What am I doing?

I honestly think I must be losing my goddamn mind.

Not only was it pushy and presumptuous to volunteer to take Jackie’s son to Science World, it was completely rude of me. I made Ted to look like a total asshole and a deadbeat grandfather by stepping in like that.

I just couldn’t help myself. I saw how destroyed that little boy was from something so simple. I should have just kicked Ted under the table, but instead I opened my big fat mouth, and next thing I know I’m signing up to take a kid I don’t know to a museum of science.

And I can’t forget his mother, either.

In other words, my employee.

My assistant.

Just Jackie.

No. Try as I might, I definitely can’t forget her.

Thankfully, Ted was okay with it all. More than okay. As he walked me out to my car later, frogs chirping from a nearby ditch, he thanked me.

“You don’t mind?” I’d asked.

“Where there’s a Will, there’s a way,” he said, a phrase people used to throw my way a lot. “I know what you’re doing.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. You want to make Jackie feel comfortable and settle in here. I haven’t been around all week, so I’m no help. I really appreciate it.”

But even with Ted’s approval, I’m still a bit anxious as I drive down the country lanes of Southlands, glancing at the large, sprawling properties with their big houses, barns, and riding arenas. The perfect slice of rural suburbia in the city, as groomed and idyllic as they come.

I find myself thinking about Jackie, wondering about her life up north. She grew up here in this affluent neighborhood, went to a good high school, had a successful father and mother who made names for themselves while giving her everything that she could want.

And yet the Jackie that I’m slowly getting to know doesn’t seem to remember that she came from all this. As gorgeous as she is, she looks foreign in these surroundings, from her unease to the clothes she wears. Not that there’s anything wrong with what she puts on—she could make a potato sack look like couture if she wanted—but it’s cheap stuff. I’m pretty sure that Diane has offered a few times to take her shopping, but for whatever reason Jackie has turned it down. Hell, she’s taking the bus most days when I know Diane would let her borrow their car, if not get her one.

Jackie’s stubborn, I’ll give her that. And a go-getter, eager to prove herself. All week while I’ve struggled to give her stuff to do—delegating isn’t my strong suit—she’s been asking for more to work on. She wants to be involved, earn her way. She wants her job to be legitimate, not just something her father has given to her.

I pull into their long circular driveway and park, heading up the stairs to the front door.

Before I even get a chance to knock, it opens.

“Watch it,” Jackie cries out just as Tyson bursts through the door, past me and down the steps, running toward my car.

“He’s eager,” I say, turning to her.

And fuck me.

There, she’s standing in front of me looking impossibly radiant. Instead of work clothes, she’s in light skinny jeans that hug onto every curve of her thick thighs, the slope of her hips. Up top she’s in a long-sleeved billowy red top with just enough cleavage. Her hair is pulled back in a loose braid, showcasing her face that’s completely makeup free and tempting beyond sin.

Wholesome. Dangerously wholesome.

Stop staring. Stop staring, now.

Say something.

“I hope you realize what you’ve done,” she says to me with a smirk before I can even open my mouth, closing the door behind her and taking a step toward me. I should probably turn and head back down the steps or at least get out of her way, but I hold my ground.

“What did I do?”

“You’ve agreed to take this dinosaur-crazy young boy to the World of Science, and his grandmother gave him extra sugary cereal this morning.”

“Uh oh,” I say, raising my brows. “I guess I should probably ditch all the candy I have in my car. And my pockets.”

Her lips twist. “You have candy in your pockets and car? You know, people warn children about men like you.”

“They’re for me,” I tell her.

“And maybe me?” she asks.

Jesus. Is she . . .flirting?

Then she walks past me to the driveway where Tyson is running around in circles, making what I assume are dinosaur sounds.

“This is yours?” she asks, pointing to my car.

“I hope so.”

“It’s nice.”

It is a nice car. A brand-new Mercedes E-class coupe. Dark grey.

“Bought it the day I moved back,” I tell her. “Has that new car smell.”

“Even with the dogs?”

“Actually, I have one of those special covers that goes in there. They love it. I removed it for Tyson, though.”

“How thoughtful.”

“I wanna sit in the front!”

“No way,” she tells him. “You know kids have to sit in the back. It’s the law.” She peers in the back of the car. “I should probably get his booster seat, though he’s going to hate it.”

“Oh mom!” he cries out, obviously embarrassed. “I don’t want to.”

“Hey look Ty,” I tell him. “How about I sit in your booster seat and you drive? I’ve always wanted to sit in one, they look so darn cool.”

“What are you doing?” she whispers to me.

I grin at her. “Actually, I have no idea.”

“I can’t drive,” Ty says, looking at me like I’m a total idiot. “I’m only seven years old you know.”

“You can’t? But your mother told me you have your driver’s license.”

He’s looking at Jackie with shock. I have to bite my lip to keep from laughing.

“Why would you tell him that?” he asks her.

She rolls her eyes. “I’ll be right back,” she says and then runs back into the house. I can’t help but watch as she goes, that ass of hers looking incredible.

I then pick that moment to bring my gaze to the window to see Diane watching me.

I give her a wave, pretending I wasn’t checking out her daughter’s ass, and then promptly turn around to talk to Ty.

“Sorry Ty,” I say to him. “I don’t know where I got that idea from. You just seem so old.”

He frowns at me. “You’re old.”

“Older than a Parasaurolophus?”

“What do you know about Parasaurolophus?” He says this as if I just conjured one in the front yard.

“I know they’re my favorite. Don’t forget I’m the one in charge of the dinosaur movies you love so much.”

“So is Grandpa Ted, but he doesn’t talk to me much about it.”

“Because Grandpa Ted is boring, kid,” I tell him. Ted is going to murder me over that one.

“I’ve got it, sorry,” Jackie says, coming out with a plush booster seat and looking flustered.

“Not a problem.”

“Batman says Grandpa Ted is boring,” Ty says. “He also knows what a Parasaurolophus is.”

Jackie tries to look annoyed but she’s smiling. “I’m not surprised at any of those things. He is Batman after all.”

It’s not long before Ty is sitting reluctantly in the booster seat and we’re driving back toward downtown.

At first I think that Jackie and I won’t have much to talk about and the drive could be a bit awkward, but Ty doesn’t seem to stop for air. I guess admitting I know something about dinosaurs kind of opened the gates, and now he’s finally found a kindred spirit to speak to.

And speak he does. By the time we get to the silver sphere of Science World (now called Telus World of Science, but nostalgia hangs onto the old name), Tyson has gone over his list of his favorite dinosaurs about five times. And he likes a lot of them. And apparently the ones I like aren’t that cool, Parasaurolophus included.

To be honest, I’m already dinosaured out, but it’s just the beginning.

The building is all encased in a sphere, like a smaller version of the ball at Epcot, and it’s an absolute madhouse. Children running everywhere. Tyson suddenly becomes shy, holding onto Jackie as we walk through the exhibits, until he finally comes to the dinosaur one. Half the area has life-sized (and disturbingly life-like) replicas, and the other half has an interactive play zone full of who the hell knows what.

While Ty zooms around the play zone, jetting from one thing to the other, I stand back with Jackie by the tail of a Stegosaurus, watching him.

“Thank you again,” she says, almost shyly this time.

“It’s not a problem. I hope he’s having a good time.” I put my hands in the pockets of my dark jeans, feeling slightly awkward, like I’m about to say the wrong thing and I’m not sure what that is.

But of course I know. It’s anything that would make me out to look like a fool. I have some mystique as her boss—it would serve me well to keep it.

“He’s having the best time,” she says, glancing up at me for a moment. “He woke up early this morning, so excited. I haven’t seen him like that in a long time.”

“Well I’m glad I could help. When does he start school again?”

“Monday. Remember, I’m taking him in before work. I’m worried for him, though. I wish he didn’t have to start so close to the end of the school year, but I wasn’t about to mess up his education.”

“He seems like a bright kid.”

“He is. Very. He’s just shy. You know. Has trouble making friends. He’s in his head a lot. Then again so am I, so I guess he takes after me.”

I can’t help but watch her face, every movement and tick as she stares after her son. Something inside me swells for a moment, a dangerous feeling. And yet I can’t tear my eyes away.

I clear my throat. “Did he have friends in Fort St. John?”

“One,” she says softly, still not meeting my eyes. All the better for me to watch her. “Simon. Lived next door. His mother, Kim, she took care of both of them all the time. Simon was older, had a learning disability, but it didn’t matter to Tyson. I’m not sure they even talked much, but they got along. Liked each other’s company.”

“Communicated in other ways.”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“You were working?”

Now she looks at me, briefly, before her attention goes back to Tyson. “I thought you’ve seen my resume. Not that there was much to put on it.”

“Ted said you were working two jobs.”

“Yeah, well. Someone had to.”

“What about your ex?”

She swallows. “He had a good job. For a few years. It’s why we moved up there, you know. Lots of money in the oil and gas industry. That’s all there is there. I wouldn’t have moved otherwise, believe me, but Jeff really made me believe we’d be a family and that I wouldn’t have to work and he’d take care of us. But then Jeff lost his job and . . . he never really recovered. I took care of Ty on my own. Sometimes Jeff would sleep there, at our house, well, mobile home. Sometimes he wouldn’t. I’d feed him, if he was behaving. He’d always have a promise, that he had some job lined up. Later I found out what he meant . . .”

Damn. That’s far too much for a girl her age to be dealing with. “If you don’t mind me asking . . . why didn’t Ted, your parents, help?”

“They tried,” she says. “They wanted to, of course they did. But we’d had a big fight when I moved. They thought I wasn’t thinking, I was making a mistake. They were right of course. And then Jeff made me cut them off.” She licks her lips, looking incredibly small next to me. “Of course, I thought about contacting them sometimes. But I didn’t want to seem . . . like I was using them. You know, only talking to them because I wanted money. And Jeff, I knew it would be trouble if he found out. Anyway, I provided. I did it on my own. I gave Ty everything he could want.”

“You did good,” I tell her. “Jackie, that boy is here and he’s bright and he’s funny and he’s healthy and it’s all because of you.”

She looks away, raising up her chin. “I’m not sure if I can deal being this . . . sentimental with you.”

Ouch. “Why not?”

“You’re my boss.”

“And what did I say the first day of work? The more we know about each other, the better. Besides, what did you say again? We’re assigned buddies now? And as your buddy, it’s my job to tell you you’re doing fucking great.” She looks away. “It’s okay to take a compliment, Jackie. It’s okay to be proud.”

She still doesn’t look convinced.

“Hey, sometimes life throws us a curve ball. It doesn’t go the way we planned. All that matters is how we handle it and the person we become on the other side. You’re here now, you’re on your way. There’s no use dwelling on the things you could have changed. Believe me. Too much reflection on all the could-haves and should-haves will only hold you in your past.”

“And what about you?” she asks after a minute.

“What about me?”

“What can you tell me about you?”

I purse my lips. “What do you want to know?”

She glances up at me, watches my face for a moment. “You seem like a natural with Ty. You never had kids? Never wanted to?”

I try not to let anything show on my face. The sore spot she’s unknowingly poking. “No, I never had kids. It was . . . complicated.”

“What does that mean?”

I exhale through my nose, looking away from her and concentrating on the shadow room in the distance, a place where a camera records your shadow on the wall. I remember that place so well from when I was a kid.

“Hey, do you remember coming here when you were young?” I ask her suddenly.

“What? Kind of . . .?”

Without thinking, I grab her hand and lead her over to Ty, who is playing some dino-guessing game. “Hey Ty-Rex, come here.” I hold out my hand for him.

He looks at me unsurely until Jackie gives him a slight nod.

I have to ignore the fact that her small, soft hand feels unbelievably right in mine. Then I take Ty’s and lead them over to the shadow room.

“What is it?” Ty asks.

“You’ll see,” I tell him as we enter a long space and stop in front of a plain white wall, facing it along with a bunch of other children.

I raise my arms so I’m lifting both their hands in to the air and hold the pose.

“What are we doing?” Ty asks.

“Just wait,” I tell him. “Lights are going to come on behind us in ten seconds and it’s going to capture our shadows on the wall.”

“Capture our shadows?” Ty sounds scared. I hold his hand tighter. Somehow it makes me hold Jackie’s tighter too.

“You’ll be safe. Get ready.”

A burst of white light flashes from behind us and, just as I remember it, the wall glows green with the frozen shadow of the three of us caught on the wall.

“Wow!” Ty cries out, running over to it and running his hand over the outline. “It has my shadow.” He turns to look at us. “Can I get it back?”

I chuckle. “You’ll get it back when it fades. Watch.”

Slowly the shadow and the green around it starts to fade back to white, as if nothing happened.

And it makes me realize I’m still holding Jackie’s hand.

“Sorry,” I apologize quickly, dropping it.

“That’s okay,” she says, her voice sounding strangely high-pitched. “It’s uh, been a long time since I’ve done this. That. The shadow thing.”

“I wanna do it again! I’m going to be a velociraptor this time.”

“You’ve created a monster,” she tells me under her breath as we exit the room, watching as Tyson stays behind and strikes his best raptor movements.

“You never know, with the VFX studio in LA, he might have a bright future as a stop-motion actor. You know, Andy Serkis works constantly.”

“That would be his dream. Pretending to be things for a living,” she pauses, glancing me over. “You’re not off the hook, you know.”

“For what?”

“For avoiding my last question.”

So the shadow room didn’t distract her.

I sigh. “All right. Was it the question about kids? Fine. Here we go, since I said we should be open with each other and apparently I have to follow my own bullshit.” I pause. “I didn’t think I wanted them. And Sasha definitely didn’t. She never wavered. So eventually I got a vasectomy.”

“Oh. Well, that’s pretty common.”

“It is. Until she got pregnant.”

“It failed?”

I give her a steady look. “No.”

She blinks at me as the truth hits her. “Oh,” she says, hand at her chest. “Shit.”

“Yeah. Oh shit. She was cheating on me and got herself knocked up. But surprise, surprise, she wanted his baby. Just not mine.”

Her brows knit together as she tries to think of the right thing to say.

“It’s okay,” I tell her quickly. “It’s done. It happened. I’m over it.”

“I just can’t believe that. What a bitch.”

My hackles go up at that one. “She wasn’t a bitch. Don’t get me wrong, she was really shitty to do that to me. I mean, really shitty. But I was married to her for fifteen years before it blew up in my face. I know she wasn’t trying to hurt me. She was just . . . careless. Selfish. Scared.”

“And a bitch,” Jackie says. “Sorry, not sorry. But she could have, you know, not had an affair.”

I shrug. “Yeah, well. She did. There was a lot she shouldn’t have done. But she fell out of love with me. Honestly, I saw it coming. I was falling out of love with her too. I just believed, stupidly, that we could work through it. Find our way back. You know, that romantic idea of getting through the rough patch of the marriage. She just . . .took the easy way out. Had her cake on the side. Anyway, it’s old news.”

“Not really, since you literally just moved here.”

“Yeah, well I guess because I was attached to the idea of working through our marriage, I thought working through the office situation would pay off. It didn’t. In fact, it was Sasha that asked me to move.”

“She did?” Jackie asks incredulously. “Why? She should move, she fucked up. Don’t you have authority over her?”

I’m smiling, just a bit, at how worked up she’s getting. “I was trying to prove that she can fuck around on me but not make me give up my job or affect that part of my life. So I stuck it out at that office far longer than I should have. It got on her nerves. Our divorce took such a long time, because of the business, that when she offered me the condo we bought here back in the day, among other stuff, I took it.” I shake my head, still not able to believe it sometimes. “If I didn’t take it, I would have made both our lives miserable. I didn’t want to be that guy. I mean, I had been for over a year, working with her side-by-side, trying to prove something, but you got to know when to stop.”

“Wow,” she says softly, her eyes tender as she stares at me. “I’m so sorry. I honestly had no idea.”

“Well, that’s comforting to know I’m not the talk of the office. But, yes, it’s been an adjustment.”

“Fuck,” she swears, biting on her lip for a second. “If I’d known all you’d been through, I think I would have worked harder this week.”

“Kid, you’ve been working hard enough. You’re spending your weekend with the boss. How about that for going above and beyond?”

“Believe it or not, this is a better weekend than what I had planned. Which was just sitting around at home. My home which isn’t really my home. God, it’s weird to be back with my parents. They’ve been great and all but it’s . . . it’s weird. Strained. Awkward.”

I nod. “Seven years is a lot of time to be apart. I’m sure you’ll get back into the swing of things soon. Go back to the way things were.”

“But I’m no longer the girl I was at eighteen. Not even close. I was bad news. A mess. And now, well I guess I’m still a mess. I just can’t wait till I make enough to move out and get a place of my own. Though with the rent in this city, I have no idea when that will happen.”

“Just take it one step at a time. That’s all I’m doing.”

“And you seem to know what you’re doing.”

“At least I have you convinced.”

At that, Tyson comes running out of the room. “Did you see all the shadows? Did you? Bam, bam, bam! It captured all of them and then gave them all back.”

“That’s great Ty,” she says. “Are you ready for lunch?”

“No!” he yells, laughing, and then runs back to the dinosaur area, running his hands over the giant replicas when the signs clearly say not to touch.

“Oh, Jesus,” Jackie says under her breath, giving me an apologetic glance before running after him. “Tyson Phillips, don’t touch those!”

I watch for a moment as she runs him down, unable to keep from smiling. There’s some part of me, deep inside, maybe stemming from the primal caveman days, that wants me to take care of both of them. To provide for them. To protect them. It’s honestly unlike anything I’ve felt before.

But I know it’s not a smart feeling to have. Not in this situation we’re in. Not when she’s Ted’s daughter, my employee, and sixteen years younger.

Still, I hold on to that urge for a moment, reveling in it, before I push it away.

I join Jackie and Ty.

We eat shitty cafeteria-style food.

Walk around the water of False Creek for a bit, watching the water taxis and seagulls, before it starts to rain.

Then I drive the two of them back home.

It’s almost bittersweet to be alone again.