Mother in Training Read online

  One day loosely worked into another. Like a prisoner sentenced to life without parole, she lost track of time.

  Days no longer meant anything to her. They were just something to get through, nothing more.

  “Not that I don’t love having you around, Zooey, but I just don’t know what to do with you.”

  Frances Finnegan looked at her daughter over the tops of the glasses nature and her ophthalmologist had forced her to wear in order to read words smaller than a billboard. She’d summoned Zooey into her office this morning after reviewing the halfhearted report that had come from her daughter’s computer concerning the next six months’ sales projections. It was obvious that not only was Zooey’s heart not in it, her mind appeared to be AWOL as well.

  Thinking that it was time to shake her up and have a serious heart-to-heart, Frances said as much to her daughter.

  “This report was written by someone whose mind kept wandering away from its subject.” Even her brother-in-law, who was awful when it came to report writing, could do a better job than what she had lying on her desk. This just wasn’t her Zooey, and Frances meant to find out why.

  A rueful expression passed over Zooey’s face. Reaching for the report, she took it from her mother’s desk. “I’ll do better.”

  “You’d have to work hard at doing worse,” Frances said honestly, then sighed. “Zooey, I’m trying to figure out what you are doing here. Your coming to work for the family business is certainly not working out.”

  Zooey raised her chin defensively, a spark of her old self returning, much to her mom’s relief. “I need a period of adjustment.”

  But Frances shook her head. She’d never expected to hear herself say this. “You need to go back to where you came from.”

  Zooey’s eyes widened. She hadn’t envisioned this. “Are you firing me?”

  “I’m freeing you,” Frances corrected.

  She didn’t want to be freed, Zooey thought, a slight edge of panic slicing through her. She needed to work, not so much for the money but because it gave her someplace to be, something to do, however badly. If she just sat at home, she’d lose what little mind she still had.

  “Mom, I’m sorry, I’ll do better,” Zooey promised.

  She saw the look in her mother’s eyes. The same look that had been there when she was growing up. The look that said the truth was required from her. So the truth came. Or at least the part she could put into words.

  “It’s just that…I keep wondering if they’re okay. Emily and Jackie,” she added, realizing she was verbally jumping around.

  There was more to it than that and they both knew it, but for now, Frances played along. “If that’s all that’s on your mind, why don’t you just call them and find out?”

  “I don’t want to—” Zooey stopped herself. She’d almost said that she didn’t want to take a chance on having Jack pick up the phone, but that was something she didn’t want to share yet. Maybe never. “Interfere,” she finally said. “I don’t want to interfere,” she repeated. “They’re adjusting to a new nanny. Having me call and talk to them will just set them back to square one.”

  An almost amused expression played on her mother’s lips. “Maybe they’re not adjusting to the new nanny. Maybe they hate her.”

  Zooey looked at her for a long, poignant moment, as if that thought hadn’t crossed her mind a hundred times already. “You know, I never realized how much you and I think alike.”

  Frances laughed. “Your best qualities come from me, Zooey. The other ones, blame your father.” And then she grew serious. “Zooey, you’re going to have to move on or move back.” It wasn’t anything that Zooey hadn’t told herself more than once since she’d walked out of Jack’s house. “This wavering in the middle—”

  “Move on,” Zooey declared fiercely, in case her mother had any doubts. “I want to move on. It’s just taking me longer than I thought, that’s all.” Crossing to her mother’s desk, she perched on one corner, feeling helpless. She’d never been in this kind of position before and didn’t know how to get out of it. “The moment I decided to put Connor behind me, he was history. So was college and every job I ever had.”

  “Except for this last one.”

  “Except for this last one,” Zooey echoed. She looked down at her mother. “I just need you to be patient with me, Mom.”

  “I have infinite patience.” And it was true. She’d proved it more than once while Zooey was growing up. But there was a time to cut her daughter some slack and a time to tighten the reins. “The business, however, would like you to get up to speed a little faster than you’ve been doing. A lot faster, actually,” she amended. “Quarterly reports are just around the corner—”

  Zooey nodded vigorously. “I know, I know.” She slid off the desk. “I promise I’ll do better.”

  “Good.” Frances rose to her feet as well. She slipped an arm around her daughter’s shoulders, walking her to the door. “You’ll make your father very happy—if that’s what you want.”

  What I want isn’t going to happen, Zooey thought.

  She did her best not to make the smile she forced to her lips look as if it was merely painted on. “Always like to see you and Dad happy.”

  Frances gave her a penetrating look. “You know what I mean.”

  “Yes, I know what you mean.” Before leaving, Zooey paused to kiss her mother’s cheek. She’d never really appreciated her before, she thought. “Thanks, Mom.”

  She was aware that her mother continued watching her as she walked down the hall.

  Moving at a quicker pace than she had for the last two weeks, Zooey started back to the office she’d been given, silently vowing to do better. She owed it to her mom, if not both her parents.

  As she hurried past the receptionist, the woman half rose in her chair. “I put them in your office.”

  Confused, Zooey looked at her. As far as she knew, nothing was being delivered to her. “Put what into my office?”

  “The kids. I didn’t think you wanted me to interrupt you when you were in with Mrs. Finnegan, and I didn’t know what to do with them—”

  The last part of her statement was addressed to Zooey’s back.

  Zooey flew the rest of the way to her office. She didn’t need to ask “What kids?” She knew. Emily and Jackie. Alone?

  Her heart lodged itself in her throat as half a dozen scenarios, none of them good, flashed through her mind like a doomsday kaleidoscope.

  The second Zooey opened the door, Emily and Jackie rushed toward her. She dropped to her knees just in time to have the children fling themselves at her, surrounding her with small arms and huge doses of affection.

  “We missed you, Zooey,” Emily cried, hugging her as hard as she could.

  “Missed you!” Jackie echoed, the words thundering into her left ear.

  “And I missed you.” Zooey kissed them both more than once and held them to her tightly for a long moment before finally releasing them. She drew back to look at their faces. She needed answers. Lots of answers. “What are you doing here?”

  Emily’s lower lip quivered, as if she expected to be rejected and sent away. “You said to come if we needed you.”

  “No,” Zooey corrected gently, “I said to call and I’d come if you needed me.” This had desperate written all over it, she thought.

  Rising, she took each child by the hand and led them over to the love seat against the wall. It was just large enough for the three of them.

  Zooey sat down with a child on either side. To her surprise, instead of squirming, Jackie curled up beside her and laid his head in her lap. She’d never seen him so docile before. She stroked his hair as she posed questions to Emily.

  “How did you get here? Did your dad bring you?”

  “No.” Emily looked up at her with big, innocent eyes. “We took a taxi.”

  Zooey stared at the little girl, stunned. “A taxi?” Taxis here didn’t roam the streets the way they did in the city.

  Emi
ly nodded. “Olivia helped me find one in the telephone book and we called it together. I showed the man the address on the card you gave me.”

  “How did you pay for it?” Was there a driver outside, waiting for his money and getting progressively angrier?

  “I used the money in my piggy bank,” Emily told her. “And he brought us here.”

  This wasn’t right. A seven-year-old and an almost-three-year-old weren’t supposed to be out, wandering around alone like that. Why didn’t the cab driver ask about adult supervision? “Where’s your nanny?”

  “Sleeping.” Emily leaned closer and confided, “She sleeps a lot. The yellow medicine from the bottle she keeps in her pocket makes her sleep when she takes it.”

  Damn it, what kind of people was Jack leaving his kids with? Why didn’t he do a thorough check into the woman’s references before he hired her? “Did you tell your daddy that she sleeps so much?”

  Emily shook her head. “Daddy’s so sad, I didn’t want to make him sadder.” The little girl looked up at her. “I saw him looking at your picture.”

  Emily was making this up. Zooey had never given Jack a photograph of herself. “Your daddy doesn’t have a picture of me, Emily.”

  “Yes, he does,” she insisted. “It’s the one that Olivia’s mommy took at the Halloween party. Daddy was in it, too.”

  As soon as Emily said it, Zooey remembered Angela aiming the camera at them and ordering, “Smile.” Zooey recalled being surprised that Jack hadn’t turned his head away at the last minute. Until that moment, she would have said that he wasn’t the type to pose for photographs.

  “Olivia’s mommy came to the house last week to give it to him. Daddy looks sadder every time he looks at it. He has it on his desk.” Emily wiggled up to her knees on the cushion, lowering her voice as she whispered into her ear. “He told me he misses you.”

  Emily’s warm breath grazed her cheek even as her words grazed her heart. Zooey resisted believing the girl. Resisted because more than anything in the world, she wanted it to be true. She wanted Jack to have missed her half as much as she’d missed him these last two weeks.

  But she knew that Emily was very bright, very creative for her age. It wasn’t beyond her to fabricate the story to get what she wanted.

  Tucking one arm around the girl’s small waist, Zooey told her seriously, “Your nose grows when you fib, Emily.”

  Instead of feeling to see if her nose had gotten any larger, Emily looked like the personification of innocence as she insisted, “He misses you, Zooey.”

  Then why didn’t the big jerk call?

  Beginning to feel like her old self, Zooey made up her mind on the spur of the moment. Moving Jackie into an upright position, she rose to her feet.

  “C’mon,” she declared.

  Emily instantly hopped off the love seat. “Where are we going?”

  Not waiting for Jackie to clamber to his feet, she picked him up. Stopping only long enough to get her purse from her desk and to slip her poncho over her head, she reclaimed Emily’s hand. “To see your dad and let him know where his children are.”

  Zooey hurried past the receptionist again. The woman looked on in confusion. “Where are you going, Ms. Finnegan?”

  Possibly to hell, Zooey thought. “I need to tell Jack Lever that he picked a lousy nanny to watch his kids.”

  There was a meeting scheduled for four o’clock. A meeting that the woman knew Zooey was supposed to be attending. “You can’t—” the receptionist began, rounding her desk to try to catch up to the threesome.

  “Oh, yes, I can,” Zooey retorted as she turned the corner toward the elevators.

  For the first time in more than two weeks, Zooey felt like smiling.

  The inner-sanctum quiet of the law firm of Wasserman, Kendall, Lake & Lever was shattered the moment the elevator doors parted. Office doors all along the corridor were opened by occupants curious to see what the commotion was all about. It sounded as if a busload of children had been deposited there.

  Not bothering to attempt to get Jackie to lower his voice, Zooey slowed down only when she reached Jack’s office.

  Lost in thought, a state aided and abetted by a malaise that threatened to completely undo him, Jack rose from his desk and opened the door when the vaguely familiar noise sounded as if it was growing louder.

  His face almost came in contact with Zooey’s fist.

  He would have been less stunned to see Noah saying he was there to collect two of everything. “Zooey.”

  About to knock, she dropped her hand. She set Jackie down inside the threshold, then took his hand as well as Emily’s and held them up.

  “Missing something?” she asked Jack.

  The sarcastic question had a simple enough answer. Or so she thought. The answer she received wasn’t the one she was expecting.

  “Yes,” he told her quietly, finally finding his tongue. “You.”

  With the wind suddenly sucked out of her sails, Zooey was left completely stunned. Positive that her mind had put words into his mouth, she hoarsely asked, “What?”

  Aware that everyone on the floor had suddenly volunteered to become unofficial witnesses to his every word, Jack drew Zooey and his children into his office and shut the door behind him.

  Because it was his nature to be orderly, he backtracked. There were blanks that needed filling in. “What are you doing here?”

  Now that sounded more like Jack, she thought. The other had been a momentary out-of-body experience. There couldn’t be any other explanation for what she thought she’d heard.

  “Showing you that while you might be a great lawyer, you’re lousy when it comes to finding a nanny for your own children.” It was very hard trying to remain angry with him when everything inside of her ached to be with him again.

  Where was her pride? she demanded silently.

  Since his mind had been focused on her all this time, it was only natural that he thought she was referring to herself, not the lackluster woman in the sensible shoes he’d taken on to fill the vacancy Zooey’s departure had left. He couldn’t bring himself to think of the woman as taking Zooey’s place because there was no way she could manage to do that. Zooey was an impossible act to follow, on all counts.

  “Oh, I don’t know—”

  Zooey didn’t let him get any further. She wasn’t about to get snowed by lawyer rhetoric.

  “Well, I do. Emily and Jackie came to my office. In a cab,” she stressed heatedly. “Emily told me the nanny was asleep, something she apparently does with a fair amount of regularity after drinking.” Zooey’s eyes were blazing now as she came at him. “Don’t you check references?”

  God, but he wanted to kiss her. For the first time in more than two weeks, he felt alive. It took effort to hold himself in check. To not at least touch her face. “She was just a temp.”

  That was a lousy excuse and he knew it, Zooey thought. “And the damage she could have done to the kids might have been permanent.” She blew out a breath. Her exasperation mounted. “You obviously need help.”

  He couldn’t take his eyes off her. Part of him was afraid that if he did, she would vanish like a dream and this had to be a dream, because both of his children were here—and quiet, something he knew was a complete impossibility.

  “Yes,” he agreed, keeping a straight face, “I do.”

  She made another impulsive decision. One she’d been longing to execute ever since she’d walked out of his house. “Okay, I’ll come back to work until you can find a new nanny.”

  Jack summoned his best poker face. “That might be hard.”

  Wasn’t he going to allow her to come back? Was he that angry at her for quitting? “Why?”

  The corners of his mouth rose just the slightest bit. Or maybe that was her imagination again. “Because I won’t be looking for a new one.”

  Did he want her to handle that, too? Didn’t he see how necessary it was to get involved in his children’s lives? Selecting the right nanny was c
rucial to their development, not to mention their happiness. He had to be made to understand that.

  “I know you’re busy, Jack, but these are your kids we’re talking about.”

  He took a deep breath before answering. Not to fortify himself, but to fill his head with the scent of her shampoo. He’d never realized he was so partial to jasmine until she was no longer there.

  “I know. But the kids don’t want a nanny,” he informed her. “They want you.”

  Damn, but he was making her feel awful. Zooey shook her head. “That’s not going to work out,” she told him solemnly.

  “Why?” he asked. “Why won’t it work out?” Because he intended to make it work out, no matter what it took.

  She told him the truth. “Because I can’t work for a man who’s not there.”

  And the way she saw it, since he hadn’t tried to get in contact with her, it meant he was glad she was gone, no matter what Emily said to the contrary. And if he was relieved to have her gone, he’d revert to playing those awful games of hide and seek again if she did come back. Forget that it hurt her; it was awful for the children.

  He nodded, his expression indicating that he thought her protest was reasonable. “What if I promise to be there more often?”

  She wasn’t about to get captured by a lawyer’s rhetoric. “How often?”

  Suppressing a grin, he lobbed the ball back into her court. “How often would you like?”

  She thought a moment. He was coming across as extremely accommodating. Maybe she’d misjudged him. Maybe he was partial to his children, after all.

  “Normal hours would be nice. To see you in the morning and at some reasonable hour at night so that Emily and Jackie don’t forget what you look like.”

  “Done.”

  There hadn’t even been a moment’s hesitation. She couldn’t help being suspicious. “Just like that?”

  “Just like that,” he assured her. “Whatever it takes to get you back into our—into my life,” he amended.

  Jack watched as surprise washed over her face. He knew that if he wanted her, he was going to have to be willing to step up to the plate, to say what she wanted to hear. What had resided silently in his heart up to now.