Page 28 of The Overtime Kiss

She arches a brow, entirely unrepentant. “You told me to.”

“I didn’t tell you to hire Sabrina!”

“I believe your exact words were, ‘Go for it.’”

“You didn’t tell me that’s what you were up to,” I sputter.

“Of course I didn’t.” She is unperturbable. “Because I was helping you.”

Damn it. She’s right. I told her she could hire anyone. I just didn’t thinkanyonewould be the woman I can’t stop thinking about.

Back at our house that night, I tuck my son into bed. After a flutter of his eyes and a long yawn, I set the space explorer book on Parker’s nightstand and turn down the light. But instead of the usual muffled “Night, Dad,” he lets out theworld’s longest sigh. That’s not the kind of sigh you expect from an eight-year-old. It’s an old-soul sigh.

“What’s going on, buddy?” I ask, ruffling his hair.

He flips over in the darkness of his room, lit only by the glow-in-the-dark stickers of moons and stars he plastered to the ceiling.

“Agatha helped me with those,” he says, pointing at the stickers.

I helped too, but I figure that’s not worth mentioning right now. “I remember. We hauled up the ladder from the garage a few weeks ago.”

“She helped me figure out where to put all of them.”

“They look great,” I say, admiring the constellations—or at least, I think some of them are constellations. I definitely don’t know my astronomy. I squint at the configurations. “Is one of them the Big Dipper?”

Pretty sure the Big Dipper is supposed to look like a cup, and none of these shapes do, but that’s okay.

Parker points to a shape right above him that looks a little more like a bowl. “It’s right there.”

“Cool. What other constellations do you have?” I ask, even though I don’t think he really wants to talk about constellations. I think he just wants to talk.

He turns his face toward me slowly, his blue eyes giving me a curious look, his floppy hair falling over his forehead. He’s pure Elle, especially with his love of science.

“The Big Dipper isn’t a constellation, Dad.”

Oh. “I didn’t know that,” I say, feeling a little chastised.

“People think it is,” Parker says, then clucks his tongue. “Agatha knew the constellations.”

And there it is. He misses her. “Yeah, she was good with all that stuff.”

“The seven stars of the Big Dipper are actually part ofUrsa Major. People call it the Great Bear. Do you know what the Big Dipper actually is?”

I give a small smile and shake my head. “I think we’ve already established the stars and skies aren’t my strong suit, kid. Why don’t you tell me?”

That earns me a smile from Parker who says, “It’s called an aster…” He gets stuck on the term. “An aster?—”

“An asteroid?” I supply, though I know that’s not right.

“No! It’s an asterism,” he says, blowing out a triumphant but relieved breath, even as his tongue tangles on the unusual word.

“I have no idea what an asterism is.”

“It’s a bunch of stars within a constellation,” he explains, then points at the ceiling and shows me how the cup—or the bowl—forms part of the Great Bear, which kind of looks more like a blob.

“And I learned something new today,” I say.

He sighs again and is quiet for several seconds. “I wanted to put more stars on the ceiling,” he says, like he had his whole heart set on it.

---