I opened my mouth and held up my hands just as Polly gave me a sharp, disgusted look and moved closer to Ryla protectively, Max mirroring Polly’s every step.
“Whoa, that is not how I meant it?—”
Polly cut me off with an incredulous look, her eyes silently saying,I’m sure.She jerked her head to Ryla. “We have to go.”
“But, Mom?—”
“NOW.” Polly’s stern command was accompanied by a sharp finger snap. Ryla went immediately to her mother’s side as Polly led her kids past me without another word.
I watched her walk away, head held high, her long legs eating up the ground in front of her.
Damn, but she was sexy as hell.
It’s a shame she thought I was a pervert.
CHAPTERSEVEN
POLLY
The company didn’t just fuck me over. They fucked me sideways, upside down, every which way to Sunday, and everywhere in between.
American Tieby Lady Jane
Narrated by Brittney Houston
Ididn’t get Jace’s number. Probably for the best, even though Ryla was able to piece together an explanation that assured me he wasn’t a pedophile. I had a meeting with Dr. Dixon on Thursday afternoon, so Leah agreed to take the kids to her house after school. I conveniently forgot to tell her about my encounter with Jace on Tuesday. I’d barely let myself think about it. Every time I thought of being interrupted before I could get his phone number, I chided myself for feeling disappointed. I should not be thinking of a twenty-four-year-old guy that way.
Yes, I’d learned his age from Ryla, too. Something else I’d thought about too much over the past forty-eight hours.
Dr. Dixon, who served as the school district’s medical director for the past twenty plus years, was nice, for a dinosaur. At seventy-nine, he’d been working at Mercy Health since its inception in 1983. I’d been taught by plenty of doctors that were older. One of my favorite med school professors was in his eighties. But Dr. Dixon had a white lab coat buttoned with the wrong buttons and had so much dry skin flaking off his ear that when he adjusted his hearing aid, it looked like a thin layer of salt was covering his desk.
Shudder.
He wasn’t a wealth of knowledge about the school district position either. I got the impression that he was a medical director in name only when he pulled out a dusty binder when I asked what he used to look up school policy. At least I’d been emailed a copy of the contract that outlined my responsibilities in detail. Once I read the twelfth bullet point, I’d rubbed my forehead harder than normal. Four hours per week, I think not. It would take all the extra time I saved by working reduced hours at the clinic, but I’d have to deal with it. I couldn’t do overnights on call anymore; it was too hard to find help. And even though I’d just gotten a response from my insurance saying that I won my appeal to cover Max’s IOP bills from earlier this year, I still needed health insurance. Max’s therapist had recommended DBT therapy. He also placed a referral for an updated neuropsychology evaluation after agreeing with me Max should be evaluated for an autism spectrum disorder. Should he need it, he could only receive school accommodations for this if he had an official diagnosis. In a stroke of luck, Max’s therapist was able to get us an expedited appointment with a pediatric neuropsychologist in Knoxville in three months.
How did a child without connections, without parental buy-in, afford and receive that kind of help? Perhaps being the medical director of the school district would be an opportunity for change.
With all of that swimming in my head, it was no wonder I couldn’t concentrate on my audiobook, rewinding the same part three times before I pulled into Leah’s driveway. As I walked into her house, I rolled my neck to release some of the tension that had taken up permanent residence in my upper back and shoulders.
“Hey,” Leah whispered when I found her in the kitchen. She waved me down the hall, and I poked my head into their family room, seeing Ryla asleep on the couch. She was using their Bernese mountain dog, Bernie, as a pillow.
Asleep, Ryla looked like the five-year-old she still was for a few more days. Her cute, rounded cheeks and pursed mouth reminding me of Max before he lost all his baby fat. Leaving the door open a crack, I followed Leah to her kitchen.
“Where’s Max?”
“He’s downstairs, playing video games with Belle and Kyle.”
“Really?” After his panic attack two days ago, I was living with the constant worry that he was going to relapse. But the next day he got up and went to summer school without significant fuss.
Leah winked. “It surprised me, too. But when Belle offered him the controller, he took it and sat next to her, like it was no big deal.” She opened the fridge. “You want to stay for dinner? I’m making spaghetti.”
I hesitated. Staying for dinner was tempting. Waking Ryla early from a nap was a guaranteed screaming match, then I’d have to get us all home, make dinner, do two nanny interviews on the phone, then get everyone settled into bed. I felt exhausted just thinking about it. But, Max was an incredibly picky eater. Unless Leah had a specific brand of dino nuggets, he wasn’t going to eat anything here.
“You don’t happen to have dino nuggets from the Pig, do you?” I joked humorlessly, mentally preparing to wake the sleeping dragon that was Ryla.
“Do I have dino nuggets?” Leah pulled out her freezer drawer with a flourish, displaying several boxes of the exact brand Max ate. “I saw them in your freezer and was intrigued. Eric’s hooked. He’s really into dinosaurs.”
I almost gave her a hug. “Yes! We can stay. How can I help?”
