Matt sure didn’t plan on eating canned spaghetti. He’d left that kind of food behind when he’d gotten the hell out of the rough part of Chicago. Ari had left it behind too. But SpaghettiOs and chicken nuggets said a lot about where she’d grown up. The same kind of place he had. He could only hope it was nowhere near as bad.
“Well,” Ari said, scooping up more broccoli, salmon, and rice pilaf. “Spaghetti is a lot better with homemade sauce that has good things in it like bell peppers, mushrooms, and onions.”
Noah screwed up his face. “Onions are yucky.”
Ari dropped her jaw, and her pretty hazel eyes went wide. Matt was as caught by the slashes of topaz in the depths of her irises as he was by her scent, something light and floral.
She shook her head in amazement. “Onions make everything taste better. And garlic.”
“Ewww.” Noah wrinkled his nose with disgust.
“Don’t you like pizza?”
He nodded. “Cookie makes pizza the best.”
“Our cook,” Matt explained. “She’s Russian with a pretty complicated-sounding last name. So she asked us to call her Cookie.”
Giving Matt a little smile of thanks for the explanation, Ari turned back to Noah. “I bet Cookie puts onions and garlic in her pizza sauce.”
“Really?” Noah raised his eyebrow in a gesture that should have been too old for a five-year-old boy to pull off. But he was rather advanced, if Matt said so himself.
“Yep. Now you better finish your yummy salmon. Because it’s so good.” She forked another bite, savoring it with a purr. “Eat up.”
While Matt could barely keep his libido under control from just sitting at the same table with her, Noah did as he was told, making yum-yum sounds the way she had.
When Ari laughed, delight sparkling in her eyes, Matt knew he’d been an idiot to think he had things under control. It didn’t matter that she was sweet and innocent and ten years younger than he. His thoughts weren’t brotherly, fatherly, or even boss-y. Everything she said captivated him and mesmerized him, as easily as she charmed Noah.
Desperate to get his mind off her charms, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a new smartphone, setting it by her plate. “I’d like you to use this.” When she didn’t immediately reach for it, he added, “You said you can’t get texts on your phone, but if I’m in a meeting where I can text but not talk, I need to be able to get hold of you when, where, and however I can.”
She finally picked it up. “I must be the last person in Silicon Valley who doesn’t know how to use one of these.”
“I’ll show you,” Noah offered.
She grinned at him. “Thank you.”
“You can switch your number over and transfer your contacts,” Matt added. “Of course, you’re free to use it for personal calls as well.”
“Thank you,” she said again. Then she waggled the phone at Noah. “We can use this on our adventures to look up the names of birds and check out maps. Cool, huh?” Noah nodded enthusiastically.
Matt liked that she didn’t take anything for granted. He’d known plenty of people who took without even a thank-you, but she was unique in so many ways. God help him, he wanted to explore her uniqueness in every way he could…
Daniel was going to kill him for his thoughts. And Matt’s foster mother, Susan, would be appalled.
“So, Noah,” she said, “I’ve been planning all the fun things we can do together. Have you ever seen a dinosaur?”
“In a movie. It was real scary.” Noah’s eyes were wide and round.
“Movie dinosaurs can be scary because they roar.” She roared and Noah laughed.
Matt’s heart squeezed. Watching his son laugh always made him catch his breath with wonder. He loved the kid so damn much.
“There’s a dinosaur skeleton at the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park that is so awesome, you’re going to fall in love with dinosaurs.” She looked at Matt. “It’s kind of expensive, but the membership is tax deductible.”
He couldn’t believe she was actually considering his expenses. Didn’t she know just how much money he had? It wasn’t like when he was a kid and he went to the museum only on the rare days when they opened it up to the public for free. But he realized that she’d probably used the free days too. “A membership is great. But you don’t have to worry about ticket prices. I have enough money for whatever activities you think Noah would like.”
“That doesn’t mean I should waste it when it makes more sense to get a family membership we can use for a year.”
Family. Matt knew how lucky he was to have Noah and the Mavericks as his family. Will, Sebastian, Evan, and Daniel were his blood brothers not by birth but by adversity. Bob and Susan, Daniel’s parents, had taken them all in as teenagers when they needed it most, providing the love and nurturing none of them had found at home. There was Lyssa too—something told Matt that she and Ari would become fast friends. Will had fallen in love with Harper and her brother, Jeremy, and Sebastian was head over heels for Charlie and her mother. Only Evan’s wife, Whitney, had never felt like family. Nor had any of Matt’s nannies. But he could see Noah falling under Ari’s spell.
Matt couldn’t allow himself to do so as well.
Pushing his plate away, he propped his elbows on the table, fingers laced. “What else do you have planned?” None of the previous nannies had suggested outings.
Ari mimicked him, pushing away a plate so clean that not even the parsley garnish on the salmon was left. “Do you like the zoo, Noah?”
He bobbed his head, trailing his child-size fork through the remains of his salmon and broccoli. “Gorillas are my favorite.”
“Me too.” She grinned. “How about mummies?”
“Aren’t they scary?”
“No, at least not the ones at the mummy museum. And later in the year we can visit the elephant seals at Año Nuevo.”
“Is it safe for kids?” Matt had heard the giant bulls could move amazingly fast.
“The docents keep you out of the way of the fighting males.” She patted his hand to put him at ease, and though the touch was light and easy, heat spread like wildfire through him. She didn’t seem to notice his reaction as she asked Noah, “Have you ever walked across the Golden Gate Bridge? We could even ride bikes.”