Chapter 10—Intentional Offside

Cindy the Super Assistant called Matt on Monday morning. She’d found the perfect nanny.

Matt disconnected the call and stared at the phone for a while. Ronda Turner was her name. She was in her fifties, had close to twenty years of nanny experience, and had recently moved to Seattle from the East Coast to be near her daughter and grandchildren. Matt looked over the résumé and cover letter Cindy had emailed to him. She sounded almost too perfect. Conservative, as he’d asked, willing to cook for the boys, and had a BA in education. Her references were stellar.

He couldn’t for the life of him understand why he wasn’t more happy or relieved about this. Surely he hadn’t been secretly hoping to rope Vi into the job? She would hate it, the boys would suffer, and he’d end up firing her. Not a good situation all around. His boys came first; his libido came second, even though it was fighting for the top spot. He wouldn’t let that happen.

Besides, hadn’t he decided a few nights ago to end it in a month anyway?

With a sigh, he called Vi and waited for her to answer.

“Hi,” she said, sounding sleepy.

“Hey,” he responded, forcing himself to swallow around an odd lump in his throat. “I found a nanny. She starts on Saturday.” He held his breath, waiting for her response.

“Thank God.”

He frowned into the phone. Vi’s obvious relief irritated him. He wanted her to be disappointed, but he wasn’t sure why. They were having sex. They weren’t in a relationship. The less she hung out with him and his boys the better. It’d been a stupid idea to ask her to play nanny anyway. His mother sure as hell had seen through it. Just as she saw through everything.

Only this morning, his mother told him to have Vi come for dinner instead of sneaking in after midnight as though Matt were ashamed of her. She’d then given Matt one of those chastising looks that made him feel five years old again and caught stealing his brother’s Legos. He’d tried to tell his mother they were just having no-strings fun, but what guy wanted to discuss such details with his mother? Definitely not this guy. His mother would soon be gone, and he could sneak Vi in and out without anyone passing judgment, at least not anyone he cared about.

“Matt? You still there?”

He gripped the phone tighter. “Yeah. Still here,” he answered tightly.

“Is something wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. It’s all good. I leave in a week on a road trip.”

“Good. When does she start?”

“She starts next Saturday. Mom leaves for the cruise on Sunday.”

“Cutting it close, aren’t you?”

“A little, but my mom deserves this vacation with her friends. She’s put her life on hold too long for the boys and me.”

“It must be wonderful to have a mom like that.” Vi sounded wistful, even a little envious.

“Yeah, I’m lucky. I had great parents.” Obviously, Vi had not. Somehow that didn’t surprise him. She never talked about her family. For all he knew she’d been dropped by the stork straight into adulthood. He tried to picture a younger Vi with purple pigtails, a pink pony tattoo, and a dress in purple and orange or something equally hideous. He couldn’t picture little girl Vi, though. Maybe for the better, because Vi was all woman.

His mom was right. No need to sneak her into the house. She could come for dinner, hang for a while, and after the boys went to bed, they could go to bed. Still, it seemed weird with his mother in the house. It wasn’t as if Vi were his girlfriend. Or ever would be. She didn’t fit any image he’d ever had of a girlfriend. Not the way his ex had. He shuddered at the thought. Look where that’d gotten him.

“Are you coming over tonight?”

“I’m coming tonight, and so are you.”

He laughed. “Then that’s a yes.”

“I’ll be there with bells on.”

“Oh, I like that idea.” He hesitated. “Why don’t you come early—for dinner?”

She didn’t respond right away. “That’s not a good idea.”

“Mom insists. She knows you sneak in every night.”

“She does?”

“She knows everything. Don’t ask me how, but she’s always been psychic when it comes to her kids.”

“This isn’t a good idea.”

“Please, she’s only going to be around another week. She’d like to see you.” His mother hadn’t said anything like that, but Vi didn’t know. He wanted to see her. In fact, he wanted to see her more than just in his bed for wild sex. He liked sparring with her. This realization shocked the shit out of him. “We have one percent organic milk.”

She laughed. “Well, in that case—are you sure?”

No, he wasn’t sure. In fact, he was sure it was a phenomenally stupid idea, but he wanted her here anyway. “Yes, I’m positive. The boys would like to see you.”

“Your boys?”

“What other boys would I be talking about?”

She choked. “I—uh, none.”

“We eat at six. See you then.” He ended the call before she could protest.

He wanted her to come for dinner—and after dinner. He wanted to hang out with her and debate gun control or climate change or pipelines in Alaska. He wanted more than sex.

He wanted things he shouldn’t want.

That one-month limit needed to become a reality.

* * * *

The sun hadn’t risen yet, and Vi was wide-awake. She’d been staring at the ceiling all night. Matt, on the other hand, had fallen asleep after sex and been out like a light, not a care in the world. Must be nice. She wished she could say the same.

Something was going on with him. Vi listened to her intuition. She liked to call it her Inner Vi, and Inner Vi was setting off warning bells.

He was going to dump her. She reminded herself they didn’t really have a relationship to dump, but whatever they had, he was going to end it. She had known this wouldn’t last. It couldn’t. She drank green tea with lemon. He drank Folgers coffee. She refused to buy any products that used live animals for testing. He probably didn’t realize such things happened. She marched in protests in downtown Seattle and on campus to bring about change. He was perfectly happy with things the way they were.

She braced herself, while telling Inner Vi this was for the best.

Matt rolled away from her and yanked on his jeans, then sat at the edge of the bed. She pulled the covers up to her chin and clutched them. Her stomach nose-dived and stayed there. All the good feelings from her multiple orgasms faded like smoke into the atmosphere.

He kept his back to her. She stayed where she was. She would not argue. She’d go quietly. This was for the best. She had no business falling for a conservative man with two kids.

Falling?

Had she done that?

She didn’t fall for a man. That was high school shit. Vi was so over being any man’s everything or anything.

He cleared his throat. She sat up in bed and gripped the comforter so hard her knuckles turned white.

“Vi…” he began, sounding choked up himself, but she must be imagining such emotion from him and hearing what she wanted to hear. The cosmos giveth and the cosmos taketh away. Matt had only been on loan, a gift for all she’d suffered.

She didn’t say anything, just waited for the lead ball to drop on her heart, knocking sense into her with I-told-you-so reprimands.

“I—you know this—this thing between us—isn’t going anywhere, right?”

“Of course,” she croaked, mimicking the frogs in the nasty green pond behind her grandmother’s single-wide. Flu-like symptoms raged through her body.

“Vi, I’m struggling. We were supposed to be temporary.”

“We are.” She braced herself. Here it came. The inevitable.

“I’m finding it hard to end this. I think we need a deadline.”

“A deadline?” Did that mean he wasn’t going to cut her off right now? Being an in-the-moment kind of girl, her heart soared with relief.

“Yeah. We need to end it—eventually—before one of us gets hurt, or my boys get too attached.”

“Your boys aren’t attached to me. They look at me as if I’m a fascinating exhibit at the Pacific Science Center.”

“Well, there is that.” He chuckled, his back shaking from the laughter. He turned slightly, giving her a good view of his proud profile and strong chin.

Vi peeked out from under the pile of blankets and met his penetrating gaze. She loved his intensity, how he gave his best to everything he did. In that way, they were alike, two passionate people willing to give all for things they believed in. She wanted to make the world a better place, while he wanted to make sure those close to him were in a better place. Maybe they weren’t so different after all.

“Are you disappointed?”

“Of course not,” she lied, shocked to realize she’d been harboring hope they could become something more.

Stupid, delusional Vi.

Even if he had been willing to go for more, he wouldn’t be once he knew the truth about her, what she did and where she’d been.

“What do you suggest?” Her fingers itched to touch him, but she held back. He needed to have his say without distractions from her.

“One month. Then we call it quits.”

“One month? From today?”

“Yeah. Does that work for you?” His gaze was hopeful.

“That works for me.” She winked at him as if she hadn’t a care in the world.

He grinned back. His smile lit up her dark places. One month. Perhaps prolonging the inevitable, but she’d take it. “It’s like we’re going on a vacation that has to end so we enjoy every moment while we can.”

He nodded. “And we’ll always have the memories.”

“Yes, the memories.” In one month that’s all she’d have. Her heart ached the way it had when her sister betrayed her. She hadn’t felt that pain in a long time. She’d hardened her heart to it. How had he managed to weasel his way past her carefully constructed defenses?

If she were smart, she’d tell him the month time limit was only prolonging the inevitable and making it harder in the long run. She wasn’t smart. She wanted every last second with him she could squeeze out of the next month.

“So I’ll just sneak in and out at night and—”

He held up a hand and shook his head. “That would be the best thing for both of us and the boys, but it’s not what I want.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to spend time with you and have you spend time with us. Hang out. Go on the boat with us. Maybe go on a hike. Or come to a game.”

“A hike? Boating?”

“Don’t look so skeptical. I’m an outdoors guy.”

She nodded slowly. The outdoors was messy. She couldn’t imagine him tolerating something he couldn’t organize into neat little boxes.

“What’ll you tell the boys?”

“I’ll tell them that you’re only going to be around for a month. They’ll know right up front that you’ll be gone.”

This whole thing sounded like a stupid idea, and she didn’t think she could do it. He was asking her to play his girlfriend for a month, then go away as if nothing had ever happened, as if doing so wouldn’t break her heart, as if he meant nothing. It was too much.

“No, that won’t work. Hanging with you is a stupid idea. I’ll sleep with you. That’s all.”

His jaw tightened, and his brown eyes narrowed. “You’re right. We shouldn’t pretend this is more than it is, but it goes against the grain for me to be with a woman only for sex.”

“If you want a month with me, all you get is sex.” She couldn’t do more than that. She had to protect herself, just as she’d protected herself her entire life because no one else had cared enough to protect her.

Matt wasn’t any different from the rest, even if she might be fool enough to think he could be.

She was a stripper, for God’s sake. A guy like Matt would never understand why she danced for a living and enjoyed it. Nor would he understand those two years she’d spent behind bars. He’d led a sheltered life, and she’d lived a life without a shelter.

She could take care of herself. She always had.