Kate
Week One
Where is he? I wondered as I laid out the Snakes and Ladders game board on the kitchen table. I had picked Dylan up from school over three hours ago and there was no sign of Ryan. We had gone to the park and I’d looked at Dylan’s homework. He wanted spaghetti for dinner, so I made it while he helped me, standing on a stool at the kitchen counter. Now we each had a bowl of spaghetti and we were going to play a game while we ate.
I was still getting used to this kid—to any kid. Dylan wasn’t much trouble so far, but he had his personality quirks: he liked to make or at least oversee his own food, he never knew where his backpack was, he wanted to wear the same Star Wars shirt every day. He was trying to behave nicely for me this first week—it was cute and kind of heartbreaking—but I could tell he had an energetic and goofy side. He thought mushrooms were gross and his father was God. I wondered where his mother was.
He wanted to play the game at the kitchen table while we ate. Maybe this wasn’t something you were supposed to let a kid do, but I didn’t really know, and it sounded harmless to me. If Ryan had a problem with it, I’d remind him once again that I wasn’t Mary Poppins. Actually, if Ryan had a problem with it he could stuff it, because he wasn’t even home.
We were on our second game—it turned out that the rules of Snakes and Ladders were whatever Dylan said they were, which of course meant he was winning—when the front door opened and Ryan came home. He walked into the kitchen, wearing low-slung jeans and a navy blue Henley that fit him like a second skin. His hair was damp and mussed, like he’d just gotten out of the shower. He leaned a shoulder on the doorjamb and looked past his son to me.
“He suckered you into Snakes and Ladders, I see,” he said. “I learned my lesson a long time ago.”
“Dad, I’m winning,” Dylan said.
“Of course you are,” Ryan replied. “Is that spaghetti?”
Dylan picked up the dice. “We made it. Where were you?”
Ryan rubbed a hand over his face, and for a second I saw his expression go hard, like he was in pain. Then he erased it and relaxed his face again. “Doctor’s appointment, and then the gym.” He frowned. “Oh, shit. I forgot to pick something up on the way home, didn’t I?”
“Bread,” Dylan said, studying the board.
“Shit,” Ryan said again.
Here was Ryan Riggs as a father: he swore in front of his seven-year-old son, he was late all the time, he never cooked, and Dylan still thought he was God. In the past week I’d been showered with Ryan’s baseball stats, his strikeouts and walks and hits per inning. Or something. I had no idea what Dylan was talking about, but he knew all the numbers.
Now Ryan fixed his gaze on me. His voice was soft when he spoke. “He okay?”
I swallowed. It was best, I’d decided, if I simply acted professional in this job. Like there was nothing in the past to think about. No sir. I tucked a lock of stray hair behind my ear. “He’s fine,” I answered him. “He’s good.”
“Thanks for staying,” Ryan said. “I’m sorry we kept you. You can go if you have plans.”
I felt my face get hot. “No problem. I don’t have plans.”
Our eyes locked. Ryan’s expression went dark, intent. Between us, Dylan rolled the dice and moved his marker around—probably up another ladder—and I didn’t pay attention, because I was staring at the man in the doorway. My God, he could really fucking smolder. I could almost smell smoke in the air.
“You sure?” he said, his voice a little rough. “No plans?”
“Ryan,” I managed.
“Dad.” Dylan interrupted us, turning in his chair, oblivious to the dirty thoughts that had just been going through my head. “Can we go for ice cream?”
Ryan tore his gaze from mine and frowned at Dylan. “Ice cream? Do you see this?” He lifted the hem of his shirt, showing his bare stomach. “I just came from the gym. You don’t get this by having ice cream on a school night.”
I stared, transfixed. All those abs, slabs of tight muscle locked together. The V muscles over his hips, disappearing into his jeans. The line of dark hair that made his happy trail. I had traveled that happy trail. I had gone all the way down. Down, down…
I lifted my gaze to Ryan’s. He was watching me—he knew exactly what he was doing, the bastard. It was all for show.
His expression, though, was a mixture of humor and dead seriousness. The question was clear: You like it?
I schooled my face to look bored, even though it was too little, too late. “Do you need abs to throw a ball?” I asked.
“Sure you do,” Ryan said, dropping his shirt. It took an effort on my part not to groan. “You need them to run, too.”
“I thought you just stood on the pitcher’s mound for the whole game.”
“And I thought you didn’t know anything about baseball.”
We stared at each other. His eyes were perfect dark brown, like coffee, and his lashes were dark. He was freaking unreal. He had even tasted good.
Delicious, in fact.
“Dad,” Dylan broke in. “Ice cream?”
The moment broke. “Not tonight, kid,” Ryan said. The corner of his mouth turned up. “Have a nice night, Kate. See you in the morning.”
Week Three
“I don’t know,” I said to my mother. “I think I might be bad at this.”
We were sitting in a café after a few hours of shopping. I had weekends off, and this Saturday was spent with my mother, watching her buy things while I window-shopped. I was used to it; I had never had a job that made much money, a fact that made my parents despair.
“At what?” my mother asked, stirring her latte. “Nannying, or parenting?”
My mother was smart, well-informed, and beautiful. She was the kind of woman who could wear cigarette pants and a tossed-on scarf and look like a million dollars. She was wearing her hair in a short cut these days, which was chic and made her look ten years younger. The worst thing was, it was impossible to hate her. She was a woman of a certain income bracket and a certain age, but she wasn’t a snob.
“Aren’t they the same thing?” I asked her.
“Not at all,” my mother said, amused. “We had a nanny for a few years when you were little. I tell you, I envied that woman for the fact that she got to go home every day.”
“Thanks a lot,” I said, pouring milk into my plain old coffee.
She smiled at me. “You were a good girl. Always so polite and well-behaved. But any little kid is a handful. As I’m sure you’re discovering.”
“Dylan isn’t a toddler,” I said, feeling oddly defensive of him. “And he’s a nice kid.”
“But?” My mother’s brows rose.
“But it’s weird being in someone’s house every day,” I said. Ryan’s house, specifically. “I mean, their things are everywhere.” Ryan’s things. “And they’re two guys, so it’s a mess. I mean a mess. Dylan loses his backpack so often that I put a Post-It note on the front hall hook that says Your Backpack Goes Here. Then I put another one on the fridge that says Clean the moldy stuff out of here. And another one on the bathroom door that says This is disgusting. Do something about it.” I ran a hand through my hair. “I’m being a bit bitchy, but really, come on.”
Mom frowned at me over her latte. “I thought cleaning wasn’t part of the job.”
“It isn’t!” I said. “It’s just driving me crazy. Why do I care? I have no idea.” I slumped in my chair and sipped my coffee.
“You don’t have to do this, you know.” Mom stirred her latte again, which meant she was about to lecture me. “You could take some time off while you apply for better jobs. That’s what a trust fund is for.”
Yes, I had a trust fund. It wasn’t millions. In fact it was small, but it was enough for a while if I needed it. I’d had access to it since I was twenty-one, but I’d barely touched it. I wanted to make it on my own, doing whatever I hoped I would discover I loved. I had only dipped into the money when it looked like the rent wouldn’t get paid or I’d go hungry. Which was luxury enough. The rest of the time, I paid my own way.
Most people didn’t understand that, I knew. It wasn’t something I shared with many people, because people get jealous and resentful when they know that you’ve inherited money you didn’t earn. It was one of the reasons I wanted to figure out how to get by without it.
The problem was, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Since graduating college I’d worked meaningless jobs here and there: hotel clerk, florist, pet sitter. And my parents, who had footed the bill for college, were unhappy about it. I couldn’t blame them, really. I was the definition of a bad investment, and as their only child I was the one they’d pinned their expectations on.
I just… couldn’t. I couldn’t pick a career and start a rise to the top. I wanted to explore, to wander. To find myself. The problem was, I’d been trying to find myself for four years now.
Don’t worry about it, Amanda had told me once. You’re a late bloomer, that’s all. Some people bloom early and some people bloom late.
How late was I, though? Should I start to wonder?
“Mom, we’ve been through this,” I said.
“I know, I know. But the pet sitting was bad enough. And now you’re a nanny for”—her expression went sour—“someone called The Bad Boy of Baseball.”
I gaped at her. “You looked him up?”
“Yes, I did. If you want to be a nanny, Kate, I’m sure there are respectable people I could find to refer you to. People who pay well. Couples, not single men. Did you know this man actually hit someone on the baseball field?”
I could feel the back of my neck tightening. And I could also feel, as I always did, the urge to do the exact opposite of what my parents wanted me to do. Something that would shock them and drive them crazy. I had spent my entire life behaving, being the only child, trying to please the two most important people in my life. I just wanted to be unexpected for once. A little like Ryan throwing that punch. That punch was nuts—right there in front of everyone, while the other man was mid-sentence. What must it feel like to not care like that?
I’d always cared, too much. And since I’d graduated college, I’d kept trying to care. But deep down, I’d stopped caring quite so much.
It was freeing.
I wanted to not care like Ryan Riggs did.
Suddenly I wasn’t so upset by this conversation anymore. I shrugged. “Ryan isn’t so bad,” I said to my mother. “He’s nice. And he’s really hot.” And I banged him five years ago, which I’m still not going to tell you.
Mom’s eyes widened, and then she closed them, as if fighting for control. “Oh, Kate, you can’t be serious. If only you had married Mark.”
“I am not marrying Mark,” I said.
“Well, certainly you’re not, since he’s married now with a baby and another on the way.” This was a fact she brought up frequently. Mark had been my boyfriend five years ago, back when he was a fellow student, getting a Ph.D in economics. He was nice, he was smart, and I’d really tried, but I just hadn’t cared. After I broke up with Mark, my parents had barely spoken to me for months. They only fully recovered after Mark got married and they could throw the “what could have been” in my face. Now it was all about Mark’s babies: See, you could have had a man who is not only stable and reliable, but potent. As if making babies was an achievement on Mark’s part.
Making babies was hardly a sign of a man’s virtue. After all, Ryan Riggs could make them as easily as Mark could.
“You know,” Mom said, “I’m still in touch with Mark’s parents. I could ask if Mark and his wife need any help.”
And that was it, really. That was what it came down to. The suggestion that Kate, the loser, could work as a nanny for her successful ex and his two babies.
“Mom, you have got to be kidding me.”
“I was just—”
“The answer is no.” I picked up my purse and pushed my chair back. “I’m not working for Mark. I’m fine where I am, actually. I’ve decided I like it.”
“Kate.”
“I’m not mad.” Well, I wasn’t that mad. “Just don’t suggest that again, okay? I’ll talk to you soon.”
I walked away, heading back to my car. Maybe I wasn’t on a great career track, but I realized that in a crazy way I was where I needed to be. I couldn’t let my parents dictate my life. They’d come so close to making all of my decisions for me, including who I married, for God’s sake.
Maybe I was a late bloomer, but it was time to be myself for a while.