The following week, Mitchell had lunch with his good friend Stuart.
"So how's the old love life?" Stuart asked, being to the point as usual.
"Okay, I guess. I actually had a date last week."
"No kidding. Great. How'd it go?"
"The date was terrific, but I don't think it's going anyplace, certainly not where she wants to go."
"Who was it?"
"A cute little mom from Timothy's school. Said I was too intense for her. Nice girl, just not for me."
"Sorry to hear that," Stuart replied. "But at least it's a start. So how's it going with the nanny?"
"Good! I mean, really great ... I mean ..."
"What do you mean?"
"Emily is terrific with the kids. She gets them up in the morning, dressed fed and off to school. I don't have to give it a second thought. When I come home at night, the kids have finished their homework, there's a hot meal on the stove, and the house is neat and clean. It's sort of weird, almost like Angela was still there, except for all the bullshit."
"Bullshit?"
"Well, maybe you didn't know, but things weren't going so well between us for a quite a while before she got sick."
"I'm sorry to hear that, but I didn't know and you never told me," Stuart remarked, sounding a bit hurt at not having been a confidant when Mitchell's marriage had gone sour. "I guess that Angela never said anything to Allison about it either, at least that I know of. But honestly, I did suspect something, and with all that happened afterwards you sort of forget about it."
"Doesn't matter. That's not the point. Point is that this girl is fantastic. Emily has taken so much of the burden off me that I find myself on the weekend finding extra special kind of things to do with the kids because I haven't had to be with them all week long, nagging them about homework or picking up their rooms, or finding crumpled snack wrappers on the couch."
"And that's a problem?" Stuart asked.
"No. It's not a problem."
"Then what is it?"
"Well, the trouble with Emily is that she is too perfect. She's beautiful and sweet and sexy and everything that I could wish for in a woman."
"But?"
"But she's more than twenty years younger than me and is driving me crazy, stark raving fucking nuts."
"What do you mean?"
"The way she dresses so sexy and appealing, little things she says, nice little things she does for me, the way I catch little glimpses of her here and there around the house."
"Do you think that she's doing it on purpose?"
"No, I don't think that at all. She seems pretty innocent about the way she acts around me."
"So what's the problem?"
"It's like she's woken something up inside me that I put to bed a long, long time ago. When I'm around her I get ideas, I start to forget the difference in our ages."
"That shouldn't be a problem, Mitch. You're a good-looking guy; you've kept yourself in shape. You look younger than your age. You've got a nice house, great paying job. I'd think you would be attractive to a lot of women, young or old."
"But I can't get involved with her. She's less than half my age, she has a boyfriend, she's still in college, she's the same age as ... well, I could easily be her father. Hell, I'm probably older than her father for Christ sake!"
"So what you're telling me is that you're like falling for her?"
"Hell no! Well, maybe not. I don't think so. It's just that after I come home and we sit down like a family and have dinner, and we talk and share the day, and then the kids go off and we clean up, I just find myself feeling ... feeling ... feeling ..."
"Like she's Angela?"
"Oh, no! And God, forgive me, better."
"So what's the trouble?"
"The trouble is that I ... she ... we ... I don't know how to put it ..."
Stuart pushed back from the table and looked at him intently. They had been close friends for years and could read each other like a Dick and Jane book. "Sounds to me like you're falling for her."
"Fuck no!"
"Pfft! Hey, don't blow this one off, old man. I think you have to have a talk with her, or better yet, a long talk with yourself. Sounds like there are some issues here that you have to get straight in your head before you say a word to her."
Mitchell had that long talk with himself off and on all that afternoon. He had no intention of falling in love, not with Emily. What would his kids think? What would his friends think? What would his family think? What would his-then he realized something. He was so concerned about what other people thought and felt that he was paying no attention to what he thought or felt.
What did he feel? Sure, maybe it was wrong on so many levels, in so many ways, but Mitchell couldn't deny what he felt in his heart for Emily. Once her friend Katie had planted the seed in his mind and Stuart had watered it just a bit, Mitchell knew that there was something special about Emily. He loved the feeling of anticipation each time he expected to see her, and the tingling feeling each time he did see her. Did she feel the same? The only other person who mattered was Emily, and again his old buddy, Stuart, was right. Mitchell had to talk to her about it, but he would wait for the right time and place.
* * *
The next weekend, Mitchell hosted his annual pool party for the closest of his neighbors. It turned out that Emily didn't have any plans that weekend and joined in the festivities. It was a terrific day. The neighbors and friends gathered in the afternoon and swam and played in and around the pool, enjoying the brilliant sunshine.
"So who's the sexy little girlfriend?" asked Pete Winter, as Emily passed by in a flowered bikini that was just a bit more modest than her other suits.
"That's Emily, my nanny," Mitchell replied.
"Nanny, huh?" Pete replied. "Karen and I had seen her around town and we figured that you had picked up a little cupcake to sweeten your life."
"Oh, no. Nothing like that," he said admiring the way Emily moved about the neighbors like a perfect hostess, making sure that they were all attended to. "Strictly business."
"Yeah, sure," Pete replied. And he wasn't the only one to say anything. A few of the others asked about her, but Mitchell went through the same explanation. She was just his nanny, a nice young girl with a boyfriend who was working her way through college. He must have been pretty convincing because as the afternoon went on, even he was beginning to believe that Emily was just the nanny.
Late in the afternoon Mitchell grilled some hamburgers and sweet corn and the neighbors passed around some special homemade salads and side dishes that they had brought to share. By early evening, most of those who had kids bid their goodbyes after a final swim. By midnight only a few diehards were left scattered about the various klatches of deck chairs talking and laughing quietly among themselves in the aquamarine glow of the pool lights.
Emily and Mitchell found themselves sitting on a pair of deck chairs at the far end of the pool away from the others. She had pulled on a tank top over her swimsuit. As they sipped their wine, she casually untied her suit top and pulled it off from underneath her top. When she noticed that Mitchell was watching her closely, she grinned.
"It was wet and kind of bugging me," she said, the flimsy suit top dangling from her fingers.
"Well, now it's bugging me," Mitch replied, nodding toward Emily as she sat beside him, the snug tank top dampened from her wet body and clinging to every lush curve of her breasts, including her stiffened nipples that were protruding provocatively.
