Overtime
JORDY STARED at the dripping dishes on the drying rack and tried to breathe.
Judging by Rowan’s panicked flight from the room, an actual relationship with Jordy was the last thing he wanted. He literally ran away from the idea.
Rowan had always said that he and Jordy couldn’t be more than casual. Jordy had hoped that was just about logistics, but looking back, he had to wonder if that line had been anything more than an easy out—advance warning he was letting Jordy down easy.
Jordy felt like a fool.
It was barely after eight, but he turned out all the lights and retired to his bedroom, ready to call an end to this disastrous day and hope for a better tomorrow.
Naturally he slept like shit, and the next day wasn’t any better. If he thought Rowan was avoiding him before….
He stayed in his rooms until Jordy left with Kaira for school drop-off. He was gone by the time Jordy got home, but Jordy hadn’t expected otherwise since he’d gone straight from the school to morning practice. Then Rowan didn’t come home for dinner. In fact, he got home so late that Jordy was already brushing his teeth and staring manically at his phone, wondering if it would be creepy and overbearing if he texted Rowan to ask him if he was still alive.
Just as he was about to give in and text a short you okay? he heard the front door open. Jordy dashed for his bedroom door— then took a deep breath and forced himself to slow down, play it cool.
He opened the doorway a foot so he could look out and spotted Rowan sneaking down the hall. There was no other word for it. He wasn’t on tiptoes, but he was moving quickly and quietly in sock feet.
Rowan paused at the door leading to the lower level, as if he knew Jordy was watching. For a long, agonizing few seconds, they stood there in the quiet darkness of the house, holding their breaths, waiting.
Then Rowan took the steps down.
So. Jordy had fallen in love with his friend, and then he made such a mess of things that he had probably ruined any hope he had of retaining that friendship.
Maybe there was a good reason why Jordy had been single since his divorce.
After another morning of invisible Rowan, which did not make for a pleasant breakfast with Kaira, who didn’t understand why her favorite person had missed two breakfasts in a row, Jordy decided to look on the bright side. At least it couldn’t get any worse.
So of course that was when his agent called and let him know he’d been traded to Vancouver.
Two thousand miles away from his baby.
Because Kaira would have to stay in Toronto, at least for a little while.
The only good thing about the trade was that Vancouver had played last night and had a rare three days off, and Orcas management had been kind enough to give Jordy a full twenty-four hours to organize his life before he hopped a plane.
Instead of napping for his upcoming game, Jordy called Gem and started to put things in order. Thank God he had finally settled on a nanny a few days prior, so he had someone to stay with Kaira for the next few weeks. With just over a month left before the winter break, and since Jordy would be busy trying to learn a new team and wouldn’t have time to find and set up a new home, pulling Kaira out of school and dragging her to Vancouver tomorrow didn’t make sense. As much as it killed him to leave her—the longest they’d ever been separated was any of his weeklong road trips—he knew it would be better for her and less disruptive than spending those weeks out of school and hanging around a hotel room with Jordy’s mother.
Jordy had never felt his lack of partner more. There was so much that needed doing, and even if he was delegating through Gem and a series of professionals, just making the decisions was exhausting. Pack up and sell the house in January or wait for the summer? Move everything to Vancouver or put some in storage and wait until he signed his next contract? Public or private school in Vancouver? And their new home—buy or rent? Condo or house? He just wanted to be able to turn to someone—to Rowan—and say, “What do you think?”
He almost forgot to pick up Kaira, but Gem called back around three with another question and signed off with, “I should let you go, since you probably have to go get your kid.”
Kaira was too young to hear about breaking news from her peers on the schoolyard, so she hadn’t heard about the Shield’s roster changes and was in a bright and sunny mood as she chattered away in the back seat.
While Jordy was glad he didn’t have to deal with fallout from the insensitive way children could deliver news, he hated that he’d have to be the one to shake up her whole world.
Thirty minutes later, Kaira was yelling that she hated hockey and the NHL and Vancouver and the Shield and she didn’t want to go anywhere. Jordy tried not to cry in sympathy and wished Rowan was here to make everything better.
And then, because the universe was laughing at him and probably hated him for some horrible shit he’d done in a past life, Rowan came home.
Something hard thumped against the wall in Kaira’s room. Jordy winced and accidentally met Rowan’s eyes.
“Uh,” Rowan said. From his expression, he already knew Jordy’s news. Well, that made sense; at least one of his coworkers was bound to be a Shield fan. “I take it she’s not excited about Vancouver.”
“You could say that.” Jordy didn’t even try to smile. “Just—one second.” He backed down the hall to Kaira’s room and pushed open the door. “Kaira, I know you’re upset, but that doesn’t make it okay to throw things.”
His red-faced, tearful daughter turned toward him. “GO AWAY! I HATE YOU!”
Somehow Jordy sucked in a breath through his teeth and managed to close the door before Kaira saw him cry.
He’d barely taken his hand off the handle when Rowan touched his arm.
“She doesn’t mean it,” he said gently. “You know that, right? You’re her favorite person. She adores you.”
Jordy made himself squeeze back tears instead of burying his head in Rowan’s shoulder. He had to have some self-respect around here somewhere. After another breath, he trusted himself to answer, even if he couldn’t meet Rowan’s eyes. “I know. She just doesn’t like me very much right now. And I can’t blame her for that.” He rubbed the skin under one eye with his forefinger. He should wash his face. It felt gritty.
“Hey.” Rowan waited until Jordy raised his head. “Do you… do you want me to talk to her?”
Jordy swallowed. He’d asked for far too much from Rowan already. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Jordy. I don’t mind. It’s not….” He sighed. “It’s not easy for me to know she’s suffering either. If I can help, I want to. All right? Maybe you can figure out dinner?”
Jordy’s reaction must’ve looked as pathetic as the suggestion he make another decision made him feel, because Rowan amended, “Order takeout from that Vietnamese place. Kaira will eat the chicken báhn mi. Spicy lemongrass pork for me, and you want to split the large spring rolls?”
Jordy did not. “I’ll get two orders of spring rolls.”
Rowan gave a wry smile. “Good idea.”
Then he disappeared into Kaira’s bedroom and Jordy went to go make a phone call and sulk some more.
It took a few minutes to get through to the Vietnamese place. By the time Jordy had ordered and agreed to pay a ridiculous sum for delivery, Kaira’s room was quiet.
A moment after he hung up, Rowan emerged. There was a wet patch on the front of his blazer where Kaira had obviously buried her head to have a cry.
Jordy hated himself a little for his jealousy, but mostly he was grateful Rowan had been able to calm her down. “Is she okay?”
Rowan shook his head, evidently feeling as helpless as Jordy did, even if he’d managed to soothe Kaira when Jordy hadn’t. “What’s okay, really, when you’re six years old and you’re not only leaving your whole life in a few months, your dad’s leaving now?”
Miserably, Jordy buried his face in his hands and then ran his fingers back through his hair and scratched at his scalp as if that could focus him. “She’s going to hate me forever.”
“Jordy. She’s going to forget about all of this the first time she sees a whale.”
That—did actually seem likely. Jordy let himself laugh pathetically. “Sorry. I’m just—yeah. I haven’t even had time to be upset for me yet, you know?”
“No.” Rowan sat next to him at the kitchen island. At least he was no longer avoiding Jordy. Of course, after today, he wouldn’t have to. They wouldn’t even be in the same time zone unless Jordy was in Toronto for a game. “But I can extrapolate.”
“There’s just so much to do. I want to be there for Kaira, but I’m going to have to leave, and she can’t—I can’t take her with me yet. Not until I’ve got a place to live and someone to look after her. I’m not going to ask a nanny to relocate when she’s just started working for me.” Especially to Vancouver, where housing was expensive even for Jordy.
Saying it out loud didn’t change it, so Jordy couldn’t understand why he felt calmer now that he had. Giving Gem his to-do list hadn’t taken any of the stress of his shoulders.
He should probably shut up, because Rowan hadn’t signed up for this, but now that he’d started, he couldn’t seem to stop. “And it’s shit, because it’s just been change after change for her over the past few months, with Janice leaving and then you moving in and then me going back to work and then you going back to work. And now the temporary nannies are at least going to settle down into one permanent nanny, but I’m going to be gone and so are you—”
“Hey. Hey!” Rowan put his hand on Jordy’s wrist. “Take a breath.”
Jordy swallowed, then followed the direction. Unconsciously, he found himself mimicking Rowan’s breathing—long, steady inhales and exhales.
Then Rowan cleared his throat, patted his hand, and stood up. “Look, this is—call it extenuating circumstances. I know things with us have been, um, different. But I’m not going to leave Kaira in the lurch, okay? I can stick around a couple extra weeks until she can join you in Vancouver. You’re planning to bring her out at winter holidays, yeah?”
Thank God for this man. But Jordy had taken advantage of him enough. “I can’t ask you to do that.”
“Good thing I’m offering, then,” Rowan said firmly. Then his cheeks pinkened a bit. “Besides, I already promised Kaira. Don’t make me a liar.”
Incredibly, Jordy laughed—just a short one, but he’d felt like he might never find anything funny again. “All right,” he said. “All right, but I’m going to keep paying you until then. You’ve got rent now.”
“Deal. I promise I’ll buy myself something really posh with the extra.”
“Espresso maker?” Jordy suggested.
“Oooh. I was thinking massage chair, but an espresso maker…. Where would I put it, though. It’s not like my new place has a butler.” He nudged Jordy with his elbow. “You going to be okay?”
Jordy managed another smile, bittersweet though it was. “Yeah. I just have… a lot of decisions to make on top of learning a whole new hockey system and abandoning my child. It’s a lot.”
“Hmm.” Rowan contemplated him. “I’m going to pretend ‘learning a hockey system’ is a phrase that has no meaning. We’ve dealt with the abandonment as much as we can. So what’s the rest of it?”
“The housing situation—here and in Vancouver. The nanny situation. Figuring out where to send Kaira to school. Somehow having the time to find a place to live while learning said new hockey system”—Rowan rolled his eyes theatrically—“and being gone half the time.” Another thing occurred to him. “Getting Kaira settled in Vancouver and not having her hate me at Christmas.”
Rowan winced. “That last one.”
Jordy huffed. “Yeah.”
Tapping his fingers on the countertop, Rowan said, “Let me ask you something. Best-case scenario, what does the solution look like? Don’t think about logistics, don’t think about how. Dream scenario—go.”
“Okay. Well, selling the house is quick and painless.” The extra liquidity would give him a lot more options. “I find a place I like in Vancouver and it’s close to the arena and a good school for Kaira.” He closed his eyes and envisioned it. Maybe they could even be close enough he could walk her to school in the mornings sometimes. They could take trips to the park on the weekends and look out over the water trying to spot orcas. “I find some way to make it up to her about the move, and the perfect nanny….” Someone who’d pick Kaira up from school and drop her off, dress her up in a banana-yellow rain coat and galoshes when the weather was bad and hold a bright pink umbrella over their heads while Kaira stomped in every puddle.
But Jordy didn’t want a big house this time. He would feel closer to her in a cozy house. Three bedrooms, maybe. One for Kaira, one for guests, and one for Jordy and—
“Come with me,” he blurted.
He opened his eyes just in time to see Rowan recoil, clearly dumbfounded. “What?”
“Come with me,” he repeated, feeling dumb and desperate. He knew Rowan didn’t want him, knew it was stupid to ask after everything, but Jordy couldn’t not . He couldn’t move across the country wishing Rowan was with him for every awful moment of it and not try one last time to get Rowan to want him—to want this life with him—back. If nothing else, he needed to hear a definitive no. “I know it’s not—you don’t want—but I have, have to….” He had to ask because he was stupidly in love and just as stupidly hopeful. “You make things… easy.” Which was a pathetically simple way of saying that all of Jordy’s life felt more manageable when Rowan was around.
“No.”
Jordy flinched.
“That’s—no. You don’t get to do this. To fucking change the game—” Rowan took a deep breath. “We already talked about this.”
Right. Asked and answered.
Jordy was saved from having to say anything else by the sound of the doorbell.
“I’ll get the food,” Rowan said and left Jordy alone. He didn’t have time to patch together his broken heart, but he could at least pull himself together enough to get through the night.
JORDY LEFT the following afternoon amidst a flood of tears and tantrums. Kaira had spent the day alternating between clinging to Jordy and yelling at him, which Rowan found painful to watch. He loved Kaira and couldn’t stand to see her in such turmoil, especially since he could do so little to stop it. Not to mention that whenever Jordy didn’t look like he wanted to break down and cry with her, he had clearly decided the best way to deal with all his emotions was not to feel them.
During the time it took for Rowan to collect their dinner and gather his own emotional fortitude, Jordy had apparently gathered up all his anxious overwhelmed feelings and stuffed them into a box. Rowan returned to find Jordy setting the table for three people, all of the nervous, untamed energy of earlier gone. And he stayed deliberate and bland when dealing with the practicalities of the move with Rowan, and only unbent for Kaira.
Who screamed and cried at Jordy before he left, and then at Rowan for pretty much the rest of the day, until she passed out a good hour before her usual bedtime.
Rowan forewent her entire nighttime routine, including changing her into pajamas, since she’d refused to get dressed that day.
All of which meant that it was more than twenty-four hours after Jordy’s shitty selfish invitation before Rowan could think about it.
And be hurt and mad and frustrated about the whole thing.
Because he needed something to do other than sit and brood, Rowan tidied the mess left by two emotional Shaws. He started in the den, picking up toys and rounding up dirty dishes, and then he tackled the kitchen.
And if he threw any of Kaira’s soft toys a little too hard at the toy box… well, she didn’t have to know. Her stupid, selfish dad certainly wouldn’t.
God, he couldn’t believe that after everything, after Rowan had clearly laid a boundary of friends or partner, not both, that Jordy would ask him to keep being the fucking nanny. To give up his career for one he never even wanted just to make Jordy feel better.
Rowan stared at the helpless stuffed rabbit clutched in his hands, then tossed it in the toy box before he did it serious harm.
He hadn’t thought Jordy could be that selfish.
Okay, that was a bit harsh. Jordy had clearly been emotional, and he’d told Rowan recently how much he felt the lack of an actual partner and coparent. Of course he wanted to hold on to the closest thing he’d ever had to that during a very emotional time. Rowan could understand that.
He also knew that he’d never told Jordy how much this limbo hurt. It wasn’t like he told Jordy that he was breaking Rowan’s heart; Jordy didn’t know that if Rowan said yes it would be the emotional equivalent of exfoliating with a cheese grater.
But that didn’t make it hurt any less to hear Jordy ask, like he wanted to give Rowan everything Rowan wanted, and have him not mean it the way Rowan wanted him to mean it.
Rowan took a deep breath and stared at the dishes piled next to the sink. He needed to stop chasing his own thoughts in circles. It wouldn’t fix anything. But he could fix this mess.
At least, he thought later as he scrubbed the counter, the house would be immaculate in Jordy’s absence, even if Rowan’s thoughts weren’t.
Or maybe the house would become a wreck and ruin of its former self, he reconsidered the next morning after Kaira dropped her oatmeal on the floor and then took her revenge against gravity by dumping her orange juice on top and bursting into tears.
Biting back a sigh, Rowan ignored the slowly spreading mess to scoop Kaira up into his arms. He carried her away from the scene of the crime and into the den, where they could settle on one of the comfortable chairs and just be together.
Several minutes later, once she’d calmed down, Rowan asked, “Are you having a rough morning?”
“Yes,” she shuddered out on a sigh.
Rowan blinked back tears and kissed her head. “Wanna tell me about it? Sometimes talking about our big feelings makes them easier to handle.” He definitely did not think about how he’d all but said the same thing to Jordy two days prior.
“I miss Daddy. I don’t wanna leave Tronno. I wanna go be with Daddy. Why can’t I go live with him in ’Couver now?”
Rowan did not comment on the contradictory nature of her woes. Instead he squeezed her and pressed kisses to her hair and walked her through Jordy’s reasons once again. He had a feeling he’d be rehashing this conversation over and over again before she was boarding a plane for Vancouver.
Finally he couldn’t justify sitting still any longer. Besides, moving would be good for Kaira. He pressed one last kiss to the top of her head and set her down on her feet. “Come on, poppet. I need your help this morning.”
She wiped her eyes with a chubby hand and made her Thinking Face. “With what?”
“Well, Miss Anna is going to be staying with us for a while, and she needs her own space. So your dad said I should move my things into his room.” This suggestion had been accompanied by the admission that the guest bedroom mattress was an orthopedic special he’d ordered for his parents and that it doubled as a torture device for anyone else. After having lain on said mattress for twenty seconds, Rowan could only agree. “I need your help to carry my clothes.”
“I am really strong,” Kaira said seriously.
“Are you? Well, I’m really lucky, then.” He nudged her toward the stairs. “Come on. Do you know if your daddy has any empty boxes?”
Moving into Jordy’s room should have made the injured animal of Rowan’s heart want to kick and bite and scream. It was a sick parody of the life he wanted. In deference—and self-defense—Rowan let Kaira tell him where everything should go. Underpants in the bottom drawer? Sociopathic, but why not. Jumpers hanging up in the closet? The shoulders would stretch out, but he could move them later. Right now letting her be in charge made this less painful for both of them.
They finished just before lunch. Anna wouldn’t arrive until tomorrow, and Rowan didn’t think hanging around in the house would do either of them much good, so he made them sandwiches and posed the question.
“All right, poppet, I have one more big job for you. Do you think you can handle it?”
Moving all of Rowan’s things—and throwing her breakfast on the floor—had clearly helped her work up an appetite, because she nodded without stopping to speak, too focused on her baby carrots and dip.
“I need to pick out some Christmas presents for my friends. Would you come with me to help me choose?”
Mercifully, the distraction worked. Kaira’s patience with Christmas shopping far exceeded her patience for back-to-school shopping, likely because Eaton Centre was decked out in lights and garlands with children’s displays everywhere. She certainly spent more time composing her own Christmas wish list than helping Rowan cross people off his. But a peppermint hot chocolate at the end of the trip and a promised dinner of her favorite pasta kept her happy.
At six o’clock, the timer on Rowan’s phone went off, reminding him of their other appointment. He directed Kaira to the bathroom to wash her hands and get the pasta sauce off her face while he pulled out her iPad and set up the call with Jordy.
He didn’t mean to hit the Call button, but his fingers slipped when he was setting the iPad on its stand. The familiar ring of FaceTime echoed through the kitchen for less than a second before Jordy answered.
“You look like shite,” Rowan said before his brain could catch up with his mouth.
“Thanks,” said Jordy dryly. “I missed you too.”
On the plus side, at least Rowan hadn’t sworn in front of the poppet. He pushed down on the hopelessly lovelorn part of himself that wanted to read into Jordy’s confession. “Um. Long few days, I suppose.”
“You could say that. We had morning skate today and I was up three hours before that because my body’s still on Toronto time.” He sneezed, scrunching up his face and making the dark circles under his eyes all the more pronounced. “And I think I caught a bug on the plane.”
“And you have to play tonight?” Rowan asked, aghast.
Jordy gave him a rueful look. “You would too, if they paid you tens of thousands of dollars for it.”
For ten thousand dollars, Rowan would bathe in Vick’s VapoRub and stuff his nose with cotton balls to play a game, so he didn’t argue. But that meant he didn’t have anything to say, suddenly, to keep his mouth from saying all the other things that wanted to spill out.
I love you and Why did you invite me here? and Why don’t you love me back? How could you give me a taste of this life and take it away?
Why am I such a stupid git?
His mouth opened. “Listen—”
Jordy must’ve had the same idea. “I’m sorry—”
Before things could devolve, Kaira returned, mostly sauce-free. “Daddy!”
Rowan had meant to quietly exit stage left and allow the two of them to talk one-on-one. But Kaira had other ideas. She climbed up onto his lap and held him hostage while Jordy gave her a tour of his hotel room, including the view of the water out the window.
“I’ll send Rowan the picture I took this morning,” Jordy said. “I saw a whale!”
Kaira gasped theatrically. “ I want to see a whale!”
“You will,” Jordy promised.
After that, Rowan did his best to tune out the conversation, as Kaira and Jordy made plans for after the school year—plans that didn’t involve him. Plans that could’ve involved him, if he’d been willing to throw away everything he’d worked for and put his heart in a meat grinder, besides.
Sunday, Anna arrived, and though Rowan found her pleasant, energetic, and kind, Kaira didn’t have much interest in warming up to her. Since she’d be Kaira’s nanny for little over a month, Rowan supposed that didn’t matter.
“She’s fond of you,” Anna said Sunday night when Rowan returned from putting Kaira to bed. She was sitting on the couch reading something she’d plucked off Jordy’s bookshelf.
“I’m still a poor substitute, I’m afraid. You should see her with her father.”
“I will, when I bring Kaira out to Vancouver at Christmastime.” She put the book down. “It sucks to have my contract cut short, but I’m getting a month’s severance and a free vacation in Vancouver, so it could be worse.”
“And in the meantime there’s that soaker tub,” Rowan pointed out.
“God, yes ,” she said, practically jumping to her feet. She picked the book up again. “I’m just going to… well. Read in the bath.”
“Good night,” Rowan told her.
The house suddenly felt too empty. Rowan turned on the television just for the noise and accidentally fell asleep.
DESPITE THE fact that he rounded out his first game as an Orca by chugging a bottle of Nyquil and passing out for twelve hours, Jordy was pretty sure it was a success.
The Shield might have touted him as one of their superstars, but while he was the most decorated defenseman in the lineup, they hadn’t lacked in talent. The Shield had a string of solid d-men of various ages. They would be fine without him.
The Orcas would have been fine without him too. It wasn’t like they’d been losing every game. But…. Jordy wouldn’t say this out loud at the risk of sounding up his own ass, but it felt like the Orcas needed him. There’d been a Jordy-shaped gap in their lineup, and playing with them was easy. And sure, they hadn’t yet decided who would be his go-to linemate and none of these guys clicked the way Sully did, but the rest of the team, the system, the game play, all felt made for him.
Jordy hadn’t felt so energized playing a home game against one of the worst teams in the league since his rookie year. Career-wise, this trade might be one of the better things to happen to him.
And wasn’t that a kick in the teeth to realize.
Especially when he woke up from his medicated coma to find a voicemail message from Rowan and Kaira.
“Hi Daddy! Me and Rowan watched the game highlights this morning and you skated so good. Rowan says the internet says you played a really good game and we should be proud of you for it, ’specially ’cause you didn’t feel your bestest yesterday.”
“… goodbye….”
“Okay, Rowan. Rowan says I have to say goodbye now because I gotta go to school. Bye-bye, Daddy, I love you!”
“Good job, poppet. Go put on your shoes…. Hey, Jordy, she really wanted to talk to you this morning, and time zones are a hard concept. I hope this didn’t disturb your sleep…. Bye.”
Jordy slumped back in his hotel bed. If he hadn’t been traded, maybe he and Rowan would have had time to grow into something solid and real so that when his contract was up, they could have talked about moving like adults.
Or maybe it would have given Jordy two years in the same city as his ex, the love of his life, suffering through awkward visits to the park for Kaira’s sake.
Jordy needed to get over himself and worry about practical shit, like finding a nanny and someplace to live.
He was scrolling through local real estate listings, aghast—they wanted how much for a two-bedroom condo?—when someone knocked on his hotel-room door.
Frowning, Jordy looked through the peep hole and caught a view of a distorted, grinning Ryan Wright, and Ryan’s moody husband over his shoulder.
Okay, so Nico probably wasn’t as moody as he looked. The more Jordy got to know the guy, the more he realized that he was just a prime example of resting bitch face.
Jordy opened the door and gave Ryan a look. “Aren’t young people supposed to abhor showing up without texting first?”
Ryan laughed. “One, I’m barely younger than you. Two, we totally did text, but you didn’t answer and I got tired of waiting.”
“That’s true,” Nico muttered. Jordy had a sudden vision of Ryan pacing and bouncing around their home, begging his phone to buzz.
“Three, you can totally tell us to fuck off and get out of your hair—we were in the neighborhood.”
“That is not true,” Nico said. “Well, the neighborhood part. You can definitely tell him to fuck off.”
Jordy snorted. “Good to know.” He eyed Ryan and his barely restrained energy and decided fuck it . He didn’t really want to sit alone in his room all day worrying about which adulting tasks he should do first. “You know what? I’m feeling generous. I’m willing to hear you out before I tell you to fuck off.”
“You’re a good man, Charlie Brown.”
Nico shook his head at Jordy, encouraging him not to ask, and Jordy shrugged and let them in.
Three hours later, Jordy was dressed and fed, had contacts in his phone for the nanny search, and was on his way to meet Ryan and Nico’s real estate agent, who was waiting for them at a house with an in-law suite that was listed on the market for 2.5 million. Sure, Jordy would be able to afford the mortgage once he’d sold his place in Toronto, but the bump in price came with a decrease in square footage that alarmed him.
Kim, the agent, was pretty great. She walked Jordy through the house, asking what he liked and didn’t, then pumped him for more information about his home in Toronto and whether he’d sold it.
“I think I have the perfect rental for you,” she declared. “Because you really should rent until your place in Toronto is sold. Taxes, you know? And I think this place in Burnaby might meet your short-term needs.”
Sure enough, Jordy found himself signing a lease for a four-bedroom house that might not have a nanny suite but at least had two full baths so he could have live-in help without things getting awkward.
Afterward, Ryan insisted on taking Jordy out for more food and dragged him to one of his favorite restaurants.
“So now that we got all the boring adult stuff out of the way, let’s catch up! How are you? How’s the kid?” His expression turned sly. “How’s the nanny?”
“I’m fine. ‘The kid’ is mad at me for moving to Vancouver, though I think the promise of whales is going a long way to fix that.” The team even had a whale mascot, which should also help.
Jordy pointedly ignored the final question.
Ryan propped his chin on his hands and ignored Jordy’s sidestep. “And the nanny?”
Jordy wanted to stab a sushi roll, but he knew that was rude. “You mean Anna?”
“Not unless the nanny you brought to New York and had sexual tension at during our wedding reception has changed his name, no.” He rolled his eyes. “Obviously.”
Jordy took back every nice thing he’d thought about this team. “We did not—”
He expected the flat, unimpressed stare from Ryan. He didn’t expect how much more effective the expression was on Nico.
Ryan took a long sip of bubble tea to wait Jordy out.
Nico didn’t blink.