“Funny how?” Fitz asked, because of course he did.
“She does voices,” Megan said. “And she let me have gummy bears for breakfast.”
I shot her a look. “You told me those were for a science experiment.”
“They were! A digestion experiment.”
Nathan laughed. “I like her already.”
“She also,” I said, flipping a burger with unnecessary aggression, “convinced Megan to try skateboarding without a helmet, which resulted in the broken arm you’re all here to gawk at.”
“Gummy bears for breakfast is objectively terrible parenting,” Julien said, pouring himself a glass of wine with the air of someone delivering a medical diagnosis. “But points for creativity, I suppose.”
That should have been enough to kill the conversation.
But it wasn’t.
“I heard she stayed at the hospital until you showed up,” Hayden offered. “And that you both had a moment.”
Megan confirmed, “Dad was being scary.”
“I wasn’t being scary.”
“You were a little scary,” Megan countered. “But Cate wasn’t scared. She just kept apologizing, and she was gonna cry.”
Fitz’s eyebrows went up. “Interesting.”
“It’s not interesting,” I said. “It’s called basic human decency. She felt guilty. As she should have.”
“But you didn’t fire her,” Nathan said.
“No.”
“Why not?”
Because she’d looked at me with those wide, terrified eyes and apologized seventeen times in the span of three minutes. Because she’d stayed when she could have run. Because Megan had held her hand in the ER and hadn’t let go.
Because I was apparently an idiot.
“She’s good with Megan,” I said instead. “When she’s not breaking her bones.”
“High praise from Dr. Lyon,” Fitz said, taking a long drink. “So what does she look like? Specifically.”
“I’m not doing this.”
“Blonde? Brunette? Redhead?”
“Fitz.”
“Tall? Short? Does she have that girl-next-door thing, or more of a—”
“She’s a person,” I interrupted. “Not a catalog listing.”
“So youhavenoticed,” Nathan said, grinning.
I had noticed. Of course I’d noticed. I’d noticed yesterday when she’d shown up on my doorstep on her day off, stammering about checking on Megan while very deliberately not looking at my chest. I’d noticed the way her face had gone approximately the color of a fire engine. I’d noticed the way she’d said “towel situation” like it was a medical diagnosis.
I was trying very hard not to think about any of that.
