If Jack turned out to be half as sweet as Harper, I’d be a very lucky man indeed.
“Thank you,” I said, nodding to myself as Jack charged over to us and flung himself into my arms, chattering away aboutwhat he’d been doing. I kissed the top of his head and looked between the pair of them. There was so much more I wanted to say to Harper but it would have to wait.
“Hey,” I said as Harper picked up his daisy chain to show Jack. “Can I make you dinner later?”
He looked shocked for a second, and then his smile returned. “Sure, I’d really like that.”
CHAPTER NINE
Harper
“Doyou have any requests for dinner? Any allergies? I don’t know if I asked you when you moved in,” Matty said as we headed back into the kitchen, Jack wearing the daisy chain I’d made him and covered head to toe in grass stains. He looked completely shattered, which meant bedtime was going to go one of two ways. Either he’d be out like a light as soon as his head hit the pillow, or he’d be up for hours while his exhaustion burned itself out in style, almost like a sparkler.
“No allergies, but I’m not very fond of celery. It’s too bitter for me.”
“Really? I always thought celery was tasteless. Or maybe that’s because I usually smother it in something.”
I chuckled. “It’s probably the second.”
“Yeah, probably.” He smiled and looked down at Jack, who was leaning against his legs while carefully stroking the petals of one of the daisies. “You need a bath, mate. You’re all green!”
“I like being green,” Jack said stubbornly. “I’m a frog.”
“A frog? Well, Mr Frog, would you like to see the nice big pond I’ve got for you? It has lots of bubbles in.”
Jack shook his head. “No, thanks.”
“Are you sure?” I asked, crouching down beside him as I tried to think of my best marketing spiel. “It’s a very beautiful pond, but it needs a frog to come and live in it. Every pond needs a frog to look after it. And the fishies need looking after too.”
“Ooh, fishies,” Jack said, his eyes lighting up for a second as he remembered the plastic fish toys he had for the bath. They were supposed to float but instead they had a tendency to sink to the bottom and need rescuing.
“Tell you what, Mr Frog,” Matty said. “Why don’t you go and play for fifteen minutes while I put dinner on for me and Harper, and then we can go and play fish rescue while you examine the pond?”
“Okay!” Jack zoomed off towards the playroom, singing at the top of his voice and suddenly full of energy again. I wasn’t supposed to have favourites when it came to the children I’d looked after, but Jack was already getting close to the top of the list after only a couple of weeks. It was hard not to fall in love with him. He was an endearingly sweet, curious child with a heart of gold and the beginnings of a personality so sassy it would be devastating.
Matty chuckled. “That’ll distract him for a minute. So, dinner?”
“I’m easy. Just feed me,” I said, then stared at him in horror as I realised what I’d said. Matty’s eyebrow rose, and there was an amused smile on his face that was doing funny things to my insides. “I mean, shi–er, sugar, I’m not picky. I, er, I don’t really mind.”
“Good to know,” he said with a smirk that should not have been attractive, but my treacherous dick had decided not toget with the program and was growing increasingly hard in my jeans.
This was not how tonight was supposed to go.
It was not howanynight was supposed to go.
Parents were off-limits. That was the number one rule. Or at least, it was pretty damn high on the list. But when Matty was looking at me like that, it made me want to throw the rulebook out of the window.
Especially because, up until this point, I hadn’t actually been sure of where we stood with each other. I’d spent the whole weekend wondering if we were going to exist in a horribly awkward state where he pretended nothing had happened and we ended up with nothing more than a chill boss-employee relationship while I spent the rest of my probationary period considering whether I wanted to stay.
Then he’d apologised and poured his heart out to me under the early evening sunshine, and now I was more confused than ever. As much as I wanted to be annoyed at him, it just wasn’t possible because I could understand where he was coming from. I might not have kids of my own, but I knew raising them was hard and the only reason I sometimes made it look easy was because of my hours of training and a lot of practice.
I hoped Matty understood that and if not, I guessed I’d have to keep repeating myself until he did.
“How about a seafood risotto?” Matty asked as he opened the freezer, followed by a couple of cupboards, and peered inside them.
“Sounds amazing, but doesn’t risotto need a lot of monitoring? I don’t think it’s something you can just leave.”
“Do you still want it?”
