“Give me my phone back,” I hear him say.
“Hannanah, is that you?” Seth says. My heart does a little flip-flop when I hear his deep voice on the other end of the line. Stop it, Hannah.
“Uhh, yeah.” Riley lets out the loudest squeal I’ve ever heard, and I think my brain just exploded.
“What’s going on over there?” he asks after we can both semi-hear again. I explain the situation, and he pauses for a moment. I think he must have handed the phone back over to Colby and run for the hills.
“I’ll be right over. Your knight in shining armor, at your service,” he says with his boyish laugh.
“Seth, I’ve seen you around kids. It’s…not good.”
“Hannah, don’t be a butthead. I’m offering you help.”
“Don’t call me a butthead.”
“Don’t act like one,” he says.
“Okay, I’m at Tess’s house,” I say. I’m not sure how to feel about this. I’m excited that Seth wants to come help me. As much as I hate myself for it, I can’t turn down an opportunity to be around him. I should have put my foot down and told him he couldn’t come, but I’m weak. Hearing his voice and laughter on the phone turned me into a puddle.
I doubt he’ll actually be any help. He turns into some weird robotic version of Seth when kids are around. It’s actually cute and funny how much kids scare him. He runs into burning buildings for a living, but ask him to hang out with kids for a few hours, and he’s frozen in terror.
“Be there in five minutes,” he says, and then the call ends. This is not at all what I had in mind when I called Colby for help. Now I’m going to have two problems to deal with: fussy little girls and guarding my heart against all of Seth’s many charms. Tonight has just gotten significantly more complicated.
Seth arrived thirty minutes ago, and in that time, Riley has fallen in love with him. She’s currently sitting in his lap, gnawing on his fingers. I think it’s all of his calluses that have won her over. My smooth hands were not cutting it for her.
Lily has finally agreed to come out of her room and make pizza with me. I brought over ingredients to make personal pizzas for dinner, and it wouldn’t be nearly as much fun without a little sous chef beside me. Seth keeps Riley content while I chop up an onion and bell pepper.
“I don’t want any vegables,” Lily says as she watches me.
“That’s okay. I won’t tell your Mommy,” I lean in close and whisper in her ear, earning me an appreciative smile.
“Good. You can tell Daddy, though. He doesn’t make me eat green stuff when Mommy’s gone.”
I hear Seth chuckle in the living room. Thinking he’s laughing at Lily, I turn to say something about it. When I turn around, however, I see him playing with Riley. He has her sitting in his lap, facing him. Her slobbery hands are reaching up to his cheeks, and he’s squishing her face in return. Riley tries to babble, and Seth loses it.
“Hannanah, you have to come see this!” he calls to me. I place the knife out of Lily’s reach and walk over to the chair. He squishes her chubby cheeks again and laughs like he’s watching comedy gold.
“Seth, have you never played with a baby before?”
“Not really. I’ve always been afraid I would break them. I think you were the last baby I held,” he says as he continues to watch Riley’s face. I’m twenty-three. He was eight years old when I was born, but now I feel like a kid talking to her grandpa. I can just imagine him rocking on a front porch, saying things like, “When I was your age, we had to wait for dial-up internet. You can’t even imagine the screeching sound we were forced to endure.”
“Okay, old man, what do you want on your pizza?” I ask, patting his shoulder. His very muscular shoulder. I jerk my hand off him like he scorched it. I fan my face for a moment. Why is it so hot in here?
“What are you putting on yours?” he asks.
“Everything…but why does that matter? You can put anything you want on yours. Just tell me what you want.”
“I just thought maybe yours would sound better. What does ‘everything’ include?”
I proceed to list off all of the toppings I brought: pepperoni, sausage, onion, bell pepper, mushrooms, and olives. He turns his nose up at almost everything I say.
“I’ll just have pepperoni,” he decides.
“What do you mean? You can’t be serious.”
“None of the other stuff sounds good,” he says.
One minute, the guy sounds like he’s in his golden years, and the next, he sounds like a child. I now feel like I need to take on the role of mother and sneak some vegetables into his food. How does a man who looks like Seth not eat vegetables? I’m assuming he must eat healthy at least seventy-five percent of the time. No one looks this good while living on junk food.