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PROLOGUE
Six months ago
I’m not a writer.
But I could write a book about the way he looks.
I could write a few pages about that skin alone.
So smooth, except where it’s stubbled over his jaw and down his throat, and olive-toned. Proudly displaying his Latino heritage — Puerto Rican, to be precise — and the fact that he spends most of his time outside, under the sun.
He’s a soccer player.
I’ve seen him on TV. Only because my brothers are huge fans of the sport and of him. If they knew that I’m in his house right now, they’d lose their minds.
Like I’m losing mine at the moment.
Over his hair.
The dark curly strands of it. How they look so smooth and silky, kinda springy too. Like if I stick my finger in it and uncurl one, it’ll coil back up the moment I let go. I also love the way it grazes the collar of his white shirt and falls over his forehead in a fringe. But I don’t think he does because he keeps plowing his fingers through his hair and pushing it back.
I think thathethinks he needs a haircut.
Which could not be further from the truth.
I think his hair’s the perfect length.
In fact I wouldn’t mind if his hair grew out a little longer. Long enough to, let’s say, graze those dense and spiky eyelashes. So dense that they do the job of eyeliner, making his light brown eyes stand out and shine even from across the room.
I know how annoying it would be though.
His hair getting into his eyes and all that.
But gosh, it would be amazing.
As amazing as the paragraphs I’m going to write on his high cheekbones, and that dense and heavy jaw. I can easily devote a whole chapter to those two bumps on his nose that make me think that he may have broken it at least twice in the past. And the fact that his mouth is so plush, like a pillow, with his upper lip even more so than the lower.
Yup, a book.
But the most chapters in the book of Riot Rivera will be about how he looks when he looks at his three-year-old baby girl, Sophia. Who everyone calls Sophie.
And in simple words, he looks lit up.
Every part of that extraordinary face lights up with utmost joy.
His swarthy skin glows at her toothy smile.
His plush mouth tips up when in her sweet voice, she goes,no, Daddy. This one,pointing to the purple Duplo block they’re playing with on the floor. Well, she’s playing with blocks, he is trying to feed her grapes. And then I hear the most beautiful sound — well, the second most beautiful, because the most beautiful sound is that cutie calling himdaddy— reverberate in the room, his chuckle, when she plucks it herself because her daddy just isn’t fast enough for her.
It’s deep like an ocean and smooth like melted chocolate, that chuckle.
That then expands into a rich laugh when Sophie, instead of eating the grape her daddy’s been offering, tells him, very sternly,I don’t want grapes. I want the yellow block now.At which point, he picks her up and sits her down on his chest as he lies down on the mat and they wrestle with each other.
Which makes her laugh and laugh and fill the room with the kind of happiness that you can weep with.
“So what do you think, would you be interested?”
The question pulls me out of my thoughts, reminding me what I’m doing in Riot Rivera’s house in the first place: interviewing for the position of his nanny. And these words are spoken by his sister Camille, who’s conducting my interview.
