It’s funny, Rudy’s the only man I’ve ever been with. And short of a brief teenage obsession with Hugh Jackman after watching the X-men movies, I’d never really been attracted to another man. But there’s just something special about the nerdy veterinarian who’d stolen my heart when I’d thought it was in pieces for good.
He pulls worn blue denim up over his legs, and while he still looks good in jeans, they definitely don’t leave me with the same hypnotizing view, so I snap out of it. “So what do you think? Back to the website?”
“It’s that or we try and find a daycare,” he shrugs.
“And most of those are closed on weekends, so I don’t think that would be particularly successful.”
“Also true.”
“Well, hey, at worst maybe we can find a temporary sitter for a couple of days or something? Shouldn’t be that bad.”
Rudy sighs and rubs the back of his neck, a sure sign that he’s feeling stressed, and I close the distance between us with one long stride, coiling my arms around his waist and pressing my lips to his shoulder. “We’ll figure this out, baby, don’t worry,” I assure him.
It’s kind of a fucked-up thought, but it warms my heart a little bit that Rudy cares so much about making sure Brie is taken care of. He loves my daughter like his own. Of course, he’s basically been helping me raise her since she was six months old.
He turns in my arms and presses his forehead to mine for a moment, inhaling deeply before tilting his head and kissing me. The kiss is slow, sweet, spreading through my veins and igniting a flood of desire.
But before I can let it carry me off and leave behind my good sense, he pulls away. “Come on,” he says, “Let’s go start looking through available sitters. We can update our old ad and see if we get any hits in time, too.”
“Sounds like a good plan,” I nod, letting out a slow breath.
He grins. “Poor baby. I might have to make you feel better tonight after we get the Princess to sleep,” he winks.
He heads out of the room without giving me the chance to shoot back with a clever response, but I’m grinning like a fool as I take a moment to collect myself and then tag along after him.
Brie is still settled happily watching her show, and by the time I step into the room, Rudy’s already settling with his laptop. “You could have used mine, it’s already on,” I tell him.
He shrugs, “Didn’t want to mess with any of your work stuff or anything.”
It’s another thing I love about Rudy. He cares about letting me have my own privacy, my own space. And I feel the same way. We trust each other, and we want to be with each other, or we wouldn’t be here. But I like feeling like we both still get to be our own individuals, on top of being partners.
“Well, then I’ll use my laptop and we can double-team it. I’ll take even-numbered pages, you take odd?” I suggest.
“That’s a pretty good idea, love,” he says.
“Don’t sound so surprised, I have those occasionally,” I tease him.
The two of us dove into our search for a nanny. “Oh, wait, hang on, let me put up our ad,” Rudy remarks, “See if we can get any hits.”
So while I’m clicking through search pages, he updates our profile seeking someone to watch Brie during the week. I save links for a few possible candidates so the two of us can go over them together, but I’m not finding anyone who strikes me as exceptionally promising.
“Papa?” Brie asks suddenly.
“Yeah, baby?” Rudy replies.
“Ice cream?”
“That’s right, I forgot that Daddy resorted to some bribery today,” he says, eyeing me.
“He sure did, and S-P-R-I-N-K-L-E-S are still on the table as a bargaining chip if we need them,” I reply, spelling the word out to hide my message from the tiny sugar fiend.
Rudy snorts and shakes his head. “Yeah, you know what, Princess, I could go for some ice cream, too, but how about we all wait and go after dinner, ok?”
She mulls this over for a moment, clearly not pleased about having to wait, but when Rudy reminds her that Saturday night means pizza night, she brightens. The idea of ice cream as a reward for pizza? That’s a trade she can live with.
So we resume our hunt, finally ending up on one screen to pick and choose together, sending out a few e-mails and crossing our fingers that we can find someone temporary, at least.
And when both of us are starting to go cross-eyed from eyeballing computer screens, we decide it’s dinnertime.