Chapter 19 #2
Wrestling a little kid into snow pants, boots, coat, mittens, hat, and anchoring a backpack on their back was a northern New England Olympic nannying sport, and Kylie’s old muscle memory kicked in. It’s not as if there weren’t plenty of snow in Indiana, but this part of Maine was extra.
Extra everything.
Including a hot cop she’d like to do something extra with.
She’d slept in her clothes, not having a specific plan for how to handle nannying overnight, so it was easy to put on her own boots and outerwear. Harriet stood by the door, watching.
Kylie’s hand was on the doorknob when Harriet said, “You’re forgetting Jester.”
“Jester?”
At the mention of his name, the golden retriever leaped over to them, tail going nuts, head under Kylie’s gloved hand.
“Daddy and Aunt Colleen and Uncle Kell and Nicole and Mrs. Petrinelli and Gamma and Gampa take him with us to the bus stop.”
“Oh! Sure.” Kylie grabbed the leash from the hook next to the door and hooked him on as she considered Harriet’s words. It took a village to keep this household functioning.
And with that, they were off.
Luke’s instructions for finding the bus stop were easy enough: stop sign at the corner of Clannaugh and Main. A cluster of kids in basically the same outerwear as Harriet were all standing there when they arrived, their mothers looking curiously at Kylie.
“Nicole’s really gone, huh?” one of them asked, not bothering to raise her sunglasses, which were mirrored and reminded Kylie of the evil-queen stepmother in Snow White.
“Hi,” Kylie said, dodging the question. “I’m Kylie.”
“We know who you are, hon,” she said in that tone.
The tone Kylie hated.
Even Jester stopped wagging his tail.
“You know, sweetie,” Mirror Mirror on the Wall said, bending down at the waist, hovering over Harriet. “I keep telling your daddy I’m happy to come over and help make life easier for him.”
The purr in her voice made Kylie’s hackles raise.
Ah. Now the tone made more sense.
This one wanted Luke.
“I guess Luke didn’t need you,” Kylie replied before she had the sense to shut her mouth. It was out there, though; her years in New York had given her a thicker skin than most folks realized.
“Excuse me?” Mirror raised her glasses, revealing a perfectly made-up face, Instagram-ideal lashes, and a sneer that could peel paint.
“Did you apply to be Luke’s nanny?” Kylie challenged, playing dumb.
“She applied to be Luke’s something,” another mom cracked, earning titters from the two others and a nasty, head-whipping glare from Mirror.
All four women were older than Kylie, somewhere between five and ten years older, so she didn’t try to pattern match and retrieve old memories from years ago. This group was virgin territory, and first encounters meant something in a small town.
She was no one here. Someone who left and came back, but didn’t have a role.
Her identity now depended entirely on Harriet and Luke.
The bus rumbled along and stopped, pneumatic doors wheezing as they opened and the kids climbed on. Harriet ran to the first step, turned around, and waved to Kylie.
She returned the wave, smile plastered on her face, holding Jester back from running onto the fun bus full of kids.
Mirror stomped off to a running SUV not more than thirty feet from the bus stop and drove away. Kylie waited until the bus door closed to begin her walk back.
One of the moms stopped her, hand extended. They shook through thick gloves.
“You don’t remember me, but I’m Izzy Chassi.”
“Izzy? I remember an Izzy who used to babysit me, but your last name was different.”
She smiled. “Right. Maiden name was Morgenstern. I married a Chassi.”
Kylie laughed with recognition. “You always let us eat the entire huge bag of chips and the two-liter bottle of soda Mom and Dad left for you to snack on, and you never told them where it really went.”
Izzy laughed, shaking her head, long beach curls poking out from under a thick wool cap. Her face had no makeup, eye lashes short, face gaunt.
“I did that for every family I babysat for. Never liked that kind of junk food anyway. I’m more of an ice-cream-and-brownie-binge kind of gal. Welcome back!”
“Thanks.”
“You’ve made quite a splash.”
“Guess so.”
“Don’t mind Mindy.”
“Mindy?”
“The bi-otch back there.”
Kylie snorted. “Glad I’m not the only one who thought that.”
“She’s divorced. Been hitting on Luke for a long time. He’s clearly not interested.”
Yay, Luke, for having taste! she thought, but couldn’t say.
“Better get used to that, though.”
“What?”
“A little unsolicited advice: There are no fewer than six women in town who are vying for the position of the next Mrs. Luke Luview. You’ve become a complication.”
“Me? Because I’m Harriet’s nanny?”
“No. No one was threatened by Nicole. But they all know about you. Some of them remember how you kissed him at camp right before you left.”
Flabbergasted, Kylie felt faint. “They what?”
“It’s stupid, right? We left that kind of stuff behind in middle school, except–some of us didn’t. Welcome back to Luview, Kylie. Nothing in the past ever stays there.”
Izzy’s phone dinged with a text.
“Shoot. Work issue. Gotta go.”
And with that, she broke out into a jog, leaving Kylie with a dog eager to chase a squirrel that just crossed the road, and a nagging sense that nothing about Luke was what it seemed.
One thing, though, was for sure:
She wasn’t about to eat any apples offered by Mindy.