Page 49 of Worst Nanny Ever
“And what would your bedroom say about you?” he asks.
“That I need someone to remind me to pay my bills and go through the mail.”
“So we have opposite problems,” he says thoughtfully. “Maybe I can organize your apartment and you can have fun for me.”
I reach over and shove his arm. “You may be good at playing the drums, but you’re terrible at making bargains.”
“I don’t know about that. There’s a certain joy to finding order in chaos. That’s what playing the drums is all about, riding the line between the two and hoping you don’t crash out.”
“And you like that?”
“I love it. I’d live in that place if I could. It’s the only place I’ve ever felt totally at peace.”
“You don’t look like you’re at peace when you’re playing. You look like you’re fighting. Especially tonight.”
He pauses, and for a second I’m sure he’s going to end the conversation, which has probably been skirting the nanny-boss line we already jumped across once today. But then he says, “It’s like I’m unleashing something. Rob calls it the beast. It feels good. Necessary. But it didn’t totally work tonight. Obviously.”
A pulse of awareness flares through me, but I shutit down, nodding. “My brother’s a boxer. Liam’s most at peace when he’s smashing someone’s face in.”
“And you?”
Suddenly, I realize the distance between us has been eliminated. There was a foot, then eight inches, and now there’s nothing. Our legs are pressed together in a seam of heat.
“I get involved in other people’s business, obviously. Being nosy is my superpower.” I hesitate, then figure I might as well go for broke and add, “Which is why I’m going to say you should share your music with Ollie. Show him what you love, and teach him how to play. Give him something real. It’s pretty obvious Lilah and Roland never did.”
His expression shifts, the lightness drifting away. But he doesn’t seem pissed exactly. “Yeah, maybe.”
A kiss-off if I’ve ever heard one.
“My dad didn’t know what to do with us after my mom left,” I push. “But one of his buddies said to share what he loved, so Dad taught us to brew beer. Now look at Liam. He made beer for the first time when he was ten.”
He gives me a pointed look. “This should go without saying, but no teaching Ollie to brew beer.”
“Yeah, yeah,Mr. Sir Thomas. I know. But that’s not why I told you the story. Liam didn’tdrinkthe beer. It was about doing something together. ‘Sharing is caring’ is a cliché for a reason.”
“I’ll give it some thought.”
I’m tempted to tell him to do it quickly, so he can hurry along to the conclusion that I’m right, but I’m wise enough to know that tactic would never work for either of us.
I sigh heavily, then ask, “What was Lilah like when you dated?”
He looks off in the distance. “She was wild. Fun. All in for going on tour with the band I was playing with at the time. We were only together for a month, maybe, before she found abetter option. Roland came to our show in Nashville, and he invited us all to his house for drinks afterward. It was this huge mansion with a full staff. Lilah climbed onto his lap half an hour in, then told me she was staying.”
“What a bitch.”
He shrugs. “I felt pretty low about it for a while.” He smiles self-deprecatingly. “Okay, really low. I was young and stupid and thought it was love. Drank myself stupid. But the next city we stopped in was Asheville. I went to a karaoke bar with one of the other guys on the tour, and I met Rob. This was before he got sober. He was drunk off his ass that night, but it didn’t matter. When he sang, everyone in the bar stopped what they were doing to listen. He had this…star power, I guess you’d call it. We clicked, and I knew we could build something together. The rest is history. It didn’t take long for me to see Lilah leaving as a good thing.”
“Because if she went for the old guy’s money, she definitely would have gone for yours.”
He sighs. “I didn’t have any back then. My dad and I hadn’t talked for years, but he died not long after I left the tour. He left me some money, yeah. Enough to get us started with The Missing Beat and for me to buy this house and have a good chunk left over to invest. But it’s not as much as Lilah would think. About half his fortune went to establishing aShips Ahoymuseum in Upstate New York that no one goes to.”
No shit.
“Can the three of us go sometime?”
He smiles. “Absolutely not. I’d rather set off fifty glitter bombs.”
“So you don’t want Lilah finding out who your dad is.”
