Beautiful Mistake(33)

Caine grumbled. “She’ll lord that over me until we’re eighty, too.”

After the girls were strapped in, Alley asked if I could come back to her Uncle Caine’s to play with her. I’d started to say I couldn’t when Caine interrupted.

“I make a mean macaroni and cheese, if you’re hungry. You sure I can’t persuade you? We might have another diaper incident, and I’m almost out of duct tape. I may need to resort to Krazy Glue.”

I smiled. I was tempted, but when Caine’s face turned serious and he looked me in the eyes and said, “Please?” there was no way I could say no.

“I’ll follow you.”

His face lit up, and my damn heart started to race in response.

Calm down in there. He isn’t inviting you to a romantic dinner. He only wants you to help with his nieces. Put on a diaper, not take off your clothes.

The entire drive to Caine’s house, I tried to reason with my heart. Talk it down from the perch of excitement his invitation had pushed it out onto. But there was no reasoning with it. My head knew the truth, yet my heart didn’t really seem to give a shit.





Rachel



A gigantic black lab ran full-speed to greet me and almost bowled me over. I kneeled to say hello. “Hi, big guy. You’re so cute. What’s your name?”

Caine answered. “That’s Murphy.” He attempted a stern voice. “Down, boy.” The dog completely ignored him and attempted to burrow into my body.

I scratched behind Murphy’s ears while he went crazy sniffing me. “He listens to you well.”

“That’s your fault. He’s never going to listen with the way you smell.”

“The way I smell?” I wasn’t quite sure how to take that.

“A dog’s sense of smell is 1,000 times greater than a human’s.”

“And what, exactly, do I smell like?”

Caine walked over to where the dog was still mauling me and gave his collar a firm tug. “Come on, Murph. Give her a break, buddy.”

Eventually, the dog backed off enough for me to stand. Caine leaned in and took an exaggerated whiff of my neck with his eyes closed. “Summer. You always smell like summer.” Then he stepped back and winked. “My favorite season.”

And there went my damn pulse again. The talk I’d given myself in the car on the way over went out the window. Caine chuckled, probably at the expression on my face.

“Come on in. I’ll give Murph a treat to distract him from how good you smell.”

I followed Caine and quickly forgot everything else once I got a look at his place.

Totally not what I expected.

Caine’s apartment was incredible. I’d assumed it would be nice, but not this nice. The girls had run down the hall to get a video they wanted to watch the minute we walked in, and I looked around in awe. His living room was bigger than my entire apartment. Not to mention, he had a foyer. A foyer in Manhattan? That entryway alone had to be worth five hundred bucks a month. Caine noticed my expression. “My great grandfather started an investment company. Every subsequent generation of the West family grew the fortune he’d made by another zero. Except me. But I did inherit twenty-five percent of the company from my grandfather. It pays slightly better dividends than a teacher’s salary.”

“Uhh…slightly? I’d say. You have a view of the damn park.” I walked to the wall of glass. “This place is amazing.”

When I turned back, Caine was standing in the kitchen, which was open to the living room, and staring at me.

“Thank you for coming today,” he said.

“I owed you one, remember?”

“You would have come whether you owed me one, or I owed you ten.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because that’s the kind of person you are.”

The girls came running back to the living room with a backpack. They jumped up and down. “Can we play tea?” they asked us.

“I guess she’s having that opposite effect from the Benadryl,” Caine grumbled.

“Sure. I love tea,” I said.

Alley unzipped the backpack, lifted it by the bottom, and dumped the entire contents onto Caine’s couch. It looked like she had enough ceramic teacups and saucers for a party of twenty.

The girls started to set the coffee table, and I walked to Caine’s stainless steel kitchen. “Do you have herbal tea?”

“I think so.”

It was amusing to see him sit on the floor and sip tea out of a little cup. Watching the way the girls interacted with him, I could tell he spent a fair amount of time with them, even if he was inept at changing a diaper.

“I take it this isn’t your first time playing tea?”

“I’m forced to play it twice a month when I go to my sister’s for dinner.”

“Do the girls live here in the city?”

“No. They live up in Chappaqua. That’s where I grew up. My sister stayed there to be near my mom.”

“I lived in Westchester growing up, too. Pleasantville.”

“You go to Pleasantville High School?”

“Umm…no. I moved to the city long before I got to high school.”

During our two cups of tea, I loved watching Caine jump at the commands of a four year old. “Lift your pinky when you hold your teacup, Uncle Caine. You’re slurping. The spoon goes on the saucer, not the table.”