and—”
“Speaking of bad parking skills,”—he opened the door, shaking his head—“I gotta get to the shop, baby. I don’t have all morning. Let me park the car so we can get out of here.”
She put the car in park, pressing her lips together, and got out. “I almost had it,” she said as she got out. Orlando’s eyes widened, but he said nothing. He jumped in the driver’s side and had it parked in the next minute. “Show off,” she muttered, crossing her arms as she watched him jump out. They grabbed the baby’s things and the baby and headed to the front door of his mother’s house. Danica dusted off her pants as she waited nervously for his mother to come to the door.
Nadia was surprisingly younger than Danica expected: late forties, early fifties if that. “Good morning,” she said, smiling big as she opened the door for them to walk in.
“Mom, this is Dani,” Orlando said, kissing his mom on the forehead as he walked past her, carrying the baby in his carrier. “Dani, this is my mom.”
“Nadia,” his mother said, holding out her hand to Danica.
Dani shook it. “Nice to meet you.”
“Orlando’s told me a lot about The Baby Whisperer.” She smiled even bigger. “Can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard him say he hit it out of the ballpark with his sitter.”
Before Danica could respond, Orlando corrected his mother. “She’s a lot more than just my sitter now, but we don’t have time to get into all that right now.”
Feeling her face flush, Danica smiled with a shrug when his mother glanced back at Danica after turning to Orlando, who was setting the baby’s carrier on the sofa. “Oh? As in . . .?”
“As in she’s practically living with me now, and she’s not sleeping in either of the spare bedrooms either.”
Lifting a brow, his mother turned to him then back to Danica. “I thought you were engaged?”
“She was never actually engaged to the asshole,” Orlando said, taking the baby bag from Danica. “But he’s out and I’m in now.”
Nadia turned to Danica again, still looking a bit stunned. “I’d just mentioned to Felicia, the girl Orlando was seeing when I first came to work for him, that we—well, mostly my ex—had talked about marriage,” Danica offered. “But we were never engaged, and then things just didn’t work out between us.”
“With her at the shop a couple days out of the week and the rest of the time at my place, things just clicked.” Orlando kissed his mom’s forehead again. “One thing led to another and here we are. We’ll have dinner or lunch soon, and I’ll tell you more, but we gotta go now.”
Just like that, after letting Nadia know it was nice to finally meet her in person, they were rushing out to her car.
“You still have my keys,” she said.
“I know because I’m driving.” Feeling her brows furrow, she turned to him in question. Orlando smiled, kissing her before he opened the passenger’s side for her. “No offense, babe. But I’d like to get to the shop in one piece and without going into cardiac arrest.” He kissed her again when she playfully frowned at his comment. “Matter of fact, I think I’ll drive from here on and might even look into getting you a helmet.”
“Ha, ha,” she said as she got in the car. He closed her door and rushed around it. “Seriously,” he said as he got in and started up the car. “Your cooking skills are up there with Gordon Ramsey’s compared to your driving skills.” He chuckled as he pulled out effortlessly from the tight parking space, which probably would’ve taken Danica forever to get out of. “Maybe you leave any outings that require driving when you’re at my house with the baby for when I get home.”
He teased her the rest of the way to the shop. But she preferred they stay on that lighthearted subject than go back to talking about her court case. Now that she didn’t have an excuse not to look into his intense eyes when he asked her anything about it, she might start blurting out the whole truth about Blaine.
The shop was a madhouse when they got there. Construction crews were going in and out, and it seemed everyone was scheduled today because of the parts that had come in for the big projects Orlando mentioned. Near the end of her shift, Danica got the text from Ted. She was only