Chapter 13
SUMMER
Ashot of water blasts through the window, dousing our hair, our faces, our clothes.
So much for that after-dinner entertainment.
Quinn’s and my shrieks fill the cardboard space as I lift her by the underarms and attempt to squeeze us both through the makeshift door. There are sprinklers shooting from every corner of the yard, drenching any dry spots that were left.
Rhett is jogging across the grass from the garage when I look up. He scoops Quinn from my arms and drags the box fort by the window. When we make it to the patio, we’re all staring in a state of shock at what transpired in a matter of seconds.
“I’m so sorry. I had no idea they were going off tonight,” he apologizes.
“Da-eee wet!” Quinn complains, peeling her palms from his soaked shirt and shaking them off.
“You’re wet.” He holds up a clump of curls in front of her eyes.
She sticks out her tongue and captures the droplets that fall from the ends of her hair.
A smile stretches across his face, rivulets running through the maze of tiny crinkles around his eyes.
Then he’s laughing. He’s looking at her as if she holds everything good in the world.
Tucking her under his chin and squeezing her tight.
It’s a tender moment. One that has me desperately yearning for the same kind of love in my life.
The moment ends when he makes a break for the back door. He stops when Quinn shouts.
“No! Da-eee see?” She points to the crumpling structure that used to be her hideout.
I get the impression from the guilty look on his face that he’s never been inside. His eyes drop to the watch on his wrist. The hands are big enough to read from here: seven o’clock. He still has another hour in his studio, and it’s Quinn’s bedtime.
I hold out my hands. “I can take her in and get her ready.”
He shakes his head. “No, it’s okay. I’m all done for the night. Besides, I think I have a cool fort to see.”
I cringe at the soggy cardboard, one side already collapsing in on itself. “Better take the chance while you still can.”
He snorts and sets her on her feet. “Better.”
Quinn drags him by the hand through the opening. When I made the door for this thing, I wasn’t intending for a grown man to squeeze through it. He chuckles when his shoulders get stuck and tears a section of cardboard away to fit.
“Wow,” I hear him exclaim when he makes it inside. “This is cool!”
It’s nothing special, especially now. But the way their voices escalate makes me feel more appreciated than I have in a long time.
I wait outside the entrance, unsure if I should go in the house and let them have their time together.
A shiver passes through me as wet clothes cling to my skin, but I’m too busy listening in on their conversation to care.
Glass clinks, and I know she’s showing him her collection of critters now—two ants, a moth, and a praying mantis. The fact that the jars survived the choppy ride across the grass and the collapsing cardboard is a small miracle.
A minute later, she peeks her head out the front door and waves. “Tum in!”
Not only was the door not built for adults but the space inside wasn’t made to fit two of them. I fight my way through the opening, trip, and land with a plop right on a lap of muscle. I scramble for purchase on something to help me stand, but all I’m doing is ripping holes in the cardboard.
“Relax. I don’t bite.” His voice is a rumbly sound in my ear, an octave below his usual one.
You sure about that? I want to joke, but it gets lodged in my throat.
My pulse hammers across my skin. There’s no way he can’t feel it with us pressed together.
Quinn’s jabbering a whole bunch of nonsense, or maybe it’s fluent sentences, how the hell am I supposed to know when my attention is glued to the hand that’s stroking a circular pattern on my knee.
Aside from yesterday when he gripped my wrist, Rhett’s never touched me before.
I didn’t know I’d need a warning if he ever did again—a chance to gather my senses before they all went haywire.
My first day on the job and I’ve ended up in my boss’s lap. This would already be completely unprofessional by any standard, but especially with his daughter right here.
I clear my throat, vaulting myself in an ungraceful exit out the door. “Last one inside is a rotten egg!”
The mention of a game lures Quinn right out and into the house, with Rhett trailing behind her.
He snags a hand towel from the kitchen on the way, mopping up the trail of water we leave behind.
There’s technically another forty-five minutes before my nanny hours end, but if he’s not going back out to his studio, I imagine he doesn’t need me. “I should head out,” I alert him as he carries Quinn to the stairs.
He stops on the second step. “You’re not driving home like that.”
I know he’s referring to the clothes that are plastered to my skin. The ones that would soak the seat of my car if I left right now. To show him I don’t care, I wave a hand at him. “It’s fine, I—”
“You can use the room across the hall from Quinn’s. There’s a shirt in the top drawer, sweats in the bottom.”
He doesn’t wait for my response. I stand there for a minute longer after he’s already gone.
I shouldn’t stay. There’s no need to. The problem is… I want to.
Another minute passes before curiosity carries me after them.
I’ve never seen this part of the house before.
There’s a long hallway at the landing with three doors spread out.
The farthest one on the right is cracked, showcasing floral wallpaper and a naked toddler fleeing large hands that are threatening to tickle her.
I don’t know how long Quinn’s bedtime routine lasts, so I hustle toward the door he told me to go in.
I flick on the light and am met with rich brown walls and a faded bedspread. The whole room is filled with warmth, but that’s not what has me closing my eyes. It smells like him—a mix of expensive cologne and Tide laundry detergent.
This is Rhett’s room.
I run a hand over an old dresser, stopping at a picture of a decade-younger version of the guy I’ve been getting to know, his sister I’m now working with, and another boy in a cap and gown. I’m gathering he’s a close friend with the way Rhett’s arm drapes over his shoulder.
Another shiver wracks my body. One that’s difficult to ignore without the distraction of Rhett and Quinn this time. I give in to the dry clothes I was promised, stripping everything off but my underwear.
There are two pairs of gray sweats in the bottom drawer of the dresser.
I grab one of them and shimmy them up my legs.
It requires cinching the drawstring as tight as it will go to keep them from falling back down to my ankles.
Basic tees line the top drawer, and I opt for the black one, hoping like hell it hides the fact that I’m now braless and still freezing.
By the time I slip into the hall, the small sliver of Quinn’s room is black. My eyes adjust to the darkness as he tucks the covers up to her chin.
I hear him whisper good night and watch her latch onto the sides of his face with two tiny palms. She pulls him in close and kisses him on the forehead, right above the bridge of his nose and between his eyebrows.
I can only make out shadows from here, but I picture his whole face softening like it did on the patio.
I’m still staring when he leaves her room and cracks the door.
“Thank you for the clothes,” I whisper. That’s the real reason I stayed lingering in the hallway. Just to tell him that. Definitely not for another chance to talk to him before I have to go home.
He’s still soaked, the wet strands of hair sending streaks of water down his cheeks. Without thinking, I reach up and swipe one of them away.
His eyes drop from my face, which is now heating as he takes in his baggy clothes on my frame. “Would you like a drink?”
A drink is exactly what I need with the vigorous cardiac workout my heart is putting me through.
Water would probably be best, but who’s to say alcohol won’t cool my pounding pulse.
I’m technically off the clock since Quinn’s asleep, so I guess he wouldn’t judge me for accepting. He’s the one offering.
“Sure.”
“I’ll just be a minute,” he says.
By the time he meets me downstairs, he’s wearing the other pair of gray sweatpants I saw in his drawer.
“Thank you… for tonight,” he gets out. “She’s rarely affectionate with me.
” It’s the most unsteady in his words I’ve ever heard him.
A stark contrast to the calculated commentary he usually hits me with.
The astonished look in his eyes also suggests he believes I’m the reason for the affectionate gesture he received from Quinn tonight. I know that’s not true.
“She’s really great,” I say, hoping it conveys how much I liked my time with her. How much I like it here.
The living room light is off, the kitchen one spilling in to compensate. Upstairs I could only make out shadows, but down here, I notice details. The faint crease between his brows. The subtle droop of his mouth. The slight downcast of his eyes.
“She always asks for her mom when I put her to bed. She didn’t tonight. Do you think that means she’s forgetting her?”
It’s hard to look at him when I don’t know how to answer that heartbreaking question. She is little. How long does a child actually remember someone who isn’t in their life every day?
“Maybe she didn’t feel like she needed her mom tonight. She has you.”
He offers me a smile. It’s reluctant, but it’s there.
He tucks his hands in his pockets. “Listen… about the principal…”
We’re standing at the foot of the stairs. We still haven’t even made it into the kitchen for that drink, and I could care less. I’d be okay if we spent the rest of the night right here in this magical spot where he’s opening up to me.
“Brian,” I fill in for him.