from him: he opened the front door for me, making eye contact as I passed him.
I kept my own expression nice and even as I did it.
And half of his mouth tipped up, that fucking dimple popping.
“Hey, Lenny,” a familiar voice called out from the office directly in front of the double doors.
I tore my attention away from the man who stopped directly beside me, his forearm and the back of his hand brushing my upper arm and elbow like there wasn’t enough space in the entrance so he had to stand so close to me. “Hey,” I greeted the older woman who came to a stop in the doorway, keeping my arm exactly where it was. “How’s it going?”
The director of the daycare moaned. “Fine except for this monster cold I’ve got. I’ve got to stay away from the children for the time being.” Slowly, her eyes swiveled to the man literally standing right beside me, and I could see her eyeballs widen just a little but just enough.
That was my cue. “Rachel, this is Jonah. He’s Mo’s dad. I was going to ask you if you could add him to the list of people who can pick up my little monster.”
Her eyes widened even more, and I couldn’t say that I blamed her.
I tipped my head up to look at Jonah and gave him a little smile. “You have your license, right?”
That bottom lip was pulled into his mouth with his teeth right before he nodded. He glanced at the woman and said, in a voice quieter than I had ever heard before, “I have my New Zealand license. I can bring my passport if you need something else.”
I frowned. What the hell was he whispering for? He didn’t speak very loudly in the first place but….
Poor Rachel, on the other hand, was too busy trying her best to keep it professional, to wonder why Jonah was talking like he was Stuart Little. But I knew what she was thinking. How the fuck had Lenny had a child with brown-haired Thor?
I wouldn’t have known how to answer. I still didn’t totally get it either. I wasn’t the most attractive woman in the world, but we’d… gotten along. Or at least, he’d thought my sense of humor was awesome, and he’d been charmed by my foul fucking mouth.
“Sure, sure,” she agreed while I was still wondering why Jonah had been whispering. “Let me get that from you, and Lenny, I’ll need you to sign a form stating that you’re giving permission to do this….” She trailed off an explanation that I mostly listened to as I watched Jonah fish his license out of his worn, slim wallet and hand it over.
Ten minutes later, Rachel was buzzing us through the door after making us squirt hand sanitizer on our hands. The doorway would lead into the main part of the building where the kids were split up. Grandpa Gus and I had picked this exact daycare because they focused on babies. There were eight kids in Mo’s “class,” which, as of two months ago, consisted of the six-month-olds and up. There was another class with the really young ones, six weeks to two months. Three months to six. A fourth class had one-year-olds to two-year-olds. It was small, clean, and pretty exclusive because of the size of their groups. Plus, they had an app that let us see what she was doing via cameras in the rooms the kids were in.
If it hadn’t been for Grandpa Gus pulling out the big guns and winking and over-the-top flirting with Rachel, I was pretty sure they wouldn’t have accepted us.
Then I’d seen their rates and wished they hadn’t.
Jonah followed me in, his head swinging around the room we had been let into, a room with the one to two-year-olds. A teacher and an assistant were busy collecting toys.
“One more room over,” I told him.
“You said she comes twice a week?”
I pushed open the Dutch door that led into Mo’s room. “Yeah, but on the same days every week.” It was the only time they had been able to fit us in around the other kids’ schedules.
“So your granddad can have a break?”
“No, to spend some time with other kids. He’d keep her all the time if I asked, but I don’t want to put that on him. It gives him time to do the things he likes that he hadn’t before.” Oooh, I could see Mo already on a mat made up