Page 7 of Power Play

Me: Okay. Details. Real ones. Hours, money, what happens in April, whether he expects me to cook.

I wanted a real reason to say no, instead of a vibe that this was a bad idea.

Maren: Full time, live-in. Casita attached to the house, own entrance, own bathroom. Kitchenette only, so you use the house kitchen for whatever, but you’d be doing that anyway to feed Iris.

Maren: He needs someone who understands the schedule. Drop offs, pickups, meals when he’s traveling or at the rink. He’s hands-on when he’s home, he just needs someone solid when he’s not.

Maren: And Iris needs someone steady. She’s had a string of unreliable sitters and she’s handled it beautifully and it kills me.

I read that last one again.

She’s handled it beautifully.

What she hadn’t said landed anyway. Iris was a kid who’d learned not to be surprised when plans fell through, who had calibrated down to what was reliably available and called that fine.

I’d had a few of those kids in every class of twenty-two, every year for fourteen years. Every single one of them had gotten under my skin.

I laid the phone screen-down on the cushion. Across the city a little girl was asleep who had been handling adult-sized disappointment with kid-sized grace so long that Maren Callahan, who missed almost nothing, felt she had to mention it.

I reached for the phone again.

Me: Set up the meeting.

Maren: !!!

Maren: Already done. He’s expecting you Tuesday at eleven.

Maren: For the record I think you’re going to be incredible at this.

Me: You are the least reliable narrator I have ever met, and I love you, and you are biased.

Maren: Completely. Still right.

I set the phone on the coffee table and crossed to the kitchen table for the top book off the stack. It was a paperback from the Camelback store, bought my second week here, with a receipt marking my page.

I carried it back to the couch and read the same paragraph over and over. The words entered and left without depositing one syllable in my brain, because the hero now had a dark beard and a Winnipeg accent, and when he picked up a coffee cup I saw Eli Kovac’s hands in front of me.

The meeting was Tuesday morning, and it wasn’t far off. I would need to do laundry before then. I would also need to stop thinking about his hands, and of the two, laundry was the one I expected to get done.

CHAPTER 3

Eli

I’d told two people about the interview. Cole found out at breakfast, which was the fastest route news could spread through the team.

“You’re interviewing someone today,” Cole said.

“Yes.”

“A nanny.”

“Yes.”

“Here. At the facility.” He set his fork down. “At our facility.”

“It has a room with chairs in it.”

Theo was at the end of the table with a paperback he’d bought in an airport, pinned open under the heel of his hand. His head never came up.