First Period
IT TOOK a pathetically small amount of time to pack up Rowan’s things. Jordy insisted on helping, partly because Rowan shouldn’t be spending more time than necessary in his apartment and partly because he was afraid if he left Rowan to his own devices for too long he’d change his mind.
That fear evaporated the second he saw the interior of Rowan’s apartment, where walls had been opened up in order to assess the extent of the damage. After that, Jordy was mostly afraid he’d run into Rowan’s landlord and “accidentally” put a foot up his ass.
For her part, Kaira was thrilled to have a captive librarian at home. As far as Jordy was concerned, that and her safety were all that mattered.
It should have felt strange to hand over a house key and alarm codes to someone he’d just met, even if he had called up Gem and run the idea by her. She said only, “This is an unusually good move on both your parts. I’m impressed.” Then he heard clicking; she must be in the office. “Tell me, does Rowan have a preferred china pattern?”
Rowan didn’t need china; Jordy had plenty of plates in the kitchen. Maybe she meant for someday when he moved out again. “I don’t know,” Jordy said. “None of the stuff in his cabinets matched.”
He had no idea why Gem found that so funny, but it didn’t really matter.
“My bedroom and Kaira’s are upstairs. She has her own bathroom,” Jordy told Rowan as he led him in the front door. He felt awkward about it after seeing Rowan’s apartment, and was silently thankful for the fact that he’d have been ashamed to invite his parents to a house that felt too showy. They’d always been clear about what was important in life. Still, in Toronto his celebrity status sometimes meant gawkers, so he’d compromised and found a home in a gated community that didn’t make him cringe. His privacy was one thing; Kaira’s safety was another. “The cleaning service comes on Tuesdays.”
“Got it.”
“But Kaira has to clean her own bedroom.” That was important. “So she can learn responsibility.”
Rowan broke into a smile. “Good call. Wish my parents had thought of that one. Still learning, me.”
“Yes, I saw your apartment,” Jordy said wryly.
“Hey! In my defense, someone literally went through with a sledgehammer looking for mold.”
“Relax. I was kidding.” They left their shoes by the hall closet and stepped forward into the living room. “This is where Kaira and I usually spend our time after dinner. Her taste in TV includes hockey and Bluey . She’s coming around to football, though. And she loves nature documentaries.”
“Especially if they’re about armadillos?” Rowan guessed. His eyes flicked up to the tall ceilings, but if the size of Jordy’s living room fazed him, Jordy couldn’t tell.
“Especially those. Kitchen is right here, obviously.” Jordy gestured. The house’s open floor plan was self-explanatory, but he still felt like he had to say it. “I usually cook here if I’m home with Kaira.”
“Is she a picky eater?”
“Depends on the day. Dino nuggets are always a safe bet. Laundry’s through here.” He opened the sliding doors that led into the hidden kitchen behind the regular kitchen. “It’s sort of, uh….”
“Oh, a butler’s kitchen,” Rowan said brightly. “Cool.”
Jordy blinked at him. “A what?”
“A butler.” Rowan gave him a look that said rich people, am I right? “You know, the kitchen where you do the actual cooking so that when people come over, you don’t have to clean up a mess.”
Jordy felt horrified. “ That’s what it’s for?”
“What did you think it was for?”
That… was a good question, actually. “I don’t know. They put the washer and dryer in there. I thought it was kind of a fancy laundry room.” Sometimes Jordy got hungry while folding clothes. He couldn’t be the only one that happened to.
“Anyway, laundry.” Rowan turned to the machines. “Anything I should know about these?”
“Kaira has sensitive skin, so I wash everything with unscented detergent. It’s in here.” Damn, they hadn’t talked about household chores yet. “Ah, I can do her clothes when I’m home—”
Rowan waved this off. “I know this is hard to believe, but even my clumsy arse doesn’t dirty enough clothes in a week to fill that monster. I’m happy to wash our things together if you don’t mind. Especially if you’re cooking when you’re home.” He paused and then backtracked. “I mean—not that I’d expect you to cook for me—”
“No point in both of us having to cook.”
“Right.” Rowan rubbed the back of his head. “Sorry, I’m trying to figure out where the line for roommate-slash-babysitter crosses into something else. Bit difficult as I’ve never had a roommate.”
“I did, when I was a rookie. Lived with the captain for a bit. He didn’t just cook for me, he told me how much more I had to eat.” Jordy paused. “Maybe that’s not a good example of setting normal boundaries.”
Rowan smiled. “Guess we’ll have to use our words. Don’t tell Gem.”
“Cross my heart,” Jordy said, keeping a straight face.
Rowan snickered and opened his mouth—
“Daddy, is it dinnertime?” Kaira stood in the doorway to the butler, rocking slightly and staring up at him with soulful eyes.
He glanced at his watch. “Uh, you know what, peanut? I think it is.”
Jordy led them both into the kitchen and opened the fridge to find the leftovers from last night. “How does curry sound?”
“Delicious!” Kaira bounded forward and looped her arms around his thigh. “The one you made yesterday?”
“Yup.” Jordy pulled containers out of the fridge, set them on the counter, and shut the fridge, only to discover his barnacle was semipermanent. Feigning ignorance, he turned toward the microwave and let out an exaggerated groan. Kaira giggled.
“Jordy,” Rowan said, “are you okay?”
“I don’t know,” Jordy gasped. “There’s something wrong with my leg.” He slowly dragged it, and Kaira, forward, Kaira giggling like a maniac. “It’s so heavy,” Jordy groaned.
Rowan stepped closer, his face the very picture of concern. “Let me look.” He leaned down, then gasped. “Jordy! There’s some kind of strange growth clinging to your leg!”
“My leg?” Jordy made a show of looking down and gasping with surprise. “Oh goodness! There’s a girl on my leg!”
Kaira snorted and gasped. “No, I’m not a girl!”
“You’re not?”
“No. I’m a sloth.”
“A sloth? Rowan, did you let a sloth into my house?”
“Who, me? Let in a sloth? No, I don’t think so.”
Kaira gasped out some pathetic animal noises between giggles. Rowan didn’t remember the sloths at the zoo making any sounds, so he couldn’t attest to their accuracy. Jordy huffed and puffed, pretending to drag her a few steps before asking Rowan for advice.
“Hm, well, I have heard that the best way to un-cling a sloth is….” He stepped closer, hands out. “Tickling.” Kaira shrieked, but Rowan didn’t make contact. He was looking at Jordy, eyebrows raised, asking if he could—or should. Jordy nodded—Kaira would be crying No if she didn’t want to play—and Rowan reached in to gently wriggle his fingers along her ribs.
Kaira squealed in laughter, hugged Jordy’s leg tighter, then let go to flop onto the floor. Rowan hesitated to follow, and Kaira caught her breath enough to say, “Tickle me, Tickle Monster!” Rowan obeyed.
Jordy’s heart melted.
Kaira pulled Rowan into a game of chase that kept them both occupied while Jordy warmed up three plates of food and set the table. This small blessing was followed by another—Kaira was hungry enough to abandon the game the moment Jordy called, “Dinner!”
Rowan refused a beer but accepted a can of Bubly.
“I thought pineapple was the devil’s fruit,” Rowan chirped as he popped it open. He took a long drag, then sighed dramatically and smacked his lips. Kaira giggled into her milk.
“It is. That drink is devil’s brew.” Rowan gave another cheeky smirk, and Jordy sighed. “I guess the pro of having you willingly work through Janice’s untouchable stash will be outweighed by you wanting more. And here I thought I’d finally be able to get it out of my house for good.”
Rowan smirked. “This is the drink of angels. It tastes of fairy dust and unicorn magic.” He winked at Kaira.
“Mr. Rowan, you’re weird,” Kaira told him. “That sounds gross.”
After dinner, Jordy corralled them both for bedtime routine. Rowan hesitated, but Jordy’s raised eyebrow and quiet “What, you gonna do this without practice?” made him step into the bathroom.
He tried at first to stay back and observe, but Kaira wasn’t having it. By the time she was settled into bed, Rowan had been asked to inspect her teeth, given a tour of her bedroom, introduced to her menagerie of stuffed animals, and roped into reading a bedtime story.
“You can read three to me, and then Daddy can read three,” Kaira said magnanimously. She was snuggled in between Bluey and Elmo with Bilbo the Armadillo clasped to her chest.
“Yeah, nice try, kiddo. Two readers does not change the three-book rule. You can have three stories total from both of us.”
Kaira let out a gusty sigh, as if she truly suffered under Jordy’s outrageous dictatorial rule. “Fine. Two stories from Rowan and one from you.”
But after Rowan read the first Bilbo books with such an impressive array of voices, Jordy lost his spot in the lineup. Chuckling, he stepped forward to kiss her head. “Since Rowan’s doing such a great job, I’m going to clean up the kitchen while he tucks you in.” Rowan looked slightly alarmed, but Jordy just smiled. Rowan totally had this. “Good night, peanut.”
“Night, Daddy!” She reached up to give him a strangling hug.
At the door, Jordy glanced back and was gratified to see neither was watching him. They were too engrossed in the story of Bilbo’s bus-tour holiday.
Jordy was wiping down the counters, the kitchen tidied, when Rowan arrived, having escaped his charge.
“She manage to con you into any extra books?”
“Are you impugning my honor as a children’s librarian, a reader of books to small humans, by suggesting that I would be unable to maintain a book limit?” Rowan asked with mock outrage.
“Yes.”
Rowan slumped against the counter. “Okay, so maybe she talked me into rereading the first book. But that was my fault. I forgot about his rocking chair, so clearly I hadn’t been paying close enough attention the first go-round.”
“Ah, so you’re a sucker.” Jordy nodded.
“Maybe,” Rowan agreed with a hint of a smile.
“You know your life is going to be easier if you stick to the three-books rule, right?”
“Technically we didn’t break the three-book rule—” Jordy shot him a look from his place at the sink as he filled two glasses with water. “Okay, okay, I know. But it was the first time, I figured a little rule-breaking couldn’t hurt just this once.”
“Guess you’ll find out soon enough when you’re home alone with her and I’m in another city.”
“Thanks,” Rowan said dryly.
Smirking, Jordy motioned for him to have a seat at the kitchen table and flipped open the folder he’d created after Janice’s announcement. He dreaded having to go through all this again, but now that he was faced with it, it didn’t feel so horrible.
“So, this is the contract Janice had. I figured we could start there.” He handed Rowan a clean copy and a pen. “For changes.”
“Changes?”
“Well, we already agreed that you can’t be the primary daytime caregiver right now, so let’s figure out what will and won’t work for you.”
Because Jordy’s lawyer was thorough—and because Jordy had what Emma called “control-freak tendencies”—the contract was specific about what household chores were and weren’t part of the job.
“There’s a clause stating that I’m only responsible for curbing the garbage when you’re not in the house?”
“What, you want the job full-time?”
“No, no. Just wasn’t expecting this level of detail.”
Jordy shrugged. “I want you to not hate me and quit in a huff because I asked too much or I’m not clear about what I need.”
Rowan hummed and kept reading.
Half an hour later, they had finished making all the changes, including a tense battle over salary. Rowan refused to take the full amount Janice had earned since he didn’t have her experience and wouldn’t be doing the full job, and Jordy refused to cut the percentage down to his suggested fifty. That was a ridiculous lowball for the time and energy, no matter how much Rowan would save on housing costs. Jordy only won in the end by pointing out that it was a short-term gig and Rowan was saving him a lot of stress and worry over the coming months.
“Great.” Jordy snapped pictures and forwarded them to Gem so she could make the changes and send the new contract their way. “She’ll probably send it in the morning. I don’t have anything scheduled tomorrow except for my workout, and I’ve already arranged for Kaira to visit with Adrianna—uh, my teammate’s wife. So you’re off the hook for another twenty-four hours at least. We can figure out the rest of the week after things are signed.”
Rowan nodded. “Right.”
They sat in growing silence. It struck Jordy then that, for the first time since meeting him, he wasn’t sure what to do in Rowan’s presence. There’d always been a task to do or a child to mind. For the first time, they had neither. They were also stuck in a limbo state where their relationship was anything but defined.
“Well, since you’re technically not my employee, I have absolutely no say in what you do right now. I’m going to grab a drink and find something to watch on TV. You’re welcome to join, but I won’t be offended if you call it a night or go out for the evening.”
Rowan chewed his lip, then shrugged. “I wouldn’t say no to another one of those pineapple drinks.”
Jordy pulled a face and showed Rowan where to find more of the vile things, and decided not to question why he was so relieved to have the continued company. The week had been long, and tonight was not a night for dental explorations of gift horses.
IT TURNED out that Jordy and Kaira’s summertime routine was pretty loose, apart from restrictions on TV time and a formula to keep bedtime going smoothly. Jordy said he mostly tried to go with the flow during the day and get as much fun time with his daughter as he could. But as August was winding down, the schedule became more complicated.
Jordy hadn’t been lying when he told Rowan he could lay out his schedule for the next several months. He sent Rowan a digital calendar with all of his NHL-related commitments filled in from now until June.
“Not all of them,” Jordy said ruefully. “Some of the charitable stuff isn’t firmed up yet. And of course it’s not like stuff can’t change.”
“Like rescheduling a game?” The idea of one’s adult life being so regimented was a bit daunting.
“Nah, well, not unless one has to get canceled because of weather or something. More like, if I have to miss a game, or if something happens so they want to book another interview.” He shrugged. “But those are pretty minor. The out-of-town stuff isn’t likely to change.”
Rowan had linked Jordy’s calendar to his own so he could figure out how their schedules combined. Then he promptly took over conservatorship of the family calendar in the kitchen.
Using whiteboard markers, Rowan blocked out of all Jordy’s work commitments in Shield blue and then used the red to mark in his own work schedule. By some miracle, the conflicts were minimal, and most of them had easy enough Kaira workarounds for the next few weeks. Once the school year started, it would be even easier.
For the first few days, they lucked out. Jordy was mostly around when Rowan was, so Rowan didn’t have a lot of one-on-one time with Kaira. But their luck ran out, and soon enough Rowan had a day off and Jordy left the house after breakfast with a kiss goodbye for Kaira and a reminder that he wouldn’t be back until after dinner.
Rowan and Kaira eyed each other in the silent entryway. He wondered if she was also questioning all her life choices that had led to this moment.
“Can we watch Puppy Pals ?”
“Uh, I don’t think after breakfast is a good time for TV,” Rowan said, mostly confident thanks to Jordy’s set routines around TV usage.
“Fine,” Kaira sighed, like she couldn’t believe she had to deal with such ridiculous limitations on her free time but was willing to go along to get along. “What can we do, then?”
“Uh,” Rowan repeated. “Well. What would you like to do?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I asked you.”
Right. Point. This was so much easier at the library, where he had a specific program to deliver, often developed by someone else. “Well, do you want to play something at home? Or do you want to leave the house for an adventure?”
Kaira carefully considered these two options and the rain falling outside. “Stay home.”
“Great. Do you wanna make something or play something?”
A few questions—and a lot of hemming and hawing—later, they ended up in the kitchen.
Thanks to contributions from Rowan’s former kitchen, they had everything they needed to make nankhatai. The cookies were simple to make, which made them simple and an appropriate task for a six-year-old.
Kaira was clearly used to baking or cooking with someone, because she pulled out a stepstool and set it up at the counter and then pulled two aprons out of a drawer in the butler.
“You can wear this one,” she said and handed over a black apron. “It’s Daddy’s.”
Rowan shook it open and nearly choked on his own spit. The plain black apron’s center bib was adorned with simple white text that read Kitchen Daddy .
“Thank you, Kaira. Where did Daddy get this cool apron?”
Kaira slipped her own apron over her head—it was pink and unicorn themed—and blinked up at him. “Auntie Emma gave it to him after she visited. She says everyone should have an apron so they don’t get their clothes dirty.”
“I see.” He wouldn’t laugh. “Are you sure he won’t mind me borrowing such a great gift?”
Kaira nodded. “Yes. Daddy says aprons are made to be used and that he wants to use that one so much it gets ruined and has to be replaced.”
“I bet he does,” Rowan strangled out as he busied himself with putting the apron on and avoiding eye contact with a guileless child.
Once they were both suitably attired, Rowan located bowls and measuring cups and Kaira clambered up onto her step stool to help.
Rowan measured out the sugar and ghee, but gladly gave in to Kaira’s demands to help and let her dump them into the bowl. He let her start the mixing process but figured he’d have to finish up to make sure it was smooth.
“What are we making?” she asked as she flailed the spoon around the bowl.
“Nankhatai. Cookies,” he tacked on, since he doubted she’d heard of this treat before.
Kaira frowned at the bowl and mumbled, “Nankhatai,” as if testing out the word.
“My nani used to make them for me all the time,” he told her. “Nani lived in Canada for a long time, but she was born in Pakistan, which is where she learned how to make these.”
“Is that far away?”
“Very. It’s on the other side of the world. You have to fly for almost a day to get there from here.”
Her hand stopped moving and she looked up at him very seriously. “Is it close to India?”
Rowan blinked in surprise. He hadn’t expected her to have that good a grasp on world geography. “Right next door. Actually, they were once part of the same country.” A vast oversimplification of thousands of years of culture and history, but Rowan didn’t think Kaira was old enough for a full geopolitical breakdown of desi politics.
“So it’s kinda the same as India?”
Another vast oversimplification, but…. “Kind of, like Canada and the US are similar.”
“Oh.” Kaira considered the bowl in front of her, then turned to Rowan and said, “Daddy says my birth daddy is Indian.”
“Oh.” There was a lot to unpack there. Like that Kaira had a birth father or that he might not be white. “Do you, um, get to spend time with your birth dad?” seemed like a safe question to start with.
“No. Daddy says that he wanted a baby so bad that Auntie Emma had a miracle baby. Auntie Emma got to give me to Daddy like a present, but she needed my birth daddy to help make me, but he couldn’t be a daddy yet. So I don’t know him, but my dada and dadi send me birthday presents. And Daddy says I should get to do and see as much Indian stuff as I want, because it’s part of my hair-ee-tage.”
And Rowan thought the “birth daddy” comment was a lot to process. Apparently she was also in touch with her birth father’s parents.
“Well, then, you are in luck. Because nankhatai cookies are made in India too. I bet your dada and dadi know all about them.”
“They are?” Kaira stared up at him, wide-eyed.
“Yup, they are. A real desi treat.”
Rowan had taken over the mixing of the sugar and butter during the conversation, since Kaira was thoroughly distracted, and it was now ready for the next step.
Kaira was now laser focused as Rowan walked her through adding the flour and semolina and mixing it together with their hands.
It was hard to tell which she liked more—the hand mixing or the shaping of the cookies—but by the time they reached the baking stage, her interest had waned. Considering she’d been occupied for a good half hour, Rowan wasn’t surprised.
Rowan placed the cookie sheets in the oven and set a timer for twenty minutes. “So, what are we going to do while we wait for cookies?”