The Hot Mess and the Heartthrob

by Pippa Grant

  “How does Hudson get to preschool?”

  “I walk him. It’s twenty minutes. Yasmin can handle the store and Holly’s good back-up. And how is it that you have nothing else on your calendar today?”

  “I’m on vacation.” And I’m supposed to be helping Tripp with anything he needs before the wedding on Friday.

  Considering he doesn’t need to be talked off a ledge, he’s had the rings for months, Lila’s terrifyingly organized, and they’re doing a small family thing at a reception hall that caters to Copper Valley’s more prominent citizens, I doubt he needs me for much.

  Typical older brother.

  Making me useless.

  Ingrid’s still squinting at me like she doesn’t believe me. “Do you actually take real vacations?”

  Legit question. I lift a pinky.

  She smiles like I’m a total goofball. “I don’t think you actually told me your secret the last time you offered me a pinky.”

  “There’s no one to hose us down this time.”

  She laughs and hooks her pinky in mine.

  Total excuse to touch her. Won’t apologize. I like touching her. “I have a secret phone that only Mom, Tripp, and my assistant know the number to. When I’m on vacation, the regular phone gets locked up, and I’m truly only reachable in an emergency.”

  “So you’re not actually on vacation right now.”

  “I’m one-hundred percent on Thanksgiving-family wedding vacation. And I’m one-hundred percent ignoring about sixty-eight messages from other wedding guests.”

  “Mom?” a voice calls from below.

  Ingrid’s eye twitches. “Coming, Zoe.”

  “Hudson put a Pop-Tart in the microwave and it exploded.”

  Her shoulders sag. “Okay. Be right there.”

  “You have Pop-Tarts?” I whisper.

  “Apparently not anymore.”

  “Hey. Totally serious. I don’t have plans. If you need help, I’m here. And I can have Giselle pick up more Pop-Tarts on the way over.”

  She studies me like she knows this isn’t normal behavior.

  It’s not.

  I’ve never offered to watch a girlfriend’s kids. Hell, I’ve never offered to find my girlfriend a babysitter for her kids either.

  And Ingrid wouldn’t call herself my girlfriend.

  I probably shouldn’t call her my girlfriend. I probably shouldn’t hang out with her kids. If they’re going to have someone in their lives, they deserve someone who can be in their lives.

  Someone who can go to their Thanksgiving pageants and hockey games and gymnastics events, either because he’s actually in town, or because him showing up won’t be such a distraction that no one pays attention to the kids.

  She shakes her head, then rises and uses our linked pinkies to tug me to my feet. “Go home, Levi. Enjoy your day off. I’ll text you later. Promise.”

  “Offer stands if you can’t find a sitter.”

  “You are a fascinating puzzle.”

  And I’m officially being banished.

  It’s disappointing.

  After Ingrid disappears back to her apartment with Zoe, and I sneak out the back door, my car is gone, exactly as it should be.

  My security detail is a well-oiled machine. Giselle is waiting in a Honda Pilot with tinted back windows.

  I’ve been sneaking around Copper Valley in cars that blend in for years.

  And I’m getting tired of it. Tired of the constant security. Tired of having other people handle some of my most basic needs, like shopping for groceries and setting up a cleaning service.

  Tired of being interested in a woman—seriously interested in a woman—for the first time in my life, and that very same life being an impediment to getting to know all of her better.

  Giselle eyes me in the rearview mirror. “Rough night?”

  I shake my head.

  It was an excellent night.

  The rough part was that it had to end.

  Twenty-Two

  Ingrid

  Did you know that the three days before Thanksgiving are the third-hardest days of the year to find a babysitter?

  If they’re not, it’s close, beat only by Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, or possibly the holidays themselves. Or maybe the problem is that there’s an early flu making the rounds, and most of my circle is full of working moms or volunteering moms.

  And that’s the short reason explaining how my girls end up gaping at me as I formally introduce them to Levi and his friend, Giselle, who will be watching them while I’m working today.

  Hudson too, after preschool this morning.

  “Are you the real Levi Wilson?” Zoe wants to know.

  “That’s his name.” Piper rolls her eyes. “Duh.”

  “I mean the famous Levi Wilson. The one who sings ‘Got That Back.’”

  “I don’t like that song. I can’t understand the words.”

  Giselle smirks.

  I mean, as much as Giselle ever smirks. But I swear her eyes crinkled a little like she’s amused. And I think Levi sees it too, based on the subtle shut up look he slides her way.

  “You sure you’re still up for this?” I ask him.

  He smiles the self-assured smile of a man who’s never babysat grade school girls. “Can’t get better if you don’t know what you’re doing wrong.”

  Zoe’s still squinting at him. “You shouldn’t wear white pants. They’ll pick up dirt and you’ll never be able to get them clean.”

  Now that look he aimed at Giselle lands squarely on me, and I swallow a smile.

  I didn’t say a word about his clothing choices when he got back. For the record.

  Beggars and choosers and all that. I’m a little desperate for help.

  Plus, I like how he looks in his tight white pants, even if I also get jealous that he can pull it off and I can’t.

  “I’d leave now if I were you,” Giselle says to me. “Before he changes his mind.”

  “And you’re just here to call 9-1-1 if something catches fire or a bone gets broken?”

  “He’s the only person I babysit, but I’m morally bound to alert authorities and medical personnel for anyone else in my vicinity who might be in trouble. Your children are safe.”

  “How’s your squirrel today?” Levi asks Zoe.

  She points to the fridge. Skippy’s sitting on top of it, chewing on a magnet.

  “Darwinism,” I mutter.

  My daughters both roll their eyes, and now Levi’s smothering a grin.

  “Do you know how to bake pie?” Piper asks him.

  “Nope.”

  “We should YouTube it and learn.”

  “Awesome.” He pulls his phone out of his pocket. “Go on, Ingrid. We’ve got this.”

  I don’t know that he does, but I’m also not in a position to be picky. Portia’s taking the kids tomorrow night and neither she nor Griff can get off work today. Nor would I ask them to.

  They do so much for me already.

  Zoe and Piper could technically hang out with me in the store all morning, but Hudson’s spent too much time cooped up there already this fall, so the afternoon would be an issue. Plus, they’d all three be bored.

  And as soon as I’m back downstairs, it’s clear that I couldn’t even keep half an eye on them anyway.

  We’re way too busy.

  “Hey, Ingrid?” Yasmin says as we work the register side-by-side.

  “Yeah?”

  “Remember three years ago you were freaking out about how much the renovations cost when you weren’t sure this would work?”

  “Yes.”

  She grins. “It worked. Good job, boss.”

  I blush.

  I think she’s right. This isn’t just a holiday shopping crowd. It’s regulars. Regulars bringing in friends. People who tell us they heard about us from coworkers.

  The loft is so busy that Holly calls her wife in as backup for the coffee bar, which usually only happens the three days before Christmas.

>   I still find time to text Levi once or twice an hour.

  And when I bring Hudson home after his morning preschool, I find my entire kitchen coated in squirrel-footprinted flour, two made-with-love-but-not-talent pies cooling on the oven, tampons scattered about the living room, Zoe wailing along to one of her new favorite songs, using a pretend microphone as she shows off her best Waverly Sweet impersonation, and Levi sitting on a white sheet in the middle of it, sporting fairy wings, while Piper paints his fingernails purple.

  I can’t decide if I’m horrified or absolutely, completely, positively in love.

  Confession: Part of me asked him to come back so my girls could one day tell people about the time Levi Wilson, international pop god, babysat them.

  Other confession: I think this is both the stuff of nightmares and better than my wildest dreams.

  Why are my tampons all over the living room?

  “Skippy!” Hudson yells.

  He bolts for the squirrel, who’s sitting on top of the bookshelf, chewing on a tampon that’s still in its wrapper, and starts to climb the shelves like a monkey.

  “Don’t move!” Piper shrieks at Levi.

  Zoe stomps a foot. “Ugh. Now I have to start my song over.”

  “Hey, Ingrid,” Levi calls. “I can’t move. The couch is lava and my force fields to cool it aren’t dry yet. Smart move bolting those bookshelves to the wall.”

  Giselle’s sitting at the dining room table. “I told him not to leave the pies on the counter with the squirrel loose, but he doesn’t pay me for my wisdom.”

  “Mom, did you know Levi knows Waverly Sweet?” Zoe bounces on her toes. “And if you say yes, he’ll text her a video of me doing her song. Say yes, Mom. Say yes.”

  “Your cuticles are really bad,” Piper tells him. “But not as bad as Mom’s when she had toe fungus.”

  I follow Hudson and grab him before he can climb the shelves. “Thank you, Piper. We don’t talk about toe fungus with strangers.”

  “Levi’s not a stranger, Mom. He’s Captain Lava-Man, and he knows how to sign all the bad words in the dictionary.”

  His eyes go wide, and he twists to look at me. “She asked if I knew them. I didn’t demonstrate. Cross my heart.”

  I sign learn better signs before traipsing around the living room, shoving tampons into my pockets, trying to figure out how to say both thank you and so I’m officially mortified out of my mind and understand if you want to bail on me forever without my kids catching on to the warring emotions battling in my head and my chest.

  “He also knows how to sign please pass the mashed potatoes and who let the dogs out?” Piper beams at him.

  “I got bored on the plane,” he reports.

  “Please pass the mashed potatoes?” I repeat.

  “And hungry.”

  I start to laugh, but—Oh my god.

  Piper’s using my wedding dress as the towel covering the floor to keep nail polish off the carpet.

  I stifle a whimper.

  Does Levi know he’s sitting on my wedding dress?

  It’s white, but it wasn’t traditional. Linen instead of satin and lace. Curve-hugging, because my shape was cute, curvy, and perky back then, as opposed to droopy, saggy, and one-too-many-pints-of-Ben & Jerry’s now. I should’ve gotten rid of it when Daniel left, but I probably thought I already had.

  Hudson was only a few months old. Zoe had just started kindergarten, and Piper was still adjusting to her hearing loss, as was I. Thinking was less at the top of my mind than surviving.

  Leave it to my girls to find it and slice it up for a tarp.

  And sliced it is—the jagged edges are fraying, which suggests this wasn’t something they did today.

  The streaks of various colors of nail polish across it indicate they’ve had it a while.

  Both my girls go suspiciously quiet, then each point at the other. “Piper found it!”

  “Zoe cut it!”

  “You never wear it!”

  “We needed a cape!”

  Once again, I’m squeezing my eyes shut.

  One… Two… Three… I didn’t have a positive emotional attachment to the dress, but it’s still my dress.

  Four… Five… Six… “It’s fine. It’s fine. But don’t cut things up that you find in my closet.”

  “It wasn’t in your closet. It was in Zoe’s baby blanket tub.”

  “I told Piper we still needed to ask you first, but she already cut it with your nose hair trimmers.”

  Seven… Eight… Nine… Ten.

  Not quite enough, but it’ll have to do. “Have you had lunch?”

  “Levi made us eat carrots.”

  “Excellent. I have to get back to work, and I’m going to pretend I haven’t seen a thing up here, and ask next time. Also, do not let the squirrel in my bedroom.”

  “But he was freaking out about the closed door, Mom. He has anxiety.”

  “He’s a squirrel.” I snatch one more tampon out of the straggly sweet potato vine that Piper had to grow for school and that I forget to water all the time. “And he’s getting into things he should not get into while we have guests.”

  I need to count to ten again.

  “Did you eat?” Levi asks me.

  Awesome. Now I’m the harping hangry hot mess. “Yasmin’s grabbing us both something down the street.”

  “Something good?”

  “Something fast and easy. We’re busy.”

  He frowns.

  I pretend not to notice, even though my heart flutters and soothes everything that counting to ten didn’t.

  A month ago, it never, ever would’ve crossed my mind that Levi Wilson would be the kind of guy to care that someone else enjoys what they have for lunch. He has people to worry about that for him, right?

  Except that’s not him.

  And I’m slowly realizing that his inherent kindness and goodness and compassion are probably exactly what make him so good on a stage. He doesn’t just pretend to see people. It’s not something he was taught.

  It’s who he is.

  And who he is keeps coming back for who I am. Despite the utter insanity in my house.

  Or maybe because of the utter insanity in my house?

  I duck my head to press a kiss to Hudson’s hair. “Be. Good.”

  “Mama, I’m always good.”

  I cringe and silently apologize to Levi. “That means you need to lock all the doors and windows and put mattresses over the bookshelves so he doesn’t climb them again. They’re bolted, and I don’t want to know why you had to figure that out, but it’s still a far fall from the top.”

  “We’ve got this, Mom,” Zoe says with a sigh well beyond her years. “Go sell some books so you can afford to keep us fed.”

  “The bookstore does fine,” I stutter. “We can afford food. And clothing. And everything you need.”

  “Blah blah,” Piper mutters. She grabs Levi by the foot. “Take your socks off. We have to do toes unless you can walk on your hands to battle the lava couch, and you’re good at a lot of things, but I doubt you’re good at hand-walking.”

  “Shows what you know,” Levi fires back.

  Zoe tackles me with a hug. “Mom? Can Levi send Waverly Sweet a video of me?”

  “Yes. Fine. But not for putting on the internet. The internet is—”

  “Full of pedophiles and people with seaweed fetishes. We know, Mom.” She kisses my boob, because it’s at face height and of course she does, then prances back to her makeshift stage that I probably shouldn’t look too closely at, lest I discover it’s my new lingerie.

  “I’ll be back at five. And thank you. And I’m sorry.”

  I turn to leave, and Giselle holds out a hand. “I won’t help him babysit, but I’ll put your tampons away for you. Girls gotta stick together.”

  “I think I love you.”

  I get a full smile at that. “Good. Because I don’t put tampons away for just anyone.”

  Downstairs, I pause in the stockroom an
d call Portia.

  She picks up on the third ring. “Oh, honey, don’t tell me he canceled.”

  “Worse. Or better. I don’t know. My sitter canceled today, and he volunteered to cover, and he’s upstairs fitting into my chaos like—hold on. He just texted me.”

  I put her on speaker and flip over to my text messages.

  When I was eleven, I wrote an original song for the school talent show about living out of a van down by the river with my best friends, Raccoon and Otter, while my mom ‘worked for a living,’ and the school called my mom to talk about public assistance programs that the state offers. Your kids are awesome. And totally normal where I come from. Enjoy work.

  “Portia,” I whisper.

  “Oh, Ing, don’t do it. He’d be home even less than Daniel was.”

  “I know.” God, I know. I know from my roots, where I found three more errant gray hairs this morning, to the tips of my toenails, which do not have fungus anymore, thank you very much. My throat gets thick and my eyes burn. “I know. And this is just—it’s just a fling, you know? But he’s upstairs having a pie-making, bad karaoke-singing, squirrel-throwing-tampons-all-over-the-living-room party with my kids.”

  “He’s trying to make a good impression on you. You put out yet?”

  I take her off speaker in case Yasmin or Holly or a random customer who thinks this is a bathroom wander in. “He brought me a pretzel from Germany. What was I supposed to do?”

  Thank god she laughs at that. “I’d go down on Griff every night for a week if he brought me home real German pretzels.”

  “Right? And it’s not like we’re gonna sit on his couch and watch old episodes of I Love Lucy and just talk all night tomorrow.” The two dinged-up boxes of squawking chickens and yodeling pickles sitting more securely on the shelf beside me remind me exactly how much fun we’re likely to have, completely naked, and hopefully multiple times over.

  Am I horny because I’ve been denying myself so long, or am I horny because Levi’s that sexy?

  Both, I decide. Definitely both.

  “Are you falling for him, or are you falling for having your needs met for the first time in years?” my best friend asks.