I’d known about him. But the fact that she would bring him into our house, with our girls … I couldn’t stand by anymore and pretend like we could fix things. Not when it endangered my daughters.
“Chad?” Ivy’s voice pulls me from my spiraling thoughts. Her eyebrows are pinched in concern like they were last night, only now it’s light enough in the room to see the worry in her eyes. “Is everything okay?” she asks. Her cheeks are getting redder.
“Yeah. Fine. Sorry. I zoned out there for a second.” I clear my throat.
She nods slowly and her expression relaxes, but she doesn’t take her eyes off me. It’s making my cheeks warm.
Is there a psychological explanation for falling for your caregiver because they were nice to you? Where it’s not real? Because that must be what’s happening with all these warm feelings about Ivy. I’ve never had someone take care of me in the gentle way she does, so it’s affecting me.
And there’s the fact that I haven’t slept well in a couple days.
Well, I never actually sleep well, but that’s beside the point.
“I was just about to take the girls down to get some breakfast.” I gesture to the door, where she’s still standing, holding Scarlett’s and Zoey’s hands.
“I came over to see if I could help with that. If you needed help. I don’t want to impose. Sorry.” She shakes her head. “I sound like a crazy person. Law is in meetings. He said I should get room service and chill, but that felt lonel—lame.”
“Daddy! Daddy! Can Miss Ivy come to breakfast with us?” Zoey cries before I can say anything.
Ivy crouches again, turning to Zoey. “Hey, remember thatsilly game we talked about last night? Where we see if we can whisper everything?”
“Oh ye—” Zoey starts, and then she covers her mouth with her hand and widens her eyes. “I mean, oh yeah,” she says in the loudest whisper she can manage.
Ivy grins at her, and I can’t help my own smile. It’s a small thing for Ivy to come up with a way to keep my girls’ excitement at a level that won’t aggravate my migraine, but it feels bigger. For so long, I’ve been the one looking out for everyone in my family. It’s nice to have someone helping—and not just with the girls. Having someone who’s looking out for me.
“Daddy,” Scarlett says in her own loud whisper. “Is it okay if Miss Ivy eats breakfast with us?”
“I’d be dumb to say no,” I reply, sharing another smile with Ivy.
“Yay!” Both girls start bouncing, and their whispers make them giggle.
I chuckle and shake my head, opening the door. “Seriously, Ivy. Thanks.”
She turns to smile at me over her shoulder, her eyes bright. My heart does a little hiccup at her joyful expression, like letting her help out is the best Christmas present she’s ever gotten.
“Anytime,” she says, as the girls drag her into the hallway.
I pull out my phone to Google “developing a crush on your caregiver.”
CHAPTER 5
IVY
The girls’ whisper game lasts the entire way through breakfast, and I’m pretty sure the ibuprofen is kicking in to finish off Chad’s headache based on the relaxed way he sits and smiles at his daughters’ giggling.
They are adorable.
They’re coloring quietly at the table now, upbeat Christmas songs like “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” playing softly in the background, and more than once I’ve caught the girls humming along. I love the way the hotel has fully embraced the Christmas spirit with things like the trees and the lights and the songs. The girls’ dishes have reindeer on them, and even my and Chad’s plates are red and green. There are figurines atop so many surfaces—little Santas, Mrs. Claus, elves, you name it.
I turn to Chad, who’s sitting across from me, eating a bag of M&Ms he grabbed from a treat bowl in the lobby on our way to breakfast. It makes a little detail about him pop into my head, unbidden. Back when I lived in Houston, I brought a cookie-decorating kit and some candies over to his house to entertain the girls, and he kept making them giggle by eating the dark chocolate mint M&Ms instead of putting them on his cookie. Iremember being enchanted by his relationship with his girls, even with everything he was going through.
Maybe I need to tap into that attitude. Past Ivy was not drooling over Chad then.
He leans back, his arm across the top of the chair that Zoey’s sitting in, looking more relaxed than I’ve ever seen him.
“Good job with the ibuprofen earlier,” I say.
“Take off the life-coach hat, Ivy,” he replies, but he’s still smiling. Teasing me. “I’m good. You can just hang out now.”
