He was still crying when she left. She felt like the meanest mother in the world.
And now this meeting. Again she told herself to focus, but her specialty was design, not management, and, being so far behind in her own work, she didn’t know why she was there. Brad must have seen that she was upset, but he didn’t so much as squeeze her hand.
Caroline saw. Caroline knew. Jamie sensed both, but she was still startled when Caroline suggested that they needed to hire not only an experienced marketer and a Williston-based Realtor but another architect.
“Why?” she asked, feeling a chill as she faced her mother across a terrifying chasm.
“Because one-third of your team is retiring, which means you’ll be the senior architect in your pod, and you could use the help.”
“I’m fine,” Jamie insisted and told herself it was true. But by the time she finally got back to her desk, she was alone with a lineup of folders that had her approaching panic.
When a hand touched her shoulder, she jumped.
“Are you really fine?” Caroline asked quietly, hunkering down beside her chair to keep their conversation private. As empty as Jamie’s pod was just then, the two other pods were filled.
“I will be once I get some work done. Believe it or not, Mom, my clients want me, not someone else.”
“You were offended.”
Jamie hadn’t called it, but yes, she was offended. Trust Caroline to home in on that. She had always been attuned to Jamie’s feelings. Add a negative overlay, though, and you had Caroline seeing a Jamie who couldn’t do her design work, or plan a wedding, or be a good mother without losing it over a dirty T-shirt, and therefore couldn’t possibly take over as the host of Gut It!
Feeling a wave of anger, she was trying to think how to respond without provoking an all-out confrontation when Caroline said, “You’ve been telling me for a while that once Malcolm retires, you’d need to hire someone else. Why not now?”
“Because Malcolm hasn’t retired yet.”
“He’s not even working half time, and most of what he does do is from his retirement place in Vermont. He’s rarely in the office. He’d probably be relieved to have an excuse to clean out his desk.”
That desk was perfectly neat, proof that the man wasn’t around. Jamie’s intern’s desk was messier, though the woman was currently at a site rechecking specs.
“Yes, I know your clients want you,” Caroline said. “I don’t blame them. But why can’t you be the name designer and the brain power behind a project while a new hire does the follow-up work?”
“Because,” Jamie said as she swiveled to face her mother, “that isn’t how it works. A good architect won’t want to play second fiddle to me. (A) she’ll want to work with her own designs so that she can build her own name, (B) if she’s fully licensed, she’s probably older than me, and (C), given (A) and (B), if she isn’t a MacAfee, she’ll feel threatened.”
Caroline made a dismissive sound and stood. “The family thing has to change. We need a real estate agent, we need a marketer, we may well need a CEO if something happens to Theo, so what’s one more architect? Okay, if you don’t want to bring in a new person, what about shifting work around? We have two other design teams already on staff. Let them help.”
Jamie told herself that her mother cared. But if she did—if she had a clue what Jamie was facing with Brad, with Tad, with her own insecurities—she wouldn’t be harping on this.
“You think I can’t do my job,” she said.
“Which job are you talking about?” Caroline asked. “Seems to me you’re working three right now.” Her eyes softened along with her voice. “You don’t have to do this all on your own, Jamie. When you were a singles star, it was just you out there on the court facing an opponent, and it had to be that way. But this doesn’t. No one expects you to do everything yourself. There is nothing wrong with delegating.”
Jamie barely heard. She was stuck back on three right now. Those three jobs would be as an architect, a mother, and what else? A wife-to-be? Maybe. More likely, though, a player in Gut It! Caroline hadn’t specifically mentioned the last, but it was right there, under the skin like a burr. The message for Jamie, of course, was that if she couldn’t handle the other aspects of her life, she shouldn’t take on the show.
“I’ve got it, Mom. I’m on it. Trust me.”
When Caroline folded her arms, Jamie glanced at her desk. She could have sworn the pile of folders had swelled since last she looked. She badly needed to work, which meant her mother had to go. But a hint of lily-of-the-valley hung in the air. Jamie didn’t want to find comfort in it, but did.
In the next instant, the comfort dissolved. “Has Claire called?” Caroline asked. Her tone was too neutral.
“Not today. I think she got the point.”
“Which was?”
“That I want her to back off.”
“She won’t. You know that.”
Choking up with so much else on her plate, Jamie whispered, “I can’t talk about this.”
Caroline eased back. “But you did get a nanny.”
“Yes.” A breath of relief for both June and the return to safer ground. “Thank goodness.”
“Do you like her?”
“She seems great.”
“Does Tad like her?”
“He didn’t this morning. He was screaming when I left, but he stopped. I checked while I was driving here. She was taking him to story hour at the library.”
“That’s nice,” Caroline remarked, seeming sincere. “How’s he doing otherwise?”
“Who knows? He can’t verbalize much. He wakes up crying in the middle of the night, needing to be held. He misses his parents.” Jamie glanced at a clock on the desk. “I keep wanting to call the nanny.”
“She has your number, doesn’t she?”
“God, yes. Cell number, office number.” Your number, she might have added, because it was right there on the list.
“Then you’re good.”
* * *
“Good” lasted until Jamie got home from work and found June Flores in tears. Something was terribly wrong.
sixteen
“What happened?” Jamie asked. She was trying to imagine what it might be, but the only thing that registered was Tad crouched on the floor putting Little People on a yellow school bus. He was clean and content.
But June was already gathering her things together. Bad news had come from El Salvador, she explained in an accented voice that was broken by tears. Her mother had died. She had to go home.
Jamie sucked in a breath, feeling the shock of Roy’s death again. “Sudden?” she asked.
It was. Barely seventy and in perfect health, the woman had suffered an aneurism and died instantly. “I’m so sorry,” Jamie repeated with each new bit of information, but it wasn’t until she asked when June expected to return that the extent of the situation hit. As fate had it, June’s father was the one who was chronically in poor health. With her mother gone and two brothers living on the other side of the country, June would have to be his caretaker in San Salvador. Having raised her own children in the United States, she would return to visit but not to work.
Jamie understood. She wouldn’t have expected any different from a kind and caring woman. Digging out money, she paid June for a single day and smiled when the woman told her how sweet Tad was. Within minutes, though, June was gone and panic set in.
* * *
What to do what to do what to do?
Stay calm, Jamie told herself, but she was back at square one, with no names on a nanny list and only slightly more than zip accomplished that day at work. Maybe her mother was right. Maybe she did need help.
Grabbing her phone, she called Chip. “It’s Jamie,” she said the instant he picked up, “and this is probably a terrible time. Are you at the playground?”
“We’re on our way home. I can talk. You don’t sound so good.”
Hearing his voice made her feel better. With only a
handful of words, he sounded like he cared, like he wanted to talk. It was invitation enough.
“June’s mother died today, so she’s moving back to El Salvador. She was terrific, Chip. I called a couple of times because Tad was sobbing this morning when I left, but she was totally on top of things. I know it was only one day, but she was a lifeline, and now she’s gone, and none of the others want weekdays.” She paused. “You still there?”
“Still here,” he said. “Keep going.”
She tried to rein in her voice. She was a grown-up. “This is so wrong of me. Her mother died. I should be more understanding than anyone. I do feel bad for her. I have no right to feel abandoned.”
“You have every right. You need child care.”
Soothed, she spoke more rationally. “My gut tells me I should stay home for a while to bond with Tad. I also need to look for a new place, because my condo is so not going to work long-run. Only I’m falling so far behind at work that it could start reflecting on the company”—not to mention proving to Caroline that she couldn’t handle things—“so I need a sitter for tomorrow. But if that person won’t nanny, I’ll have to find someone else, and isn’t it worse to be passing Tad around? I’m thinking daycare, but honestly I can’t bear the thought of spending tomorrow scoping them out, and I don’t even know what to look for. You like First Unity, right?”
“I do.”
“Then I’ll call First Unity, but is there an application process? How long before he can start, and is it a problem if he isn’t toilet trained—no, of course not, if they take babies,” she thought aloud, “but will they even have room for him?” Meekly she added, “What do I do?”
“What you do,” he replied, “is meet me at First Unity in ten minutes. Know where it is?”
“Yes, but it’s too late in the day, isn’t it?”
“It’s a daycare center. They’re open till six. That gives us twenty minutes.”
“But it’s such a bad time for you.”
“Did I say that?” No. He hadn’t. “Are you game?”
“I’m game,” Jamie said before he could change his mind. “Ten minutes. See you there.” She hung up, grabbed Tad, and raced out to the car.
* * *
There were only four children left at the daycare center, so Jamie didn’t see the place in full operational mode. But three of those children were cleaning up a finger-painting project under the guidance of one patient teacher, the other teacher was cuddling a one-year-old who looked tired, and Chip was amazing. He introduced Jamie as a friend, and though there would normally be an interview with the center’s director before accepting a child, he made it happen without. Granted, he exaggerated the critical nature of Jamie’s work, and when he insisted that Tad wouldn’t be a problem, it was like he knew the boy really, really well, which he did not. He also made sure, albeit in a subtle way, that the women knew what a coup it would be to have a MacAfee child enrolled.
“That was easy,” he told Jamie when they walked to the car shortly after six. His was a Honda Pilot, parked behind her SUV.
Looking up at him to respond, she felt a spasm of shyness. He was tall and broad-shouldered, his sunglasses hung on the neck of his shirt in a way that showed a sprinkle of dark hair, and those blue eyes held hers. They were powerful, direct, interested—which, of course, she was seeing because she needed to feel the connection, which was probably not appropriate, but what was a single minute of make-believe?
Gathering her composure, she smiled. “So easy. Thank you. You went above and beyond. I’m sorry you had to bring Buddy back here again after you’d already picked him up. Did he not mind?” That Buddy was with Tad in the play yard, rather than hanging on Chip, said something.
Chip’s lips twitched. “Oh, he minded. He counts on having his nights with me. I told him that if he came without a fight, I’d take him to Town House of Pizza for dinner.”
“That’s bribery.”
“It works every time.” He cupped his mouth. “Buddy!” He waved him in. “Bring Tad.”
Jamie watched as Buddy reached for Tad’s hand. He seemed to be a totally obedient child, certainly not like the Tad she had seen that morning. “When you say he ‘minded’ coming back here, how did he let you know?”
“Verbally. And physically. He started kicking the seat in front of him, bam-babam-babam-babam.”
She might have laughed at the way he said it, nodding sharply with each babam, if she hadn’t been heading somewhere with her question.
“Is he often physical?”
“Oh yeah. I’d say it’s a boy thing, but I’ve seen girls get pushy and shovey on the playground when they don’t get their way. The thing is, girls have an option. They can mouth off. Boys don’t have that gene, so they kick.” He tipped his head, ducked it, and asked a cautious “What did he do?”
The way he guessed her point—the way he asked—was adorable. She really liked Chip. Not caring in that instant whether it was appropriate or not, she related the T-shirt drama. “I was rushing to get ready for work and praying that June would actually show up, so I’m sure he felt my nerves, but when he continued to scream, I just yanked off one T-shirt after another. I mean, there was no finesse. How do you deal in a situation like that?”
He had long since straightened, and while he should have been studying her as if she were a pathetic mommy wannabe, there was no censure. His eyes were warm. They were appreciative. He liked her, too—and that meant a lot to her. From the corner of her mind came a whispered tsk tsk, but she was needy enough to ignore it.
“Sometimes not very well,” he replied.
“What do you mean?”
“I lose it, just pick him up and put him in his room.”
“Time out.”
“Not that it’s a solution if you’re on the clock and have to get to work. Then I go with the two-choice rule. Two shirts, which do you want. Two sneaks, which do you want.”
“What do you do if he refuses the choices?”
“Use force. I just put one of the damn shirts on him, usually the one I know he likes least, which is the pissed side of me coming out.” Self-conscious, he scratched the back of his head. “So I get my satisfaction, and he learns that a little choice is better than none.” He dropped his hand. “Kids this age want control, but they don’t know how to make decisions. I can’t tell you how many parents I hear offering choices their kids can’t possibly make.”
“Like?”
With a quick little jerk of his eyes, he lowered his voice. “That mom picking up the little girl over there just asked a wide-open ‘What do you want for dinner?’ That kid is probably eighteen months old. How in the hell does she know the choices, much less know which one she wants? Two choices. That’s more than enough. You have to teach them a little at a time.”
Jamie was charmed. “Did you learn that in college?”
“I wish,” he said with a self-conscious snort. “No, I learned it by making every mistake first. I’m good at making mistakes.”
If it was a reference to an earlier life, she didn’t think it fit. “You’re very good at parenting.”
“Brilliant in hindsight. I’ve already been through what you’re going through now, so I’ve mastered that stage. Now I’m muddling through the next one. Parenting is a work in progress. It never ends.” He smiled crookedly. “I think I did get that from one of my ed courses. It’s more profound than I am.” He put a hand on Buddy’s head. “Ready for Town House?”
“Yeah,” the boy said enthusiastically.
“Join us?” Chip asked Jamie, but in that instant, leaning down to lift Tad, she dropped the daycare papers. She might have blamed it on being flustered at the prospect of dinner with Checker Chip, if she hadn’t had such a history of fumbles.
Embarrassed, she knelt to gather them up. Chip was right down there with her.
“Sorry,” she muttered. “Multitasking is always a challenge. I’m not the most coordinated being.”
“I find that hard to b
elieve,” he said and passed her the papers as they stood. “I watched a tape of your last big match on YouTube.”
She was ridiculously pleased. “You did?” Chagrin followed. “I lost.”
“Daddy.” A whine.
“In a sec, Bud,” he told his son, then said to her, “You’re very pretty to watch.”
She was beyond ridiculously pleased. The way he was looking at her made her breath hitch. She had to swallow before she could say, “Was. But thank you.”
“Mamie,” Tad piped up, echoing Buddy’s whine.
She took his hand. “I was eighteen then and totally focused. Real life is not that way.”
“No.” He eyed her, questioning. “What do you say? Town House?”
She wanted to go, really wanted to go, which confused her. She liked Chip a lot. Did that mean he was a good friend, like a girlfriend, only male? She worked with men all the time and considered many of them friends. This was different. She found Chip exciting—yes, because he had answers, and because he understood what she was going through, and because having a friend was a novelty for her, but also because he had strong hands, broad shoulders, and hips that could move in a purely male way. When he looked at her with those riveting blues, like he was doing now, she felt something deep inside.
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