“Em,” Leo says, pushing off the wall, his voice returning to its normal timbre. “Go brush your teeth. You still haven’t.”
“But Annie—”
“Now, please.”
She rolls her eyes with a practiced drama, but trudges toward the bathroom. At the door, she turns, her expression solemn once more. “Bye, Annie! I hope your period gets better!”
I wince. Behind me, Leo fails to stifle a snort of laughter. I shoot him a look that I hope conveys exactly how I feel about him right now.
“Thank you!” I call back, because what else am I supposed to say?
She disappears into the bathroom and suddenly it’s just me and Leo standing in this entryway, and the weight of everything that just happened crashes down on me. This is it. This is where he tells me thanks but no thanks, I collect the tattered remnants of my dignity, and leave.
I look around quickly, making sure I’ve got everything—wallet, keys, tokens, the mortifying tampon safely tucked away, camera—and then I start walking toward the front door because I might as well save us both the awkwardness of him having to kick me out.
But before I can reach it, the broad plane of his chest moves in front of the door, blocking my path, and I almost stumble directly into it. Into him.
I stop short, looking up. “What are you doing?”
He points toward an arched doorway off to the left that I’m guessing leads to the living room. “Would you be willing to talk? For a minute?”
I stare at him, trying to figure out if this is some kind of joke, but his face is serious. Completely serious. Although to befair, I haven’t actually seen himnotserious yet except for when Emma took his picture, so I don’t have much to compare it to. His brown eyes are studying my face, moving quickly over my features like he’s trying to figure something out, and I take a step back even though I don’t particularly want to because he smells good. Really good, like cedar and bergamot, which is unsettlingly attractive on a man I’d last seen snarling on a sidewalk.
“Uh,” I manage, eloquent as always. “Sure?”
He jerks his chin toward the living room in a gesture that clearly meansfollow me, then turns without another word, expecting compliance. I follow, a marionette whose strings have been cut.
The living room is really nice. There’s a large sectional couch in this soft grey fabric that looks like it’s actually comfortable instead of just for show, and across from it is another smaller couch and a matching armchair. The coffee table is dark wood, solid and substantial, with a few books stacked neatly on one corner and a chunky remote control sitting precisely in the center. There’s large arched windows that let in the light and a television—one of those bigger box ones that probably weighs a ton—sitting in an entertainment center against the wall, and next to it are shelves filled with books and what look like academic journals.
Everything is neat and orderly and clean, not a toy or stray crayon in sight. You’d never believe a child lived here if you didn’t know better.
It’s the sort of apartment I imagined living in when I thought about moving to New York. The grown-up kind, where everything has a place and nothing is falling apart or stained or held together with duct tape and a bit of optimism.
Leo gestures to the couch and I sit, pulling the hem of my dress down slightly because it’s riding up and the last thing Ineed right now is to flash my future employer.Ishe my future employer? I don’t even know what we’re doing here.
He takes the armchair, leaning forward, elbows on knees, his clasped hands a steeple of contemplation. The silence stretches, weighted by his gaze.
Finally, he speaks. “I don’t know if I like you very much.”
The frankness is a slap. My mouth falls open slightly but I recover, a defensive heat rising in my chest. “What makes you think the feeling is mutual?”
A faint, almost imperceptible shrug. “I never assumed it was.”
“Good. Then we understand each other.”
The ghost of a smile touches his lips—there and gone—a crack in the granite. “Whether I like you or not is irrelevant. Emma likes you.”
A disbelieving laugh escapes me. “That’s not true. She was interested in my camera, that’s it. She doesn’t know me.”
“Emma likes you,” he says again, shaking his head. “I can tell.”
“From a fifteen-minute interaction that included property damage and a crash course in reproductive health?”
“Yes.” He leans back slightly, running his hand through his disordered curls again, and I’m starting to think that’s a nervous habit. “Do you know what’s happened with the last few nannies I hired?”
“No.” I have a feeling I’m about to find out though.
“Well, with one of them, Emma locked her in the bathroom. She walked her in there under the pretense of showing her something, then shut the door and somehow managed to wedge a chair under the handle. She was in there for almost an hour before I got home.” He says it matter-of-factly, like this is just a normal thing that happens. “The next, Emma cut her hair offwhile she was on a phone call. Not a trim. Shears from the kitchen. The woman had to get a pixie cut.”
