humiliation.
So, an hour later, the boys bellowing and sloshing blissfully in the tub, Silas ducked back into their room to make the call, so focused on them through the door he almost forgot who he was calling until she said, “Silas?” in a voice far raspier than he remembered, or expected, or wanted, or needed, and for a moment he was torn between praying she’d say yes and fervently hoping somebody else would snatch her up.
Thereby saving him from a fate worse than death.
Chapter Three
It took Jewel so long to process Silas’s number on the display that her voice mail nearly clicked in before she answered. “Uh … hello—?”
“Noah says you’re looking for work?”
Three thoughts zipped through simultaneously. One, that warp-speed Internet connection had nothing on Tierra Rosa’s gossip mill, especially when major chunks of the mill were related to each other; two, that he sounded about as thrilled about making this call as he would have making an appointment for one of those exams; and three, Wow. Deep voice.
“Um … yeah? You know of something?”
He sighed. The kind of sigh that precedes bad news. “Turns out there are no day-care openings, anywhere. At least not for several weeks. Meaning I need a part-time nanny. And the boys like you. So. You want the job?”
Oh, no. Nononononono. Because that little ping of awareness she’d thought a onetime thing? Yeah, well … apparently not. She tried—oh, how she tried—to send her hormones back into time-out, but since there was only one of her and five quadrillion of them …
“Gee, Silas, I don’t know. Um … what if I get called out on a birth?”
“But how often does that happen? Couple times a month?”
Her mouth twisted. “Maybe. But there’s prenatal appointments, and follow-up visits …”
“Even three days a week would work. Or just in the afternoons. Or mornings, whatever works for you.” Silence. “I’m really, really in a bind.”
“You must be to ask me.”
More silence. “The good news is, we’d rarely be around each other.”
“So you don’t like me.” “Whatever gave you that idea—?”
“Silas. Please.”
Somehow, she imagined him removing his glasses, rubbing his eyes. The hormones moaned. Shut. Up.
“I think it’s safe to say—” he exhaled into the phone “—that we have … different ways of approaching life. But that’s neither here nor there. Look, I’ll pay you whatever … whatever you think is fair. Name your price.”
Visions of paid bills and maybe a new pair of hiking boots danced in her head. Cautiously she tossed out a figure, Silas said, “Done,” and Jewel sucked in a breath. “And like I said,” he added, “it’s only temporary. Until October. So what kind of schedule would work for you?”
“Um … if you don’t mind being flexible, why don’t we take it day by day—?”
“Works for me. Can you start tomorrow?”
“Uh, yeah … sure—”
“Then how about I swing by your place about eight-thirty to give you a set of keys to the house? And instructions?” “I guess. We don’t have any appointments tomorrow, so—”
“Great. See you then.”
Instructions, right, Jewel thought through the mild dizziness as she set her phone back on the counter. No doubt annotated and color coded. Like those scary Supernanny charts.
Her hormones scrambled for cover.
“Dad-dy! Where are you?”
Kids. Right.
Still clutching his phone, Silas walked back into the bathroom where his children—irrefutable evidence of his life having once included sex—had apparently decided why use a tiny squirt of shampoo when half the bottle was so much better? Or—he picked up the weightless plastic shell from the middle of the bathmat—the entire bottle. However, given the condition Silas and his brothers used to leave the bathroom in after their baths when they were kids, he was grateful most of the water was actually still in the tub.
“Look at Tad’s hair!” Ollie said, giggling and pointing to the Marge Simpson ‘do atop his youngest son’s head. Ollie, however, had gone more Marie Antoinette. All he needed was one of his plastic boats on top to complete the look.
Giving Silas a big, dimpled grin, Tad scooped up a mountain of froth. “We made bubbles!”
“So I see,” Silas said, sinking onto the covered toilet lid and thinking, God, I love these kids, his heart seizing up with a random attack of the what-might-have-beens. At least they didn’t happen as often as they did in the beginning. But they still came, sneaking up on him like ninjas in the middle of the night. Or like now, when the thought of entrusting them to some ponytailed, raspy-voiced, braless weirdo was making his brain hurt.
Figuring the suds made soaping them up redundant, Silas rolled up his shirt sleeves and turned on the handheld shower, a move that got a pair of “Awwww … not yets!”
“You want me to read?” he said as Marge, then Marie, dissolved into foamy streaks slithering down the boys’ chests. “Then you have to get out of the tub now.” Doughboy appeared at the open doorway, took one look at the Torture Weapon in Silas’s hand and backed out again. “And anyway,” he said, wrapping up each boy in turn like little mummies in their bath sheets, “I’ve got news.” He grabbed Tad to rub his curls mostly dry with a hand towel. “Jewel’s agreed to be your nanny.”
“Re-re-really?” Ollie said as Silas attacked his wet head, his grin enormous when he resurfaced, a blond porcupine pumping his fist. “Yes!”
“Yes!” Tad echoed, his still-damp curls bobbing as he, too, pumped his fist so hard he lost his towel. Then naturally both boys dissolved into giggles because, you know, life was go-ood.
Smiling, grateful, Silas hauled them both into his arms—was there anything better in the whole wide world than freshly bathed little boys?—and down the hall to their room, where he read three books and tucked them in with hugs and kisses and tried very, very hard not to think about Jewel Jasper’s voice.
Which he’d be hearing again in … less than twelve hours.
Hell.
The doorbell rang precisely at eight-thirty the next morning.
Waking Jewel up.
Muttering not-nice words, she fought her way out of the tangled covers—she’d always been a thrasher, had been told sharing a bed with her was like trying to sleep in a blender—yanking on her shorty robe as she lurched toward the front door.
The bell rang again. As did her cell phone.
