Southern Playboy (North Carolina Highlands 4)

“I’ve given your proposal some thought.”

“And?”

“And”—I hear her take a short, sharp breath—“I’m in.”

My eyes bulge. “You’ll really do it? Oh, fuck, Amelia. Fuck. Thank you.”

“Amelia?” Beau asks.

“Is that Beau?”

“Yeah,” I say, waving my brother away as I turn back toward the kitchen. “He’s here helping me set up some kid stuff.”

“That’s nice of him.”

“It is. Thank you, Amelia, really I”—I pull my thumb and forefinger across my eyes—“I seriously can’t thank you enough. You’re a lifesaver.”

She makes this sound, not quite a scoff but not quite a laugh either. “Wait until you hear my terms before you thank me.”

“Anything.” I slump over the counter in relief. “Ask me for anything, and it’s yours. Can you start today?”

I’m kinda joking, kinda not, and she laughs. “Let’s draw up a contract first. I’m looking at a template I got from a friend. It’s pretty basic, covers hours and pay and all that stuff. I can email it to you if you’d like to take a look while we chat?”

“Sure. Yeah. That’d be awesome, thank you.” I give her my private email address.

“Amelia’s going to be your nanny?” Beau asks.

“Is your brother still there?”

“Go away,” I tell him. “This is a private conversation.”

“Not when things just got juicy,” he says, and pulls up a stool. “Put it on speaker?”

I ignore his request and lean down, settling my elbows on the countertop.

“Tell him I said hi,” Amelia says. “Let’s dive in, shall we?”

My pulse skitters at her decisiveness. Her willingness to jump in with both feet from the get-go. No judgment. No shame. Just facts.

“Let’s,” I say, oxygen filling my lungs. The relief is so sudden I’m light-headed for a beat. For the first time since I got that call from Melissa, I feel like this might not be the end of the world after all.

I feel like I can actually do this—be both the stud wide receiver who wins championships and the single dad of a two-year-old.

“I’d like forty hours guaranteed every week. I’m flexible in terms of hours, but Grandma Rose and I have standing dates on Wednesday for dinner and Sunday for yoga, so it’d be great if I could block those times off. Anything past forty hours will be considered overtime.”

“Done,” I say.

“What are you thinking in terms of housework? Would you like me to cook, do laundry, tidy up . . .”

“Um.” I shift my weight to rest on my right elbow. “I haven’t given it much thought, to be honest. I was just ordering in from the Barn Door for the past couple of months. But now that training camp’s on the horizon, I’ve been having these paleo meals delivered from a service downtown.” I scoff. “How do toddlers feel about lean meats and veggies?”

“Hard to say. If Liam will eat healthy stuff, great. If not, we may need a plan B.”

“How about I talk to Samuel and get his thoughts on what we can do in terms of family-friendly food? As for housework, I have a housekeeper who comes three times a week to help with cleaning and laundry and stuff. But I don’t know what a two-year-old’s laundry situation is going to look like, so I may need your help with that every so often.” I glance at the nearest box on the floor, a small one that contains a faucet cover shaped like a whale. “Baths too, if I’m not able to be around for that.”

“Sounds good. And speaking of training camp, what’s our time frame looking like for this arrangement?”

I imagine Amelia’s sharpened pencil poised over a neat pad of paper, each sheet printed at the top with her name in pink. Her favorite color.

I tell myself my heart skips a beat because this is the part of the conversation where the rubber meets the road. The part where I have to think ahead, make decisions, recognize that this arrangement really is temporary, and that I really do need to start thinking about what life with Liam will be like in the long term.

Because, yes, having Amelia on board while we’re still on Blue Mountain is all great and good. But I’m fairly certain she won’t want to come out west with us. She made clear she wants to teach again, for one thing. For another, she’s always been attached to Asheville. What was it she said when she broke up with me? Something about the fact that she had roots here, and she couldn’t imagine ending up anywhere else.

“I have to be in Vegas at the end of July. Camp begins the twenty-eighth.”

“Okay.” Now I’m imagining that pencil scratching over the paper. “Okay, let’s set that as our end date. Gives us a solid month or so together.”

But now that I’m thinking about it, the last thing I need is to put Liam through yet another transition just when I’ll need to focus most on football. “What about the possibility of extending it? The contract? Past the twenty-eighth, I mean. Would you be willing to come to Vegas with us?”