Page 93 of Worst Nanny Ever
I was trying to push you away last night because I thought it was the right thing to do.
You did a good job of it.
Say, is there a nanny HR department I should report you to?
Probably. Maybe you can just report me to one of those Ships Ahoy fan forums. That seems to be the best way to circulate information.
Where are you?
Liam asked me to have a drink at Big Catch.
Is he about to murder me?
Not on my behalf. So if you get murdered, we can blame your personality.
Odds aren’t good for my survival, but if I make it, I’ll be home in an hour or two.
We’ll be here. We’re having a paint-off in your living room without a drop cloth. Whoever gets the most acrylic paint on the floors wins.
Have fun ;-)
I’m about to write something else—hopefully something deep and meaningful—but Liam sets a beer in front of me.
“Talking to Hannah?” he asks as he gets settled into the booth with his own drink.
I itch to pocket my phone, as if Liam might develop X-ray vision and see our conversation, but I settle for setting it down on the table.
“Yeah. I let her know we’re here.”
He raises his eyebrows, leaning back in the seat across from me. “Are you going to tell me what that was all about?”
“You mean with Hannah? I?—"
“No, I meant with those women at the show,” he says, frowning, and gestures to the kayaks on the wall. “Those people have as much of a hard-on for ships as the guy who started this place.”
I laugh and nearly choke on my sip of beer. “I figured Hannah told you all about my past.”
He holds my gaze for a moment before saying, “Hannah might seem like an open book, but she doesn’t share other people’s secrets.”
“So I’m discovering,” I say, feeling an ache of longing.
I don’t need to tell Liam about my dad. I get the feeling he won’t insist on it, but at this point, the secret isn’t much of one. People will be talking. People will beposting. My only hope is that Lilah’s still in the middle of her internet desert or that the local news is the only place this will end up. After all, my dad is old news, and I shouldn’t be news at all.
So I tell him about Ships Junior. Meeting Alice in the toy store. The social media post.
“Well, damn,” Liam says, cracking his scarred knuckles. “Someone’s got a grudge against you. Who have you pissed off other thanmy sister?”
I laugh uncomfortably. “She said something about that, huh?”
“I’ve known her since she was born,” he says, giving me a look that informs me he could kill me without trying. “She didn’t need to say shit.”
“I think very highly of Hannah.” I immediately feel like an idiot. It sounds like the kind of thing an HR professional would spout off, but I can’t exactly tell him how I really feel about her. How I felt perfectly happy for the first time in years last night, only to screw it up. Because there’s a part of me that doesn’t believe I get to be perfectly happy—that I could have my son and a woman who cares about both of us.
A silence settles between us, not exactly comfortable, because I can feel him sizing me up.
Finally, he says, “You should know that Hannah asked me for two favors, to be granted at a time of her choosing.” He allows for a dramatic pause before finishing. “She could have asked for anything, but she used one of them to send me over to New Belgium to get you. So it seems like she thinksvery highlyof you too.”
Fuck.Fuck.
