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I glared at Griff, who looked like he was considering running. “Let me guess. You taught him that, too?”
Ben looked up curiously at me. “Did I say something bad?”20NolaI liked to think I was the sort of person who minded her own business. As it happened, I was sitting on a bench in Central Park while Ben and Griff played doing exactly that. I had one earbud in and was tapping my foot to an oldie but a goodie by The Shins. That was when gold curls, full lips, perfectly applied makeup, and an expensive outfit eclipsed my view of the playground.
I looked up at the woman and gave that smile you might give to someone you kinda sorta recognized in passing—lower lip pressed up and tight against the teeth with a bobbing nod of the head.
She just waited with her hands on her hips.
I pulled the earbud out of my ear and finally recognized her. Ally Callaway. The country singer. The one who was Ben Kerrigan’s biological mother.
“Oh,” I choked. “Hi.”
“Yeah,” she said sweetly. “Hi.” She sat down beside me on the bench with a jingle of jewelry, bags, and a puff of expensive smelling perfume. “You’re the nanny, right?”
“My friends call me Nola.”
She showed no sign of catching the attitude I was lobbing her way like a grenade. All she did was keep wearing that sweet smile. “Okay, well I have a little favor to ask. Jack hasn’t been returning my calls, and I really need to talk to him. What would it cost to get you to pass a message along to him?”
On the surface, I knew there was nothing too wrong with the conversation so far. Except I had the distinctive sense of looking at a seemingly beautiful strawberry I knew would be bitter and black on the inside if I took a bite. I also decided if Jack wasn’t returning her calls, I wanted to hear his reason before I went behind his back.
“I’d feel better if I spoke to Jack before I agreed to pass along some kind of message. Maybe you can leave me your number and I’ll get back to you.”
She scoffed and pulled out a little red crocodile-skinned checkbook and flipped it open. She uncapped a heavy looking gold-gilded pen and poised it over the empty rectangle on the check. “How much?”
“You know,” I said. I was clenching my teeth now. That was a bad sign. “I think I’d feel better if I talked to Jack first.”
Ally’s sweet smile finally faltered—if only slightly. “He’s sleeping with you, isn’t he?”
“Excuse me?”
She snapped the checkbook shut and shoved it in her purse. “Don’t bother denying it, sweetie. I know how he is. But let me give you a piece of advice. Jack doesn’t let anybody have his heart. All he has ever cared about is that kid. Everything else to him is just background noise.”
That kid? I tried my best impression of her sweet smile from earlier. “Thanks for the advice.”
The corners of Ally’s mouth turned down as she stood up and looked at me. “You’re going to wish you took my money when you had the chance.”
“Really nice to meet you,” I said dryly as I put my earbud back in. Fittingly, the song had changed to C-Lo Green’s Fuck You. The lyrics weren’t a perfect fit, but I was absolutely feeling the title as I watched Ally and her personally trained, tight ass walk away.
That was when I noticed Griff was shouting encouragement as Ben tried to do a push up with three little rocks on his back. With a sigh, I got up and went to the boys.
“Please tell me he’s not trying to torture you, Ben.”
Ben grunted with effort, his spindly arms shaking as he finally straightened them and then collapsed, letting the little rocks patter to the mulch beside him. “He’s training me.”
“For what?” I asked.
Griff got a mysterious look in his eyes. Both boys refused to explain what Ben apparently needed to train for, so I gave up and went back to my bench. I watched Ben spasm beneath a monkey bar as he tried to do a pull up. Next, Griff chased him up a hill while trying to whack the back of his legs with a leafy branch when he went too slowly. And the apparent training ended with both spitting on worms “to help stop them from drying out so they can make it off the sidewalk to the grass.”
All in all, it was actually what had become a relatively typical day for me. Including the part where I thought about Jack Kerrigan roughly five times per minute. His rare smiles. His pitcher’s forearms and the way the tanned skin there flexed and moved as he performed benign tasks like untying his shoes when he got home from practice or a game.
