would need to take care of Andrea. “Ellen only quit a little more than twenty-four hours ago.”
The argument obviously carried no weight with Roberta. “God created the world in six days.”
His mother had her own brand of logic. He had ceased to try to make sense of it a long time ago. “He left Adam and Eve for last. That was the hardest part.”
Roberta sniffed. Andrea squealed with glee, then landed on a well-padded bottom and a stuffed rabbit. “You don’t have to create a nanny, just hire one.”
He had to get going. Rex, one of the two owners of the company, was his best friend and incredibly understanding, but there were limits. “Almost as difficult.”
Roberta gave him a reproving look. “I never had difficulties finding one for you.”
Alec thought of the women who had paraded through his life, the ones who had been there to substitute for the genuine article. The very memory was enough to make him not want to hire anyone. He’d had a disjointed, unstable childhood at best. He hadn’t wanted that for Andrea. But he obviously had no choice. Alec sincerely hoped she wouldn’t remember any of this.
Because he needed help, he threw the ball into Roberta’s court. “All right, then you do it. You find a nanny.”
“Me? I should think that would be something you would want to handle on your own.” Roberta pursed her lips in a disapproving pout. “Really, Alec, I thought I raised you more independently than that.”
She was unorthodox, but he loved her. That still didn’t make him incline to let her delude herself.
“No, Roberta, you didn’t raise me at all. Estelle and Elizabeth and Suzanne and Joan and several other women whose names and faces begin to escape me, they raised me."
She distanced herself the way she always did when faced with something she didn’t want to deal with. A frown brought with it several wrinkles that refused to be smoothed, creamed or coaxed away. “What is your point?”
There was a vague discomfort in her eyes. Any moment now she’d announce that she was going off on a junket somewhere, leaving him completely adrift. He had to do something before that happened.
Alec looked at his mother ruefully. “The point is that I’m a little stressed out right now and I guess I’m being rude.”
Roberta smiled, graciously accepting the apology. “Yes, you are. But I forgive you because, after all, I am your mother even if I don’t look it.”
She walked Alec to the front door. “I’ll watch her today but remember, this can’t go on forever. I want you to find a nanny quickly.”
“No more than me, Roberta,” he assured her. “No more than me.”
“By tomorrow,” she called after him.
With any luck, tomorrow could be one of the days he worked out of the office he had set up in his den. That would give him the opportunity to conduct a few interviews. If conducting interviews for a nanny could be referred to as an opportunity.
He fervently hoped it would be the last time he’d have to go through this.
“Thanks, Jane, you’re a lifesaver.” Marissa shed her sweater, draping it over the back of the kitchen chair. Class had run over. Professor Johnston had gotten into a heated discussion with one of the students over the administration of corporal punishment and the class, divided, had taken sides. She was more than half an hour late. She’d called Jane from the campus, but that hadn’t changed the fact that it was way past the time she’d promised to be back.
Jane gathered her books together, depositing them into her backpack. She grinned. “Hey, no problem. Think of it as payback time. I remember when you used to baby-sit me.” The young girl got up. “You made things so much fun.”
The Sergeant had been stationed here for a while when Marissa was in her mid-teens. She’d always liked babysitting at the Hendersons. Their house always seemed to be so comfortably disorganized. Not the pristine living quarters that the Sergeant insisted on. “I liked you, it was easy.”
Jane nodded over her shoulder toward the tiny alcove off the living room. “Christopher is in bed.”
“Asleep?”
It was a rhetorical question. If he hadn’t been, Marissa knew she would have heard him by now. He wasn’t a child who didn’t make himself known.
Jane nodded. “I think we tired each other out.”
She’d already called her father and knew he was on his way to pick her up. He’d be out front by the time she got down to the ground level.
Jane was at the door when she suddenly remembered. “Oh, and you had a phone call. I took the number down. It’s posted on the refrigerator.”
“Thanks.” Marissa handed Jane her money. “And good night.”
“Same time Thursday?”
“You bet.” Marissa locked the door and crossed to the refrigerator. Taking the paper from under the magnet, she stared it at. The number wasn’t familiar.
But the name was. Jeremy Allen. The man she was subletting the apartment from. Tucking the phone number into her jeans, she first crossed to the alcove to check on Christopher.
He was still asleep. She stood, looking at him, love swelling within her heart. During the day Christopher was sheer energy, but once he was down, he was down for the night. It was, she supposed, nature’s little way of compensating.
She was still smiling to herself as she dialed the phone number. A sleepy voice answered on the fourth ring and said what passed for hello.
“Jeremy? This is Marissa.” She glanced at the clock and realized what time it was in New York. She’d completely forgotten about the time difference. “Oh, God, did I wake you?”
“Yeah, but that’s okay.” She heard rustling on the other end, as if he was sitting up in bed. “I’ve got some news.”
Marissa didn’t know if she particularly liked the sound of that. It was the exact same way her father used to preface his announcements that they were moving yet again.
“Oh?”
“Yeah, I’m coming home.”
She could feel her stomach sinking down to the floor. The apartment was a godsend for her. Located just a couple of miles from the campus and close to both her job and Jane, it made her life easy.
Easy was obviously not a word destined to remain with any permanence in her life. “When?”
“End of the week.”
“The end of. the week?” When she’d agreed to sublet the apartment, Jeremy had said that he was leaving for two years. It had only been nine months. “But you said—”
It was clear that he didn’t feel up to being hassled when he was half asleep. “That this was only temporary,” he reminded her.
