Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 96850 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 484(@200wpm)___ 387(@250wpm)___ 323(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96850 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 484(@200wpm)___ 387(@250wpm)___ 323(@300wpm)
“I think urgent care might be best?” the nurse answered patiently. “Get him tested for the flu. His temperature is running a little high.”
“Okay. Okay, thank you.” Eve hung up the phone, unsure of what to do first. She had four more people coming to audition. Then she had to open the club at eight. If Landon had the flu, would the babysitter want to be exposed? And one huge, ugly detail was pressing in on her from all sides. What was it going to cost to take Landon to urgent care? Lark would probably come down with the bug, as well, right? Double whammy.
“Uh . . .” Eve held the clipboard to her chest and stood, feeling far too wobbly to have an audience, even of one. Oh, and it was so telling and terrible the way she suddenly ached to have Madden there. His blue eyes would steady her nerves and she’d stop shaking. He wouldn’t overstep, he’d just wait there like a giant safety net, which was exactly what she needed right now. To know things were going to be okay, even if they would never be perfect. “We’ll have to do this another time. My nephew is sick at school. I have to go get him.”
Veda stood and pushed in her chair, but she was focused on Eve. “Do you need help?”
“With what?” Eve bit off, trying not to regret her tone.
“Anything. I’m an unemployed musician. I have a lot of free time.” Veda gestured to the clipboard. “Maybe I could audition these folks?”
“I’m way too much of a control freak for that.” Eve laughed, high-pitched and without humor. She speed walked to the door, while Veda jogged to keep up with her. “Look, unless you know anything about sick kids, I don’t think you can help me.”
“I have two little brothers, actually. Or, they were little.” She shivered. “One of them has a soul patch now.”
Outside the club, Eve quickly locked the door. “I don’t think it would be responsible of me to leave two kids with someone I just met.” Desperate. You’re desperate. One night of the club being closed and she’d have no chance of paying this year’s property taxes. “Do you have references?”
Veda visibly thought for a second. “You know that real estate agent lady whose face is all over the benches in town? Alexis Asimov?”
Of course Eve had seen those benches with the angelic, smiling blonde in a power suit. “I do, actually.”
“That’s my sister,” Veda said. “You can call her.”
They stopped in front of Eve’s car bumper. “Wow. You look nothing alike.”
“Thank you.”
No time to analyze that response. Eve scanned the parking lot. “Where is your car?”
“I took the bus.”
Eve hit the button on her key fob. “Get in. We’ll call your sister on the way to the school.”
They’d driven for a full minute before Veda turned in her seat and said, “I’ll watch your kids for free tonight if you listen to my proposal for the outdoor space behind the club. You know, when the sky isn’t falling?”
Did it ever stop falling these days? “Done.”
Chapter Six
Eight Years Earlier
Some bloke—Andrew, was it?—tossed Madden a baseball on his way down the corridor of Cumberland High, slapping Madden on the back as he passed. Madden forced a smile and nodded at his new acquaintance, even as that slap reverberated through his entire body, an echo he had no desire to feel. He remained stalled midstep a moment, reminding himself the slap had been a friendly one, before getting moving again.
Two weeks into being enrolled as a junior at Cumberland High and the other students were obviously still getting used to seeing him there, based on the way they stared as he walked through the rows of lockers. His accent had been imitated around a thousand times. Nothing was familiar. Not the food, the constant high-fiving, or the impractically frantic pace of an American school day. But he’d chosen this, hadn’t he?
He’d chosen to stay.
When the morning arrived to return to Ireland, he’d calmly gotten out of bed and walked into the kitchen where Aunt Fiona stood making tea and solemnly asked her to please not send him home. The request had been difficult to make. Madden knew better than to ask for more than what he absolutely needed. Expecting more than what he’d been allotted was selfish. He was selfish. Hadn’t he been told that often enough?
His aunt had taken one look at his white face and nervous breathing and poured a second cup of tea. He could still hear shadows of that conversation, alive in the house.
“We’re not really related, Fiona. I’m a . . .”
A long sip of Barry’s Gold. “You’re a what?”
“A bastard,” he managed, his first time saying the word aloud. Far from his first time hearing it. “My mother was pregnant with me when she married my father.” Fiona’s brother. “I’m not his, it’s easy to see. They’re fair-haired and green-eyed, the opposite of me. Maybe if it wasn’t so obvious we’re from different men, he wouldn’t be so humiliated. Maybe he wouldn’t . . . take that humiliation out on me.”