“Well, he won’t be there, so…no. Otherwise, it could get dicey.”
She smiled and he watched her carefully, drinking in the slope of her cheekbones, the smattering of freckles, the softness in her lips.
And thought about spending a whole night, with a storm raging, in a brick house miles away. This could be the best hurricane ever.
“So how was he today?” he asked, working for casual and businesslike.
“He ate well,” Pepper reported. “Only spit up once, right here.” She patted her shoulder. “So I smell like a creamery.”
“You do not smell like a creamery,” he assured her. “Did he roll over again? Belly to back?”
“Twice,” she said, taking the finished bottle from his mouth. “And every time he looks horrified.”
Jonah laughed. “Of course he does. His world literally goes upside down.” Which was kind of like how he felt every time he looked at Pepper.
She bent her head down to Atlas and tickled his tummy with one quick fingertip, and Atlas laughed—the new laugh, the surprised gravelly chuckle he’d only started making last week—and Jonah experienced the same small detonation he’d been having all week in his chest.
It wasn’t Atlas’s laugh causing the sensation.
“Oh, that sound!” she exclaimed, her own laugh just as gravelly and sweet. “It gets me every time.”
This was not going to be sustainable, he thought. This was not a viable arrangement. Not with her father’s warning looming. But…where would Marcel Broussard draw the line? He needed to know.
“You don’t mind me staying with you, do you?” he asked. “I mean, you’ll tell your dad and he’ll approve, right?”
She just laughed. “He’ll be at the campus.”
“But…” He ventured deeper. “I did tell you that he was pretty clear in suggesting that any kind of, uh, friendship between us wouldn’t…” He had no idea how to finish that without making her father look bad. “Wouldn’t be a great idea.”
Jonah had not told Pepper that the warning came with subtext—no, actually, it was overt text—that said Chef Broussard was so opposed to a relationship with Pepper that he would wreck Jonah’s chances at Driftwood.
She finally looked up from Atlas. “I told you, he can’t pick my friends or employers. I’m not a child.”
“But does he even know you’re Atlas’s nanny?”
“He knows I’msomebody’snanny.” She lifted Atlas an inch and kissed him lightly. “I’m a smitten kitten.”
“With Atlas,” Jonah clarified. “Not his father.”
She looked up with a glint in her eyes. “Oh, a little smitten with his father.”
The admission hit. So did the glinty eyes. “Pepper.”
“Hush,” she whispered, exactly like she did with Atlas, skillfully easing the bottle out of the baby’s mouth without waking him. “Let me put him down and we’ll talk. Go ahead and shower, Jonah. I’m in no hurry to leave.”
On a sigh, he pushed up and agreed to that plan, deeply aware that he was in no hurry for her to leave, either.
Jonah rushed through a shower,put on some clothes, and checked on a sleeping Atlas in his crib. He found Pepper in the dimly lit living area, sitting on the sofa, reading her phone. He didn’t want to be down here alone with her, in the dark, on the sofa, close and clean and hungry.
He seized the last thought.
“I think everyone’s gone but there was plenty of food,” he said. “Want some dinner? Kate’s pasta is top notch.”
She lifted a shoulder and put her phone down. “I could eat. How about you?”
Honestly, not a bit. “I tasted so much food and finished two plates that didn’t pass Chef’s exacting standards.” He made a face. “If she rejected a wild mushroom risotto with truffle oilthatgood, then I don’t ever want to cook for her. But I’ll do a mean heat-up for you.”
Upstairs was quiet and still after the meeting. He supposed Kate and Eli had taken a walk to de-stress, Emma had disappeared to teenage land, Aunt Vivien had slipped off to Peter’s, and Meredith was…probably working.
