4. Flint
When I hear the back door open, I rise to greet Aspen, noting the time on my diamond-studded Rolex.
“Stay here and play a minute, okay, lovey?” I tell Lily, but I doubt she even heard me, her mind fully involved in the shape puzzle in front of her on the table.
She’s early, I think, pleased that Aspen was ready to go, even though I’d sent Ryan to pick her up almost an hour earlier than she needed to be here.
But when I turn the corner into the kitchen, I find myself alone. Frowning, I retreat outside to look for the nanny, but to my dismay, I realize what happened. Caden swept her away on his motorcycle. His bike isn’t in the open garage, and neither is my long-time friend.
That guy and his stupid stunts, I grumble silently, retracing my steps back into the house where I now encounter my driver and Zoe’s husband.
“Where’s the nanny?”
“Oh… Caden was just with her,” Ryan explains, appearing contrite. “He asked me to bring her bags up.”
“Any idea where they went?”
He offers me a blank look. “Went?”
I roll my eyes heavenward and stifle a sigh. “Never mind, Ryan.”
“Did I do something wrong?”
“You didn’t,” I reassure him, again checking the time.
I have half a mind to call Caden and order him to bring Aspen back to the house, but I know full well that if I do, he’ll just keep her out until the last feasible moment out of spite.
“Papa Flint…”
I turn to look into the solemn brown eyes of my small charge, my initial irritation immediately dissolving. “Yes, lovey?”
“Can I have a popsicle?”
“Lily Ann Marie Parker, you may not have a popsicle at eight-thirty in the morning.”
A small pout forms on her rosebud mouth, but she brightens again like she didn’t even ask. “Is my new nanny coming today?”
“You already know she is,” I reply, scooping her up to sit her on one barstool at the kitchen island. “Haven’t you been asking me every day since you met her?”
“I like her. She’s pretty.”
Something stirs inside me as Lily mentions Aspen’s attractiveness. It didn’t escape my attention, either.
“Is she?” I say vaguely.
“She looks like Mommy.”
My blood runs slightly cold, slowing my breathing for half a second. “Your mommy?” I croak.
“She looks just like the picture by my elephant lamp in my room,” Lily reminds me. Heat and cold wash over me in unison.
“She does, doesn’t she?” I rasp.
Until that moment, I truly hadn’t made the connection between Alexandra and Aspen, but now that Lily said it, the resemblance is more than passing. Both share the wide, sloe eyes and thick, russet waves. Aspen is a few inches taller than Lily’s late mother, but their slim, tone figures are the same.
Is that why we were all in consensus with her? Because she reminds us of Alex?
For months following Sonia’s retirement, the three of us could not agree on a single nanny good enough for Lily. If one of us approved, the other two would shut her down. Only two made it to the interview process, and all three of us had nixed them almost as soon as they had walked in the door.
But Aspen is different, and our old-soul ward, with her enormous eyes and absolutely no recollection of her biological parents, likely hit the nail on the head with why.
How did I not see that before?
Zoom!Screech!
“Papa Caden is home!” Lily announces without looking out the window. She knows the sound of his bike and the motors of our individual cars too well.
I glance at the wall clock in the kitchen, ready to huff at Caden for keeping Aspen out past her starting time, but there are still three minutes until the clock strikes nine, and they both amble into the kitchen before I have any right to complain.
I imagine that Aspen arrived better coiffed than she appears in the moment, her shoulder-length hair spilling haphazardly from a bun at the back of her neck. She pulls her skirt down as she moves, slightly wobbly, as if the ground is spinning beneath her. She offers me a sheepish smile, which I can’t help but return. Even in total disarray, she’s so beautiful.
“Hi!” Lily chirps before I can think of something sarcastic to say. “You’re my new nanny!”
I give Caden a side-eye glower, but he snatches up an apple from the fruit bowl and crunches into it, his hazel stare meeting mine evenly.
“I know, Lily,” Aspen replies, pulling her gaze from mine to address our ward. She crouches down. “I’m Aspen. Aspen Palco. I’m so excited to hang out and play with you.”
She extends her hand, and I notice her gleaming nails. She’s obviously given herself a manicure.
Lily seems impressed with the adult way Aspen greets her and accepts her proffered hand.
“And how old are you, Miss Lily? Seven? Eight?” Aspen guesses, her eyes shining.
I step back to stand beside Caden as they interact, my chest tightening to see a wide, genuine grin on Lily’s face.
She is far from an unhappy child, but there has always been something missing in her life: her parents, obviously. As lovely as Sonia was, she was generations out of touch and far too old to keep up with the needs and energy of a curious and rambunctious Lily, particularly in her toddler years. Aspen will be exactly what she needs.
“I’m four!” Lily cries. “I’m not in school yet!”
“Next year,” I interject quickly, tension forming inside me at the mention of school. There are so many additional factors to navigate once she enters the world, ones we can’t protect her from. “We opted out of preschool.”
“I want to go,” Lily mutters, folding her arms over her chest, and again, my heart pierces with worry. “I want to play with other kids.”
“Pre-K isn’t that much fun, anyway,” Aspen confidentially informs Lily, catching my distressed expression. “And you’re going to have lots of other kids to play with, I promise.”
Lily’s face lights up in another smile. “Can we have popsicles for breakfast?” she asks in a loud whisper.
“I’m standing right here, Lily,” I tell her sternly and give Aspen a look of disapproval.
“Let’s assume the same rules apply with me as they do with your—” She abruptly cuts herself off, the blood draining from her face as she looks to us desperately, the question on her face palpable.
She wants to know what Lily calls us.
“Same rules with your nanny as with your papas,” Caden interjects smoothly. “All right, Lilbug?”
Aspen winks and rises as I turn to Caden in disgust. “Do you ever wear a shirt these days?”
Caden looks down at his bare chest and laughs as if he only just realizes he’s not wearing one.
“I could probably use a shower, too,” he agrees. “Want me to show Aspen to her room?”
“Oh! I want to show her!” Lily begs, reaching eagerly for the nanny’s hand.
Aspen purposely avoids both our gazes and fixes her eyes on the little girl. “I would like that.”
“Good. Fine,” I say. “Let’s do a quick tour of the house. I can set you up with the necessary phone numbers in your new phone after you sign your employment contract, and then I have to get back to work.”
The young woman blinks once, as if my litany of instructions has caught her off-guard, but she keeps the serene smile on her face as she nods.
“Okay, fine,” she concedes pleasantly. “Lead the way.”
I glance at the time on my Rolex again and then look at my phone. It’s barely nine a.m., and the emails are already piling in. At least now, with Aspen here, I can focus more on my work and less on Lily. I can’t afford any more distractions.
* * *
Lily plays in the hallway, some game with the shadows that I’ve never fully grasped but is best left alone.
Aspen sits in front of me, gaping over the contract before her.
“Is something wrong?” I ask, trying to keep the impatience out of my voice.
The tour of the eight-bedroom, twelve-bathroom house took longer than I’d planned for, Aspen’s awe entrancing me. I couldn’t bring myself to rush her along when she was so enamored with the décor and Pike’s artwork.
But my phone won’t stop ringing in the pocket of my suit jacket. I need to get back to work.
“It’s… it’s like fifty pages long!” Aspen sighs. “I’ve never had to sign an employment contract this long before.”
“Do you need to get your lawyer to look at it?”
Her dumbfounded expression only expands. “My lawyer?” she chokes, and I stifle a sigh.
“It’s really standard stuff, Aspen. You know who we are, and you understand our situation. This protects us, Lily, and you.”
She raises her chin and looks at me straight, her intelligent eyes fixated on my face. “From what exactly?”
Her direct query catches me off guard, but I maintain composure, careful not to let her see that she’s fazed me. “From the outside. We’ve worked really damn hard these past two and a half years to give Lily some semblance of security and normalcy. But the world out there is cold and cruel. Do I really need to explain this to you? You were in the system, weren’t you? You know how awful the world can be.”
She purses her lips and lowers her gaze.
“I won’t let anything happen to that little girl,” I continue, a fire burning inside me. “Not as long as I’m around to stop it.”
Aspen’s delicate brow wrinkles, and she stares at me, but before she can speak, Lily scampers into my office and throws herself into my lap.
“Papa Flint, are you going to take me on a teddy bear picnic today?”
My mood instantly shifts to embrace the child in front of me.
“Is it Tuesday today?” Brushing her dark hair aside, I smile at her sweet face.
“I dunno. I’m four.”
Aspen smothers a laugh. But when I look at her again, I see the appreciation shining in her eyes, her hands reaching for the pen I’d slid across the desk earlier. She scrawls her name at the end of the contract and rises from her chair as Lily glances at her.
“You can come on our teddy bear picnic too,” she reassures Aspen. “We go every week, down to the creek.”
Aspen’s eyes widen as if she recognizes that it’s not a playful encounter that Lily manifested in her mind, and heat rises to my neck. But I’m not embarrassed. The teddy bear picnics have been a tradition on Tuesdays every week since we took custody of her. If I’m away on business, Caden or Pike take the lead, but neither has ever complained. Not when it comes to Lily.
“I would love to join your teddy bear picnic,” she tells the child, and Lily’s face lights up like a firework.
“Can we go, Papa Flint?”
“It’s not Tuesday, darling,” I sigh, not wanting to disappoint her. If I did not have so much work to do today, I would take her anyway, but she could not have asked on a worse day.
But that’s just my life, isn’t it? I’m always stuck cleaning up someone else’s messes. Never able to do what I want to do.
But Aspen had a solution.
“Can you show me where you go for the teddy bear picnic?” she asks Lily. “So I’m prepared tomorrow?”
This compromise appeases her, and Lily gestures affirmatively, taking the woman’s hand. Aspen flashes me a gorgeous smile that gives me a semi hard-on, much to my shock. I follow her undulating hips all the way out the door as I sit back in my swivel chair, exhaling slowly. But the moment of peaceful, horny elation passes as my office phone and cell phone chime in unison.
There’s no rest for the wicked, after all.