That part really got Britt’s attention. “Are you serious? He saw you in nothing but atowel? I mean, he’s seen more than that, but still.”
“I was so embarrassed when I realized what I’d done. Thankfully, he was a total gentleman about it and brought me a robe to wear. Speaking of which, I need to remember to give that back to him.”
“Well, it’s an understandable situation. Sure, it’s not fun when your kid gets into trouble and involves innocent bystanders, but that’s how it goes when you’re a parent, I guess.”
“Yeah, but he’s not just an innocent bystander. He’s…” I leaned in closer to her just in case Maddie was listening to the conversation from around the corner. “He’s…you know.”
She sighed and nodded, as if the dad situation had slipped her mind, too. I couldn’t blame her—with the way I was handling things it was easy to forget that Valentino was Maddie’s father. It seemed to have a way of moving into the periphery then reappearing at will.
Britt held up her hands and closed her eyes, as if trying to give herself a moment to wrap her mind around everything.
“OK, so then what happened?”
“I scolded Maddie. Luckily for me, Valentino was cool about the little fact that my daughter snuck onto his property and played with his dog without either of our permission. He can be a little…stoic at times, but he really knows how to keep a cool head.”
Britt smiled. “That sounds like a good trait for a dad.”
I nodded, lowering my eyes and wrapping my fingers around my mug. “No kidding. I might be unsure of how to handle all of this, but Maddie doesn’t seem to have that problem at all. She loves him and absolutely adores his dog.”
“Then that’s going to make the whole process easier. You’re going to tell him soon, right?”
My stomach formed into a tight knot at the mere idea of having that conversation with Valentino.
I knew it needed to happen all the same.
“I’ll tell him. I…just don’t know when.”
Britt shook her head, sensing my enormous hesitation. “You can’t continue to put it off like this. It might’ve been easy to imagine keeping him out of the loop when you didn’t know how to get in touch with him. But now? He’s right next door. Hell, you could go over right now and tell him the news. I could go to your second floor, stick my head out of the window and yell it to him if I wanted to.”
“Uh, you’re not going to do that, right?”
She grinned. “Of course not. I’m only trying to prove the point of how it’d be a very easy way to handle this situation.” Her expression turned serious, as if something else had crossed her mind. “Then again, youdohave a good reason to put things off a little.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. There’s a legal part in all of this, and you might want to speak to an attorney so you can figure out what your options are and all that. But then again, maybe you don’t need to. Does Valentino seem like the kind of guy who’d try to screw you over?”
“Not even a little.”
She shrugged. “Then you may not need to worry about that part. You can tell him the news, then sit down like two adults and hash it out.”
I stared into my coffee. “You think I was too hard on Maddie?” I was curious for her take on the matter, not to mention that I didn’t mind a subject change from the Valentino situation.
She shook her head. “Doesn’t sound like it at all. Kids at that age are like that.”
“So, this is normal?”
“Totally. It’s hard to punish them too, since they don’t really know how to connect what they did with the consequence. They just know they did something that upset you. But it sounds like Mads was about as receptive as you could’ve hoped.”
“Valentino was so good about it,” I said, shaking my head. “A total natural. And the crazy thing is that he thinks he’s not a kid person.”
Britt grinned. “Well, kid person or not, he’s going to be in for quite a surprise.”
She was right. More than that, I knew the conversation couldn’t wait any longer.
Maybe, as scary as it seemed, tonight was the night.
Chapter 15
