CHAPTER SEVEN
I’d just slammed the door in Chase Covington’s face.
Taking in a deep breath, I reopened it. He looked adorably confused. He wore a pale-blue T-shirt that made his eyes impossibly bluer and jeans that had been created solely to be worn by him. And I was covered in poop and puke.
“Nobody’s ever shut a door on me before.” And I’d never shut a door on anyone before. “Bad time?”
No, I was so glad he’d decided to visit when I had one sister’s regurgitated chocolate and the other’s fecal matter all over me. “You could say that.”
“I just needed to get my tux. I thought I would save you the trip.”
My eyes flicked past him to the dark, quiet street. I thought celebrities were chased by paparazzi everywhere they went. I stepped back to let him inside. As he came in, I pushed myself against the wall so I wouldn’t get puke on him, acutely aware the entire time that he looked like, well, a movie star, and I looked like something the cat found in the dump, dragged across town, and then shoved under the dryer.
Zia toddled in, sucking on her thumb, as I closed the front door. She walked over to Chase and looked up at him from under her lashes. “I Zia.”
Chase crouched down so they were eye level. “Hi, Zia. I’m Chase.”
She reached out and patted his cheek. “Hi, Cheese.”
“Chase,” I corrected her, and she glared at me. “He Cheese.”
He straightened to standing with an amused smile. Zia held up both her pudgy hands and reached for him. He complied, picking her up. She quickly nestled her head against his shoulder and sighed. “I loves him. My Cheese.”
My baby sister was seriously flirting with him. Not that I could blame her.
“You should take it as a compliment,” I explained. “Cheese is her favorite food.”
Chase smiled. He had Zia propped on one side like he’d been holding kids his entire life. He didn’t look even a little bit uncomfortable. His gaze traveled up and down my body, only this time it felt like a question instead of a compliment.
“My four-year-old sister barfed on me. She got into some chocolate chips. Which she’s kind of allergic to. Leaving me with this lovely candy-coated shell.” Great. Another watermelon-carrying moment. He hadn’t asked, but I had to overshare.
“Hmm. Does that mean you’ll melt in my mouth and not in my hands?”
A wave of want slammed into me. I was pretty sure I would melt either way. The offer was completely gross on its surface, given where said candy-coated shell had come from, but somehow still hot.
As if he hadn’t just shifted my entire world on its axis, he cocked his head to the side, and I realized he was looking into the living room at my other siblings. “There’s four kids total?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Go take a shower and get changed. I’ll watch them.”
“Seriously?”
“I’m not completely helpless. When I did Noah’s Ark, I spent a lot of time with the sets of twins who played my siblings. They wanted us to bond and seem like a real family during filming. I learned how to take care of little kids. Go on.” I still hesitated. “Trust me.”
Without waiting to see if I would take him up on his offer, he went into the living room and started introducing himself to my brothers and other sister. I watched as he put Zia down on the couch, took off his jacket, and settled on the floor. Zelda showed him Mr. Wriggles, and Zane lifted up his Spider-Man mask.
As much as I wanted to stand there and be totally impressed at how well he was interacting with them, I really did need a shower. Part of me felt bad—I was supposed to be his assistant, helping him and making his life easier. Not the other way around. I stopped by the laundry room and threw all my clothes into the slop sink. I’d rinse them out later. I grabbed a towel from the dryer and wrapped it around myself as I stepped over mountainous piles of clean and unclean laundry and headed to the bathroom.
The water took forever to heat up, even though I kept willing it to hurry. When it finally hit lukewarm, I hopped in and scrubbed every square inch. I washed my hair, too, just in case.
The water finally became hot as I finished. I went to my mom’s room to borrow some stuff. I hadn’t planned on spending the night, so I didn’t have any extra clothes. Borrowing clothes from her was always a little iffy. I was at least four inches taller than she was, and her clothes were either heavily Moms R Us, nurse’s scrubs, or clubbing outfits from the early nineties that she couldn’t bear to get rid of.
I settled for an old worn but soft SIU shirt that sort of fit and a pair of plaid pajama pants that had belonged to my stepdad, Duncan, before he died. They almost went to my ankles. I yanked the drawstrings tight. Like I was girding my loins, ready to do battle. I grabbed an elastic band from the bathroom and pulled my hair into a ponytail. I looked at the messy pile of toothbrushes and toothpaste. Should I brush my teeth? I decided against it, knowing it would keep me from throwing myself at him.
As I walked down the hallway, I thought for a second there were strangers in the living room. Then I realized all the voices were coming from Chase. He was sitting on the floor, Zia in his lap, Zelda snuggling up on his left side, reading one of Zane’s Batman comics aloud, doing completely different voices for each character. All the kids were entranced. Even Zander, who was supposed to be doing his homework, had stopped to listen intently.
Chase finished the comic, and the kids groaned when he said, “The end.”
“Can we read another?” Zane asked. “Maybe we can download a Captain Sparta one.”
The knowing look in Chase’s eyes made my cheeks turn pink. “Yes, I heard about your great love for Captain Sparta. How you were telling them all about him earlier.”
Little traitors. “That’s not quite what happened,” I informed him, but I could see he didn’t believe me.
“Did you know that sometimes at my job I get to dress up like Captain Sparta and pretend to be him?” Chase asked Zane, whose eyes grew impossibly big. Another victim of his charm.
“Hey, Zo, what’s a school of squid called?” Zander asked. Most likely for his project. I probably should have made him look it up, but I was still a tad scatterbrained over the fact that Chase Covington was in my home.
“Regular or giant?”
“Uh, regular.”
“A shoal.”
That appreciative look was back in Chase’s eyes. “I think it’s cool you know random stuff like that.”
More blushing that I felt all the way down to my feet. “Okay, bedtime.” I would get the kids in bed and the movie star out of my house and everything would be fine.
“I want to say prayer!” Zelda shouted, raising her hand. I had hoped we might skip our family prayer, but no such luck. We knelt down and held hands. Chase offered me his, and I took it. That electric current was still there, the one that made me feel excited and freaked out at the same time.
Zelda prayed for Mommy to be safe, and for Daddy to like his wings, and for Chase to be her new friend, and for me not to be mad at her for throwing up, and for Mr. Wriggles to not have a headache.
We said amen after she did, and I told the boys to brush their teeth and get into their pajamas. Zander complained about not finishing his homework, and I was tempted to tell him it was his fault for waiting so long, but instead I said he could finish it in his room and then go to bed. Which led to Zane whining about the light being on and my telling them to knock it off and just go.
I marched them down the hallway, stopping by the girls’ room to grab some pajamas and a Good-Nite diaper for Zelda. After I got the boys brushing their teeth, I came back and helped Zelda change, feeling Chase’s gaze on me the whole time. Figuring she’d already brushed her teeth after the puking episode, I sent her off to her room.
“Come on, Zia,” I said, offering my hand.
She shook her head adamantly. “No! Cheese put me bed!”
“I’d be happy to,” he offered. I told him her bedroom was the third door on the left, down the hallway.
He picked up Zia, and on his way out of the living room, he came to a halt way too close to me. I could feel his warm breath on the side of my neck. “Is there anyone else you want me to put to bed?”
It sounded innocent, but I caught his unspoken meaning. That made me suck in a huge gulp of air as I ordered my legs to keep me vertical. He chuckled like he knew exactly what he had done to me. I reminded myself that it wasn’t a big deal for him to say stuff like that. He probably said a lot more explicit things to a lot more experienced women. But it made me all flustered and nervous. Like a junior high school girl at her first dance.
So I did what any self-respecting, awkward junior high girl would do. I hid in the bathroom.
And I brushed my teeth.
Just in case.
When I had collected myself enough that I felt like I could face him again, I heard his voice in the girls’ room. He was singing to them. Which was so sweet it made me put my hand over my heart. If I could have bottled up that feeling and sold it, I would have been a billionaire.
Not wanting him to catch me eavesdropping, I returned to the living room. Which I suddenly realized was an absolute pigsty. It was one of those things where you get accustomed to a mess because you live with it all the time and it seems like no big deal, but when you realize how it must look to an outsider, you’re embarrassed.
“I hope you’re not doing that on my account.” Chase leaned against the living room wall, hands in his pockets, looking so utterly delicious that I froze. “I’ve already seen it.”
Yep, totally humiliating. I sank onto the couch and put down the basket of clean laundry I had planned on stowing in another room. I started folding it to give my hands something to do. “My mom’s got a lot on her plate. I try to help out when I can. She has this ongoing to-do list. Or as I call it, the Ta-Da List. Because it would be magic if we actually accomplished anything on it. But when you have this many small kids, it’s like continually cleaning up by yourself after a raging party you didn’t attend that happens every night. Which means my mother’s housekeeping style can best be described as ‘There appears to have been a struggle.’”
He let out another laugh as he took in his surroundings. He looked at all the pictures on the walls, the knickknacks, and the books on the shelves. He didn’t seem to notice I was nervously babbling. Or else he was polite enough not to comment on it.
“What about the giant ones?”
What the what? “Giant ones?”
He picked up one of the wooden toys my grandfather had carved for me when I was little. “Groups of giant squids. What are they called?”
“Oh, schools. Like fish. And a group of little kids is called a migraine.”
Chase laughed, that same real laugh, and I felt it in the lower part of my stomach. “I love that you know random stuff like that.”
“It’s Alex Trebek’s fault.”
He put the wooden horse on the shelf. “Why? Did he hold you down and force you to learn things?”
“I always wanted to meet him and be on Jeopardy!. I used to read trivia books all the time.” It occurred to me that I hadn’t picked up a book like that in years.
His fingers drifted across my grandma’s old Bible. “The prayer was nice. My grandmother was religious.”
Not like mine. “I’ll see your religious grandmother and raise you an Amish one.”
“Really?”
“Really. It’s a long story, though. I’ll have to tell you about it another time.” Because didn’t he need to leave? I needed him to leave. I was running out of clothes to fold. “I didn’t ask you before, but how did you know where my mother lives?”
“It was on those forms you filled out for One-F.” Right. I’d had to provide previous addresses and emergency contacts. He could have put two and two together. That seemed like a lot of effort, though. He must have really loved that tuxedo.
He found a photo album and held it aloft. “May I?”
“Sure, stalker.”
He grinned and settled onto the couch next to me. “Trust me, this is a new experience for me, too. Usually it’s the other way around.” He opened the album to the back page and saw a baby picture of Zia with her name on it. “Your parents seem pretty committed to this ‘Z’ thing.”
Parents? Another can of worms not worth opening just then. “My grandpa’s name was Zev, and my mom’s name is Zerah. She carried on the theme.”
He flipped a page. “I bet that gets confusing.”
“It does. You should hear her when she’s trying to yell at someone. She will run through every name except for the kid she’s mad at.”
I finished folding the laundry in the basket. Which made me all fidgety and not sure what to do with my hands. I figured I should probably run and get more, but I wondered if that would seem pathetic. I mean, I was sure he was super impressed with my glamorous lifestyle of staying in and doing laundry and watching small children. Would getting another load make it worse?
Chase perused the pictures, sometimes turning the album slightly to better see the photo. He had really nice hands. Long, tapered fingers. I thought of earlier when he’d held my hand during Zelda’s prayer. I’d really liked it.
But sitting in that silence, not sure what to do or say next, it suddenly dawned on me.
I was alone in my childhood home with Chase Covington.