Hip Check (New York Blades) by Deirdre Martin Read Free Book Online Page B

muttered.
    “I love you, but you are so talking out your ass,” Michelle said affectionately. “What, you think I’d be lazing around the pool all day? I’d be
working
—taking care of the kids, and trying to remind the Karles that I’m not the maid. No amount of money is worth the aggravation, trust me. And I told you, I didn’t want to be that far away from you and Dad—you know, in case Dad magically went senile overnight.”
    “Fuck you, Michelle.”
    “I’m just sayin’,” she teased. “So—?”
    “Yeah, you can borrow it. But only if you let me help you unload it. I’m serious.”
    Michelle’s shoulders sank. “Fine. But not a word out of you. You have to
swear
.”
    “What am I gonna say to him? ‘The Islanders will always be the class team of New York no matter how many Cups the Blades win’?”
    “That’s a start.”
    Michelle heard the key turning in the front door; her dad walked in, carrying two bags of groceries. He had a big smile on his face as he put them down on the table and gave her a smooch on the cheek. “Hey, kiddo. This is a surprise.”
    “I know.” She gave him a quick once-over: he looked his usual, robust self. Jamie was nuts.
    “She’s a traitor, Dad,” said Jamie.
    Michelle rolled her eyes while her father looked at her in confusion.
    “She’s going to be a live-in nanny for one of the
Blades
.” He spat the last word.
    Her father looked at her suspiciously. “Yeah?”
    “Yeah.” Michelle and her father started putting the groceries away.
    “Which one?”
    “Esa Saari.”
    Her father glanced at her brother knowingly. “The Finnish prick.”
    “Jesus, Dad!” Michelle exclaimed, overcome with exasperation. “It’s not like my job has anything to do with hockey! I’m taking care of his eight-year-old niece.”
    “I thought you were taking a long break after working for the Karles.”
    Michelle stood on tiptoes to put the ketchup in the cabinet next to the fridge, where it had been kept for as long as she could remember. “This just kind of fell into my lap. I couldn’t pass it up.”
    “I still don’t know why you left teaching,” her father said with a frown, dumping a bag of frozen peas and a box of fish sticks into the freezer. “All that education, and for what?”
    “I told you why: the money is better, I don’t have to deal with school politics or enforced curriculums, and I’d rather have a deep, lasting relationship with a couple of kids than a shallow relationship with an impossibly sized group of them. Class sizes kept getting bigger and bigger. They still are.”
    “But you were good at it.”
    Her father was right: she was as good a teacher as you could be when you were responsible for thirty-one first graders. She knew she was cut out to teach from the way her students responded to her with respect and an eagerness to learn, and from the esteem in which she was held by their parents. But even so, it gnawed at her that she couldn’t give each child the time and attention he or she deserved, and she didn’t like the way everything in the curriculum was geared toward boosting test scores. She enjoyed being in the classroom, but when it came down to the bottom line, the job wasn’t fulfilling her in the way she’d hoped, so she left. A lot of her friends thought she was nuts; how could she walk away from a job with tenure? But for Michelle, happiness trumped job security any day. She knew how fleeting life could be; how many things had her mother wanted to do that she never got to because she died young? Michelle knew she was taking a huge risk when she left teaching, but so far, it had turned out to be worth it.
    “You living-in?” her father asked.
    “Yeah. And before you say it, I know Saari’s single, I know he’s a dog, blah blah blah. He’s also my employer. Don’t worry about your poor, helpless daughter living under the same roof as ‘the Finnish prick.’ I can take care of myself.”
    “Yeah? You’re like the