“Rachel is fun. She really likes me. I bet she will make pies. I want pies for breakfast like a pancake pie or a Lucky Charms pie or—”
“Not everything goes in pie,” I chuckled.
I answered the doorbell, and Rachel was standing there in tight jeans, a t-shirt and a cardigan sweater. Her curves were mouth-watering, and the fact that she was holding a foil pan in front of her didn’t even distract me from raking my eyes up her body. I halted my gaze when it reached her mouth, full and sensual, glossed with pink. I cleared my throat, so obvious.
“Glad you could make it,” I said, opening the door wide so she could enter.
She looked around the cabin and grinned. “This is so cute,” she said, and slipped off her sneakers as she walked in.
“You can wear your shoes inside,” I said, although I didn’t really mean it. I never let Sadie come in with shoes on, and I didn’t do it myself. She nudged her pink lace-ups side by side next to the door. Next to mine. I looked at them for a second, how different, smaller, bright and cheerful, totally foreign.
“Rachel!” Sadie squealed. Rachel went down into a squat and held out the pan for my daughter to see.
“I brought you a cherry cheesecake, Sadie Lady,” she said.
“I want it now! Want Cheesecake, Want Cheesecake!” she said in robot voice.
“Supper-First-Supper-First,” Rachel answered her in an imitation of the robot voice. She got to her feet and carried the pan to the refrigerator and slid it inside on a shelf. Closing the door, she surveyed the cluster of messy artwork taped there.
“Did you make this? You did NOT do this. You’re too little,” she said with mock indignation. “This looks just like the City Hall daffodils for the like two seconds they bloomed this year. Is this the one the teacher made, and you just sneaked off with it?”
Sadie giggled. “No, that’s mine! I did that. See, I used scissors on it and cut on the line except I missed a line a little bit there and it doesn’t look right.”
“False. It looks perfect. I’m still not sure that you could—oh, there’s your name on the back. Huh. I guess it is yours.”
Sadie beamed under the teasing and praise. “You can take it home,” Sadie said.
“Hey,” I put in. “You gave that to me! Make her another one. No one gets to steal my Original Sadie Artwork,” I said.
“So, Max, you been holding out on me? Where’s the gallery where this kid does her art shows?”
“We’ve tried to keep it quiet so the other kids don’t feel useless. They can’t even color in the lines,” I joked right back. She giggled.
“I don’t have a show. I don’t get to have a YouTube or anything. Daddy says. No Snapchat, no TikTok—”
“Sadie Cakes,” Rachel said, “it’s Daddy’s job to keep you safe. It’s his most important job. So you gotta trust him. He knows that even though it looks fun, it’s not safe for a little girl,” she said. “I didn’t even get a phone till I could buy one myself. But when I did, I took real good care of it, because I had to earn it. You will, too.”
I glanced at her. She had no idea what kind of money I had. My daughter wasn’t going to have to work a part-time job to pay for her phone or her car or her college. But I didn’t say that. Let her be nice, talk about work ethic a little. It wasn’t like I spoiled Sadie—I’d been careful not to. But the idea that my little girl would have to struggle just galled me. Rachel was talking to her like a person, which she always did, and Sadie ate it up.
“You’re my new sitter, right?” she said.
“Your daddy and I are talking about that tonight. We want to make sure everything will work out.”
“I can’t stay by myself. I can’t even drive,” Sadie said.
“Dang, Max. You’re so strict. You won’t let her have Snapchat or a YouTube channel, and now she can’t even drive? How is she ever gonna fit in with the other kids at this rate?” she teased.
I felt a smile on my face, felt my pulse kick up. Rachel teasing me, backing me up, felt good. I was as excited to have her here as Sadie was in a way, and I told myself to be careful. She was easy to talk to. She had a rapport with Sadie. It would be too natural to fall into a trap of letting her fit right in with us. She praised the salad Sadie had helped with and coaxed her into eating a little bit of carrot and one tiny lettuce bite dipped in ranch.
When I was leaned over cutting up Sadie’s roast beef, I glanced over at Rachel, who quickly looked away. I was a hundred percent sure she had been checking out my ass. Which, if this were a date, would’ve been good news for later. Since it was a job interview, it was awkward. I ignored it and kept all my attention on Sadie, talking to her about how much meat she was going to need to eat in order to get dessert.
She promptly turned to Rachel and said, in a low voice, “When it’s you and me, you don’t have to do that thing with the counting my bites. We can just eat whatever.”
I cleared my throat. I saw Rachel’s eyes dancing with suppressed laughter at my sneaky kid.
“Two things. One, I can hear you,” I told Sadie, “and, two, rules are
