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Has Hockey Hunk made a move on you yet?
How’s the kid? She a brat? Spoiled rotten???
Any jilted lovers try to off you yet?
Seen his junk?
Her questions are harmless—well, with the exception of the last one or two—but I can’t help but think back to that NDA. Quinn wants to gossip. I know it’d be easy to just tell her about the contract I signed, but it feels weird to put secrecy for Reese above my best friend. Like there’s some unspoken girl code I’ve spat on.
By the end of the week, I know that if I don’t reply, she’s likely to put out a missing person’s report on me. Best to get on with it now.
Despite Violet’s poor sleeping habits, I manage to get her down for a nap at a decent hour. No one else is in the house. Perfect time to call Quinn and quell her curiosities.
Or, yanno… pour gasoline right on top of them.
I tuck the baby monitor to my hip and trek downstairs. Hopefully, Violet will stay asleep long enough that I can get dinner going and finish up with Quinn.
I pop in an earbud and start dicing veggies for spaghetti sauce. Quinn answers before the second ring can even finish.
“FINALLY! Olivia Rene Carter, you better have been dying or dead. You don’t talk to me all week, and now, you come crawling back out of the blue?!”
I roll my eyes. So dramatic, that bestie of mine. “Come on, Q. You know it’s not that serious.”
“Says you! Just because I’m not in Dallas right now doesn’t mean I won’t be on the next flight there!”
“If you were really worried about me like that, you’d have called Mom to make sure I was okay.”
A wet raspberry sputters in my ear. I can just picture Quinn puffing out her perfectly blushed and highlighted cheeks, tongue poking between glossy lips painted a bold pink.
“Listen, just because you know me well doesn’t mean you get to throw it back in my face like that!” she snaps. Her voice drops into something a smidge more serious. “I was actually worried about you, Liv.”
Guilt stabs at me. “I’m sorry, Q. I really didn’t do it to be mean. It’s just been… chaotic. Promise. Forgive me?”
“Mmmmm…” She draws out the sound. When she runs out of breath, she sucks in another and keeps going. “Mmmmm…” I let her go on for what feels like an eternity before she laughs and gives in. “Okay, fine. I’m not that mad anyway. But you owe me!”
“And what exactly do I owe you?”
“All the deets!” Her screech blows out my eardrum.
Not like I needed my hearing anyway, right?
I brace myself for this part of the conversation. The part where I know I’ll have to disappoint her a heckuva lot more. It’s all the worse because this is the juiciest situation of my whole life. I’ve nannied in some wild situations before, but a superstar NHL player with a secret baby and no baby mama to speak of? It’s like I’m starring in my own soap opera.
Mom would love it. Quinn would collapse and die.
“Define deets,” I hedge.
“Oh, don’t get cute with me! The deets! The juice! The tea! What’s it like being around Reese? Was I right? Has he hit on you? What kind of dirty secrets hide behind those chiseled abs? I wanna know it all.”
Heaven help me. “Well, I mean, he’s not really around.”
“Ooh, that’s mysterious,” she croons. “Secret lover somewhere?”
“No, no, nothing like that.”
Silence spreads between us. An awkwardness seeps in so bad that I shift in place. If Quinn was in the room with me, she’d be mean mugging me into oblivion. As if to shake off the feeling, I double down on the dicing so hard I almost slice a fingertip off.
“Olivia, what the fuck is going on?” Quinn’s voice is suddenly serious. It no longer holds that playful curiousness.
