4. Jonah
He’d been listening for her car, standing in the entryway in his chef’s whites with Atlas on his hip and his knife bag by the door.
He’d told himself his low-grade case of nerves was about starting an internship for a top chef at a name restaurant…
but he couldn’t completely rule out the possibility that his stress was tied to the new nanny.
“You hear that, bud?” Jonah nestled his five-month-old son closer. “Your girl’s here.”
Atlas gave a kick.
“Your girl,” Jonah corrected, “because she is definitely not my girl, and we are going to be very strict with ourselves on that point at all times. Are we clear, Atlas Lawson?”
Atlas blew a bubble.
“I’ll take that as a ‘heard, Chef.’” Jonah took a breath, sneaking a peek through the sidelight to watch her walk up the steps to the front door of the Summer House.
Oh, man. Of course she looked adorably perfect, from that loose knot in her hair down to scuffed Chucks that were next-level charming.
In between was a white T-shirt tucked into khaki shorts, a tote slung over her shoulder, and the lithe figure of a woman who could dance en pointe and pirouette straight into his heart.
Exactly where—according to her father—she could not go.
“Okay, buddy. Game face. For both of us.”
He opened the door before she could ring the bell, nearly blinded by beauty and brown eyes and lashes that just didn’t know when to quit.
“The cavalry has arrived,” Pepper announced.
He opened his mouth to say something, but before he did, Atlas flung his arms out, all baby blue eyes and grabby fingers, and made the breathless noise that meant he saw something he wanted.
“I’d say he’s glad to see you,” Jonah said, his voice even as he passed her the baby. “We both are.”
She softened against Atlas and kissed his cheek.
Jonah looked at the floor for one full second, because there were certain images a man could not afford to file directly into long-term memory if he wanted to function at a professional kitchen later that night.
“Thanks for coming early,” he said, and stepped back so she could walk in. “You can plan on three-thirty from now on, but it was crazy here on Saturday during the wedding, and I wanted to give you an official tour and run through Atlas’s schedule again.”
“Works for me.”
“And did it work for…” He had to know. He had to ask. “Your dad?”
As of Saturday, when she’d come here for Tessa’s wedding to help him with Atlas and get the lay of the land—because she was definitely not his date—she had not told her father she’d taken the part-time nanny job.
That mattered because her father, his most important professor in the culinary arts program he was enrolled in, had made it clear that he did not want Jonah to get involved with his daughter.
And then somehow, through some force outside of nature, Pepper became the nanny Jonah so desperately needed.
“Dad knows I took a gig,” she said breezily.
“For me?” he pressed.
“For…someone.”
“Pepper.” He gave her a look of disbelief. “You should have—”
“I’m twenty-six years old,” she said, a measure of lightness leaving her voice. “He doesn’t see my paychecks or approve my life choices.”
But he held Jonah’s academic career in his right hand. The one that wielded a dangerous chef’s knife. “I think he should know you’re working for me. Conflict of interest and all.”
“Whose interest?”
“The interest I have in my GPA and future,” he replied.
She flicked a hand. “I’ll tell him eventually. He’s happy I’m not breathing down his neck at his office for three days a week and he’ll be overjoyed that you’ve figured out your childcare issues. He told you to do that twenty times.”
Maybe three times. Still, he tipped his head in concession.
It was her call, but he wasn’t a fan of secrets.
They had a way of coming back to bite you…
right in the old GPA. Not to mention Chef Broussard had stuck his neck out to help Jonah get the internship at Driftwood, and could probably end it easily.
“Come on, let me babysit.” She shooed him through the entryway, dropping her keys in the bowl like she already knew the house driveway rules. “Show me around.”
She slid the bag off her shoulder and adjusted Atlas on her hip to step into the open living space. Atlas, chewing his fist, kicked and fussed. “Be still, sweet pea.”
She laid her hand flat on his back and rubbed one slow circle, and Atlas dropped his head onto her shoulder and exhaled, miraculously still.
Yeah, she was the right person for the job. The only person and the right person.
“I don’t have to leave for twenty minutes,” he said, “so you get the deluxe tour—all three floors and a few introductions, in case you forgot who you met at the wedding.”
“Will everyone be here when I am?”
“In and out. They have lives, which is why I decided to hire you instead of depending on grabbing whoever looked bored and like they owed me a favor.” He shifted his weight. “I ran out of favors, to be honest, and I couldn’t impose. It’s a big family, they want to help, but Atlas is my…”
“You don’t want to say problem, do you?”
He laughed and tapped his son on the nose. “He’s the greatest thing that ever happened to me and I would move heaven and earth to make him happy. Instead, I just hired an…” Angel. “Nanny,” he said instead.
Something flickered across her face—disappointment? Amusement? He couldn’t tell because Atlas tried to grab some strands of her hair around her face, but she wrestled it free and gave Jonah a sunny look that made him feel approximately fifteen years old.
“Lead on, Chef.”
“That’s Student Chef to you,” he said.
“Noted.”
She followed him to the staircase, and they’d gone up three steps when his Aunt Vivien’s voice came from above them. “Is that the lovely Pepper I hear?”
Aunt Vivien appeared at the top of the stairs in a flowy summer dress, smiling in a way that never failed to charm a room, usually one she’d decorated with impeccable taste. She came down the stairs and kissed Pepper’s cheek as if they’d been doing it for years.
“Oh, good. We didn’t scare you off at the wedding.”
“Not even close,” Pepper said. “You had me at ‘Walkin’ On Sunshine.’”
Vivien laughed, obviously delighted. “The house anthem. You better teach it to Atlas as your first assignment. Do you live locally, then? I thought I heard a little New Orleans in your voice.”
“I was born and raised there, but now I live here, with my dad. He’s—”
“At the front of my lecture hall,” Jonah finished, just so everyone knew that this was business and anything else would simply complicate his life. “Teaching me how to be a chef.”
Vivien gave him a curious look that suggested she sensed that was a complication. “That’s interesting. Well, welcome to the Summer House. You’re practically family already, looking after our boy.”
She nodded toward Atlas. The phrase our boy hung in the air with a curious extra inch of warmth. No surprise. Jonah’s aunt had been planning his eventual love life since he had been four.
“Thank you,” Pepper said. “That’s very kind.”
Vivien drifted off downstairs as they continued the tour, pausing in the loft, an open area that led to the bedrooms on this top floor.
“You won’t have to come up here much,” Jonah said, “but just for orientation, that’s my dad’s room.”
“Eli?”
“Correct. Chief cook and bottle washer, head honcho, house builder—well, architect, but on this one, he actually hammered a few nails.”
“He’s also grandpa to this little guy, correct?” She leaned in to whisper to Atlas, who gave a look of ecstasy at the soft breath on his ear.
“Very much so and probably the best in the world.”
“And that’s my Aunt Vivien’s suite,” he continued. “She used to share with her daughter, my cousin, but Spacey Lacey has gone off to Jacksonville to be an NFL girlfriend.”
“Tessa’s son, given up for adoption,” Pepper recalled, with a wistful note in her voice. “What a sweet story.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he joked. “But the guy’s in the NFL.
That’s the sweet part. Anyway, over there is my sister’s room.
If Meredith’s not here, she’s working. If she’s here, she’s working.
Basically, if she’s breathing, she’s working.
And over there is a revolving guest room, currently occupied by Dr. Kate Wylie—”
“Your dad’s girlfriend,” she supplied.
“Uh, yes.” He gave her a look, then leaned down. “I’m not sure of their status right now. If you pick up some tea, let me know, okay?”
“Family gossip is in my job description?” she asked on a laugh.
“Nothing untoward, just…insight.” He waved her back to the stairs. “Follow me. You sure you’re good carrying him up and down stairs?”
“I better be.”
As he walked, he talked over his shoulder. “Oh, the grannies are above the garage.”
“Maggie?”
“That’s my grandmother. Steel Magnolia, literally. Judgey, controlling, and Atlas is her kryptonite.”
“Good to know. And the other woman? Jo Ellen?”
“Mother of Kate and Tessa. Sweet as pie, which she will make you eat. If it’s the humble version, that came from Maggie.”
She chuckled at his descriptions, a little awe in her expression as she took in the house and the backstories of its residents.
Just as they walked into the kitchen for a bottle lesson, the door to the garage opened and Maggie breezed in, as if on cue.
His grandmother wore tailored slacks and a soft blue blouse that matched her gaze, which narrowed and settled on Pepper.
“Ah, the nanny we apparently needed in a house full of women.”
Jonah snorted. “Grandma Maggie, Atlas is a big job. And yes, this is Pepper, who has signed on to help while I’m interning at Driftwood.”
“We met briefly at the wedding,” Pepper said, extending her hand. “Hello, Mrs. Lawson.”
Shaking Pepper’s hand, Maggie’s gaze went briefly to Atlas, and her whole face softened ten percent, which was the equivalent of another woman bursting into song.
“Is my great-grandson behaving for you?”
“He’s an angel.”