Maybe three times. Still, he tipped his head in concession. It was her call, but he wasn’t a fan of secrets. They had a way of coming back to bite you…right in the old GPA. Not to mention Chef Broussard had stuck his neck out to help Jonah get the internship at Driftwood, and could probably end it easily.
“Come on, let me babysit.” She shooed him through the entryway, dropping her keys in the bowl like she already knew the house driveway rules. “Show me around.”
She slid the bag off her shoulder and adjusted Atlas on her hip to step into the open living space. Atlas, chewing his fist, kicked and fussed. “Be still, sweet pea.”
She laid her hand flat on his back and rubbed one slow circle, and Atlas dropped his head onto her shoulder and exhaled, miraculously still.
Yeah, she was the right person for the job. The only personandthe right person.
“I don’t have to leave for twenty minutes,” he said, “so you get the deluxe tour—all three floors and a few introductions, in case you forgot who you met at the wedding.”
“Will everyone be here when I am?”
“In and out. They have lives, which is why I decided to hire you instead of depending on grabbing whoever looked bored and like they owed me a favor.” He shifted his weight. “I ran out of favors, to be honest, and I couldn’t impose. It’s a big family, they want to help, but Atlas is my…”
“You don’t want to say problem, do you?”
He laughed and tapped his son on the nose. “He’s the greatest thing that ever happened to me and I would move heaven and earth to make him happy. Instead, I just hired an…”Angel. “Nanny,” he said instead.
Something flickered across her face—disappointment? Amusement? He couldn’t tell because Atlas tried to grab some strands of her hair around her face, but she wrestled it free and gave Jonah a sunny look that made him feel approximately fifteen years old.
“Lead on, Chef.”
“That’s Student Chef to you,” he said.
“Noted.”
She followed him to the staircase, and they’d gone up three steps when his Aunt Vivien’s voice came from above them. “Is that the lovely Pepper I hear?”
Aunt Vivien appeared at the top of the stairs in a flowy summer dress, smiling in a way that never failed to charm a room, usually one she’d decorated with impeccable taste. She came down the stairs and kissed Pepper’s cheek as if they’d been doing it for years.
“Oh, good. We didn’t scare you off at the wedding.”
“Not even close,” Pepper said. “You had me at ‘Walkin’ On Sunshine.’”
Vivien laughed, obviously delighted. “The house anthem. You better teach it to Atlas as your first assignment. Do you live locally, then? I thought I heard a little New Orleans in your voice.”
“I was born and raised there, but now I live here, with my dad. He’s?—”
“At the front of my lecture hall,” Jonah finished, just so everyone knew that this was business and anything else would simply complicate his life. “Teaching me how to be a chef.”
Vivien gave him a curious look that suggested she sensed that was a complication. “That’s interesting. Well, welcome to the Summer House. You’re practically family already, looking after our boy.”
She nodded toward Atlas. The phraseour boyhung in the air with a curious extra inch of warmth. No surprise. Jonah’s aunt had been planning his eventual love life since he had been four.
“Thank you,” Pepper said. “That’s very kind.”
Vivien drifted off downstairs as they continued the tour, pausing in the loft, an open area that led to the bedrooms on this top floor.
“You won’t have to come up here much,” Jonah said, “but just for orientation, that’s my dad’s room.”
“Eli?”
“Correct. Chief cook and bottle washer, head honcho, house builder—well, architect, but on this one, he actually hammered a few nails.”
“He’s also grandpa to this little guy, correct?” She leaned in to whisper to Atlas, who gave a look of ecstasy at the soft breath on his ear.
“Very much so and probably the best in the world.”
