"It's Landon," Angel said.
"What's Landon?" Kimber offered the next piece to Lyon. He took it. She was glad. She couldn't take the rejection.
"Has it always been Landon?"
Uh-oh.
"I'm hungry." Lyon pouted and held his stomach.
"You're always hungry," she told him before returning to her call. "Angel, what are you-"
"I thought you had a crush on Evan all those years ago." She gasped and Kimber's skin erupted into goose bumps. "How could you keep this from me?"
Guilt pinged along her ribs like a pinball had been shot into her chest cavity. "I didn't mean to. I just … never corrected you when you assumed it was Evan."
Lyon frowned at the mention of his father's name. Right. She should watch what she said in front of the little playback machine.
Angel's good-natured laugh startled her. "Landon's a good choice," she said. "He's single, he's rich. He's not what I'd call romantic, so if you're suffering any chocolates-and-roses fantasies, I think you can hang those out to dry. But he is established. Stable. Lives close to you."
Only he did bring me chocolates. And potato chips are better than roses. She shut her eyes. That so wasn't the point. "Angel, I'm not really looking for-"
"Can I have Teddy Grahams?" Lyon flopped to the floor, doing his best impression of a famished child.
"Yes," she answered him. "Do you need me to get them for you?" And hang up with your prying aunt? But he was already on the move, tapping into a store of energy that sent him bouncing out of the bedroom like Tigger hopped up on Red Bull. "It's not like that," she told Angel, raking her fingers through the pile of Legos. "I don't even know him."
But her friend wasn't about to be thwarted. "So get to know him. You live with him. How hard could it be?"
She thought of last night's conversation. Landon hadn't answered her when she prompted conversation about Windy City. Then he'd practically drawn a line in the sand when she'd offered him leftovers from dinner. It's not your job to cook for me.
"I don't … think he likes me."
"Pssh! Kimber. You're beautiful, you're stylish, and you're mothering his only nephew. He probably thinks you walk on water in your spare time. I know he seems like a fuddy-duddy, and I'll admit this whole Lissa situation was … weird."
Kimber frowned at the mention of Lissa. She wanted to ask, but refused to pry.
"Maybe he needs a real woman," Angel said. "A woman who knows who she is."
Whoa. Get ahead of herself much? "I'm here for Lyon," she reminded both of them. "And a paycheck so I can buy my ex-boyfriend out of my business. I'm not interested in Landon." She touched the tip of her nose to make sure it hadn't grown a few inches and sprouted leaves. Because there wasn't a bigger lie than the one she'd just told. She'd been interested in Landon since she'd laid eyes on him at age sixteen.
Angel sighed. "Fine. I just got all excited. You'd be good for him. Yin to his yang. Butter to his bread. He's a family man, you know. Underneath that ridiculous arrangement with Lissa, I believe he really wants to be in a stable relationship."
Ha! If he was looking for stable, he'd stumbled into the wrong nanny. Kimber had no idea where she'd be in five years, five months, or in five minutes. She was spontaneous and fell in love too quickly and made spur-of-the-moment decisions without much rational thought. Like buying Hobo Chic with Mick. Landon, with his details and lists and über-organized penthouse, would go crazy if someone like Kimber were his other half.
Now who's getting ahead of herself?
Angel covered the phone, muffling her voice. "I know. I'm not!" she called out, probably to Richie. "I'm back. My husband is berating me for playing Cupid. It's a pastime."
"Obsession," Richie said into the phone. Kimber had to laugh.
Angel whispered her next words. "Have a drink with him tonight. You owe yourself a break. Take it. And talk to him. Maybe you'll have more in common than you imagine."
She opened her mouth to tell Angel she didn't think it was a good idea, but then she heard the telltale beeping of the buttons on the microwave.
"I gotta go," she said, hoofing it down the hallway. No good could come of Lyon operating the microwave.
CHAPTER FIVE
Landon was reading through the e-mail he'd spent the last twenty minutes drafting when his desk phone rang. The button signifying his private line lit. His emergency line.
Lyon.
A myriad of horrific thoughts went through his mind in the nanosecond it took to punch the button and bring the handset to his ear. What if Lyon had broken his arm? Or his leg? Or his neck?
"This is Landon." The words didn't come out frantic, but they were stiff.
"This is Angel," came his sister's mocking voice.
His panic eased down a notch. If she was joking around, this must not be the emergency he'd feared. He uncurled his clenched fist. "Everything okay?"
"Of course everything's okay. Why? Is this number hooked to a red phone or something?"
He eased back and leaned an elbow on the arm of his chair. "I assume any call to my direct line is an emergency."
"Can't a sister call and talk to her oldest brother for no reason at all?"
"Sure she can. But she doesn't." He waited. He was right; he knew it.
An audible sigh confirmed his suspicions. "Fine," she said. "You got me. I wanted to call and tell you to have a drink with Kimber tonight."
He straightened his glasses. What was she up to? "A drink."
"Yeah. Make an effort to talk to her when you get home tonight."
Had Kimber … said something? He hadn't been in the greatest of moods last night when he'd come home. He'd been brusque, unintentionally. "Why?" he said, not letting Angel in on any of his thoughts. "She's a babysitter not an adult-sitter."
He nearly laughed when she blew out a frustrated grunt. "She's a nanny. And a professional."
"I know. Isn't it best for me to stay out of her way?" he asked, happily needling his only sister. "Let her do her thing?"
"You're so clueless." He heard murmuring followed by Angel answering, "Second drawer, Richie!" She addressed Landon again, her voice at normal pitch. "Kimber is marooned in your big, lonely house for the entirety of a week-"
"More like four days at this point," he interjected.
Angel ignored him. "-and her only company is a six-year-old with a fondness for fart noises. Did you consider she might like to have a conversation that didn't involve applesauce or Superman?"
She was making her point passionately enough that he began wondering if she had talked to Kimber. Had Kimber filed a grievance with his emotionally unstable sister? "If she's unhappy with the job-" he started, about to issue an idle threat.
Angel didn't let him finish. "She likes you, Landon."
He blinked at his computer, which had gone into hibernation mode. A Downey Design logo winked on and off in varying locations. So this wasn't a case of Kimber complaining to Angel. It was a case of his love-struck sister trying to set him up. "Listen, Cupid."
"Don't call me that."
"Okay. Angel. You have a Cupid complex. You see matchmaking everywhere you look."
"Kimber never had a crush on Evan," she blurted. "It was you. All those years ago when she hung around the basketball court, when she sat next to you at dinner, when she helped you with your English paper."
What? "Creative writing," he muttered, semi-stunned.
She huffed. "The point is Kimber liked you. Still likes you, if you ask me."
He sifted through a memory of her on the patio, winding a red curl around her finger and watching him play basketball with Aiden and Evan. No. No way had she been out there for him. "I was too old for her." Five years was a huge gap between a sixteen-year-old and a college kid.
"You're not now."
He wasn't. Kimber was thirty-two, her womanly curves as far from her gangly teenage years as possible, and as enticing as they came.
"Fine," Angel replied when he remained silent. "Don't believe me."
He blinked away the vision of Kimber's long legs wrapped around his waist, those retro shoes crossed at his back. "No worries. I don't." He cleared his throat, hoping the rasp in his voice conveyed disbelief rather than lust.
"Just … be nice to her instead of being your rigid, cardboard self."
He opened his mouth to say he wasn't rigid and ask what she'd meant by "cardboard." Was she insisting he was bland? Dry? Stiff? Whatever she'd meant by it, it was unflattering.
She didn't give him a chance to argue further, forcing him into business mode with a question about a redesigned logo for a senior care facility due tomorrow.