Page 118 of Worst Nanny Ever
His mustache is history, his hair has been restyled, and he’s wearing a button-up shirt, a pair of jeans, and loafers.
Fuck, she dressed him up to look like me.
A laugh bubbles up inside me just as Hannah catches sightof me. She grins, then announces to the people gathered around her, including Liam, who gives me a weighing look: “We’re gonna have a banger of a holiday party this year, friends. Eugene here is going as Santa Claus.” She ignores the surprised look he gives her. “Trust me when I say you don’t want to miss that.”
They start talking amongst themselves, and Hannah gives Eugene a little push, as if he’s a baby duckling she’s casting into the pond. My smile grows larger as she makes her way to me.
“What are you doing here?” she asks, sounding surprised but not upset, thank God.
“I had to see you, and Dottie offered to stay with Ollie for a little while.” I hand her the cookie I brought her. “She made some love cookies.”
She gives me a searching look as she accepts the cookie. I half expect she’s going to lob a barb at me, but instead she asks, “Does this have weed in it?”
I laugh. “I hope not. Ollie ate five.” I glance at Eugene, who’s talking animatedly to someone, hopefully not about spreadsheets or self-discipline. “You chose a weirdly hot look for him,” I say, quoting what she said about my button-downs earlier.
“I was inspired,” she says with a smile, tucking the napkin-wrapped cookie into her purse. “But, really, what are you doing here?”
“Is there somewhere private we can talk?”
She searches out Liam—who’s been watching me like a hawk since I walked in and would definitely make a hat out of my face if I screw up—then nods to him and takes my hand. The gesture is so natural, it fills my chest with hope.
She leads me into a small, cramped storeroom, then shuts the door. There’s a bunch of kegs stacked up behind us, another row of them on the floor in front of us, and the walls are coveredin floor-to-ceiling racks crammed with cardboard boxes of alcohol and barroom supplies.
“Well?” she asks, turning toward me. “You’re being very mysterious.”
“I wanted to thank you in person,” I say. “I gave Ollie a drums lesson today. It felt…” I’m surprised by the welling of heat behind my eyes. “It was awesome. And if you’re okay with it, I’d love it if you could bring him to The Missing Beat tomorrow.”
She gives me one of her gorgeous whole-face smiles. “I’m so happy I’m not even going to say I told you so.”
“You can if you want,” I say. “You were right. You did tell me so.”
“I did, I really did,” she says, practically bouncing in her excitement. Her excitement for us. For what this might mean for my relationship with Ollie.
I hesitate, afraid to say this next part but needing to. I take a deep breath. “Before I met you, I was afraid of being a dad. I figured the best thing I could do for Ollie was find someone else to raise him. Someone who knew what they were doing. Maybe that sounds ridiculous because I spend my afternoons working with other people’s kids, but it’s different. They’re older, and they’re there to learn music, not life lessons. So the first thing I did when he got here was try to look for someone else to spend time with him. But I’m done doing that. I want to be his father, Hannah. I’m not going to hire another nanny.Iwant to do this. I’m going to bring him to the Beat with me every afternoon, and Dottie helped me realize that I can just get sitters for when I have shows.”
“This is the nicest way I’ve ever been fired,” she says with a laugh, her eyes shiny with tears. She wraps her arms around me and pulls me close, burrowing her face into my neck. “I’m so fucking proud of you.”
“I’mnotfiring you,” I say, holding her close,savoring the scent of her, the feeling of her in my arms. I sent her away the other night like an idiot, but I never want to do that again. I want to hang onto her for as long as she’ll let me. Until my fingers break. “You can keep the job for as long as you want. It’ll help in the beginning to have you with him at The Missing Beat. But you need something else, too, Hannah. Something bigger. You’re good at working with people, at bringing them together.” I pause before admitting, “And I want you to be with us because we’re yours, not because it’s a job. You’re the person I’d choose to be with, out of everyone in the world, and I want you to choose me back. I want to prove I’m worthy of it.”
She pulls back to look at me, and I’m gutted by the tear sliding down her cheek. I don’t need her to tell me she’s not the crying type. She probably sees tears as weakness. I always did, growing up. Whenever we would cry, Our mother would hand us over to Nanny Grace for “acting out,” and Nanny Grace would rap our knuckles.
I trace the tear with my finger. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
“I think they’re happy tears,” she says, laughing softly. “I honestly don’t have enough experience with tears to be sure.”
I lean in and kiss her softly, reverently.
“You’re really blowing my mind right now, Travis,” she says. “But you’ve been a bit hot and cold. I don’t know what to make of it. I thought you didn’t want to be with me until I stopped working for you.”
“Maritime law is different,” I say, wanting a smile from her.
“Okay, Ships Junior. Enlighten me.”
“When you’re on a ship, you don’t know how much of a future you have ahead of you. Pirates might attack, or everyone might get scurvy. So it’s all about living in the moment. You’ve made me value that. I was hoping we could try living in the moment together.”
“I’d like that,” she says, then lifts onto her toes and kisses me. “I’d like that a lot.”
“Then will you sit down on that keg, so I can get down on my knees and worship you?”
