Page 17 of The Spice Play

Matty’s little eyes widened with excitement as he kicked his feet. “Can I show her my goalie?”

Sebastian snorted. “If you want to give her nightmares, sure.” Matty squealed and went to move, but Sebastian kept his hold on him. “Hold your horses, bud,shoes.”

Maneuvering around his son, he leaned over the edge of the sofa, grasping the little red sneakers sitting on the ground near them. He popped them ontoMatty’s feet.

“Remember how to tie them?” Sebastian prompted, holding up the laces for Matty to reach toward. He grasped them in his little hands, putting one over the other and looping it through before tightening it down, and then staring hard at the laces as if they’d unlock the memory of what to do next. “You’ve got to make the little loop, remember? Then around and through and pull—no, not like that.”

“Do you know the rhyme?” I offered, moving closer on instinct. I sat down beside them on the leather. Matty shook his head.

“There’s a rhyme?” Sebastian asked, his brows coming together as he turned to look at me.

“Yeah! It’s super easy. Watch.” I offered my hands for Matty to give me the laces, and the moment he did, I undid his work and set us back to square one. “Bunny ears, bunny ears, playing by a tree. Criss-crossed the tree, trying to catch me.”

I made the motions as I half-sang the rhyme, tying the first bit that Matty had nailed. Then, I made two little loops on either side.

“Bunny ears, bunny ears, jumped into the hole,” I continued, looping one over the other and pulling through. “Popped out the other side, beautiful and bold!” Tightening it down, I motioned with both hands toward the perfect little lace tie. “See? Easy! You want to try? I’ll say it with you.”

Matty nodded excitedly and picked up the laces on his other shoe as his father eyed me over his head. “Bunny ears, bunny ears, playing by a tree. Criss-crossed the tree, trying to catch me,” Matty and I said in unison while he performed the first tie perfectly yet again. “Bunny ears, bunny ears, jumped into the hole…”

Matty struggled to make the two little loops and weboth paused while he maneuvered it. He stared at them, but it was like something clicked, and he put one through the crossover like I had before, and pulled them tight.

“Popped out the other side, beautiful and bold!” We finished together, and Matty’s grin spread across his cheeks like wildfire as he kicked excitedly.

“I did it!”

“You did! See? It isn’t hard, you just have to remember it,” I said. “Sometimes I still have to sing it to myself, you know.”

“Really?”

“That’s the first time he’s managed to do it completely on his own,” Sebastian said, cutting through the elation and leveling a stare at me that I couldn’t quite read. It made a shiver run up my spine. “Wild.”

I tried to laugh it off, tried to hide the minor discomfort he made me feel, but he just kept watching me, just kept picking me apart beneath his gaze. I couldn’t tell if he was actually happy I’d helped his kid with something or annoyed that I’d intervened.

“I did it, Dad,” Matty said again, this time leaning back in his father’s embrace and peeking up at him upside-down.

“I know! Good job, bud.” Sebastian grinned, his hands moving to either side of his son’s abdomen and squeezing just enough to get a squeal out of the kid.

Matty was so cute it actually hurt, like when you see a baby bunny and just want to squeeze it close to your chest and never let a single thing harm it. The thought raised questions in me that I normally didn’t think about with single parents — like where his mom was, if she was in the picture at all, if the last nanny’s departure had hit him so hard because maybe he didn’thavea mom. I’d looked at a handful of photos up on the walls as Sebastian had walked me through the house,and not a single one included anyone other than him and Matty and a woman who looked so much like Sebastian that the only logical conclusion was that she was a sister.

“Right, let’s show her the guesthouse and your goalie so that Nelly can decide if she wants to work for us sometime before the sun goes down,” Sebastian chuckled.

I’d already decided, but I wanted to see it all regardless, so I kept my mouth shut.

Together, the three of us went through the sliding glass door in the kitchen, stepping out onto the deck. A massive in-ground pool spanned part of the yard, with a small white fence around it to keep Matty safe. Beside it, under the cover of the roof, was a hot tub with a cover on top. A pathway led from the deck to a building that looked like a full-on little house.

But before we could get halfway there, Matty took off running into the grass, right up to…

I cackled. Full, belly-breaking cackled.

A scarecrow, of all things, sat between a smattering of hedges and plants, a helmet on its head and a hockey stick somehow secured to its hand. It wore a blue and gold jersey withAtlanta Firewritten across it, and beneath that were mounds of what I could only assume were shoulder pads and other protective gear.

“Ah, I see you’ve met Carl, the house goalie,” Sebastian said, coming up behind me.

“Carl?” I laughed.

He shrugged. “I don’t know, Matty named it.”

“Why did you put a scarecrow up? This isn’t a farm.” I chuckled, trying to keep my laughter at bay as Matty ran circles around it excitedly.

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