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Madison looked up guiltily and stuffed the entire Snickers bar in her mouth. Mara shook her head. She would have to find out where the kid hid her stash or they were all dead. She did a quick head count. One, two, three ... That couldn't be right. "William! Eliza, Jacqui, have you seen William?!" she asked.
The two shrugged indifferently.
"You guys stay here; I'll try to find him," Mara said, beginning to panic. She walked carefully around the perimeter, calling his name as softly as she could. "William?" she whispered. "William? Where are you?"
"Sorry, sorry," she said, tiptoeing by an uproarious group of
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clean-cut guys in matching khaki pants and Teva sandals, puffing on cigars as they cheered the spectacle in the sky.
"No worries. Why don't you join us?" one asked, offering her a plastic cup filled with bubbly.
"No thanks. I'm just looking for a little boy." Mara shook her head.
"We're all big boys here." He winked. "C'mon, stay awhile." He looked about twenty-two, red-cheeked, and well meaning, but she wasn't interested in older guys (even older guys with the maturity of teenagers).
"Really, I can't. I'm working."
"What do you do?"
"I'm an au pair."
And with those four little words, his posture changed. He raked his eyes over her body. "Then you've got absolutely no excuse not to stay. It's not like you've got a real job, right?"
Mara turned away without answering him, completely offended.
"WILLIAM!!" Mara began to yell in desperation, not caring if she caused a scene. The hyperactive nine-year-old finally reappeared, making airplane noises and screaming every time the rockets boomed.
"Don't ever do that again!" Mara scolded. "You can't just disappear like that! It's not safe!"
"DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!" William screamed. "YOU'RE NOT MY MOMMY!"
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"I know I'm not your mommy, but I work for your mommy."
"No, you don't--you work for ANNA," William spat.
Back at the blanket, Mara recounted what the Dartmouth undergrad-look-alike
had said to her. "It was like I said 'au pair' but he heard 'hooker'!"
Eliza rolled her eyes. She could have warned her about using the "a" word to describe herself. "Most of the young investment banker types around here think au pairs are easy summer lays with little or no responsibility. Stay away from them; they rent tract homes in West Hampton and are totally not worth your while," Eliza advised.
Madison removed a Ziploc full of gummi bears from her pocket. She nudged her brother. "The other au pairs were a lot nicer."
"Wait. What other au pairs?" Mara demanded.
"Camille, Tara, and Astrid. They were taking care of us because Nanny went back to England this summer," Zoe piped up. "What happened to them?" Eliza wanted to know.
"They were fired," William said gleefully. "It was funny." He hugged his knees, remembering how the Porsche Cayenne careened through the streets of East Hampton and screeched to a halt at the Jitney stop and how his stepmother used bad, bad words as she threw their suitcases out of the window.
"Fired?" Mara asked, a chill in her heart. The possibility had never occurred to her. That would totally ruin her plans to earn enough money for her college tuition.
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Fired? Eliza thought. Now, that would definitely complicate matters. She was supposed to spend the whole summer here-- God help them if they tried to ship her back to Buffalo.
