Page 55 of The Au Pair Affair

“I fired her. Don’t do that. That was very specific to our situation, okay? I repeat,do notfire Tallulah.” The rattle of golf clubs could be heard in the background. “Does she like you?”

“How would I know?” Burgess growled.

“Is she giving you any signs?”

“She gave me a massage last night in the kitchen.”

“Then I’d say you’ve got a fighting chance, my man. Especially if it was a dick massage.”

“It was a back massage, shithead. Jesus.” He licked his hand again and furiously tried to smooth down the piece of hair that had chosen today to stand straight up. “What does it mean that she wants to help me get back on the dating scene?”

Wells didn’t answer for several seconds. “You know, you could have led with that. It’s kind of the crux of the issue, wouldn’t you say?”

Burgess grunted.

“I’m out of my depth here, Sir Savage, but I’ll tell you one thing I know purely from a standpoint of self-preservation.” His friend seemed to be pausing for dramatic effect. “Do notactuallylet her get you back on the dating scene, do you hear me? If she has even the slightest ounce of interest in you and you go on a date with someone else, it’ll sink faster than one of my putts.”

“Okay. Yeah.” Burgess slowly started to nod. “This is the kind of advice I came for.”

“Glad I could help. Godspeed.”

Burgess hung up, put the phone back in the pocket of his coat and crossed the street toward the park, relieved to know whatnotto do. It wasn’t a plan, necessarily. Still, it was more than he’d had ten minutes ago. But when he saw Tallulah coming up the sidewalk in an open trench coat that blew out behind her to reveal a short skirt and boots that went all the way to her knees, everything he’d just been told drained straight out of his head.

Un-fucking-real.

She saw him and a glow spread across her face, her hand lifting in a fluttery wave, turning heads as she walked. Was he actually trying to make something serious happen between him and thiswoman? On the wild chance he could have some kind of relationship with Tallulah, how long until his cantankerous nature wore thin and she got sick of him, like his ex-wife had? Was there even any point in trying?

Tallulah did a little skip as she reached him, and his heart followed suit.

Yeah.

Yeah, she was worth trying for.

“Congratulations on your good news.”

“Thank you.”

They agreed tacitly to turn and walk beneath the wrought iron arches into the park—and Burgess immediately did a double take. He’d expected the park to be empty of anyone but children and parents at this time of day, but there was a whole gathering of what looked to be young professionals milling around on the grass, holding cups of lemonade in their hands.

“Must be a company picnic or something,” he remarked.

“Yes,” Tallulah murmured back, vacillating briefly on the stone path. “Or something.”

He studied her out of curiosity, but whatever had her hesitating seemed to have taken care of itself. “What made you want to come to this park?”

“Um.” She rolled her lips inward. “The water, of course.”

“Lead the way.”

They continued down the pathway until they reached the edge of the pond, Burgess watching as Tallulah hunkered down to observe the brief shoreline, her gaze sweeping the rock, grass, and dirt landscape in one fell swoop and warming with fondness. “Isn’t she pretty?”

“I’m guessing you see a lot more than I do when you look at a pond.”

“My heart belongs to the ocean, but I do love knowing there is a structured ecosystem on the shores of a pond that isn’t always visible to the human eye.” She dragged a finger through the still surface of the water. “You have your producers, like algae. Consumers, such as fish, insects, occasionally crustaceans. And your decomposers, who are basically like nature’s Roomba, just cleaning up all the waste. Light and heat act as the engine for everything. It’s all running like clockwork, even if we can’t see it.”

“It’s like a team. Everyone has a job to do?”

“Exactly.”

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