Free Babysitting the Billionaire by Nicky Penttila Page B

breathless. “I knew it! You look
great. Would you take a photo with me? I love your penguins.”
    May saw his face slip into the mask he wore when she
first saw him in the airport, firm and commanding. But he didn’t growl at the
groveling girl, even though he’d just told May he didn’t approve of groveling.
    The girl didn’t miss a beat. Handing her phone to May,
she said, “Would you? Waist-up, please.”
    Feeling like the always-helpful Asian-American girl, May
dutifully composed the photo, waist up, and took two shots. The girl’s smile
was well-practiced, but Beau’s lips were too mobile.
    She handed the phone back, and the girl immediately
ignored both of them as she clicked through the images and typed busily with
her thumbs.
    “May!” He caught up with her in one step. “I forgot to
ask. With flavors or not?”
    Her mind was as blank as her face.
    He looked toward the girl, and lowered his voice.
“Condoms.”
    She felt slugged by a Nerf bat. “You still want me to,
you know…”
    “You think because we argue I don’t want you anymore?”
    Well, yes, she had. “Pretty dumb?”
    “Unobservant, perhaps.” He smiled. “See you after work?”
    She shouldn’t feel so girlishly grateful. But she did.
    “Deal.”
    ****
    Sadie, outside the foundation’s building, spotted her a
quarter-block away. She click-clacked in her flash pumps toward her.
    “Where is he?”
    “Cooling off. How’s your man?”
    “Bewildered. He thinks Kurck is a flake.”
    “What do you think?”
    Sadie looked at her a moment. “He’s worried about you.
Did you sleep with him?”
    May still had some anger inside her, and it appeared.
“You told me to do whatever was necessary.”
    “Bullshit.” Sadie looked around, as if anyone on a
summer street would care if she swore. May wished it was one of those
one-hundred-degree days, so Sadie’s perfect hair would lose its Republican Wife
flip.
    “He looked around the office and said we all looked like
starved zombies. I said I loved my job. He thinks I’m crazy.”
    “You are crazy. Penguins?”
    “It’s important.”
    “It’s a job, May. What else is in your life? Besides a
lover who’s leaving town in two days.”
    May’s cheeks flamed as if Sadie had hit her. “What is
it? Pile on May Day?”
    Sadie touched May’s cheek lightly. “I wasn’t sure if you
could blush. Your skin is so beautiful.” She dropped her hand. “And I’d call it
Speak-Truth-to-May Day, myself. Ready to beard the lion?”
    “I have to get his coffee, first. And mine.”
    “Maybe not. Don’t bring anything you’d be tempted to
throw.”
    Upstairs, Edmondsson had moved back behind his
death-skin desk. May’s head reeled with new perspectives and current problems,
and were things really the way she saw them?
    “You lost Kurck.” Where Beau’s blue eyes seemed somehow
warm, Edmondsson’s gaze felt glacial. She just swapped them in her mental
picture with Beau’s warm ones.
    “You lost him. He doesn’t think you’re the leader the
expedition needs.”
    “Insolent puppy.” Edmondson stood, as if by standing he
could get more air in his lungs for shouting. “I’d been to both poles before he
was out of diapers. If he’s even out of them now.”
    This bloviating was so familiar to May that she had a
word for it: pontifigushing. She leaned on one hip and waited for the flood of
words to subside.
    But why was she so familiar with it? Because Edmondsson
did it quite a bit, sure, but she wasn’t that often with him. She heard him
direct it at others, but she’d heard it a lot more than that.
    Then she realized: this was how her dad communicated.
The not-listening, the over-talking, the expectation that May was meek and
would just take it.
    Hmmm.
    Beau listened to her. He actually responded to the words
she said, the ideas she floated. What would it be like to be noticed all day? Exhausting . May liked to be invisible,
in the main. Less drama, for sure.
    But less glory, as well.