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“Yeah.” Then after a pause, she said. “She won’t let me ride horsey like Shelley did.”
“Ride horsey?”
“After school.”
I didn’t know what Zoë was talking about. Then I realized that Shelley had been picking up Zoë on her scooter after school, instead of taking the bus like she was supposed to do.
“Did she give you a helmet to wear?”
Zoë thought back. “She gave me something to put on my head.”
I was horrified at the thought of my daughter on a scooter. Anything could have happened! What if she lost her grip or a car knocked into her?
“That was very naughty of Shelley,” I said sternly.
“She said not to tell you,” Zoë remarked.
“What else did she tell you to keep from me?”
But Zoë had to be bribed with additional food items before she would reveal that sometimes, Shelley let her watch television in the afternoons. Not only sometimes either, but just about everyday, while Shelley helped her friend.
“What do you mean, helped?”
I had a bad feeling about what I was about to hear. Rightly so, as it turned out.
“Shelley’s friend needed help with his homework,” said Zoë. He would come over and they would work on this homework in Shelley’s room with the room locked and the music turned up loudly. Apparently, he was very bad at the work because Shelley would have to work for hours and hours and when he left, she would be really tired and need to have a nap.
I was stunned.
Shelley had only been with us for six months and I had no idea what was going on in my house.
“What about Nikki? Does she also take naps in the afternoon?”
I had visions of Nikki lying down in her room, dressed in her underwear and a t-shirt stretching over her breasts, maybe taking off her clothes in an exaggerated, lingering fashion, as if she knew I was watching her. It was pathetic, but ever since Nikki had started working for me, I found myself entertaining all kinds of daydreams like these.
Who took a nap naked anyway?
Only the Nikki in my dreams.
It had been too long since I’d been out with a woman, I realized. Someone fun, someone pretty and uncomplicated. Nikki checked all those boxes.
“No daddy, we do homework after school. If we finish early, we read and draw pictures.” I’d seen some of these pictures, stuck up against the fridge for me to look at. So far, Nikki was the perfect nanny.
My thoughts wandered back to Nikki.
I did not see much of her when I’d come back from work, having had long days at the office. She’d wait for me to get home, then point out dinner and disappear into her room. Sometimes I heard the shower being turned on, which had the rather unfortunate consequence of turning me on too. I would imagine her getting in there, hot water on her body as she soaped herself gently but very thoroughly, after the very messy job of looking after a small girl all day.
It was impossible.
I didn’t want Nikki to catch on about my growing attraction to her.
Good nannies were hard to find, as I knew.
I tried to deal with it by talking as little as possible to her and staying out of her way. I left for work early in the morning and stayed out of her way at night.
On Saturday afternoon, as I was watching a game on TV, Simone called me.
“So, how are things with Nikki working out?”
