He let her go and walked past her, into the small office.  A quick check of the terminal revealed messages from both Percy and Penny, but nothing from Molly.  Feeling an odd spurt of confusion and alarm, he opened the first message from Percy and discovered, to his surprise, that Molly had hired an older girl to take care of the kids.  Percy seemed enthused about this development, which puzzled Kurt until he placed the caretaker’s name and remembered just how pretty she was.  Penny, on the other hand, complained long and loudly about having an older girl watching her at all times.  Apparently, the older girl had made the mistake of believing Molly’s instructions.  Kurt’s daughter had found herself going through her homework again and again until the babysitter – Penny seemed to believe that the older girl was her babysitter, which she found very insulting – was satisfied.

Kurt gritted his teeth, then started to record a message.  It was hard to blame Molly for hiring help – and besides, it sounded as though the new girl was doing an excellent job.  Penny would just have to get used to being supervised, at least until she started working up to the standards Kurt expected.  Kurt finished his message by promising a reward, as Rose had suggested, then recorded a second one for Percy.  At least his son seemed happy with the situation.

At least until it gets embarrassing, Kurt thought, remembering his own youth.  A girl more than three or four years older than he’d been would never have given him a second glance.  Percy would waste time trying to impress her, then either do something stupid or get over his crush.  Kurt briefly considered trying to warn him, before deciding that it was pointless.  His father had tried and Kurt hadn’t listened.  It was astonishing just how smart the old man had become in the years between Kurt reaching his teenage years and growing out of them.

There was a tap on the door, which opened to reveal Rose.  She looked cleaner, Kurt was relieved to see, but she still looked pleased with herself.  Kurt waved her to a chair, then spun his own chair around to face her.  Rose sat down, looking past him to see the monitor.

“Did you hear anything from your daughter?”

“She’s complaining about the girl Molly has hired as a ... babysitter,” Kurt said, loading his voice with as much disdain as a teenage girl could cram into an otherwise innocuous word.  “I need to speak to you about the exercise.”

Rose looked thoughtful.  “Pushed it a little far, did I?”

“A little,” Kurt agreed, dryly.  “You do realise we have reporters on this ship, don’t you?”

“I believe I might have noticed,” Rose said, equally dryly.  “One of them wanted me to pose on a starfighter in my underwear.”

Kurt blinked at her.  “Why ...?”