by C. D. Reiss
An old Korean couple in plaid golf visors waved and smiled.
Ruefully, Blakely continued. “I wish I could just change my face sometimes.”
My phone chimed. Speak of the devil. My agent.
“Hi!” I said while Blakely polished off her water.
Laura sounded businesslike and positive when she delivered bad news.
“Matt and Dom fell through.”
“What?”
“Sorry, Cara. It wasn’t you.”
“What do you mean it wasn’t me?” I felt the world shifting under my feet.
“They love you, they just decided they wanted someone who speaks Spanish.”
“I speak French! What’s wrong with French? Willow Heywood is fluent because of me. Did you tell them that?”
“I’m sorry, Cara. We can send you out again. You’re easy to place.”
I wanted to throw the phone. Instead I just hung it up.
Blakely had heard everything. She put her hand on my back.
“You’ll find something.”
“Sure. I’ll get hired and go in like a little puppy, all tail wagging and wanting to do a good job, then one of two things will happen. No. Three things. He’ll look at me like I hold the keys to the life he wanted and missed, and I’ll quit before I ruin their marriage.” I counted off a second finger. “Or the lady of the house will start snapping at me every time he’s in the room, or I’ll hit the lottery and get a single mom who won’t fire me until she gets a serious boyfriend. Then I’m out. And it’s not fair. Because they only want pretty nannies. Having their kids toted around by someone unattractive or middle-aged is like a black mark on their records. And we’re like inanimate household accessories until the person in the house with the dick feels sad or lonely.”
“Wow. You need some ice cream.”
I was frustrated and disappointed. I also had no business complaining about any of this to Blakely, who had it ten times worse.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“You were just speaking my mind.”
“Let’s go down to Cups and Cones,” I said. “I’m buying.”
CHAPTER 4
CARA
Things work out the way they do for a reason. Sometimes the reason is that the universe wants to screw you. For fun, maybe. Or because you getting screwed is in service of someone else’s “things happen for a reason.”
But the reason isn’t always rainbows and unicorns. When my parents got reassigned to Paris the reason was so I could learn French, and when it was Pakistan it was so I could stay in the house all the time, and when it was Korea it was so I could fall in love with a boy named Shin who clumsily took my virginity two weeks before we had to move again. When The American School in Stuttgart was full, Dennis and I went to Lycée Français and stayed. The universe must have wanted our lessons to be rigorous and consistent no matter where we were. Certainly, Dad didn’t mind that we were taught to always just be polite, deferential to authority, and keep our noses clean. But by fourteen, nothing about me was clean.
It’s true, sometimes things happen for a reason. And sometimes the reasons suck.
Moving around that much meant I didn’t have a chance to fall in love. And if I couldn’t fall in love, I was just going to let my body have a party. Free birth control in Belgium and not being anywhere long enough to get a “reputation” meant I could do what I wanted. I just had to make sure I kept away from other girls’ boyfriends and stuck to guys who didn’t talk so much.
When I was seventeen I cost my father his security clearance. I was caught in a car on a desolate Scottish road with a rugby player. People talked. My parents, who kept their noses so clean they glowed, asked for a transfer so we could start from scratch yet again. We went back to the states in deadly tense silence. After that, I felt as if I couldn’t do anything right. My parents made me nervous. My father in particular always seemed to look at me sideways, as if he was looking for me to get into some kind of trouble.
Once we settled in Texas I had a habit of not disclosing any information about anything. I got into and out of minor scrapes by being straightforward and respectful at the same time. I adapted easily to new situations and watched how other people behaved before I acted. I was a natural diplomat.
My peers and their parents may have been right. I might have been cold. I might have been unemotional. People and their judgments scared me. I was only really myself around children.
I went to college for child development and took on a teaching position for about five minutes before I was offered a ton of money to watch Jude and Karen McVino’s twin toddlers while they shot a movie in Austin.
When they went back to Hollywood I went with them. I said good-bye to my parents. They got stationed in Argentina while I was gone and after a few phone calls it got too easy to stop talking to them. Then it got hard to pick up the phone.
I was fine. I felt like I had a new family because those kids set a light off in my soul.
Not every child I’ve watched did that. I’ve loved them all, even the most rotten and entitled kids in town. But a few were exceptional.
“Brad Sinclair wants to meet with you,” Laura said on a call the day after the Griffith Park hike. Blakely and I were on the balcony of her cheap Los Feliz rental. She had a beer and a magazine. I had a book and a bottle of water.
“He’s too famous.”
“I told him you’d say that.”
“Do you have anything coming up? Isn’t Ken Braque’s wife pregnant?”
“Three months. You might want to meet with Brad for a consultation. The poor guy’s confused as hell and his parents are going back to Arkansas soon.”
“Tell him how to parent? That never goes well.”
“Just go meet him,” Laura said. “As a favor to me. It’ll look good for the agency.”
“For you,” I said. We said our good-byes and hung up.
Blakely put her foot on the railing. Her big toe poked out of her sock and the brand of beer she was drinking was a dollar a can. When I opened the screen door she held the magazine up.
“What do you think of her nose?”
I looked at the picture of Frida Julian. “Looks like a nose.”
“It used to be huge. I was in acting school with her. Total honker. And she was stunning, even with that thing on her face.”
“You have a nice nose.” I sat on the chair next to her.
“Yeah. But if it were bigger that would be all people would see. I’d be unrecognizable.”
I didn’t feed further into her fantasy. I had to figure out if I wanted to step into Brad Sinclair’s life.
“Maybe she was stunning because of it.” Blakely considered this more to herself than me. I wasn’t even in the room anymore. She needed something to do besides worry and wonder. If she could just get a job, she’d be all right.
I decided to see Sinclair. At the very least, maybe I could help out Blakely.
CHAPTER 5
CARA
The house was ginormous. The kind of house you got just because you could. Everything about this stank to high heaven. Everything about Brad Sinclair was wrong. From his travel schedule, to the way he partied, to the number of women he reportedly bedded weekly.
A guy in a white shirt and black jacket opened the car door. Probably a driver on staff. That was a good sign. But as signs went, the yellow Maserati with the scratched bumper parked by the garage wasn’t as good.
“Thank you,” I said, handing him my keys. I’d been briefed on how well-staffed Brad Sinclair was. So the house valet didn’t surprise me. The guard at the gate didn’t surprise me. The catering truck behind the house was likely some celebrity chef who kept the fridge and pantries stocked when the celebrity in question was home.
Which wasn’t as often as people thought. I’d traveled with the McVinos, and the life they led was unfriendly to keeping a house, a family, or a routine. Unless they took their entire staff with them, a working actor or director spent weeks at a tim
e eating in hotels in the middle of the night after a fifteen-hour day. They picked what they could off craft services tables, and if the film didn’t have a huge budget, the only options on the table were fat, sugar, and salt.
Uncomfortable costumes, exposure to weather, long hours, tons of waiting.
I’d need a staff when I was home too.
The front door opened. I expected a housekeeper or butler, but it was the actor himself.
I hadn’t forgotten how beautiful he was; I’d just chosen not to think about it.
“Ma’am,” he said. Southern boy. Parents together. Christian elementary. Public secondary. Two years at USC Drama. Dates his costars for a month after the wrap party, then moves on. Poring through the trades and making calls, I’d discovered he’d spend at least eight of the next twelve months overseas doing action movies, but most had postproduction in town.
“Mr. Sinclair,” I said, holding my hand out. “Nice to see you outside a bathroom.”
He shook my hand.
I’d shaken plenty of famous hands attached to gorgeous men, but my imagination was sparked by the way his fingers slid against mine to grasp them and the way our palms pressed together. My mind clouded over with ripped sheets, hard muscles, and soft skin.
“Pleasure’s mine,” he said and my brain skipped like a trip on a cracked sidewalk over the word pleasure.
He didn’t give me the oversincere hand-over-clasp to show me how damn happy he was to see me, but there was something intimate about that half a second.
Just a consultation.
I followed him into the house. Dora Donovan had designed it. Looked like her with her faux-midcentury white couch and shag rug. That wasn’t going to work with playdates unless he wanted to keep an upholsterer on staff.
We went through the living room to a smaller room with a pool table smack in the middle. It had a stained glass Budweiser lamp over it and was racked for nine-ball. Dora Donovan had nothing to do with this room, for sure.
“Wanna sit?” He held a chair out for me. The glass-topped table was just inside the open patio doors and was set with iced tea.
I sat.
“I’m not a date,” I said kindly, indicating the iced tea setup. “Just so you know. You don’t have to do things like hold the chair for me.”
“Habit, I guess.”
He sat opposite me.
“Chivalry is nice. But with the nanny, whomever you hire, it can be misconstrued.”
He smirked a little, as if misconstruing his own thoughts. I cleared my throat and pulled my jacket closed.
“Where’s Nicole?” I picked up the pitcher and poured him some.
“My parents took her to the park. She made the tea. My mother, I mean.”
“I hear they’re not staying?”
“No.”
“And how is she?”
“My mother?”
“Your daughter.”
He took a second to look out the doorway into the blazing sunset, then at his tea. He shook the ice down.
“I have no clue.”
His honesty was refreshing. He earned my attention and respect with those four words.
He looked at the table, then up at me. The camera always caught his little imperfections: the scar on his forehead, the slightly crooked nose. In person, they were tangible indicators of his charisma, and were powerful reminders of the flawlessness of the rest of him.
“Laura said you have a photo shoot set up for you and Nicole with Vanity Fair.”
“Yeah. So?”
“You need the money?”
“It’s going to charity. A dyslexia fund. My sister has it so—”
“Cancel it.”
I looked right at him. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t melt even though I wanted to. He knew I was right. In the millisecond pause and the way he broke his gaze, I knew I didn’t have to explain myself.
“Will do.” His voice was low and husky, like a growl turned down to one. As if he wanted to yell about not telling him what to do, but knew better. I could just about see the string he was tied together with.
“I think she needs as much consistency as you can manage. She was taking gymnastics. You should get her into classes.”
“I can do that.”
“Have you found a school for her?”
He took a sip of tea, then jerked his thumb southward.
“There’s one down the Valley side.”
“Laurence?”
“Yeah. There’s another one on Wilshire. The public school’s on Franklin.” He shrugged. “Summer just started. We have a few months.”
He wasn’t prepared for this. Not even a little. Neither was I, because he seemed so vulnerable behind the cocky veneer that I wanted to help him, and that was the first sign I should run away.
I was there as a consultant, so I was going to consult.
“Nicole is a very together little girl. And I think, under normal circumstances she’d thrive in a tough, competitive school environment.”
“She’s going into first grade.”
“It’s also Los Angeles. It’s a town of self-made strivers and their children. So kindergarten is the entry year. It’s very hard to get a kid into first grade, even one as mature as Nicole. There’s just no space.”
“She’s mature? She can read. Right? It’s amazing.” He beamed. I wanted to smile, but I couldn’t be delighted for him. That was inappropriate.
“I know I saw her in tears, but once she calmed down she followed instructions and spoke clearly. She has great fine motor skills and when she cleans a shitstain she gets every speck off. At her age and for what she’s been through, you’re right. That’s pretty amazing.”
Flattering the child was a sure way to get the job, and even though I wasn’t interested in working for him, per se, seeing him beam like a proud parent gave me hope for him.
“We had her reading tested. She’s perfect.”
He was really stuck on the reading. Most kids could read by the time they entered first grade, but he seemed happy in his bubble. I didn’t want to pop it.
“She’s doing great,” I continued, trying to focus on Nicole and not the way his hand curved around his iced tea. “There’s a school in Santa Monica called Crossroads. It’s a great school, academically, but one of their core directives is the emotional health of the student. They have a grade-bearing course that focuses on each child’s emotions.”
He smiled that award-winning smile.
“Ma’am, I’m from the South. That hippy-dippy shit ain’t gonna fly.”
“And when your daughter breaks down because she never dealt with losing her mother, your good-old-boy shit ain’t gonna fly neither.”
I heard his foot tap, but didn’t look at it. We were eye-locked, measuring each other.
Thank God I wasn’t working for him. He was melting me from the inside out, and I had a feeling it was on purpose.
“You play nine-ball?” he asked.
“Sure do.”
“You win and I’ll go see your hippy-dippy school. I win and you go see the one on Wilshire.”
“I don’t see why it matters what school I see. It’s your decision.”
“You consulting or not?”
I hadn’t considered seeing him after that meeting, but he had a point. A real consult on how to manage his daughter would take more than one meeting, and the pay was excellent. But I wasn’t here for me. I was here for Blakely.
I stood up. “You break.”
He handed me a cue. “Ladies first.”
I took it and placed the cue ball in the middle of the table, about six inches from the headrail and lined with the center diamond. I had a break method shown to me by a hustler I’d dated in Paris. I always sank something in nine-ball.
I placed the cue on the rail wood and slid it back and forth, bridging high with my left hand.
“What the hell is that?” he asked.
“It’s me breaking.” I stood straight, getting the power from my hips. “Lau
ra says you won’t meet any other nannies.”
“I don’t want any other nannies.”
I broke. Clack tic tic tic pup pup pup . . . the three threatened the side but bounced on the cushions. Nothing went in. That was a first.
“What’s the problem with them?”
“Nicole doesn’t like them, or I don’t like them.” He set up a one-three and sank it.
“Too hippy-dippy?”
“I don’t like a woman who flirts on an interview to watch my kid.” One-seven. Sunk. He was just going to run the one ball all over the table.
“I think you’re seeing things.”
He must have been. We were professionals, every one of us. Laura was damned serious about this sort of thing.
“I know women.” One-five. Sunk. He was set up for the seven, and if he played it right, the nine would be next. I should have made a better break.
“I have someone,” I said. “A friend. She’s had some bad luck, but she’s got experience and she loves kids.”
“Really.” He looked up at me from setting up his shot. “Where’s she worked before?”
I didn’t pause. Pausing was death.
“The Trudeaus.”
He missed the seven. Stood.
“I’m not looking for that kind of help.”
“It’s not what you think.” I leaned down and set up the one-nine.
“It never is. Take your shot.”
“She’s really great.” I pocketed the nine. Game over. “So is Crossroads. I’ll set up the appointment. Please don’t use the phrase ‘hippy-dippy’ in the interview. The school doesn’t need your money or the trouble.”
“Good advice.” He leaned down and retrieved the rack.
“You really should take my advice on this and just about everything.”
I smiled at him and leaned on my cue.
He popped the balls back in the nine-ball diamond. “I don’t want Josh Trudeau’s nanny. Even without the extra services. I want you.”
This is the kind of thing a single girl wanted to hear from a beautiful man. I was there as a professional. Despite that, I went a little jelly. I tightened my mouth into a line I couldn’t let him see.