Chapter Twenty-Four
“Thank you, darlin’.” Jack kissed my cheek.
“My pleasure.” I already had my arm wrapped around Skye.
“Nick’s a little over protective and—”
“A little?” Skye complained. “I’m almost sixteen. I don’t need a babysitter.” She gave me the half smile she’d inherited from her dad. “No offense. I like hanging out with you.”
I liked hanging out with her too, and it’s why I agreed to it against my better judgment when Nick had asked me last night if I would mind if Skye hung out with me while he did some research at the police department for the screenplay he was working on. I really shouldn’t be entangling myself more with his family, but my heart felt more alive around them.
“None taken.” I gave her a squeeze. “Have fun on your date.” I smiled at Jack.
Jack flashed that debonair grin of his. “I plan to.”
“Gross, Grandpa.” Skye held up her hand. “Don’t say anything more. It was bad enough watching you on Tuesday make a fool of yourself with Lana’s grandma.”
Jack laughed and kissed his granddaughter’s head. “You’ll understand someday, kid. Love you.” He stepped off my doorstep with a spring in his step. “See you ladies later.”
Skye and I waved our goodbyes to Jack and watched him drive off. I turned to Skye. “You ready to have our fun?”
“As long as it doesn’t involve old people kissing.”
My head tilted, surprised. “Kissing?” Jack and Nan were moving fast.
“Not like making out, but more like old people pecks.”
“Old people pecks? What are those?”
“You know, where they’re like birds pecking each other’s beaks.”
Not sure if I wanted to, but I tried to visualize it. My parents were around Jack’s age, but they never kissed like that. My dad, when things weren’t so tense between him and my mom, would press his lips against hers and breathe her in for a small moment. He never parted her lips in my presence, thankfully, but the emotion was always felt. I never doubted how much my dad loved my mom. I wanted a man like that.
“Did they do that a lot?” I was curious.
“Just once that I saw when he walked her to her door, but it was enough.”
“There will be no kissing tonight unless you count loving on some puppies and kittens.”
Her green eyes lit up. “Where are we going?”
“I talked to your dad’s friend Janelle about some volunteering opportunities and she mentioned that her son Liam . . .” I paused to see if that elicited a reaction and it did. I found it interesting that Janelle was the mom of the same Liam who Skye had told me about. Skye’s porcelain cheeks tinted pink. I continued, “Volunteers at an animal shelter once or twice a week.”
“Is Liam going to be there?” She bit her lip and refused to make eye contact.
“I heard a rumor that he might be.”
She threw her arms around me. “Thank you.”
I reciprocated and hugged her back. “You’re welcome. I thought afterward you and I could do a late dinner before your dad picks you up.”
She nodded against me.
I felt a piece of my heart connect while holding her. I wasn’t sure if I should back away or hold on tighter. What was it with the Wells family? “We better get going.”
On the drive over to the shelter I was able to learn more about Skye. Her birthday was the second week of September, which she hated because she was the oldest person in her class. She was still mad that her dad didn’t let her start kindergarten a couple of weeks early. She went to a private all-girls school, which she was also not a fan of. And her best friend’s name was Hensley, who she could text incessantly with while she conversed with me. I admired the talent. I imagined she was telling Hensley she was on her way to see Liam.
I hoped it would be okay. I supposed I should have mentioned it to Nick, but the less I talked to him, the better. I was hoping tomorrow night he would hit it off with Chanel when he took her to a Braves game. I guess he hadn’t taken my advice. He’d asked what I would like to do on a first date, and I recommended the improv club because it wasn’t too intimate, but you could sit at a table alone and talk between performances. Not only that, you could gauge the other person’s sense of humor to see if it matched your own.
Topgolf was also on my favorite lists for dates, not like I had a lot, but I’d been there before and the food was good and my date and I had a great time playing the interactive golf games. I mentioned he could even help her with her swing if she needed it. That was romantic. Then there was always Friday night jazz night at the art museum, a favorite of mine. What was better than art and live jazz? Apparently, baseball. I wasn’t a huge fan.
What he did was his own business. But I really needed him to hit it off with Chanel. I didn’t care that he said he wouldn’t. The sooner he found love, the better for all involved. I would no longer have to be his relationship manager and my heart would get the message that he was never a contender, and we weren’t breaking the rules, especially the mother of all the rules.
Though I wasn’t sure he broke that particular rule. The people in his life, from family to friends, seemed to love him even if they all thought he could use a little work. But who didn’t need some work? I wasn’t thinking to repair him. And people could only be repaired if they wanted to; no one could do it for them. Sure, you could help. It was my job to help people in that process. But you should never enter a relationship with the intention to “fix” someone. You would only end up broken.
The thing with narcissism was it wasn’t curable, and for any change in behavior it would require extensive amounts of psychotherapy. It would be an arduous task. And narcissists rarely felt the need to change.
Regardless of what Nick was or wasn’t, we weren’t meant to be. My job was to help him find his last first kiss, as the commercial was going to say. And we were never kissing. You should never kiss men like Nick. My books backed me up. There was even a chapter titled, “You Should Never Physically Bond with Bad Boys.” You thought ovaries were loud, they had nothing on saliva. The chemical makeup of saliva could tell you if your partner in question would give you beautiful babies.
And really, was that even a question in Nick’s case? He would give anyone beautiful babies. I had living proof next to me in the car. So her mom was a supermodel. Nick had passed on plenty of his gene pool to her.
Mix that saliva with all the happy chemicals kissing released in your brain and you’d be throwing out every rule you’d ever made to be with him. And if that didn’t do it, the flush of pheromones rushing through the both of you would make the other person seem even more sexy. If Nick got any sexier . . . well . . . I couldn’t think of it. And unfortunately, I had thought about it, many times in my past, present, and probably my future.
I focused on Skye. “Do you have any pets at home?”
She took a second to stop texting. “We had a cat once. My dad brought her home to me in his jacket pocket,” she smiled, but it faded quickly, “after my . . . mom . . . Alessandria . . .”
That was telling. She called her mom by her first name, her only name. I tried not to draw attention to it or react one way or the other. I waited to see if she wanted to continue, and she did after a pause.
“Decided she didn’t want to keep pretending to be a mom anymore.”
I was able to safely sneak a glance at her and it didn’t take a degree to recognize the pain on her beautiful face. “How old were you?” I reached for her hand.
She took it and that bond appeared again. “Six. I mostly lived with my dad anyway . . .” She tried to sound brave.
“It’s okay that it hurts.”
She shook her head and looked out the passenger-side window. She was obviously trying to pretend the hurt had healed. “I overheard her tell my dad that if it wasn’t for him, she would have never had me in the first place. All I was for her was publicity. Every interview and article written about how much she loved being a mom was all a lie. She used me,” her voice cracked, “to further her career. I hate when people at school show me old magazine covers they’ve found online with her and me on them.”
I gave her hand a gentle squeeze while my heart broke for her. “It’s hard when the people we trust most in our lives fail us. You didn’t deserve that.”
She wiped her eyes. “My dad has always been there for me. I don’t need her.”
“No, you don’t. The loss is hers.”
“That’s what my dad always says. I think it’s why he’s so overprotective. I had a nanny until I was twelve.” She laughed. “I had to tell him how embarrassing that was. I’m surprised he lets me hang out with you. He’s never let any of his girlfriends take me anywhere.”
I coughed and swerved a tad. I had to place both hands back on the wheel. “I’m not your dad’s girlfriend.”
She gave me a crooked grin. I saw a lot of her grandpa in it. “I know. You’re friends.”
“Sort of.”
“You like him though, right?”
I had to think about what to say. It was complicated. I didn’t not like him, but I didn’t want to like him. How did I explain that to his daughter? I didn’t. “Yes.” It wasn’t a lie.
“Good.” She smiled.
Did she breathe a sigh of relief?
We needed to change the subject. I couldn’t ask about the cat now since she said she used to have one, so that indicated it probably died and it was associated with an awful memory of her mother. That woman now ranked right up there with Douglas for me. Who says that about their child? What Janelle told me two days ago made so much more sense. I even felt sorry for Nick.
“Tell me what you like about Liam.”
A dreamy giggle escaped her. “He’s so cute, but in that nerdy, glasses kind of way. Do you know what I mean?”
“I think so.” I was picturing Clark Kent. Did she even know who that was?
“And he’s so nice, but he’s really shy.”
“Nice is good.” Very good, well, as long as it was genuine.
She held her hands together. “He’s super smart too. He got into Princeton, but he’s staying in Georgia so he can be near his mom and brother and sister. He doesn’t want to leave them since their dad died.”
“He sounds like a really great guy.”
“He is,” she let out a wistful sigh, “but things are so different between us now.”
“Well, he has a lot of big life changes coming up, and you’re still in high school, not to mention you live in California. He’s probably being cautious.”
“I know, but we’re only two-and-a-half years apart and he’s come to visit before. He’s really into comic books and science fiction movies and books, so my dad took him to Comic-Con last year.”
Of course he did. Nick needed to quit confusing me. “Did you go too?”
“Uh, yeah, even though it isn’t really my thing.”
I smiled at her. I would have done the same thing at her age. “The only advice I have for you is to be yourself around him. If he sees that, maybe he’ll relax and maybe someday your friendship can blossom into something more.”
“I’ll try, but what I really want to do is kiss him.”
To be almost sixteen again. I laughed. “He probably wants to kiss you too, but don’t rush it.”
“How will I know when it’s the right time?”
Oh gosh. I didn’t know if I was the right person for her to be asking, but maybe she wanted a woman to talk to about it instead of her dad or grandpa. Sadly, I had to think back a ways.
“Um . . . it’s all in the eyes. The way the other person gazes at you, but they don’t speak. They may stare at your lips. There may even be some awkward silence. They’ll tilt their head and lean in closer. The magic of anticipation will stir between you and you’ll close your eyes and before you know it, it will happen.”
“That sounds so romantic.”
“It isn’t always, that’s why you should wait and do it with someone who means something to you.” Honestly, I was shocked she hadn’t kissed someone already. She had to have boys, even men who had no business doing so, clamoring after her. And I’d had patients younger than her who were already having sex and dealing with the repercussions of it. They were too young to handle the emotion of it. Many felt pressured into it. Skye’s experience or lack thereof was a breath of fresh air for me.
“Liam means something to me.”
I believed her. I watched her interactions with Liam that night as we played with the abandoned puppies and kittens, trying to help socialize them. There was no question that shy, lanky boy with hair of dishwater blond and thoughtful hazel eyes behind thick dark glasses was smitten by the beauty of the girl he thought was way out of his league by the way he gazed at her when he thought no one was looking. It was as if he didn’t dare hope that Skye could really like someone like him.
He was selling himself short. Not only did I observe him with Skye, but there were young volunteers there who read to the animals, and he would help them sound out words. He did great animal sound impressions. Skye giggled as he did everything from an elephant to a lion. His smile said he was pleased he could make her smile and laugh, though he turned a few shades of pink.
I enjoyed my time snuggling furry creatures and talking to Skye about our book. It was getting really good. The hero and heroine were locked in a battle of wills. He wanted to protect her, to claim her, and she wanted a choice. They were bound by legend and fate, but she wanted to know she was loved by him regardless. The kissing scenes were A+ too. Sad, how much I was enjoying them.
Skye made an interesting observation while stroking the head of the cutest calico kitten. “How will she ever know the truth?” she asked, speaking of our heroine.
Oh, that was a good question. One I was still searching for myself. If only I could script out my own ending.