Page 50 of The Nanny and the Beefcake
She was about to ask her friends what in Buddha’s name they were doing inside Raz’s home when Phoebe pointed to the floor.
“Those are from the video!” the child exclaimed, delight written on her face.
Libby felt the blood drain from her cheeks.
Phoebe Gale had seen the video?
And then she remembered the words that preceded the burst of light.
Say, beefcake.
Oscar had seen the video, too.
She didn’t have a second to get a word out before Phoebe started speaking again.
“Are those tiny torpedoes, Libby? Is that why you were throwing them? Can we put them in the pool? Can we race them? And, boy oh boy, now that I can see them up close, they look like big plastic hot dogs with little motors, and you’ve got a ton of them. There’s a pretty rainbow one. I call dibs, Oscar. That one is mine,” the little girl finished.
Libby inhaled a tight breath. She didn’t think adding another layer of humiliation to this evening was possible.
She was wrong.
“Do not touch anything, Phoebe,” Rowen called.
“Same goes for you, Oscar. Hands where we can see them,” Mitch exclaimed as Penny and Charlotte slapped their hands over their mouths to restrain what looked like a serious bout of giggles.
Oscar crouched down and took a picture of the Rainbow Screamer, then handed the still-developing Polaroid to Phoebe. “Here you go. I don’t know why we can’t touch the hot dog torpedoes, but you can put this picture in your room.”
The little girl twirled and pressed the photo to her chest. “I’ll tape it to my door, so we can see it every time we walk down the hall.” The child paused, then squealed. “I have a better idea.”
“What is it?” Oscar chimed.
“I’ll use my magnet and put the rainbow hotdog torpedo on the refrigerator. Then we can look at it while we eat dinner. What do you think, Penny and Uncle Row? It’s a pretty awesome idea.”
Rowen adjusted his glasses, but even the thick lenses couldn’t hide the complete look of mortification on the man’s face. He parted his lips, but nothing came out.
“Phoebe,” Penny said, stifling a grin. “We can talk about that when we get home.”
Phoebe shared a look with Oscar and groaned. “That meansnoin adult-talk,” the little girl whisper-shouted to her buddy, then beamed at Raz.
“Hi, Erasmus Cress! We like your house,” she tossed out, not missing a beat.
“Thanks?” the man stammered. He blinked a few times like he still wasn’t sure what was going on.
That made two of them.
“Libby, guess what?” Phoebe continued, undeterred by the bevy of vibrators scattered across the floor.
“What?” Libby replied, attempting to appear as normal as possible after dispersing sex toys in front of minors. She could feel her cheeks heat, but Phoebe, and Oscar for that matter, were quite unbothered by the strange set of events.
“Oscar and I were having a sleepover at my house. We were playing Go Fish in the living room when we saw you and Erasmus on the TV.”
“You’re good at throwing things, Libby,” Oscar added.
“And then Uncle Row turned off the TV real fast, and Penny ran into the room and said we were going on a special trip to Erasmus’s house. But there were a bunch of vans parked outside your gate, so we came in through the back. And we had to be quiet like cheetahs about to pounce on a gazelle because we didn’t want the people outside to know we were here.”
“Yeah, we got down real low so nobody would see us,” Oscar added, acting out the covert movements.
“But then we got bored waiting for you guys to come inside. And you don’t have any cookies or hot dogs here,” Phoebe continued, giving Raz the stink eye.
