“Don’t you worry. There’s not going to be any kissing today. Even if you beg me.”
Nicole squealed and the cart came to an abrupt halt right in front of the pristine white castle. The cart wasn’t the only thing that came to an abrupt halt. A family of four with a stroller and a little boy in a yellow T-shirt stopped dead when they saw me. I smiled at them. I expected a little holdup, but the security guards got in front of me.
Cara picked up Nicole and started for the castle. She knew where the VIP entrance was, because that sweet bottom knew exactly how to cut the line with the row of security guys behind.
She looked back at me, half a smile. A four-ton bag of shit and nerves lifted off me.
Just that. A smile to let me know she wasn’t so mad anymore. She was trouble. Bad trouble. And somewhere in my guts I’d decided that she wasn’t leaving when she said she was. She was leaving when I said she was.
I was going to have an easier time standing on my head and spitting nickels than letting her go.
CHAPTER 43
CARA
I’d spent a few weeks with Kevan Delight’s kids, including a VIP, drive-the-cart-around trip to Disney. I had no idea how it was done any other way. I’d gone to Euro Disney once with my third-grade class, but barely remembered anything besides the lines and a really good hot dog.
Nicole was beside herself. She wanted to do everything at once. Haunted Mountain, the baby roller coaster, the games, the candy apples, the go-karts. And Brad was game. He went on every ride with her. Whatever junk she ate, he ate and they discussed the relative merits of kettlecorn to its buttered cousin with utter seriousness.
Security kept a nice zone around them. Brad ignored them and focused on his daughter. This was going to become her normal. A buffer zone from the public and a free pass from inconvenience.
I tried to keep a step or two away. It wasn’t my day. I was just there to help, but Nicole kept pulling me close and checking to make sure I was within arm’s reach.
I always thought of her first, but her father made it hard to keep a professional distance. If he wasn’t talking to me, asking a question, or inviting me to join the Great Popcorn Flavor Debate, he was eating me alive with his eyes. He was totally inappropriate. He was exactly the dad all the nannies talked about over coffee. The one you had to watch, because given the right moment he’d pounce.
But he wasn’t that dad. Not wholly and not indiscriminately. Blakely hadn’t been on the receiving end of the inappropriate-daddy vibe. It was just me. I hoped none of the people photographing us with their camera phones or shouting his name for the gift of a wave or a smile saw the way he looked at me.
“You need to go on one ride,” he said, folding a tuft of cotton candy in his mouth. He and Nicole were on a bench by a cluster of shade trees. I crouched in front of her.
He wore sunglasses, but I knew he was looking at me. I could feel his eyes burning through my clothes. We’d stopped for strawberry pie just ten minutes before. He’d speared his pie, watching me with one message.
Us southern boys eat pussy like pie.
Turns out, Nicole didn’t like strawberry pie. I had to finish her piece.
“No,” I said, wiping sticky pink strings from Nicole’s right hand while she licked the paper cone she had in her left. “I don’t like rides. And it’s not about me today. It’s your day.”
“My day means you do what I say.”
“Forcing me onto a ride might be fun for you—”
“It is fun for me. Completely fun.”
“I’m here to facilitate. No more.”
He leaned up, elbows on knees, dropping his voice to the exact timbre of my spine’s vibration. “You’re a professional. We get it. Now loosen up, buttercup.”
“Has any woman ever resisted you?” I asked. He shook his head ever so slowly. I wasn’t surprised I didn’t have company.
“Teacups!” Nicole pointed back the way we came. “Come on! The teacups!”
I looked back that way for no particular reason. I knew where they were. I just had to look away from him. But if I could resist him, Nicole had other equally powerful talents against me. She hopped off the bench and pulled me down the path.
“Teacups,” Brad announced to John/Steve/Bob, and the entire entourage trundled down the brick path. We hustled past the line, through the back, and were seated in our own personal lavender-and-white cup with purple and pink flowers.
Nicole pulled me close to her, then Brad, until we took up half the cup. She held one of our hands in each of hers and giggled uncontrollably.
“Was she like this on all the rides?” I asked.
“Yep. She knows how to have fun.”
“Oh, like I don’t?” The ride started churning. Slowly at first. Almost pleasantly.
“I want you to spend the next three minutes on this ride not worrying about something.”
He slipped to the spot across from me. The world behind him zipped out of focus with a smear of color.
“I have to worry.”
“I admire the way you think you can take care of anything that comes along. But now you’ve gotta put that away . . .”
His last few words were drowned out by the whipping wind and Nicole’s delighted cries. I lost control of my body, sliding around before I could grab on. Brad had his arms on the backs of the seats, and Nicole hung on to the edge for dear life, her smile a point of stillness in the swirl.
Was this a kid’s ride? The force of the spinning was incredible. I slid into Brad and landed with my head on his chest and he laughed, arm casually draped behind me. I tried to straighten up, got halfway, and laughed with him as my face got pushed into his.
I didn’t worry.
Not for a second.
He put his arm around me and held me fast. The torque threw all the worry and anxiety out of me. The laughter dislodged it and inertia flung it away to a far corner of the park. We had now. These two wonderful people and me, in a purple teacup, screaming with music I could barely hear over the whooshing wind in my ears.
I let the ride push me into him and we laughed together, squealing with Nicole at this silly spinning teacup. Even when my stomach lurched, it lurched up to a smile. Even after I knew I was going to lose the handful of blue-ribbon strawberry pie, I didn’t worry. I was happy. Centrifugal force was like a drug that separated body and mind.
I puked midlaugh. It landed on Nicole, whose squeals of delight turned to screams of horror. My stomach flipped again and a stream of bright red pie made a circular pattern from my mouth to, well, everywhere.
How much pie did I eat?
The volume of pie puke far outweighed the piece, but it kept coming, splattering the back of the teacup, Nicole, and my shirt.
Brad got a little on him, but he was more worried about me. The arm that had been coolly behind my seat grasped my shoulders and held me still.