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“Let’s play here, Lexi. I think that would make your dad more comfortable.”
Lexi squinted at him, then shrugged and plopped down on her little butt, too, and she crashed her truck into his thigh with a, “Vroom.”
Grabbing onto the door jamb, I leaned out to check if any of my neighbors were around. Thankfully, the streets were clear of traffic, and no nosey Nellie’s appeared to be peering at my house. When I felt that strange tingle of being watched, I glanced around to find CJ below me, staring up at me.
He winked. Lexi yelled, “CJ, pay!” and his gaze shifted from me to her.
As they chatted and played, I prayed for my sanity. What choice did I have now, but to ask him to come in? We couldn’t exactly hang out in my open front door with the cold blowing in. I’d do a quick interview—even though I had no intention of hiring my hook-up—and then I’d shoo him out the door to never be seen again. Why did that thought hurt?
CHAPTER SIX
CJ
It was meant to be. Whether Kevin Wadsworth knew it or not, the universe had spoken, and we were destined to be together forever. Now I had to convince him to hire me as Lexi’s manny, or to, at the very least, give me his phone number for more grown-up things before he booted me out the door.
“Let’s go into the playroom,” Kevin said, sounding somewhere between hysterical and defeated.
“Yes!” Lexi screamed. She turned the wheels of her truck and crawled down the hallway. “Come on, CJ. It’s tis way.”
Geez. This kid was adorable. She had the same black curly hair as her father’s, except much longer and tumbling around her shoulders, and her daddy’s big green eyes. She so resembled him that I fell half-in-love with her on sight. Not that I loved the nervous man, but he’d be an ideal candidate. He hadn’t faded from my mind at all since our interlude, and unlike the other night when my dumb ass let him go without a way to contact him in the future, I didn’t plan to squander this Heaven-sent opportunity.
Crawling along behind her, I looked over my shoulder up at Kevin. “You coming, Dad?”
His cheeks flushed a rosy red. “You can stand up, you know?”
Scowling playfully, I said, “But I’m playing with Lexi.” Then I rolled my eyes and followed her into what she called her playroom. It was actually originally designed to be a formal living room, but this one was overrun with bins of blocks, a dollhouse that was probably as tall as Lexi, a blue old-fashioned play kitchen, a cloth chair swing hanging from the ceiling, train cars, and then all the trucks a child could hope for. It was all neatly lined up or on shelves, so things definitely had a place, but the room still resembled a toy store.
“Here, CJ.” The child pushed a truck toward me. “You can pay with tis one.”
I complied, making the same vrooming sounds as her. The vehicle she’d given me had a white cab, and the back had racks that I knew from my own childhood were supposed to hold toy cars. I didn’t see those or anything to use as roads.
“Do you want to build a town with roads running through it that we can drive on?”
Lexi sat back on her calves. “What you mean?”
Sitting down cross-legged, I patted the floor next to me. “Come sit here so we can visualize together.”
She scrunched her tiny nose up in confusion, and it was so cute I wanted to pull my cell phone out of my pocket and snap a picture. “Vitwatlize? What’s dat?”
“Visualize,” I said, slowly. Her eyes locked on my mouth, and her lips moved as she watched me say it. Oh, this one was smart. We were going to have a blast. “You coming?” I patted the ground again.
Deserting her truck, she scrambled over and sat next to me, leaving a foot of space between us. Smart girl. She might have liked me and the fact I’d play with her, but she didn’t know me yet, either. I had experience with earning children’s—and their parents’ trust—though, so I wasn’t worried about that.
Earning the faith of every member of the family I worked for was one of the first and most crucial parts of my job. This didn’t work right if the kids were scared or hated me or if the parents weren’t able to breathe easy knowing that the most precious people to them were safe and protected.
“So the first thing we have to decide is what’s in our town,” I said seriously.
“How do you know tat?” she asked.
“Well, we have to look for what we have to work with.” I pointed to a Little People building sitting up on a shelf. “What’s that?”
She jumped up and ran, poking it and pushing it back farther on its shelf. “Tat’s a gas station.”
“Oh wow.” I crawled to where she was and pulled it down. “Our town definitely needs this so that our trucks can fuel up.”
She tilted her head to the side. “Tat makes sense.”
I set it to the side. “What else do you think we need?”
