Hayley followed Ethan as he navigated through the crowd toward the ice-cream shop. Her heart had started to beat wildly. What was she doing playing house? It was ridiculous. Nothing good could come of it. She was sure of it.
Ethan suddenly looked over his shoulder at her and winked.
Hayley smiled. She couldn’t help it.
Chapter 104
When Cressida told Amy that she was sending her to downtown Yorktide on an errand, Amy’s spirits rose. Anything to get out of the house for a while. Even the fact that the errand was to pick up a brand of seriously strong laxatives at the pharmacy didn’t dampen her mood. As soon as she was behind the wheel of her car she texted Hayley in the hopes that she would also be in Yorktide that afternoon. Yes, Hayley had replied. She was taking the girls to the charming little park by the WWII memorial.
Errand completed, Amy sat on one of the benches in the park and waited for Hayley to show. She had bad news to deliver. Cressida had demanded she spend the night again and Amy hadn’t had the guts to say no. Not that she wasn’t upset with her lack of nerve. She was.
Look at what had happened the first time she had agreed to stay at the Priors’ overnight. She had cancelled her date with Noah and hadn’t heard again from him after he had sent her a text acknowledging the message she had left for him at the brewery. Anything Noah had felt for her might now be dead. And here she was about to let down her closest friend in favor of her boss. The radical idea of quitting her job had occurred to Amy but only briefly. Her grandfather had taught her the importance of not walking away from responsibility. She would finish out the summer as Cressida Prior’s . . . whatever it was. Besides, actually telling Cressida face-to-face that she wanted to quit was a terrifying thought.
There was Hayley, pushing the girls in a double stroller. She waved when she saw Amy.
“I can’t go to the Mexican Kitchen with you tonight,” Amy blurted the moment Hayley had joined her. “I’m sorry. I promised Cressida I’d stay over at the house.”
“Another last-minute summons?” Hayley frowned. “You’re being taken advantage of, Amy. What is this, the third time you’ve been asked to spend the night with little or no notice? What’s involved with these night shifts, anyway?” Hayley asked, peering down at the two sleeping girls.
“You know, the usual things,” Amy said with a shrug. “We eat dinner and—”
“And what?” Hayley asked. “What do you do for the rest of the night? Does Will stick around?”
“No,” Amy admitted. “He goes to bed, I guess. Cressida reads one of her business journals and I read, too. And then she goes to bed and so do I.”
“So, you don’t actually do anything on these nights?” Hayley pressed.
“Right. The point is that I’m there.”
“You get overtime for these do-nothing nights, I hope?”
“I get paid,” Amy said. She had been wrong to assume that she would be compensated more grandly for night hours than for day hours. She supposed she could count the tokens Cressida had given her as the equivalent of overtime. There was the designer bag Cressida didn’t want because it was last year’s It model. That the lining of the bag was badly ripped didn’t seem to matter to Cressida. And there was the silk scarf from Coach. The colors were gorgeous—teal and deep purple—but it was only after Amy had gotten home that she realized there was a large grease stain covering one entire corner of the scarf. Amy could only hope that whatever castoff Cressida decided to give her tomorrow wouldn’t be something one of the children had given her, like Jordan’s vintage compact.
“Well, I think it’s odd,” Hayley said.
Amy said nothing. She was tired of arguing that what she was asked to do for Cressida was normal or fair when in fact she knew that it was neither. “So,” she said, “are you going to go to the Mexican Kitchen anyway?”
“Sure, why not? I enjoy my own company, and I’m not missing out on free chips and salsa. Anyway, good luck tonight.”
I don’t need luck, Amy thought. I need . . . But she didn’t know how to finish the thought.
“It was nice meeting Ethan,” she said. “He didn’t act like I thought he would.”
“The Whitbys are good people. Money doesn’t corrupt everyone.”
Amy wondered. Would Cressida be a nicer person if she didn’t have such financial power, or did gaining financial power in the first place require a certain ruthlessness? But what about Will? He didn’t seem corrupted by the cushy life he lived. Or had he in effect sold himself to the highly successful Cressida in exchange for those very comforts?
And what about herself? Had her own head been turned by the bundles of cash Cressida handed her at the end of each week? Had money blinded her to the truth about her employer? She remembered the unnecessary and impulsive purchases she had made that summer and regretted them. Amy sighed. Life was so complicated. People were so hard to figure out. At that moment, she felt very young and very clueless.
“So, how are things with Ethan?” she asked. “You two looked pretty cozy pushing those strollers the other day.”
Hayley looked away. “Fine,” she said.
Well, Amy thought, that was an evasive response. Maybe her question had hit a nerve. Maybe Hayley’s scheme wasn’t working as she had hoped, or maybe she had chosen to abandon it. But if either of those possibilities were the truth, why hadn’t Hayley told her what was going on? Amy felt a twinge of guilt. Why would Hayley have come to her when all Amy seemed able to talk about was her fantastic mentor? The sad truth was that she hadn’t been there for Hayley this summer. And if she hadn’t been there for Hayley, she certainly hadn’t been there for her own mother.
Amy rose abruptly. “I’d better get back,” she said. “Cressida will be wondering what took me so long.”
* * *
Amy lay on the bed in the guest room and stared blindly at the ceiling, wondering yet again how she had let herself get sucked into the dynamics of this family. There had been another upsetting incident that evening. When told to come to the table for dinner Rhiannon, in the living room watching a movie on the big-screen television, had called out that she would join the others in a minute. When two minutes had passed and Rhiannon hadn’t made an appearance, Cressida had gotten up from the table and marched into the living room. Amy had sat frozen, hearing but not wanting to hear Cressida’s shrill voice raised in anger. Then there had come the sound of a slap, followed by the pounding of feet running up the stairs.
When Cressida returned to the table her expression was grim. Neither Will nor Jordan said a word but continued to eat, eyes on their meal. Amy continued to poke at the plate of steamed vegetables before her, her appetite gone.
But there were only a few weeks left of the summer and then Amy’s responsibility to the Priors would be over. And there was no way she would accept the offer of a job in Atlanta, assuming it was still on the table. She wasn’t sure how she was going to say no to Cressida, but she would find a way. She hoped she would be able to find a way.
Lying there in the guest bedroom it occurred to Amy that while Cressida claimed to be a feminist she was nothing of the kind. The way she kept Amy in a state of uncertainty and inferiority was abusive. The way she refused to really empower her so-called protégé by setting her serious tasks proved that she had no respect for Amy. And the way Cressida spoke about her colleagues and employees was telling. Clearly Cressida favored competition over collaboration, and that seemed pretty classic male behavior. Amy had learned about such things in a class called Gender Politics. Too bad the lessons had slipped her mind.
The sound of a door opening and closing and then the creak of a floorboard caused Amy’s heart to beat faster. Quickly she got out of bed and carried the white ladder-back chair to the door of the room, where she wedged it under the doorknob. She didn’t really know what she was afraid of, but the memory of a wraithlike Cressida roaming the house in her long white nightgown suddenly frightened her.
Amy looked at the digital clock on the dresser
. It was only two. Four more hours before she would be summoned.
Chapter 105
Leda sat at her usual table in Over Easy, sipping a cup of excellent coffee. “So, is this a new item on the menu,” she asked when Vera joined her. “The challah French toast. Or have I just not noticed it before now?”
“It’s new,” Vera explained. “It seems to be a hit, too.”
Leda put down the menu. “I have something to admit,” she said carefully, “and I don’t want you to be angry with me.”
“What could you possibly have done that would make me angry? Unless you gave away my top-secret recipe for lemon curd. That just might be unforgiveable.”
“Nothing like that.” Leda sighed. “The thing is, I took it upon myself to ask around about Margot Lakes. You know, in case one day you and she might . . .”
“What do you mean ask around? Like, you did a background check?”
“An informal one, of course,” Leda added hurriedly, “and I kept your name out of it. And the consensus is that Margot Lakes is perfectly normal. No criminal record. No secret husband. No obsession with worms like that woman you dated last year. Who keeps worms as pets?”
Vera shrugged. “She liked the fact that they were quiet.”
“And Margot asked about you the other day. She wanted to know if you were single.”
Vera looked down at her coffee. “Oh.”
“I told her that you were. Are you mad at me?”
“No,” Vera said, looking back to Leda. “I’m not mad. And thanks for telling me that Margot is interested. But I’ll say it again. I’m permanently off the shelf. My sell-by date is a thing of the past. I’ve formally retired from the world of wooing and being wooed.”
Leda sighed. “Okay. I give up. I formally resign from the world of matchmaking.”
“Don’t look so down. Thank you for caring so much about me, really. I appreciate that you’re only looking out for what you believe are my best interests. But I’m just fine the way I am.”
“Vera—”
“I don’t badger you about getting out there and meeting someone, do I? Wait, don’t answer that. Look, from now on neither of us will try to prod the other to date. Deal?”
Leda hesitated before replying. There really wasn’t any need to mention to Vera that she had invited Margot to Phil’s party. “Deal,” she said.
“Are you excited about the party?” Vera asked, as if reading her mind.
“Excited and nervous,” Leda admitted. “I wish Phil wasn’t going all out for me.”
“Nonsense. It will be fun. Is Amy coming?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t she?”
Vera shrugged. “Cressida Prior might require her presence again.”
“Amy would never miss this celebration. She found the issue of the Journal of Craftwork with my interview the other day and was upset that I hadn’t shown it to her when it first came in. I couldn’t tell her that at the time I thought she wouldn’t be interested. She cares, Vera, she really does. And I think Cressida Prior’s spell is wearing off.”
“The Wicked Witch of Yorktide.” Vera frowned. “I’ll need to see her melting to believe it.”
Chapter 106
Hayley had lain awake all night, haunted—that was not too strong a word—by the memory of yesterday’s outing in Ogunquit. She had known full well that playing “happy family” with Ethan was potentially dangerous and for all sorts of reasons. But she hadn’t been able to remove herself emotionally from the moment no matter how hard she tried. And she had tried. She had tried very hard.
Things had really ratcheted in intensity once they had gotten their ice-cream cones and taken the twins to a small park off the main thoroughfare. Ethan and Hayley had sat side by side on a slatted wooden bench, the girls in their strollers set facing each other. Nothing much had been said, certainly nothing of great consequence, but the longer Hayley sat next to Ethan, her thigh just about touching his, her shoulder occasionally grazing his shoulder, the more she had felt almost faint with desire.
“Turn to me,” Ethan had said abruptly. Hayley had turned, half expecting . . . With his paper napkin, Ethan gently wiped ice cream from the corner of her mouth. They had never been so physically close as they were at that moment, their faces mere inches apart, their eyes locked on one another. The tension had been almost unbearable until once again a child had interrupted the potentially explosive situation by making herself known, and loudly at that. Layla had turned her ice-cream cone upside down on the little tray of her stroller. Lily, finding this amusing, quickly followed suit and then, realizing that her ice cream was now not so easy to eat, had shrieked in dismay.
The incident had shattered the intimate moment. Ethan had laughed and righted Lily’s cone, saving what he could of the ice cream. Hayley busied herself wiping Layla’s face, covered with sticky vanilla goo.
They had gone back to the Whitby house after that. Ethan went off to his room to work, and Hayley hadn’t seen him again. Lying in the bed that night she had realized she didn’t know how much more of his proximity she could take without . . . without what? Her plan, that wretched thing, had long been abandoned, if indeed she had ever really embraced it in the first place. So, what now? What happened next? Nothing? Everything?
At four a.m. Hayley had given up on the possibility of sleep. She got out of bed, careful not to wake her mother. (And her father? He might be home or he might not be.) She had showered and dressed and left the apartment by five. The roads were largely deserted but for the occasional farmer bringing his produce to a market and a few others whose workday started well before nine. She had driven to the beach, where she had sat in her car—the morning was chill—and stared at the ocean, steely and gray, almost without conscious thought. When it was finally time to head to the Whitby’s house, Hayley took a deep breath and started the car. Would Ethan be there? She hoped he wouldn’t be. She hoped he would be.
She turned onto Overlook Road shortly thereafter, parked, and went into the house. As was her habit she headed directly to the kitchen.
Ethan was there. He was alone. “Hi,” he said. He was wearing a rumpled chambray shirt, open to the middle of his chest. Hayley thought he might have slept in it. His jeans, too, looked as if he had spent the night tossing and turning in them on some uncomfortable surface, rather than in his own bed.
“Hi,” Hayley said. She stood just inside the door, clutching the strap of her bag slung over her shoulder.
“Marisa is out,” Ethan said. “The girls are asleep.” Hayley could see him swallow hard. An electric sensation streamed through her, the likes of which she had never known.
“Hayley—” Ethan began.
After, Hayley couldn’t remember how what had happened next had happened. All that mattered was that they found themselves in each other’s arms, their lips pressed together as if their very lives depended on it. Hayley had no idea how long this glorious experience lasted. It could have been minutes. It could have been hours. When finally their lips parted, they clung to each other still.
Ethan traced the line of Hayley’s cheek with his forefinger. “‘The Brightness of her cheek would shame those stars as daylight doth a lamp.’” He smiled. “I played Romeo in my senior year of high school.”
“I bet you were wonderful,” Hayley whispered.
“Maybe not wonderful. Hayley,” Ethan went on, his tone urgent, “I’ve wanted to kiss you almost from the first moment I saw you, but I felt it would be wrong. My father is your employer. I didn’t want to put you in an awkward situation. I was going to wait until after the summer to ask you out.” Ethan shook his head. “But this happened. I’m sorry.”
Hayley thought that no one, not even the Latimers, had ever been so considerate of her feelings. “Please, don’t be sorry,” she said feelingly. “Just don’t.”
“I can’t help but be. My father would be furious if he thought I’d compromised the peace of mind of one of his employees.”
“I know. But
I’m not without blame, too.” Hayley smiled and put the flat of her palm against Ethan’s chest. “Until now I wasn’t sure you had any interest in me,” she said. “Not romantically.”
“When all along I was . . . I love you, Hayley Franklin. I really do.”
Hayley felt faint and held Ethan more tightly. “And I love you, Ethan,” she said. “Truly.”
And then the sound of the front door opening . . .
“Give me your number,” Ethan whispered. “I’ll leave through the back door and get in touch with you later.”
Hayley did, and gave Ethan another quick kiss.
Ethan smiled. “I really do believe in luck now. No, let’s call it Fate with a capital F.”
And then he was gone.
As footsteps made their way to the kitchen Hayley tried desperately to compose herself. It was not easy. A part of her wondered if she would suddenly wake to find that the past moments had been only a dream. How cruel that would be....
Marisa appeared in the doorway, dressed in baggy sweatpants and sweatshirt. “Hi,” she said brightly. “I thought I’d take a stroll this morning before heading out to YCC. It’s a lovely day, isn’t it?”
Hayley managed a smile. “Yes,” she said. “It is.”
“Is Ethan still here?” Marisa asked. “I left a message with him about my being out.”
Hayley reached for a dishtowel and swiped at a nonexistent mark on the counter. “No,” she said. “He left. He told me you were out.”
Marisa went over to the coffeepot and poured herself a cup. She seemed in no hurry to leave. “Remember that student I told you about earlier this summer,” she said conversationally. “The one who wasn’t able to grasp most of what was going on but who seemed to enjoy coming to class?”
Hayley nodded.
“You’ll never believe how things have turned out. Another of my students, one of the quickest learners in the class, has been tutoring Marjory for a few hours each week. They’ve become friends, and Marjory is finally absorbing the lessons. Isn’t that fantastic?”
The Summer Nanny Page 31