Give & Take (Redbeard Cove #2)

5. Lana

Chapter 5

Lana

“ M rs. Bloor.” The motherly looking woman in a busily-patterned floral blouse and polyester pants leans forward in her chair. “I do admit I’ve never run into a child with a…problem such as what I understand you’re dealing with. But I’d be willing to consider the poor girl.”

I stare, shocked, at the gray-haired woman in front of me. She’s my third interviewee, and the third person who’s said something completely unhinged. “Problem?”

“You know.” She cups a hand to the side of her mouth, even though we’re alone in my living room. “The glandular issue.”

“ Excuse me?”

The woman tuts. “It’s a shame. Excessive mucous is certainly a difficult handicap, but as long as you supply ample tissues and we spend our time entirely at home, I think we could manage.”

I don’t understand it. She looked so good on her application. They all did .

“Well, thank you for your time,” I say, abruptly standing up. I need this woman out of my house. Just like I needed the last three out. Glandular problem? The woman must have applied for a job at a hospital and gotten her wires crossed.

The woman looks surprised, but rises, looking around the house a little warily, like a child with a firehose snot problem might appear at any moment.

This whole morning is going a thousand times worse than I feared. And I feared the worst, given my luck with filling this position.

“When will you?—”

“I’ll call you either way,” I say, knowing I’m being curt and this time, not caring.

Nova, who’s been waiting in the wings—AKA at the top of the stairs—bounds down two at a time, then calmly opens the front door for her.

The woman gives her a wide berth.

Nova slams it hard behind her.

“Nova!”

I’m surprised the door didn’t hit her on the way out. Not that I would have minded at that point.

“She was weird,” Nova says.

I sigh. “She was insulting, is what she was.” I flop down onto the couch. “And yes, weird. What’s going on, Nova? I don’t understand it. Was it the ad?”

Nova shrugs, looking at her clipboard. While I arranged a playdate for Aurora today during the interviews, Nova insisted on staying behind and being my assistant.

I take a long sip of my ice coffee, relishing the feeling of the milky-sugar-caffeine seeping into my bloodstream. Nova made it for me—she’s been shockingly helpful today. She—and the coffee—have been the only bright spots in this hellish process.

“Okay,” I say. “Who do we have left?”

Part of Nova’s process has been answering the door, then seating the interviewees in our makeshift waiting room—aka the wraparound porch outside. I’m not allowed to go out there. If we still lived in Vancouver, having my eight-year-old answering the door to strangers would be a no-go. Here in Redbeard Cove, I’m not nearly as worried, especially because my loveable and slightly nosey 80-something neighbor Mrs. Brown is keeping vigil on the proceedings from her porch next door. She may not be fast on her feet, but she is with her phone to mine if anything’s amiss even in the distant vicinity of our block. What I was worried about at first was not getting to greet everyone personally, but I figured it would be a good test to see how they deal with a headstrong girl running the show.

Nova consults her clipboard. “There’s only one person left before lunch. But I have a good feeling about them.”

I can’t help but smile. Sometimes I feel like my eldest is just a little too much like me. Cynical. Sarcastic. Slightly temperamental.

An occasional misanthrope.

But someone who takes great pleasure in seeing things run efficiently.

“Okay,” I say, sighing. “Send her in.”

Nova hedges, holding her clipboard against her chest. “It’s…not a her.”

I frown. Then I glance out the frosted door to the porch, where a tall figure walks by, apparently pacing.

A tall, broad-shouldered figure with a silhouette of thick dark hair.

My stomach bottoms out. I scramble to my feet. “No.”

“Mom, stay calm,” Nova says, holding her clipboard in front of her like I’m some kind of wild animal.

“Nova.” My voice is in a lethally low whisper. “What. The. Hel …” I catch myself. “What the heck is that man doing on my porch?”

“Mom, Raph is amazing.”

“Raph? You call him Raph now?” I cry out.

The figure stops pacing.

Panic crawls up my chest, bouncing around like a smoking hot rubber ball.

“You have to give him a chance.”

“Hell no! I mean, heck no!”

Heck does not carry the gravitas I need. This man makes me feel like everything I assumed to be true has turned upside down. Worse, he makes me feel things I’ve worked very hard not to feel. Sensations in my body, for example. Heat. Jittery, flickering nerves. An inexplicable and entirely unwelcome magnetic pull when those whiskey eyes land on mine.

I stride to the front door, the ball inside of me pinging like a live bat. My whole body’s suddenly pumping with adrenaline; an unfortunate reaction I’ve learned I have to the person outside .

When I bang the door open, Raphael jumps to attention.

And unfortunately, my body freezes. It refuses to cooperate with my brain, which is screaming at me to tell this man off and slam the door again. My brain says, How can he possibly think I’d hire him for an actual real job looking after my kids? One that would involve him living above my garage?

But my body remembers. All it does is see him, and instantly that live-wire feeling he gave me when we so briefly touched the other day is reignited.

Raphael is wearing those goddamned snug jeans he wore yesterday, which somehow, exude just as much raw sex appeal as his bare skin did yesterday. But on top, he’s got on a white button-down shirt, and a tie. His unruly, slightly over-long dark hair is combed neatly, and he’s freshly shaved.

And he smells like goddamned cedar wood.

I honestly feel like my knees are going to give. For a moment, I’m scared more than anything else. I read a lot of romance. I thought what those authors describe was strictly fantasy. Either that or I was dead inside. But this instant, full-body attraction to the absolute worst person to be attracted to, is terrifying. I can’t stand being out of control like this.

So I won’t be.

My brain finally kicks in again, and I shove the bodily reaction hard to the side, like I’m playing roller derby and my feelings are my arch enemy. Which they are. It works well enough for me to find my voice again.

“You were not on my list,” I say calmly. “I didn’t call you for an interview.”

Raph holds his hands up. “I know. But hear me out. I’m the best person for the job. Hands down.”

I turn on my heel. “Goodbye, Raphael.”

“Hey, you said my name!”

I grit my teeth, my hand on the door handle. Are my hands trembling? I will them to still.

But Nova’s on the other side, her feet braced, both hands on the inside handle.

“Nova, let go.”

“Not until you talk to him!”

I grit my teeth. “Nova!”

“ Mom !”

God, she looks and sounds so much like me right now it’s uncanny.

I take a breath, turning around. Then I swallow, because he’s right there, smiling at me. His golden eyes don’t move from mine. I can feel my pulse begin to race again.

No.

He has no right being this goddamned handsome.

He also has no right barging in on my interviews like this.

I take a discreet, bracing breath. “This isn’t a joke, you know,” I say. The words come out harsh with the effort. Clipped.

Hurt.

It works. Raphael’s suddenly serious. “I know that.”

“I need a responsible adult to look after my children for the summer. You know, my children, the reason I live for. You can’t just waltz in here and ask for a job application.”

I know even as the words come out that they’re not even close to true. The man is clearly responsible—he raised his brothers. He’s working on a doctorate. He’s probably saved several kittens from burning buildings. But the rational part of my brain is drowning in my need to keep him safely away from me.

“Do you have a job application?” Raph asks.

“What? This isn’t a… Pizza Hut.” I wave my hand in front of me.

“I’m aware you’re not a pizza chain, Lana.”

Oh no. He can’t say my name like that. Lana. The word glides out of him, rolling around on his tongue like something warm and delicious. I hate it. I can’t stand it.

I love it. The electric, intimate feeling of hearing my name in his mouth runs scattershot through my whole body.

“Hey,” Raphael says, mistaking my stillness—my grappling of the two beasts wrestling inside of me—for something else.

And he rests a hand on my forearm.

It takes all my effort to ignore the heat his touch brings. To despise it, for what it’s doing to me.

I turn, eyes cool, my mask drawn down tight.

He drops his hand. “Fuck, I’m sorry, Lana.”

Nova snorts behind the door. I’d almost forgotten she was there.

“Shit,” he says, then claps a hand over his mouth.

This time, I yank the door. Not so hard she goes flying, but hard enough she’s not expecting it. I hear a “Whoa-a-a!” as I shut it tight.

I open my mouth to tell Raphael to walk away. Now.

But when he removes his hand from his face, his expression is sober. “Lana.”

And there’s my name in his mouth again, as intimate as if he’d?—

I blink, clearing the image.

“I know this is the most important job in the world,” he says. “I know they’re your whole world. If those two were my kids, they’d be my whole world, too.”

I pause at the way he’s phrased that. I can’t help but think of Mike, who swoops in every other month claiming to miss his girls so much but then somehow magically manages to forget every promise he fills their hearts with the moment he vanishes again.

“Lana,” Raphael says, and this time my name is like a little gift. A promise. Like he’s handling a fragile, invaluable cup filled to the brim with something precious. “I understand those girls are your heart, walking around outside your body. If you give me a chance—just a chance to interview, that’s all—I promise I’ll show you how much I’d respect that. And you.”

I’m so stunned at his choice of words, that for a moment, I honestly have nothing to say.

That’s exactly what Nova and Aurora are to me. My heart, on the outside.

“Just one chance,” he says. “Please.”

The tiniest fissure cracks through the forged iron wall around my heart. It’s the tiniest fracture—hairline. Nearly invisible. But it’s there. Somehow, I don’t think Raphael’s saying words he doesn’t mean.

Plus he looks so…earnest, and Nova wants him so badly.

And I’m so, so tired.

The door creaks open behind me, Nova peering out, looking almost scared.

The crack widens then, my resolve filling the gap like a tiny flood. I didn’t mean for her to see me so angry.

I take her hand, squeezing it briefly. I need her to know she’s loved, but not off the hook.

Then I turn back to Raphael. “Fine,” I say quietly. “An interview. That’s all.”

Raphael looks like the sun has filled his inner core, and for a moment, that crack splits wide open.

I jam the open pieces back together as best I can.

“It doesn’t mean anything more than an interview, Nova,” I say as I walk back in the house.

But as I pass through the foyer, I hear the soft clap of a high five behind me, and I almost— almost —smile.