Yeah, you know how women are naturally nurturing…”
He could tell by the look on her face that he’d stumbled onto a rocky path so he hurried to continue his thought.
“Meaning I’m naturally not as skilled because I’m a man.” He hoped by insulting his own sex, he’d saved the situation.
“That simply isn’t true,” she said. “I’m friends with several Holford graduates who are male. Admittedly, some people have more of an aptitude than others, but it’s silly to discount yourself merely because of your sex. I find it’s just a matter of confidence and intent. Lay her down and trust her to do the rest. If you are too hesitant and wait until she’s sound asleep every time, you prevent her from learning how to self-soothe. This will be important later when you want her to sleep through the night. You don’t want her dependent upon you in order to go back to sleep. She must be able to do so on her own.”
Despite what he’d said before to his mom about being used to criticism from his coaches, he found himself feeling prickly at her little Nanny TedTalk so he changed the subject.
“I didn’t know you played guitar,” he said.
“That’s odd. It’s on my resume.”
He didn’t want to admit that he’d left the hiring of her up to his mother and hadn’t even looked at her resume, even though Glenna had copied him on every email regarding Finley’s employment.
“You didn’t come off the plane with one though.”
“I had it shipped, along with some other belongings of mine. They arrived while you were at the airport.”
“You play well,” he said. “The living room has excellent acoustics, by the way.”
“Thank you. I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, but in a way that suggested she wasn’t sure if his compliment was sincere.
They stood there in an awkward silence until she said, “If you’ll excuse me, I have some tidying up to do.”
She breezed past him but paused a few steps away. “You told me when I arrived that I could take the room your mother was staying in. Does that offer still stand?”
“Yes, of course. Take any room you want.”
“Thank you,” she said again. “I will be moving my things later then. Don’t bother yourself about the baby. As discussed, you can hide your face for however long you feel you need to.”
With that, she disappeared into her room but left the door ajar, presumably to listen for signs that Aria had woken up.
Carefully, he eased Aria’s bedroom door open and tiptoed inside. If he couldn’t be with his daughter while she was awake, at least he could look at her while she was sleeping. The guitar rested against the changing table and he sighed thinking about the grand piano he had sitting in storage. When he and Brit were looking at houses to buy, he’d wanted the living room had to be big enough for it because his current townhouse was tight on space. He later found out that Brit thought it would be an eyesore.
“It just doesn’t go with the décor I have in mind. Why don’t you find a place for it at the BIC? You could play after practice, regale your teammates.”
“I thought you liked to hear me play.”
When they’d first started dating, she had enjoyed listening to him. In fact, he’d stealthily found out from her friends and family what her favorite love songs were so he could play them for her. He wasn’t much of a singer, but his attempts made her smile. He’d always thought these silly musical interludes had been one of the reasons she’d fallen in love with him, but over the years, he would offer to play for her and she’d often have something else that needed doing or she’d suggest they do something else, usually have sex. At first, that had been a no brainer. Their sexual chemistry was off the charts, but in hindsight, he realized whenever she deigned not to listen to his music, it hurt—not a great deal, but enough that as time went by, he began to wonder if she ever really liked his playing. Eventually, he’d stopped asking, and when they moved into this house, the piano went into storage.
But, hearing Finley just now, he realized, like Captain Von Trapp, he missed having music in the house. Before Brit, he’d sometimes came home after a game, sat at the piano and played something soothing. Even after showering and taking an ice bath and flushing out the lactic acid on the bike, he often felt keyed up after the intensity of the game. The music helped to quiet his nerves and bring him slowly off the adrenaline high of sixty minutes of high octane professional hockey. Maybe it was time to clear a space and finally put the piano where it belonged.
Downstairs, Jason pulled up Finley’s resume on his iPad. Sure enough, there it was in the skills section. Playing guitar, cooking and baking, rugby, knitting, sewing, and yodeling.
Yodeling?
The woman was full of surprises. Or maybe not. None of these would have been surprising if he’d actually read the resume in the first place.
And what kind of father was that negligent about his child’s caregiver?
He turned back to the CV. She had eight years of experience with two different families but there was a gap of a few months between her last posting and her job here with him. Maybe she’d taken a sabbatical or something. Did nannies take sabbaticals? He had no idea.
His phone signaled a text.
Finley: Are you hungry? I’ve made sandwiches. We should eat while she’s sleeping.
Jason: On my way.
When he arrived in the kitchen, he saw an impressive spread: a triple decker sandwich piled high with turkey, bacon, cheese, avocado, tomato and lettuce; whole grain crackers smeared with almond butter, and a bowl of mixed berries with some whipped cream on top.
So far, she’d displayed her cooking and guitar playing. He found himself wondering which of her other skills she’d demonstrate next.
He hoped it wasn’t the yodeling.
“This looks great,” he said. “Perfect, in fact. Just what I need. Lots of carbs and protein for energy and muscle repair, and fats for long term energy and joint lubrication.”
“Glenna said I would occasionally be cooking for you as well, so I did a bit of research on nutrition for athletes.” As he picked up the plate and took a seat at the table, she asked, “Would you prefer to eat alone? It’s perfectly all right. In England, the help often eat separately from the family.”
He looked at her, perplexed. “Jesus, that’s weird. Sorry, no offense. It’s just…that seems rude.”
“It’s quite normal, I promise. Remember, we had a quite robust servant class for hundreds of years.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen Downton Abbey,” he said, “but it’s not going to be like that here, at least in not my house. You can eat wherever you want, whenever you want and whatever you want. In fact, I got you a credit card for expenses. I don’t want to deal with the little details, so if you think we need it, go ahead and get it.”
“Brilliant, because I was thinking you probably shouldn’t be eating store-bought mayonnaise. Soybean oil isn’t good for you. You have everything to make mayonnaise here except a lemon.”
“Making mayonnaise wasn’t on your resume,” he pointed out.
She blinked at him and a hint of a smile flickered across her mouth but it didn’t bloom into a full one. He’d seen her smile at Aria and his mother, but not at him and, strangely, he found himself wanting that.
He pulled the credit card out of his wallet and handed it to her. “You’ve got carte blanche for now. I’ll look over the bill every month and let you know if anything seems over the top.”
“Brilliant.”
He took a bite of his sandwich, wincing in pain when he opened his mouth too wide.
“Ow. That hurt.” He tried again, taking a bite more gingerly than before. “Wow, this is good, really good.”
“Thank you.”
They ate in silence for a few moments, but Finley ended up filling him in on Aria’s morning.
“I believe she recognizes me now. She wiggles her arms and legs when I go to get her after her naps. It’s endearing.”
“She does that with me too,” he said morosely, touching his swollen lip and wishing he didn’t look like Oscar De La Hoya on a bad day. “I wonder if she misses me.”
“I’m sure she does.”
“She’s not going to forget me, is she?”
“Oh, no, you shouldn’t worry about that. She could never forget you, even if you were separated for fifty years.” Finley sipped from her water glass. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something… I’d like to have access to the video doorbell, since I’ll be home most of the day.”
“Of course,” he said. “In fact, there’s something I need to talk to you about as well.” He wiped his mouth with his napkin. “It’s probably nothing, but there’s a woman—at least we think it’s a woman—who’s…obsessed with me. I feel like a damned egomaniac even saying that, but it’s true. There are people on staff who have been monitoring this fan on social media and things have gotten to a point where they want me to be careful.”
“My word.” Finley’s brow furrowed. “Is that why you wanted a Holford nanny?”
He nodded. “Once my mother found out that members of the royal family use Holford nannies, she wouldn’t let me hire any other kind.”
“Your mother is a wise woman.” she said. “Do you have transcripts of the stalker’s posts?”
“I can probably get them, yes.”
“Have you ever interacted with this fan in person or on social media?”
“Not that I know of. I have accounts but I never use them.”
“That’s a point in our favor.” She got up and brought a pad of paper and a pen back to the table. “Let’s write down some first steps.” She bit her lower lip. “After you’re finished eating, if you have time, I’d like you to walk me around the perimeter of your property. Do you have any cameras other than the doorbell?”
“No.”
“We may want to add some along with an actual security system.”
Even though she seemed to know what she was doing, equipping the whole house with security—especially here in Coronado, one of the safest communities in the city—seemed a little overboard, but he didn’t say anything.
“Does anyone know about the threat other than the people at your meeting?”
“I don’t think so.”
“That’s another thing that must change. You need to tell your friends and acquaintances that you have a potentially dangerous stalker.”
“I don’t see how that’s going to help.”
“We need as many people aware of the situation as we can. You never know who’s going to notice something strange. Neighbors especially can be of great help in this regard. I’d also like the usernames the stalker fan is tagging you with so I can keep an eye on the posts as well.”
He jotted them down on her pad of paper.
Brow furrowed, she reviewed her notes. “All right then, action items…security tour, look into increasing security, inform your social circle, monitor socials.”
“Gotcha,” he said then polished off the last of his sandwich.
She regarded him with narrowed eyes. “Why do I get the feeling that you’re not taking this seriously.”
He wiped his mouth with his napkin. “Maybe because I’m not? Honestly, I think everyone’s blowing this way out of proportion. We all get our share of kooky fans and this one’s fixated on me for whatever reason. But at least half of her attention is focused on Brit, who doesn’t even live here anymore.”
“But the fan doesn’t know this. You should at least inform your wife. In my opinion, although you’re the object of the stalker’s affection, Mrs. Locke seems to be the one in danger.”
Danger? He resisted the impulse to roll his eyes.
“All right, fine. I’ll tell Brit what’s going on and we’ll release a statement about our divorce. Then everything can go back to the way it was. This nutso woman can go back to writing her fan fic about the two of us and that’ll be that.”