“Mr. Anderson left half an hour ago, sir,” the doorman said behind me. “Said he had a meeting he was late for, and your return couldn’t have been more timely.”
“Thanks, Darren,” I said with a thumbs-up to my doorman.
“Bruin, this place is stunning,” Jillian gushed as she looked around at the place. “Who did your interior design?”
“I hired a team of professionals from Milan.” I smiled appreciatively as I walked down the entry hall with her. “They’ve got an eye for design that’s hard to find on this side of the world. But you haven’t seen the best part yet.”
She raised an eyebrow at me, and as if on cue, I heard the sound of tiny feet running on the tile floors.
“Daddy!” came a high-pitched child’s voice from one of the side-hallways, and I instinctively knelt down to see Emma come running clumsily around the corner, her bright eyes shining and her face smiling as she opened her arms for me to catch her.
“There she is,” I said with a laugh, scooping her up in my arms and standing up, immediately launching her into the air and catching her. The sound of her delighted laughter was music to my ears. “How’d you like your time with Uncle Rhett, sweetie?”
“He has big silly arms,” she said, and I laughed, ruffling her hair as I turned to face Jillian with my girl.
“Emma’s at that age where she has a lot of interesting things to say,” I explained, watching Jillian’s face shining in adoration. “She calls the valet ‘Mr. Horseman,’ and I can’t figure out why for the life of me.”
Emma was watching Jillian with a curious expression, and she looked to me for help. I beamed at her. “Emma, this is Jillian, a special friend of Daddy’s.”
She turned and hesitated before giving Jillian a little wave, which Jillian returned, trying not to cry at the sight of me with my tiny little girl in my arms.
“Hi Emma,” she said.
“Why are you crying?” Emma asked.
“Because you’re cute,” Jillian said with a laugh.
“Why?” she asked. I rolled my eyes. Ah yes, the infinite ‘why’ chain.
“Because you have Daddy’s eyes,” she said, and I raised my eyebrows, catching her glance at me.
“Why?”
“I’ll explain that later, sweetie,” I said quietly to Emma. Emma bit her lips a moment, then leaned in to whisper something into my ear. I beamed at Jillian, who was raising an eyebrow at us.
“She says you have ‘nice hairs,’” I translated.
“Daddy, that was a secret,” Emma protested, and I laughed as nodded for Jillian to follow me.
“Oops, sorry, honey. How about I make it up to you by taking us to the park?”
Emma’s eyes widened as if I’d just promised her, well, the best thing in the entire world.
“I think that’s a yes,” Jillian said, and I winked at her.
“Come on, I’ll show you our favorite place.” We headed was back out the doors, plus one Emma.
About half an hour later, we were making our way across the perfectly cut grass fields to the playset at the local park, Emma holding both our hands as she tottered along. Every now and then, she elected to jump up and swing on our hands, giggling wildly, and I was thankful that Jillian seemed delighted to no end by it.
“Jillian, is this your favorite park?” Emma asked, looking up at her with wide eyes.
“I think it might just be,” she said with a judicious nod. “At least, it’s getting there.”
“Daddy, we have to show her the slide.” Emma tugged on both our hands.
“If you’re on the fence about your favorite park, the slide will seal the deal,” I said to Jillian with a faux-serious tone.
We jogged up to the slide in question. This park was definitely on the upscale side of town, so even I had to admit that everything was a child’s dream. The jungle gym was more like a jungle castle, a maze of a wooden fort with tunnels and playsets a kid could get lost in for hours. Maintenance workers tended to everything on a daily basis. Even the geese in the pond were docile, which in my experience was a very rare thing.
Once we got to the slide, Emma ran ahead of us to the steps leading up to it. “Now Emma,” I warned. “You know you’re not allowed to go up there alone.”
She gave me a defiant look, and I could tell she was considering running on up there anyway, but to my surprise, Jillian stepped in to the rescue.
“Emma, can I go up there with you?” she asked in a bright, excited voice. Emma’s face lit up.
“Yeah. Daddy, is Jillian allowed to go up there without you?”
“I don’t know,” I teased, tapping my chin with a smile. “Maybe if the two of you go together, you’ll be okay.”
“Let’s go.” Emma squealed, grabbing Jillian’s hand and taking her up the steps.
I grinned as I watched them go, Emma telling stories about her favorite times down the slide. When they got to the top, Jillian crouched down and held Emma in place while I went to the bottom of the slide and did the same.
Emma went down, giggling hysterically the whole time, until she got to my hands, and I swept her up and laughed triumphantly, tossing her up and catching her like she weighed nothing.
“That was incredible, Emma,” Jillian called down. “This is definitely the best park in the world.”
“I don’t know about that,” Emma said when she finally settled down and Jillian was back down with us. “They probably have really good slides in Japan.”
“Japan, huh?” Jillian said, surprised yet again. “And what all do you know about Japan?”
“So much stuff,” Emma answered with wide eyes.
“Emma’s tutor is from Kyoto,” I explained quietly. “I know she’s a little young for the heavy stuff, but I wanted to get her started early on exposure to other languages. And other basics too, but language is what you want to focus on this young.”
Jillian nodded, then spoke to Emma. “That’s incredible, Emma. I speak lots of languages, too.”
“Really?”
“French and Spanish.”
Emma looked at Jillian like she had suddenly become a goddess. “Whoa.” She then turned to me with an urgent expression. “Daddy, can I learn Spanish?”
“You can learn anything you want,” I told her with a proud smile, and I winked at Jillian, who bit her lip through a grin.
It had never hit me until just then how strange this afternoon was turning out to be. I thought I’d just come to show Emma to Jillian and show her around the house, but the two of them really seemed to be connecting. What was more, I didn’t feel awkward about it.
What Jeff had insinuated about me and Emma followed me around a lot. In the back of my head, as much as I loved Emma, I worried sometimes that people would look at us and assume I was a fuckup of some kind. Of course, that wasn’t how I saw Emma at all, but watching Jillian play with her made that worry vanish so completely that I never would have known it had ever haunted me.
“Daddy, can we go to the bathroom?” Emma asked suddenly, and I raised an eyebrow at her.
“How about you go with Jillian?” I asked, looking questioningly at her.
“Come on, Emma, let’s go together,” Jillian offered with a wink to me, and the two of them made their way to the restrooms while I watched with crossed arms.
I really couldn’t believe it. A few weeks ago, if someone had told me I’d be not only out with my daughter and Jillian Hargrove at the park, but that I’d be enjoying it, I’d have called them insane.
Emma wasn’t the only one to thank for that, either, I thought as I smiled softly. It hadn’t hit me until now, but even in this short time, Jillian had changed me in a profound way.
Even though Jillian had been there all along, it was only now that I could really appreciate everything she was capable of.
A few minutes later, Emma came running out of the bathroom with an excited smile on her face, Jillian rolling her eyes behind her with an apologetic grin at me.
“
Daddy-Daddy-Daddy! Jillian says we can go get ice cream!”
Twenty-Two
Jillian
“Daddy, is Jillian coming home with us?” piped up Emma, sitting across the table from us at the ice cream shop.
I froze, looking at Bruin with worry. How the hell were we supposed to handle a question like that?
But Bruin just smiled softly. “Not for now, Em.”
“But she’s really pretty,” the little girl added, pointing at me with her tiny pink spoon. Her pudgy face was smudged with chocolate. I couldn’t help but smile at her.
“You’re right. Jillian is very pretty.” Her father reached under the table to take my hand. I gave it a light squeeze.
“So? Why can’t we keep her?” asked Emma, dropping her spoon in the little cup of quickly-melting ice cream and folding her arms over her chest.
She gave Bruin a squinty, suspicious look. One thing was for sure, she had definitely inherited her father’s stubbornness and fiery personality. It was adorable.
“It doesn’t quite work that way, sweetheart.” He chuckled. “Are you going to finish your ice cream? Why are you avoiding all the sprinkles? You asked for them specifically.”
“They’re crunchy,” she said, shrugging.
“Well, yeah. They’re sprinkles,” Bruin commented, raising an eyebrow.
Emma wrinkled her tiny nose. “I don’t like crunchy.”
“You just like the colors, huh?” I said. Emma grinned and nodded.
“Rainbow!” she exclaimed, seemingly forgetting all about her line of inquiry. But then she made a shockingly solemn face for a three-year-old, and said, “Jillian, do you like me?”
I tilted my head to one side and nodded. “Of course I like you.”
“Then why won’t you come home with us?” she asked, her sweet baby voice so sad and innocent it nearly made tears come to my eyes. She really was the cutest.
Bruin sighed. “You have to be patient, Em. Jillian doesn’t live in California. She lives in Georgia. That’s where her home is.”
“Why?” she asked, frowning.
Bruin and I exchanged exasperated looks. Why seemed to be her favorite question. But then again, she was barely out of her terrible twos. “Her house is in Georgia. In Atlanta,” Bruin said simply. Emma did not look convinced in the slightest.
“Can’t she move her house here?” she inquired with a shrug, as though it were the most logical suggestion in the world. I giggled and she looked at me with a vaguely scandalized face.
“Well, it’s an apartment, actually,” I said. “I can’t fit my whole apartment in a suitcase and take it with me to California.”
“Why not? Is it a really big apartment?” she asked, endlessly persistent.
Bruin rolled his eyes. “Emma, that’s probably enough questions, honey.”
“Oh, I don’t mind,” I said quickly. Emma grinned at me fondly.
“I like you,” she said. “You’re nice.”
“Well, thank you. I like you, too,” I told her.
This conversation, if you could really call it that, was going in circles. But I expected that was probably pretty par for the course with a toddler. Emma scooped out and ate a big bite of melty ice cream.
Bruin mouthed the word “sorry” at me but I just shrugged, smiling back. The truth was, I was really enjoying interacting with Emma. I had never spent very much time around kids. None of my friends had babies yet, and most of my clients were well into middle age, so their kids were usually grown up and out of the picture. Jeff rarely made time for dating, much less getting into a serious relationship that could involve a kid. I was the younger of the two of us, so I never had a little brother or sister, either. I had always expected to kind of hate hanging out with a little kid. I had no idea what to talk to them about, what kinds of things they were into. Half the time I couldn’t even properly guess how old a child was without being told explicitly.
But Emma was cool. At least, she was cool for a three-year-old. She really was like a very small, very chatty, girly version of Bruin in a lot of ways. She didn’t mince her words, saying exactly what was on her mind, even if it was awkward to say. She was upfront about what she wanted, even if it didn’t make sense to other people. Like the rainbow sprinkles. I was sure she knew perfectly well that they would be crunchy, but she wanted them for their aesthetic value. It was silly, but I kind of understood it. At my apartment, I had an old-fashioned vintage alarm clock in my bedroom. I never used it because I just used my phone as an alarm. But I kept it around because I liked the look of it.
Ugh, here I was, finding common ground with a literal toddler. Who was I anymore?
Meanwhile, Emma was singing some made-up song about ice cream. Bruin and I both laughed when she rhymed “spoon” with “moon” and that seemed to delight her. She grinned, her chocolatey little face radiant with joy. I could feel my heart swelling with fondness for her already. It was difficult not to adore her, she was so cute. And the fact that she was like a little Bruin clone certainly helped.
“You about ready to head out, Em?” he asked her. She looked into her bowl of melted ice cream with a serious expression, like she was doing some crazy calculations in her head. Bruin was biting his lip to stop from laughing.
Finally, she looked up at us both and nodded, setting her spoon down with a clink.
“I’m done,” she announced.
“Okay. Good. You’re one slow eater, you know that?” Bruin said, picking up her bowl and spoon and dropping them in the trash. He offered her his hand and she took it. Then she turned and reached for me. My heart skipped a beat. God, she was adorable.
I took her other hand and she laughed with joy. “Swing me!” she exclaimed.
Bruin and I lifted her up and swung her a few times once we walked out of the ice cream shop and into the parking lot. She giggled and kicked her feet, looking up at us with overflowing happiness. It was late afternoon, the sun just sort of beginning to decline toward the horizon. The sky was streaked with pink and purple, the world around us cast in that gorgeous golden glow that always happened this time of day. We piled into Bruin’s rented Mercedes, Bruin strapping Emma neatly and carefully into her car seat.
“Daddy, where’s my pony?” she asked as we started to pull out of the parking lot. I shot Bruin a dubious look. I knew he had serious money, but he didn’t really buy her a pony, did he?
“Relax,” he said quietly to me, smirking. “It’s a toy pony.”
“Pony, pony!” Emma chanted, kicking her legs.
“Miss Whinny is back at the house, Em,” he told her.
“Aww,” she whined, poking out her bottom lip.
“You’ll be reunited with her soon, okay? Just be patient a little longer,” he said.
“Daddy?” she chirped.
“Yes, princess?” he answered. The car pulled out into dense traffic.
“What does patient mean?” she asked.
“You want to take this one?” Bruin asked me in an undertone. I blushed. I had no idea how to explain something like patience to a child. Or even really to an adult, for that matter.
“Uhh,” I began awkwardly, wracking my brain for an example. “It’s like… when you have to wait for something for a long time.”
“Yeah?” Emma prompted me to continue.
“So, you’re waiting and waiting and it feels like you’ve been waiting forever, right?” I added, glancing at Emma in the rearview mirror. She looked very contemplative for someone who could hardly even read yet. She nodded.
“I hate waiting,” she said solemnly.
“I know. Me, too. It’s hard to wait when you want something really bad,” I said.
“Or when you’re really bored,” Emma burst out.
“Yeah. That works, too,” I said, laughing. “It’s hard to wait. But sometimes you have to.”
“Why?” the little girl asked again, for the umpteenth time today. Bruin sighed, but I just smiled and turned to look at her. She wasn’t joking aroun
d. She really wanted to understand.
“Because life is long,” I said softly. “And sometimes there are times when it feels really long. And you might want to skip the boring stuff or the scary stuff or the sad stuff, but instead you have to wait. And just know in your heart that things are going to change once the bad stuff ends. But until then, you have to smile and be happy anyway. And that’s called being patient.”
Emma stared at me, and I could almost see the little cogs turning in her head as she genuinely considered the meaning of my words. Then she perked up and said, “You’re smart.”
I laughed. “Thank you. I think you’re pretty smart yourself.”
Emma looked positively elated at the compliment. “I can count to ten,” she bragged.
“Wow! That’s really impressive,” I told her.
“She can spell her name, too,” Bruin added, with a twinge of pride.
“E-M-M-A,” she announced, clapping with every letter.
“Good job,” I said, smiling so hard my cheeks almost hurt.
“How do you spell Jillian?” she asked. I spelled it for her and she was so amazed, she then asked me to spell Bruin, patient, ice cream, and rainbow. I spelled them all for her and she seemed truly fascinated by my ability.
“I wanna learn to spell,” she said, a hint of envy in her tone.
Bruin looked at me happily. “Fostering a desire to learn. You’re a real natural with little kids, you know?” he said with a smirk. I rolled my eyes.
“Have you heard how many times she’s asked ‘why?’ I’m pretty sure the desire to learn is already more than present,” I laughed.
“Daddy, I don’t wanna go home yet,” Emma said suddenly. Bruin frowned.
“Why not, honey?” he asked.
She pouted. “Because then Jillian will go away.”
My heart was breaking. Bruin glanced at me sadly. “Well, she has a job to do. And like I said, she doesn’t live here. She lives in Georgia.”
“How far away is Georgia?” she pressed on.
“It’s on the other side of the country. What’s the name of our country, honey?” he asked, clearly hoping to distract her with trivia.
Double Mountain Trouble Page 30