Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 97287 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 486(@200wpm)___ 389(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97287 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 486(@200wpm)___ 389(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
Wow, inappropriate. Look away, girl.
I look back down at my own clay, only to find I’ve dug my nails into it. Thank god James doesn’t seem to notice, though, as he says, “Really enjoying Baymax! at the moment. You know, the big puffy robot.”
“Baymax!” Tor yells, raising his clay-covered fists in the air excitedly.
“We’re aware of Baymax,” I tell him.
“I bet you’ve seen a lot of kids’ movies and the like, over and over again as a nanny, aye?” He glances at me, and I make the mistake of meeting his gaze. His gaze is striking, enough that it makes me dizzy for a moment. He really shouldn’t be so close to me, with his eyes and his scruffy, manly jaw, and the scent of his woodsy cologne. The correct distance for him would be across the room. No, down at the other end of the house. At the end of the road. Buried in a snowbank.
“Perks of the job,” I admit, my attention going back to my clay. I originally had the intention of making a horse, but now it’s starting to resemble a triceratops. That’s fine, I can pivot.
“Do you think you’ll have kids one day?” he asks, and it takes me by such surprise that I drop the clay, staining my jeans.
I stare at him wide-eyed, fumbling to pick it up. “Me?”
“Yeah,” he says with a frown. “You’re such a natural. Is that an inappropriate question?”
“Maybe…” I mean, it is when he’s asking.
He lifts a shoulder in a shrug and goes back to working at his clay. “I get it. It’s none of my business.”
We fall silent for a few moments until Bjorn suddenly gets up and abandons his mogwai, heading over to the coloring books in the castle tent.
“Are you done?”
“Yeah!” he yells.
“Are you sure?” It only looks half-done, but it isn’t new for Bjorn to abandon things when he finally gets bored of them. “Because I’ll have to enter it in the competition as is.”
He mumbles something and starts coloring erratically.
“Well, then, I give up,” James says, putting down his mound of clay and gesturing to it. “I mean, this is supposed to be a bear and it’s just a blob with eyes.”
“Baymax!” Tor says cheerfully, pointing to the blob.
We work on our clay for a little while longer, Bjorn now in chatter mode as he colors from the castle, telling us a story about a dragon and Baymax and some kind of frog—I don’t know, his story went off the rails for a bit.
“Sorry if I got intrusive,” James says in a low voice, leaning in for a moment so I get another whiff of pine and amber.
I shake my head. “It’s fine. It’s not a heavy topic or anything. I just…” I bite my lip for a moment in thought. “I actually don’t want kids. Is that weird? I have a feeling it’s weird considering I love being around kids and I love being a nanny, but…no. I don’t want them for myself. I never have.”
“That’s not weird,” he assures me. “It’s honest. It means you know yourself.”
I hope he’s right about that. Sometimes it feels like I don’t know myself at all.
I give him a quick smile. “And you? Do you want children?”
He ponders that for a moment, poking his finger into the clay. “You know what? I haven’t thought about it much. Maybe it will change when I meet the right person one day. Maybe it won’t. But I think deep down I know my answer is no.” He gives me a smile that’s borderline vulnerable, making him look boyish. “With the childhood I had, could you blame me?”
“Not at all,” I say, resting my hand on his arm. His skin is so soft and warm, the muscles strong, that it takes me a moment to realize what I’ve done.
I take my hand away, clearing my throat. “Okay, boys, I know I need to get you cleaned up for dinner, so how about we have our competition now? I’ll build a little stage for your art so your parents can see it later.”
I can feel James’s eyes burning on me, but I don’t meet them as I bustle around the room and gather up an even stack of books and a Scrabble board to act as a makeshift stage. Then I take their works and proudly place them on it.
“Who won?” Bjorn asks, coming over and peering at the creations.
“Well, you won scariest creature,” I tell him. “And Tor won cutest creature.”
Bjorn points at James. “And what did he win?”
Since Bjorn is talking in Norwegian again, James looks perplexed.
“James won an A for effort,” I tell them in English.
“Oh, it’s just like secondary school all over again,” James grumbles under his breath.
All four of us make quick work of tidying the playroom, then I take the boys to their room to get them cleaned up. There was a quiet kind of ease just being with James like that, without too much tension getting in the way. But the more I find myself in situations like that with him, the more I’ll actually start liking him again.