Who's the Boss? - Erin McCarthy Page 0,22
was Isla. I wouldn’t have pegged her as the dating app type, but that was stupid. Every single person in the world was on a dating app, whether they used it regularly or not. They were still out there, just in case. Just because.
“What’s her name?” Kennedy asked, sounding like she didn’t believe me.
“Isla. We work at the restaurant together.” The picture was one of her smiling broadly, which I had never witnessed in person. She was wearing a cocktail dress that showed an enticing amount of cleavage.
“Call her,” Kennedy said.
The toddler cut to the chase.
Considering that if Isla did ever look at her app, she was going to see we had matched, I probably should say something. I could tell her on Monday but would she really believe me that a toddler had been making dating picks for me?
“Fine,” I told Kennedy. “But you have to talk to her, too.”
She gave me an encouraging nod.
Isla answered right away. “Hello?” She sounded generally suspicious and grumpy.
“Hi, are you busy?” I asked. “Am I interrupting anything?”
“Just my hot date with Peaky Blinders. What’s up?”
“So, funny story. I’m babysitting my friend’s daughter and she was swiping through a dating app I have on my phone and we came across your profile.”
“You let a child scroll through your dating app?” she asked, sounding appalled.
“She’s three, she opened the app herself, what can I say? She just thinks it’s pretty ladies.”
“I can’t believe someone let you watch their child.”
“I’m highly offended by that. I can be trusted to take care of a human. It’s like truffles, you handle them delicately. She wants to talk to you.”
“Who?” Isla sounded bewildered.
“My babysitting charge. Here she is.” I handed the phone to Kennedy and put it on speaker. “Make me sound good, kid.”
“Hi, I’m Kennedy.” She set the phone in her lap.
“I’m Isla. Are you having fun with Sean?”
“Yes. He’s funny.”
I gave her a thumbs-up and an encouraging nod.
“He’s hilarious,” Isla said.
Her amused tone was lost on Kennedy. Being allowed access to talking to a stranger seemed to get Kennedy jacked up. She started rocking back and forth, her hands in tight little fists out in front of her as she did a little dance.
“He’s strong and he makes me mac and cheese.” She put a lot of emphasis on the word “cheese.” She clearly had strong feelings about cheddar, as it should be.
This was good. She was building my resume.
“And he smells like cheese. And he has a face like cheese.” She emphasized cheese each time.
Okay, so she was getting distracted. Isla was laughing.
“Say goodbye,” I told Kennedy.
She actually obliged, and handed me the phone. She climbed off the couch and went toward the kitchen, probably in pursuit of dairy. I took the phone off of speaker and put it to my ear. “Sorry, that went sideways.”
Isla laughed. “Well, I don’t think you smell like cheese, I’ll give you that.”
“Thanks, I appreciate that. I’ll let you return to your streaming but I just wanted you to know I didn’t swipe left on you, a toddler did. I wasn’t sure you would believe me if I told you later. I needed backup but getting a kid to do what you want is tough.”
“I understand. Nico thinks I quit because I typed ‘I quit’ in a text and then didn’t hit send and handed my phone to my friend’s one-year-old. He managed to send the text. It was almost disastrous.”
“You’re kidding. Looks like we were both outwitted by babies.” Was that why Nico had sent me the ultimatum? He was worried Isla really would quit? He must really respect her as a chef.
“This is a sad day.”
“It is.”
There was a pause, and then she said, “Well, goodnight. Go make Kennedy some mac and cheese.”
“You should taste my mac and cheese,” I said, because I was proud of it and for whatever reason I wasn’t going to look at too closely, I didn’t want her to end the call.
She obviously didn’t feel the same way. “I don’t need to taste your anything. Bye, Sean.”
She’d already tasted my tongue. Tangling with hers. I was going to point that out but she had hung up on me.
I stood up and went to the kitchen to see what Kennedy was doing. I’d been able to see her from the living room, an advantage of small apartment city living, and she was rooting around in the refrigerator. She had two juice boxes in her hands. She handed me one.
“Thanks, kiddo.”
“Um.” She ripped the