Chapter6
Cara’s voice was in a panic. “Aleisha, I’m so sorry to have to make this call to you, but my father had a stroke. I have to go to him in Boston. He’s at the hospital. I need to leave right away, and I don’t know when I’ll be back.”
“Oh no. I’m so sorry, Cara!” Aleisha felt as if her own heart had just departed her chest and gone out to the young girl.
“You’re going to have to come home right away or send someone else over here to take care of the kids. I have to go right now,” she pleaded miserably.
“I know. I understand. I’ll be right there.” Aleisha sounded empathetic and in complete control, but her mind was going in several directions.
They hung up, and she turned to look at Grace and Kyle, who were standing near her, waiting to hear what had happened and waiting to know if they could help at all.
“That was my babysitter,” Aleisha began as she lifted her hand and pressed her fingertips against her temples, stemming the stress headache that was slowly beginning to form there. “Her father just had a stroke, and she has to go to Boston to help him.”
“What other options do you have besides your babysitter for your children?” Kyle asked, eyeing her with concern.
“None.” Aleisha frowned in frustration. “I have a meeting with Jeremy Flanders, the bus driver from the New York Tech case, in an hour and a half. I don’t have enough time to find anyone else to take care of the kids, and she wants me there right now.”
“You don’t have any family or friends who could step in at a moment’s notice?” he asked, his eyes steady on her.
“Not this time. My sister and my grandmother are on a cruise together in Mexico. I can’t believe this is happening right now. Normally, I could call them, and they’d be right over there. I wouldn’t even have to leave the office, but they’re gone, and now I have no other choice or option.” She rubbed her hand over her forehead and closed her eyes, trying to think of what she could do.
Kyle reached his hand out to her elbow and touched it gently. “I’ll watch them for you,” he said quietly and comfortingly.
Everything in her stopped, and she dropped her hand and looked up at him. “What?” she asked, certain that she hadn’t heard him correctly.
“I said, I’ll watch them for you. That’s no big deal. It’s just while you’re meeting with this Mr. Flanders, right? How long could that be, a couple of hours at most? I can do it. I have no problem looking after them. This is an important meeting and an important case.
“So, we can leave here and go to your place, your babysitter can leave, I’ll stay with the kids, and you can go to your meeting. I’ll see you when you get back, and we’ll figure it out from there.” His voice was reassuring and steady. Calmness radiated from him, as if it wasn’t the big deal she was worried about, but rather that it was nothing more than an easily handled bump in their daily road.
She stared at him, and at first, no words could come to her. She couldn’t imagine him looking after her children – he didn’t seem the type to want to be around kids – but then again, perhaps he was, she thought to herself as she looked back at him.
“You’d really be okay with watching nine-month-old twins…” she trailed off as she furrowed a brow at him.
He shrugged and nodded. “Of course! They’re small. How much trouble could they be?”
She laughed unintentionally and crossed her arms over her chest. “Have you ever spent time with kids before? Little kids?”
He nodded. “I have, actually. I have a pretty big family and a lot of cousins. I might be an only child, but there were plenty of other kids around me growing up, and I have quite a few cousins with kids. It’ll be a piece of cake. I promise. If I doubted that I could do it, I wouldn’t have offered. I’m absolutely confident that we’ll be fine.”
Kyle gave his head a shake and turned his body toward the door, moving his hand from her elbow to her back as if to guide her out of his office. “Get your things, and let’s go. We don’t have a lot of time. She needs to get to her father, you need to get to your meeting, and you don’t have another choice. Luckily for you, I’m a good choice. So, let’s go.”
Grace raised both of her eyebrows and grinned, holding back a chuckle as she turned and went back to her desk. Aleisha blinked and tried to wrap her mind around what was happening. She knew that he was right, they had no time and they had no choice, but he was the last person she’d ever have expected to jump in and help her out with her babies.
“Uh… okay. I guess…” she trailed off, turning away from him and taking a few steps before she paused and looked over her shoulder at him doubtfully.
He shook his head again and, with his hand on her back, ushered her toward the door. “No time to argue or worry about it. Let’s go. Come on. You can buy me lunch sometime for doing this for you.” He pressed her forward, and she went, walking in a daze toward her office to get her things.
Minutes later, she was seated beside Kyle in his Tesla as they zipped through the streets and intersections on the way to her home. “I still think we should have taken my car.” She frowned, and he answered without looking back at her.
“Why? It’s a safe bet that my car is faster, and you can take it to the appointment with Flanders. Come back and get me when you’re done, and we’ll go from there.” He was nonchalant, as if it wasn’t even a question in his mind that his car was the better option.
Aleisha was still too surprised to say much of anything else. She looked out of the window and watched the city fly past her. She didn’t know what to say about Cara needing to leave so suddenly, or Kyle watching her babies, or her even driving his top of the line sports car to her meeting with a bus driver. It felt like her life had been in order that morning, and now, not one thing was the way that it was supposed to be. It was chaotic, as if she had suddenly fallen down a rabbit hole and everything had gone topsy turvy.
They pulled up to the building where she lived, and he looked up at it and frowned. “You live here?” he said quietly as they got out of the car and headed into the main door.
Feeling a little insulted by his astonishment, she gave him a narrow look. “Yes, I live here.”
He looked a little sorry for having said it the way that he had. “I didn’t mean it like… I just meant that it’s so… small,” he finished uncomfortably.
She lowered a brow and felt an edge come up inside of her. “I’m a single mother living within my means. This is the best I can do for myself and my kids right now. I’m hoping that will change in the future, and I’m willing to work hard for it, but for now, this is what I can do.”
He nodded and looked down. “I didn’t mean to sound condescending. I’m sorry if I did. I’m just surprised, that’s all. I thought you’d be living somewhere with more room, you know, having two babies…” his voice grew soft, and she looked away from him.
“Well, maybe with this new promotion, I can afford to make that change in the near future, but not right now. Right now, this is the best I can do.” She unlocked the apartment door, and they walked in.
Cara was an emotional mess, and after a quick hug from Aleisha, she went straight out of the door. Aleisha sighed and turned to look at Kyle, who was taking in nearly every detail of the interior of her apartment.
“Well, I guess we should introduce you.” She walked over to the playpen in the living room and lifted her daughter up. Hailey was dressed in a little, red jumpsuit that reached to her ankles and had straps over her shoulders. She wore a little, white blouse beneath it and a small, red barrette in her soft, curly, dark hair.
Hailey grinned and squealed, happy to be held, happy to play, and happy to meet the man who was standing before her, staring at her as if he had never seen a child before in his life. Kyle reached his hands out for her slowly, taking her into his arms and moving his eyes all over her face and her small form, almost like he was memorizing every single thing about her and about the moment.
“Hailey…” he said quietly as a smile grew over his face. “It’s wonderful to meet you.” He touched the tip of his finger to soft chubby cheek, and she giggled and reached for him, wrapping her tiny fingers around his forefinger.
Aleisha watched him incredulously. He was completely taken with Hailey, and she got the distinct impression that he was going to do just fine with the babies. She lifted Harry from the playpen and held him in her arms. He was wearing a matching jumpsuit and a button-up white shirt with a slender, little, red bow tie at the neck. He wriggled and giggled, clapping his hands and touching his mother’s face with delight.
“This is Harry,” Aleisha said with a widening smile as she turned toward Kyle. He grinned as he reached his hand out to the baby boy. Harry grabbed onto his hand and pulled it straight toward his mouth.
“Oh, be careful. He’s teething. He’ll bite you,” Aleisha warned Kyle with an apologetic laugh. Kyle shook his head subtly.
“I’m not worried at all about that. He can bite me if he needs to. I’m sure cutting teeth is painful.” He gazed at the boy and laughed softly, his blue eyes studying everything about the baby with utter delight.
Aleisha chuckled quietly. “Well, I never would have guessed.” She watched him and the babies as they got to know each other, and he took Harry from her with his other arm and sat down on the sofa with them both, looking from one to the other and then back again.
“You never would have guessed what?” he asked distractedly, his attention solely on the two little ones in his arms. Hailey was cuddling up against him, and Harry was climbing all over him and inspecting his face and his necktie and shirt.
She shook her head. “I never would have guessed that you’d be a natural with kids. They like you. That’s… that’s just totally unexpected, and it’s a nice surprise. I wasn’t sure what to think about leaving them with you, but it looks like the three of you are going to get along alright.”
“We’re going to be perfectly fine, aren’t we, guys?” he looked from Harry to Hailey and then finally turned his face up to Aleisha.
She laughed. “Alright, well, their diapers and changing things are in their room. There’s a changing table in there. Their extra clothes are in there. There’s food for them on the top shelf in the refrigerator. They usually eat around one, and they’ll go down for a nap in their cribs after they eat. When they wake up, they’ll need a diaper change. I guess…” she watched them all playing with each other, “I guess that’s about it.”
She could not believe that she was watching her boss get along so sweetly with her precious babies. It was as if the rabbit hole she had fallen into had no end in sight. Nothing was believable, even though she was looking at it and watching it happen right before her eyes.
“Go on, get to your appointment. We’re going to be fine. Don’t you worry about us.” He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his car keys, tossing them gently to her. “Enjoy the car.”
Aleisha stood stunned for one more moment as she tried to wrap her head around what she was looking at, but finally, she took a deep breath and turned, walking out of the door and smiling to herself at what a strange turn everything had taken.
Kyle leaned his face close to each of the babies and smiled at them. Hailey’s smile wavered as she looked at the door and then back at him, and then once more at the door, realizing that Aleisha had left them. Her smile turned upside down, and she began to cry, brokenhearted that her mother had left.
As Kyle rubbed her small back and tried to soothe her, Harry clamored across his lap and up his chest, hiccupped, and then promptly threw up all over the front of Kyle’s tie, shirt, vest, and suit. Kyle looked down at his chest, covered in everything that had just left Harry’s stomach, and then he looked back up at the small boy.
“This is a tailored Armani suit,” he began, but then he chuckled a little and shook his head as he rubbed Hailey’s back. “You know what? It’s okay. I have ten more just like this one.”
It took Aleisha a few miles in the Tesla before she got even a little comfortable driving it. It wasn’t anything like her car at all, and it was nerve-wracking to her that the model she was driving was worth more than she made in a year, or at least more than she had been making. She had gotten a healthy raise when she had been promoted, but it still didn’t ease her mind about driving something as expensive as the wheel at her hands.
She wound her way through the buzzing streets from her home to Jeremy Flander’s home in New Jersey. He lived on a quiet and humble street in a modest neighborhood. All of the cars were old, sitting on the street or in people’s driveways, some of them obviously junked but kept in the yard. The houses were worn down and had aged roughly. She felt as far out of place as she possibly could have, being there in the shiny, red Tesla she was driving, and she chastised herself for not insisting on taking her own car. Her vehicle would have fit in much better in Mr. Flander’s neighborhood.
She parked in front of his house and looked around her closely as she locked the car and faced the home before her. It was a single-story home with two windows on the front framing either side of the old door. There was a scraggly-looking front yard that was more weeds than grass and still held much of the brown lawn from the year before. There was a driveway with an old Ford pickup truck in it and an open garage with a tired looking Dodge car parked inside.
Taking her bag up on her shoulder, she straightened her pantsuit and walked up the sidewalk to the front door. She knocked a few times, but there was no answer. Frowning, she turned and walked toward the garage, wondering if he might be hidden in the dark depths of it, working on something.
“Mr. Flanders?” she called out loudly. “Mr. Flanders?”
A moment later, a man’s face slid out from beneath the car that was parked in the garage. He looked up at her, and she saw the grease smudges on his cheeks and forehead, while the rest of his face was covered with a beard and a moustache.
“Yeah?” he asked, moving his eyes over her as he sized her up.
“I’m Aleisha Kingston. I’m from Carrington, Peterson, Jansen, and Drake,” she said with a light smile.
He frowned. “Oh… the lawyer.” Sliding back under the car, she was left alone in silence for a long moment.
“Is this a good time to talk?” she asked, wondering what he was doing.
“Yeah, I’ll be out in a minute. I just need to tighten this. Give me a second,” he called out from somewhere beneath the filthy, old engine block he was working on.
She stood and waited patiently. A few minutes later, he slid back out from beneath the car and pushed himself up off of the creeper board that he had been lying on under the vehicle. Standing up, he pulled an old dirty rag from the back pocket of his coveralls and wiped his hands on it in an attempt to clean them, though the rag did little to remove any of the grime from his skin.
He reached his hand out to her, and Aleisha ignored the grease and dirt and took his hand in hers, shaking it. “Thank you for taking the time to meet with me. I appreciate it. I can see that you’re busy, so I won’t stay too long. Is there somewhere that we could sit down and visit?”
She kept her voice professional and friendly, and she hoped that he could detect the sincerity in her.
“Yeah,” he nodded, looking away from her as he made another attempt at wiping his hands off again. “We can go in the house.”
She followed him out of the garage and up the steps to the front door of the house. His living room was simply furnished. He had a couch, two chairs, and a worn coffee table that was spotted with water rings from glasses and mugs that had been left there over long periods of time. There were a few cigarette burns on it and a full ashtray of cigarette butts sitting at one end of it, beside the fatigued chair that was obviously his favorite.
He turned to look at her, expressionless. “Can I get you anything to drink?”
“No, I’m fine, thank you.” She gave him a smile and a nod. He disappeared into the kitchen and came back a minute later with a beer in his hand. He cracked it open and sank down into his chair, nodding to her to sit on the sofa near him. She did.
“Mr. Flanders,” she began, but he looked up at her and gave his head a little shake.
“Just call me Jeremy,” he said flatly.
“Okay, thank you. Jeremy, there’s another family in the lawsuit that is refusing to sign the settlement, like you are, because they say that the company is aware of problems with their bus line, but they’re refusing to do anything about it. They’re turning a blind eye. That sounds sort of like what you were telling me on the phone. What is your reason for not signing the settlement?” she asked, hoping to get answers out of him without leading him too much.
He furrowed his brow and took a long swig from his beer. “They’re liars. They aren’t taking care of anything. That other family is right. The company is turning a blind eye. I was with them a long time, and I know what’s going on there. I seen it. The brakes are bad on all of their buses, and they won’t get ‘em fixed. They’re too damn cheap to keep up the maintenance on their bus line. They aren’t worried about the safety of their passengers or their employees.”
She listened quietly and reached for the pen and notebook in her bag, jotting down everything that he was telling her. He didn’t seem to mind that she was writing, because he kept right on talking.
“They knew that the brakes they were using weren’t good, and they kept on using them. They didn’t change them, even after the last three wrecks.” He scowled and took another long pull off of his beer.
Aleisha looked at him in surprise. “Three wrecks?” she asked as she lifted a brow.
Jeremy turned his eyes back to her. “Yeah. Three wrecks in the last year, all of them from brakes. Four wrecks the year before that. Go back every single year, and you’re going to find multiple wrecks each year, and all of them are due to bad brakes... Bunch of white collar idiots. You’d think they’d figure out that it’s cheaper to just put new brakes on the buses than to keep paying people off every year. Except I guess maybe that’s what the insurance company keeps doing, and they just keep letting the insurance company pay it, so it doesn’t really come out of their pocket.” He twisted his face in disgust.
“They don’t care about anything but money.” He lifted his beer and pointed it at Aleisha as he continued to talk. “All us drivers knew that we were driving a gamble. It was gonna be one or another of us at some point. I just happened to be driving that day. The brakes got soft, and I knew what was coming. I had a hunch. I hoped I could make it back to the station after that route, but the brakes gave out, and I had no way to stop the bus. There was nothing that I could do.”
He looked down at his other arm, and for the first time since Aleisha had met Jeremy, she noticed that it hadn’t moved. It had been still the entire time, slightly bent at the elbow, his fingers still as if he had been relaxed.
“Lost the use of this arm in that wreck. Can’t do a damn thing with it now, or with my hand. Can’t be fixed. Going to have to spend the rest of my life like this. You think that company cared about me or my arm? No way. You want to know what they did? They fired me and blamed me for the wreck. I was a model employee for them. I drove for them for ten years, and look at me now, sitting here on my ass, working on cars.” He lifted his beer and pointed it at the far wall.
She looked up and saw a row of plaques, ten in total, all of them covered in layers of dust with gold ink on the papers beneath the musty glass. “You see them? Those are awards. Special commendations that the company gave me every year for being a model employee. I showed up every day. I never called in sick. I did everything they asked me to, everything by the book. Then, when this wreck happened, they fired me immediately. No letter of recommendation.
“You know how hard it is to get another job after you been at the same one for a decade and you don’t have a letter of recommendation? It’s impossible. No one wants to hire you when you come off a decade of work with nothin’ in your hand to show what kind of work you done.”
He shook his head sadly and finished off his beer, partially trying to cover a burp. “Pardon,” he said quietly as he cracked open the second can. “Then that lawsuit came up, and I joined it, thinking it might be at least something to go right with all of it, but then I saw what they were offering everyone. It’s an insult. It’s a joke. They’re offering everyone scraps for what we all went through. There were two people killed on that bus that day. I bet you seen that in your file. They were killed. An old lady and a young girl.”
Tears formed at the corners of his eyes. “I tried to help them. I did what I could until the ambulance got there, but it was too late. They couldn’t be saved.” He was staring off into space, into the past. “You ever seen someone die, Aleisha? You ever held on to someone, begging and pleading with them to live just long enough for the ambulance to get there, and they die in your arms, and there’s not a damn thing you can do?” He turned his gaze and looked up at her then.
She felt her stomach tighten, and a wave of nausea came over her. “No, Jeremy. I’ve never been through anything like that, but I did lose my parents in a car accident, and I know what it’s like to lose someone who means everything to you. I can’t imagine what you went through, and what you’re still going through. We didn’t know about all these other accidents. We didn’t know about the company ignoring the brake issues.”
“Well, now ya know,” he said quietly, looking down into his beer. “The only way I will sign off on anything with New York Tech is if they make good on all of their brakes and they’re forced to keep it that way in the future, and if they give me a good job reference. It wasn’t my fault that the brakes went out.”
Aleisha lifted her chin and looked him squarely in the eye. “Jeremy, we’re going to come back on New York Tech. We’re not doing this settlement with them. I’m going to go to them and renegotiate this. I’m going to make sure that not only do they fix their brakes and increase the settlement offer to every person in that wreck by a lot, I’m also going to make sure that they publicly apologize for what they’ve done, and that they commit to proper vehicle maintenance in the future. We’re going after them.”
She slid her notebook and pen into her bag and stood up, and Jeremy stood up as well. “Thank you for your time. I’m going to meet with them, and I’ll keep you in the loop on it. I’ll let you know how it goes, and when they meet your requirements, then I’ll send you a new settlement document to sign.”
“Sounds good,” he said with a quiet nod and a heavy sigh. “It’ll be good to be done with the whole thing.”
“I’m sure it will.” She shook his hand, and he walked her to the door. As she went back to the car, she wondered just how many people New York Tech had swindled over the years. She was going to find out, and she was going to make sure that it never happened again. She was really glad that when she had told Richard Peterson that they needed to go after New York Tech, Kyle had not only listened to her, he had backed her up.
She couldn’t imagine representing a corporation who could be so underhanded, especially in this particular case. The idea of being on the other side of it and having to defend them from this exact case made her sick to her stomach. She’d have hated being on the other side of it, and she wouldn’t have had a choice. She’d have had to work hard to defend them, even though they were wrong, if they had been a client of the firm.
As it was, the attorney who had been working on the case initially had been fired, and all of his files had been given to Kyle and her to work on. She felt lucky that she had been handed the New York Tech file. She was exactly where she would have wanted to be in the case, if she could have reviewed the whole thing and had her choice about what position to be in on it. Closing her fingers tighter around the steering wheel, she promised herself that she was going to get to the bottom of it, and she was going to do right by everyone on that bus and everyone who would ever be on a New York Tech bus again.
As Aleisha pulled up to the parking garage near her apartment, her thoughts shifted from her meeting with Jeremy Flanders and turned to her boss, who was watching her babies for her. Thoughts of all that might be happening up in her apartment began to tumble through her mind. There was no telling how it had gone, but she hoped that it had gone well.
She tried not to hold her breath and to have a little faith as she stepped out of the elevator and went to her front door. She couldn’t hear any sounds from the hallway, but she knew that that didn’t mean much. Slipping her key in the lock, she opened the door and looked around.
The living room was tidy, actually cleaner than she had left it, and no one was in it. It sounded to her as if no one was home at all because there was nothing but silence that greeted her. Her heartbeat picked up a bit, and she walked to the kitchen. There were two little bowls in the sink, and she checked in the refrigerator and saw that some of the food had been eaten from the top shelf, so she knew that the babies had been fed.
She went back into the living room and went down the hall to the twins’ room. They were not in their cribs, though both of their little red jumper outfits were sitting on top of the laundry basket in the corner of the room. She frowned and stepped back out into the hall, her heart going even faster as curiosity ran rampant through her mind.
Aleisha went to her bedroom and pushed the door open. Two steps in, she stopped where she stood as a smile began to spread over her face. There, on her bed, was Kyle, wearing his suit pants and a Tina Turner t-shirt that she had bought at the last Tina Turner concert she’d been to. She blinked in surprise that he was wearing it.
Sleeping in each of his arms were the babies, curled up against him and passed out. They were dressed in their pajamas, each of them curled up with their toys, a teddy bear and an elephant. She lifted her hand and touched her fingertips to her mouth as she took the moment in. She almost wanted to take a photograph of it, it was so sweet, and she was positive she was never going to see her boss in that kind of position again, but she knew she shouldn’t.
She walked around the bed and reached her hand to his as it lay over Harry’s leg. Touching him gently, she woke him. Kyle snapped awake with a start and looked around almost in a panic until he realized that both of the babies were asleep. Breathing a sigh of relief, he let his head fall back to the pillow for a moment, and Aleisha reached down to help him maneuver the babies off of him so that he could get up.
When he was standing, he held his finger to his lips to shush Aleisha so that she wouldn’t wake the babies, and it was all that she could do not to laugh at him. She watched him as he reached for the blanket and covered them both up, tucking them in, and then she followed him out of her bedroom and down the hall to the living room.
“How did it go?” he asked her in a whisper.
She finally laughed softly. “You can speak in a soft voice out here.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think I want to take any chances.”
“Maybe,” she eyed him teasingly, “but I’m home now, so you won’t have to do any more babysitting.”
He nodded with realization and smiled. “How did it go?” he asked her again, just barely above a whisper.
She frowned a little. “I found out that there have been several wrecks over many years, and every time they happen, the company just uses the insurance to pay off the injured and keeps on going like they have been. They neglect the upkeep on their vehicles, and they continue to risk the lives of their employees and passengers.
“There were three wrecks this year, including this one, and Jeremy has been there ten years. He’s seen what they’ve been doing. He says that all of the drivers have. We have a very different case on our hands than we thought we did. We need to go after New York Tech and make them take care of their bus line and maintenance, as well as all of these people who are just the latest in a long line of people they’ve hurt by their negligence.”
“We can’t let them do that. We’re going to take them on, and we’re going to fix this,” Kyle stated resolutely.
She grinned broadly. “I was hoping you’d say that because that’s exactly what I told Jeremy that we were going to do.”
“Find out what you can about the repairs on the brakes. We have testimony, but we’re going to need some solid proof that they haven’t been abiding by safety codes if we’re going to pressure them to make this all right.” He looked at her pointedly.
“I’m on it. I’ll find out all that I can and get this taken care of right away,” she vowed. “We’re going to make sure they never hurt anyone again.”
He nodded, and the corner of his mouth turned up in a smile. He almost wanted to tell her how beautiful she was when she was on fire for something she believed in, but he realized a moment before he said it that it was something he probably shouldn’t say to her, so he kept it to himself and just let the half-smile show.
She saw it and looked at him curiously. “So, what happened to you? You’re wearing my Tina Turner concert shirt?” she raised one eyebrow and put her hands on her hips as she laughed a little. “I mean, it’s a great look, I wear that myself, but… it doesn’t really go with your tailored suit. I think maybe you should be in jeans with that shirt.”
He looked away from her and brought his hand to his head, raking his fingers through the dark, loose curls of hair on his head. “Yeah, well… Harry had an upset stomach and… we both wound up wearing it. The rest of my suit is hanging in your shower. I rinsed it off. I have no idea if I should wash that kind of material, but I couldn’t leave it like it was.”
Aleisha bit at her lower lip as she looked at him sympathetically. “I’m sorry. I’ll pay to have it dry cleaned,” she offered sweetly.
He watched her biting her lip, and for a moment it totally distracted him, and he found himself wishing that he was biting her lip instead. The thought caught in his mind, and he looked away from her and waved his hand dismissively. “No, don’t worry about it. I told Harry that I have ten more exactly like that one. My cleaner will get it out; it’s fine.”
“How did the rest of it go?” she asked, folding her arms across her chest as she smiled up at him.
“It was great! We had a good time. It was a little tricky at first right after you left, but we cleaned up and played, and then they ate cheerios and fruit, and then they laid down for a nap with me, and I told them a story about a vacation that I had in Barbados, and it was so boring that we all passed out. Looks like I’m going to miss the after-nap diaper change. I’m not sorry about that, though… I’ll be honest.” He winked at her and chuckled. “I really think I got the hang of it. I loved it; it was a lot of fun.”
She stared at him and shook her head. “I can’t believe it. You are such a surprise. I never would have guessed that you’d be good with babies.”
His eyes were steady on hers. “You’d be surprised about a lot of things where I’m concerned,” he said quietly.
“I believe you.” She nodded at him. “Thank you for taking care of them and letting me do this meeting. We really needed it. We have so much more information for this case now. This made a big difference, and I really appreciate it.”
She walked over to the sofa and sat down with a sigh, and he followed her, sitting beside her. “Now, I just need to figure out what I’m going to do with the kids until my sister and grandmother get back from their cruise to Mexico. Cara is gone, and there isn’t anyone else because my sister and my grandma are my backup. I’m really at a loss for what to do here, but I’ll figure it out.”
Without really thinking about it, he reached out and took her hand in his. She turned and looked at him as the warmth and softness of his skin closed over hers. It made the breath in her stop, and she didn’t move.
“Don’t worry about it. I’ve contacted an agency here in Manhattan. It’s the very best agency in the city. They’re sending someone over in the morning, and I promise it will be their best nanny. Take the rest of the day off today – we’re just about done with the day anyway – and spend the time with the kids. The new nanny will be here in the morning, and you can come in to work.” He gave her a smile, and she felt as if the air between them had stilled, as if everything around them had stilled.
He was so close to her, his hand around hers and his eyes holding her gaze, and for the briefest moment, she wanted nothing more than to lean forward and kiss him softly and slowly, but the thought flitted away, and she blinked and nodded.
“Sure, that sounds fine. Thank you so much. You really didn’t have to do that.” She felt her cheeks warming as he gave her hand a squeeze.
“Yes, I did. I need you at work, and as much as I would love to see those two little angels in there every day, it’s not conducive to me having a productive work day either, so this was the next course of action. Don’t worry about it; it’s nothing at all for me to help you with this.” He dropped his gaze from her warm, brown eyes to her full, red lips and allowed himself a moment’s temptation in drinking them in before he looked away and let go of her hand, standing up and taking in a deep cleansing breath.
“Well, I’m really grateful for it. Thank you,” she said, trying to clear her own mind as she stood up and walked around the coffee table to the other side of it. She needed some distance between them if she was going to maintain any kind of professionalism at all in that moment. The nearness of him and his soft touch had been enough to stir up a warmth in her body that she knew was totally inappropriate.
“You are very welcome. Thank you for your hard work.” He gave her a smile and headed to the bathroom down the hall. He returned a minute later with his wet shirt, vest, tie, and jacket. “I’m guessing I can return Tina Turner to you tomorrow?” he asked with a light laugh.
She couldn’t help laughing back; the sight of him was completely enchanting in its silliness and sweetness. “Sure. It’s fine to get it back to me anytime.”
“Well, I’d better be going,” he said softly as he walked toward the door and reached for his coat, draping it over his arm.
“You’re going to need these.” She pulled his keys from her coat pocket and handed them to him. He nodded, and she frowned.
“My car is at the office…” she sighed and rolled her eyes. “I can’t believe I forgot that.”
“I’ll pick you up in the morning.” He smiled at her, his eyes dancing with mirth and something else that she couldn’t quite place, some hidden happiness.
“Do you always have the solution? The answers to anything that crops up?” she asked lightly in a teasing way.
He nodded and spoke evenly. “Yes,” he answered and walked out of the door with his clothes over his back and his coat over his arm.
She watched him walk away, and when he had turned the corner to go to the elevator, she closed the door and leaned her back against it, closing her eyes and sighing. “Don’t get a crush on your boss, Aleisha. Just… don’t.”