She reluctantly takes Ari from my arms and hugs her close to her chest. “Do you think I should go for a drive with her?” she asks, looking at the door. “Like, is she crazy?”
“I don’t know.” I run my hands through my hair. “I didn’t even know she felt this way.”
“Okay, how about I just go and buy some food?” she suggests and then sees my face. “Or I can go buy some new ingredients to make the shrimp.” She smiles for the first time since she walked out. “Don’t take this the wrong way”—she rolls her lips—“but I don’t think those shrimp are going to survive.”
I laugh, the tightness in my chest that had crept in when I saw her walking out is now gone. “What do you say, baby girl? Do you want to go for a drive with me?” She walks to her car and then looks at me. “I don’t have the right car seat.”
I walk to the garage and press the code numbers, the door slowly opening and I pray that Miranda doesn’t come to the door to see. I grab the set of spare keys and walk over to her. “Take my car,” I say. “There is an emergency diaper bag in there, but there is no bottle.”
“I’ll get some if she gets hungry. I should only be gone for thirty minutes.” She walks over to the car and buckles her in with ease, then she climbs in the truck and lowers the window. “Will you text me a code?” I look at her, confused. “To tell me you’re still alive and she didn’t kill a rabbit or something.”
Fuck, she’s stunning and funny, and all I want to do is sit with her and talk. I want to know what she’s done for the past ten days. Did she go out on a date? I mean, not that I have a say in it, but did she? “I’ll call you the minute she leaves.”
“We should have a code word,” she says, and I think she’s joking, but from her face, I know she isn’t. “What color is the brown bear?” She looks at me. “The answer is.”
“Brown,” I answer her.
“No!” she shrieks out. “The color is purple. That will be a trick.”
“Good God,” I mumble.
“I saw it on a Dateline episode.” I have so many questions now. “So when you call, if you don’t say purple, I’m calling in the SWAT team.”
“We are going to have so much to talk about when you come back,” I say, shaking my head. “So much.”
“Whatever.” She rolls her eyes. “You’ll thank me if you are being held against your will.” She closes the window, and I watch her drive away and then brace myself for what I’m walking into.
Stepping inside the door, I smell cooking, and when I walk into the kitchen, I suddenly feel better about having a code word. With music playing, Miranda stands in the middle of the kitchen, cutting a red pepper, and a frying pan behind her on the stove is sizzling. “Oh, good, you’re back. I was making a stir-fry,” she says, looking at me with a huge smile on her face.
“Um, Miranda,” I say to her. “I think we need to talk.” She looks up at me. “I don’t know what is going on.” I stay on my side of the counter. “But if I somehow said something or did something for you to think that . . .” I use my fingers, and she puts down the knife, shock on her face.
“But you told me you like having me around,” she says almost in a whisper.
“Well, I like having you around to take care of Ariella. I’m happy you take good care of her,” I start to say. “I am happy that she doesn’t cry with you, and that she’s okay.”
“But you smile at me all the time,” she says, walking around to my side of the counter. “And you said you’d like to have me around more.”
“I said that I might spend more time training so you can be around more.” I repeat the exact words I told her three days ago. “Only because Ari was coping well, not because—”
“Is it because of her?” she asks, pointing at the hallway where Candace walked out of. “She’s young, and well, she doesn’t look like she’s your type. She looks like one of those puck bunnies that you see all over these hockey players.”
“Okay,” I say, putting up my hand. “I think you need to stop right there. Number one, you don’t know me or what my type is.” My anger starts to get a hold of me, not because of what she said but because of how she just described Candace. “And number two, you’re fired.”
“What?” she asks, shocked. “How can you fire me?”