On the Steamy Side - Louisa Edwards [42]
Panicking, she said the first thing that popped into her head. “We’ll play hangman!” Her cousins liked to play the word game on long car trips, Lilah knew.
The kid snorted, a look of deep scorn arching his brows. Lilah stared. If she’d had any doubt about his paternity before, those doubts were now assuaged.
“Look, kiddo. Everything I know about nannying comes from movies like Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music—I realize it’s your job to start out surly and untrusting and I’m supposed to win you over with my charm and warm heart and incomparable singing voice, but unfortunately for both of us, Tuck, I am so not Julie Andrews. So what do you say we skip that part and head straight for being buds?”
Tucker looked at her blankly. Dear sweet Lord in heaven, was it possible the child didn’t know what she was talking about?
While she was still struggling with the horror of a kid who didn’t know who Mary Poppins was, Tucker opened his mouth and dispelled any worries she’d had about his ability to speak.
“You talk weird, Lolly.”
His ability to speak politely, however, was still in question.
“I’m from the South,” Lilah said. “As I think I already mentioned.” She struggled for a moment against the hated nickname, then reluctantly added, “And that’s ‘Miss Lolly’ to you.”
Tucker stared at her challengingly. “Does everyone down there take so long to say stuff? You sound like the big chicken in the cartoons.”
Oh, he did not just compare her to Foghorn Leghorn.
Trying to be glad that the child was familiar with Warner Bros. cartoons—at least he had some grounding in the classics—Lilah pursed her mouth and said, “Maybe no one ever explained this to you before, but making fun of the way someone talks is not a great way to make a friend.”
Tucker shrugged. “Whatever. I don’t care about making friends. And I don’t want to play hangman, either.”
“Well, what do you want to play?” Lilah felt like she was at sea in this conversation. Who would’ve thought one ten-year-old would be more challenging than a roomful of hormonal teens?
“Hide-and-seek,” Tucker said, smiling for the first time. The grin transformed his pointed face, bringing a sparkle to his eyes and revealing a previously hidden dimple in his left cheek.
Hoping to encourage this kinder, cuter Tucker, Lilah smiled back. “Okay, that sounds like fun. But there are rules, right? Every game has rules.”
Tucker cocked his head, giving every appearance of listening carefully. Gratified, Lilah went on. “The first one is the big one: No getting underfoot.”
He squinted. “No kidding. I don’t want to be stepped on.”
“Not literally under someone’s foot,” Lilah said, chuckling. “I mean don’t get in anyone’s way.”
“Oh,” Tucker said, his mouth curving down into an expression far too bitter and adult for his age. “No problem. I’m good at that.”
Hating the way his mouth curved into an unhappy bow, Lilah hurried to clarify. “I mean the dining room and the kitchen are both off-limits. Got it?”
Tucker shrugged again. Evidently, he liked to shrug. If Lilah had shrugged at her Aunt Bertie, she’d have been snatched bald-headed. Lilah reminded herself that it had been a traumatic evening for Tucker, and that maybe Yankee children were raised differently than she had been. Allowances could be made.
When he took off running, though, with no warning other than a toothy grin that seemed to say “Sucka!” Lilah pressed her lips together and considered that, Yankee or not, a rude kid was a rude kid.
When she caught that Tucker, he was getting a lesson in manners he wouldn’t soon forget.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Devon blinked sweat out of his stinging eyes and panted, hands planted on the stainless-steel counter. His right palm edged up against something sticky the color of plums, which part of his weary brain recognized as the port wine demiglace for the grilled rib-eye entrée. He hung his head and watched the reduced sauce stain his hand purple and just could not be bothered to move.
Every muscle ached, in that trembling sort of exhaustion he hadn’t experienced