His hand went to his heart, where Nico knew his blazer held a secret pocket. “I keep it with me, so I can at least feel close to them.”
Valerie gave him another long look, which Roger held without flinching. Then her gaze moved to the crossed-out calendar on the wall. Would she go through with it? Nico would take on the task of finding Yvette if she said no. He would be the one to help, even though Roger had kept his secret from Nico and trusted Valerie instead.
“Deal. Nico can be a witness.” She held out her hand.
Nico couldn’t tell who was more surprised at her decision, him or Roger. Or, judging from her complicated expression, Valerie herself.
Roger recovered first. “You’re sure?” he pressed.
She lifted her eyebrows. “Do you want my help or not?”
“Yes, yes. Sorry.” Roger took her hand gingerly, as though worried shaking it too hard might change her mind. “Thank you.”
“Will it be just us and the family?” she asked. “Up north, I mean.”
“I’ll be there,” said Nico without waiting for Roger. It only made sense. Roger would need his help to support Valerie, and they’d already planned to work from the cottage for a couple weeks.
She smiled at him. “Looks like we’re colleagues.”
Colleagues.Nico looked into Valerie’s lovely brown eyes and let his fantasy of asking her on a date fade. This summer was going to be complicated at best, and he couldn’t risk making it worse.
Damn it.
Six
Valerie had never been to a cottage but appreciated the concept. A lifetime of Canadian media consumption told her the cottage meant lazy hours on a sunny dock and frolicking in the lake. Flannel shirts on rainy days. Nights roasting marshmallows while the haunting calls of a loon echoed over dark water.
However, she suspected reality would fall short. She didn’t like bugs, although they harbored a deep and enduring affection for her or, specifically, her blood. She wasn’t outdoorsy and had never experienced personal growth hiking through scratchy brambles. The idea of fish nibbling her toes or underwater weeds licking along her calves was disturbing. Plus, she was soft and urbanized and required the convenience of hot running water.
This made her decision to help Roger Badgerton all the more baffling. In a way, saying yes to his truly whacked-out scheme was right up her alley. She’d done enough online personality tests to confirm she was an impulsive people pleaser, and her streaming history exposed a weakness for intense family dramas. However, this snap decision wasextreme even for her, and last night she’d been up late worrying about whether it was time to restart therapy. She could probably cut back on takeout to pay for the appointments, although pizza provided its own form of healing.
The thing was, the second she’d said yes, she’d felt good again, the feeling of failure fading into the background to lie dormant until her next sleepless night. Part of it was the chance to redeem herself after screwing up Malcolm’s event, but it went deeper than that. She kept thinking of the photos: the one she’d seen at the memorial, when all the siblings looked so confident and cheerful, and the other of Yvette and the baby. She wanted to help Roger. She hated that there was a radioactive cloud poisoning his life when she could do something about it.
Not to mention the money. She’d mentally worked through the dirty feeling of being paid to lie by deciding it was basically an acting job. That soothed her integrity and meant she could pay off her bank loan and have enough left over for food. Luckily, she knew someone looking for a place and had managed to sublet her apartment for the summer right away.
As for his Ad Astra offer…that could change things for her business.
Her train of thought was disrupted when Nico brought tea into the library of Roger’s penthouse, where the two of them were meeting to discuss her fake-daughter backstory. If she was honest, Nico was the less magnanimous reason she had agreed. She didn’t expect anything to happen, since he had been nothing but professional, but she liked the idea that somethingcould. In the dying days of her relationship with her ex, Jake, one of the many realizations she’d come to was that if she stayed, she’d kiss away her chance of feeling anything like passion again. Romance, that exhilaration of being swept off her feet, or being happy simply to be near the other person, had become emotions that barely existed in her memory.
Nico made her feel the edges of that again, when for so long there had been emptiness.
Also, those eyes. She’d gone online last night to google him again (nothing but a few reposts of Bread Company news and some blurry photos) and had tried to pretend entering search terms likesuper sexy eyes white crescent under iriswasn’t a bizarre thing to do. Incredibly, there was a name for them.Sanpaku eyes.They made him almost painfully attractive, with a contradictory sleepy come-hither yet piercing expression.
Nico handed her a glass cup so clear and streak-free it was like the liquid was floating in the air, then brought out a stack of albums. “I thought you’d like to see some family photos.”
She opened the first book at random and all worries about running water evaporated. The Badgertons didn’t have a cottage. They had a majestic summer residence.
“This house has more bathrooms than I have rooms in my apartment and that includes a broom closet too small to fit a broom.” She flipped through the pages. “Are the Badgertons related to Jay Gatsby?”
“They’d like to consider themselves more East Egg than West.”
Valerie laughed, pleased she didn’t have to explain her terrible joke. She liked how he could connect the dots with lines she sometimes left undrawn because the association was so clear in her head she forgot it wasn’t the same for everyone. He handed her another album, open to a photo of a young Roger and a girl that must be Penny from the 1980s, complete with feathered hair and sport socks yanked up to the knees. They held tennis rackets and had their arms casually slung over each other’s shoulders. Valerie slid her fingers over the photos. It must be such a comfort to be so easy with your family. She would get Roger that feeling back, and if she managed to experience a bit of the same belonging herself over the summer, well, she wouldn’t say no.
Nico leaned across the coffee table, and she patted the couch next to her. “Come join me so you don’t strain your neck,” she said. “It’ll be easier to see.”
He hesitated, then moved over. Sitting in the direct sun like that should reveal all his imperfections, but he merely looked incredible. When he reached past her to point out some detail on the photo, she noticed his dark hair had bronze highlights, a look she’d once paid a lot to replicate but was probably natural on him. Not for the first time did she wonder how much richer she’d be if she’d been born a handsome man. She’d save so much money on hair styling and skin care alone, since she’d no longer have to pay the pink tax, not to mention she probably wouldn’t need cosmetics.
Nico turned the page. “Roger said he and Penny were doubles champions in the Mariposa summer league growing up and they still play. Do you?”
