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The dinner went off beautifully with lots of laughs around the table. Morgan and Jaleel insisted on taking cleanup duty, so the women flopped into chairs in the living room, while Uncle Phil, who had more energy than all of them combined, joined with Harper going outside with the kids into the snow that had finally covered the ground the last couple days.
Marni had put little Jack down in a portacrib in the nearby office, keeping her baby monitor at hand. She asked Aileen for advice about things she should be on the lookout for with boys when they get to the toddler age, and the two women talked for a while, Blake once again fighting against the envy of ever have that kind of conversation about her own children.
After the conversation shifted from one thing to the next and then subsided, Marni looked at Blake and said, “How did it go when you talked to Morgan about the offer you got?”
“I haven’t told him,” Blake said.
“You haven’t told Morgan?”
Just as Marni’s slightly loud and screechy question came out, Morgan and Jaleel strolled into the living room and sat down.
“What haven’t you told me?” Morgan asked.
Thanks, Marni. “I, uh…” Her stomach gripped in such a knot, she hoped she didn’t end up puking her dinner all over the living room floor. Although, that would give her a chance to postpone answering him.
“What kind of offer?” he asked. “One of the jobs you applied for?”
Blake could tell he was purposely trying to keep his expression neutral, but those penetrating eyes of his were challenging her. After what he went through with Fawn, she knew his trust level towards women was easily broken.
She nodded. “A teaching position at Harvard.”
“You could teach at Harvard?” Aileen blurted. “Do you have a hidden side we don’t know about?”
Blake let out a soft laugh, but Aileen’s comment about a part of her being “hidden” was painfully apt.
When she did not answer right away, Marni spoke up, saying, “She has a PhD in ancient history and the classics from Harvard. And she was a lecturer and research fellow at the University of Chicago.”
Jaleel’s eyebrows shot up. “Whoa. So, it’s Dr. Sheehan, huh? Didn’t know we had a genius in our midst.”
“Hardly,” Blake said.
“Would the job begin in the summer semester?” Morgan asked, his voice flat.
Blake nodded again. “I planned on talking to you about it as soon as the Christmas chaos was over.”
It sounded so lame, since it was clear she had already told Marni. But Blake needed time to talk to Morgan about what was going on between them when she broached the subject of the teaching job. She needed to discuss reasons for staying or for leaving. Needed to ask Morgan questions about how he saw their relationship. And now, here they were in the middle of a family gathering and there was no way she could do any of that. Blake didn’t even know if his sister and brother-in-law knew she and Morgan were more than nanny and boss.
Were they?
The front door burst open and the shouting children saved her from either bearing her heart and soul in front of company or bearing the cold resentment Morgan was doing a bad job of concealing.
“Blake! Aunt Aileen!” Ciara called as she ran toward her. “Kareem fell and cut his hand and his cheek and he’s bleeding!”
Blake sprang out of her seat, along with Aileen, and the two of them hurried the boy toward the downstairs bathroom where they could wash him and administer some first aid.
As Blake was leaving the living room, she heard Ciara’s sweet voice ring out. “Don’t worry, Weston. Blake will help your mom fix up Kareem. She always knows what to do. And Blake is my daddy’s feransay, which means she is going to be my mom!”
“Ciara…” Morgan said, his tone a stern warning.
“But you said I could tell people,” she grumbled and shuffled back to the bathroom where Blake and Aileen were tending to Kareem.
Blake listened to hear what might be said about Ciara’s comment, but the living room went silent for several tense moments. Then she heard Jaleel change the subject to football.
* * *
Harper and companyleft shortly after that awkward moment, Marni no doubt sensing what she had unleashed. Hurt and furious, Morgan put on the best front he could as the evening wore on.
His sister and her husband knew him well enough to know not to pry. But Aileen did ask him when she caught him alone in the kitchen, “Would you prefer we leave tonight?”
