Lainey’s List Chapter Forty-Four
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Lainey
“Mommy, I need the bread! I need the bread!” Cassidy says breathlessly, having sprinted all the way to the pond the moment we entered the park. I hand her the heels from loaves we ate. “Come on, Uncle Nick,” she tugs on his hand. He goes willingly, adjusting his ball cap.
I’m not sure the disguise is going to work. The weather is nice, and the park is filling up. Soon there won’t be an empty space on the grass. I plop down on the edge of the pond. The trees are starting to bud. I pluck some long grasses and weave them together while I watch Nick and Cassidy. From the snippets of conversation that wend my way, the two are apparently naming the ducks.
“That one’s Mr. Happy.” Nick’s arm stretches out to point toward a plain brown duck paddling furiously toward the huge chunk of bread floating in the water. Cassidy’s not very good at tearing little bits off and has a tendency to throw the entire piece of bread in. The feeding frenzy never lasts long with her.
“I think it’s a girl, Uncle Nick.”
“Nuh-uh.” He shakes his head. “It’s pretty so it has to be a girl.”
“Girls are the brown ducks.” Cassidy frowns. “Don’t you know this? The pretty ones are boys.”
“Are you sure?” he asks.
“Of course.” Cassidy places her hands on her hips, indignant that she’s being questioned. “Mommy said, and she’s never wrong.”
Nick casts me an amused look over his shoulder. “Never?”
“Never,” Cassidy replies emphatically. “Throw your bread over there. That one needs some food.”
“He does look scrawny,” Nick admits, getting the gender right this time. Cassidy claps her hands in approval.
In short order, they have all the ducks in the pond at their feet but no more bread. Without the food, Cassidy loses interest in the ducks.
“Can I play on the slide?” She yells as she runs toward the jungle gym.
“Sure.” Although I don’t think she hears me.
“You’re brainwashing the girl,” Nick complains as he lowers himself to the ground.
“Only in the best way.” To my left, I hear a couple of people whisper about Nick. The words “Super Bowl” and “Mustang” and “quarterback” are loud enough that even the subject of their conversation can hear them but Nick pretends he doesn’t.
He plucks the grass crown out of my hands and sets it on top of his cap.
“Not worried about being noticed?” I ask quietly.
“It’s going to happen. Hopefully, everyone will be polite. I’m here with a kid, after all.”
An ache in my chest develops as the thought of Nick and his own child at a park like this fills my head. Someday, he’s going to have his own family and despite the pain that notion brings, I want that for him. Because Cassidy’s the best thing that ever happened to me, Chip notwithstanding. Nick would be a tremendous dad. I can’t really figure out why he’s not settled down yet, particularly since he doesn’t seem too interested in sleeping with every jersey chaser that shoves her number under his hotel room door.
“There’ll be some post tomorrow online about you and me and Cass.”
“It’s not the first time someone’s photographed us together. I think you’re known as a family friend.” He peers at me from under the brim of his cap, his eyes shaded but his lips looking lush and kissable.
I tuck my hands under my thighs and remind myself that a friend is all we are. “Well, at least they’re getting some of the gossip right. How come you aren’t back in Chicago?”
The off-season for players is never very long, and it seems to get shorter every year.
“I’m waiting on some things.” A Nerf ball bounces close to us. Nick grabs it and whips it back to the boys at the playground. They don’t realize a Super Bowl winning quarterback has just tossed them a ball, but others do. I see more gasping and pointing. We’ll have to leave soon or be mobbed.
“Like your brother?” I ask, getting to my feet.
“Maybe.” Nick joins me. “I hear Charlie’s business is really taking off.” He rests his hand on the low of my back.
It’s hard to concentrate when he stands so close to me. It’s also hard to remember that we’re just friends, or some approximation of that sort of non-sexual relationship, when his hand is resting right above my ass. “She has more work than she can handle. I’m thinking of getting a nanny for Cassidy for a few hours of the day.”
“You should let me do it.”
“Watch Cassidy?” I cast a quick look in his direction to judge his seriousness but his sunglasses are hiding his eyes.
“Yeah. It’d be fun.” He’s staring in the direction of Cassidy who’s climbing up a small rope ladder. “But I guess I’ll start training camp soon, and you’ll want someone who can be around all the time.”
I knew better than to get my hopes up. I inject a light tone into my voice so he doesn’t know that I took him seriously. “I don’t want a manny for Cassidy anyway.”
“A manny?”
“Male nanny,” I explain. And then, because I feel like I may have hurt his feelings, I rush out, “Want to sit in on the nanny interviews?”
His eyebrows shoot up above the rims of his sunglasses. “Really?”
“Why not? It’s good to have a second opinion.”
Before I can retract my invitation, Nick nods enthusiastically. “Deal.”
—————-
“Do you have to flirt with so many of the candidates?” I ask irritably.
“I’m being nice,” he protests from the kitchen. The last meeting apparently made him very thirsty. He escaped to get a glass of water before it was even over, leaving me to smile awkwardly at the eager young thing who kept casting longing glances toward the kitchen door.
Nick and I’ve spent the last two days interviewing nanny applicants. They’ve come in all sizes, shapes, and ages. The only consistent thing about them is that they all blush and stammer around Nick.
He’s not helping, either. He flirts with them relentlessly. To the grandmother who was shaped like a pear and had a cloud of gray hair floating around her head, he exclaimed that in his whole life, he’d never seen a woman with a more beautiful smile. To the middle-aged nurse who looked like she sucked on lemons, he’d declared that her hands revealed she was a woman of class and distinction. To the young ladies, of which there were many, all he had to do was smile and they dissolved into a puddle of non-coherent goo.
He returns from the kitchen with a glass of water for me. “Who’s next?”
“Danielle Tipton.”
“Sounds like a fluff ball.” He grabs the resume from me. “This chick is nineteen. She can’t watch Cassidy. When I was nineteen, I barely made it to my two classes each day. Nineteen is in no way responsible enough to care for a kid.”
“I was seventeen when I had Cass,” I remind him.
“That’s different,” he proclaims. He shakes the paper in front of my face. “Her only experience is the church, Dairy Queen, and a summer nanny position. We shouldn’t even interview her.”
A knock on the door interrupts his resume rattling.
“Too late,” I tell him, getting up from the chair and strolling over to the door.
Swinging it open, I feel immediate regret because Danielle Tipton is the most gorgeous girl I’ve ever had the misfortune to lay my eyes on.
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