The last thing she wanted to happen was for someone to get hurt, but it was hard to imagine walking away from thirty thousand dollars. How hard would it be to spend a few hours with this man for an amount that’d truly make her and Juno’s lives easier?

River closed his eyes and swallowed. When he opened them again, she saw the same conflict on his face that she felt inside. “I don’t know,” he said again.

“So why are you willing to do this?”

He lifted one shoulder. “I want to prove that I’m right.”

Jess wasn’t sure what woman would think that answer was good enough. While she could appreciate this take from an intellectual standpoint, that was exactly the problem: this was supposed to be about unquantifiable, instinctive chemistry.

Wasn’t it?

Standing, she placed her napkin on the table. “I need to think about it. I’ll call you.”

NINE

JESS WAVED TO Nana through the kitchen window and headed toward the back of the apartment. Juno was already tucked into bed with a book. Again. Fail, fail, fail. If Juno talked Pops into letting her have frozen fish sticks for dinner again, it would definitely push Jess over the edge.

Did every mom feel like this? Jess worked too much or didn’t work enough. She was spoiling Juno or Juno wasn’t getting everything she needed. Jess was a helicopter mom, or she was ignoring her kid. More often than not Jess was convinced that every decision she made was ruining Juno’s childhood in some way.

“Hey, Bug,” she said, stepping around a basket of laundry and collapsing onto the bed next to her daughter. Pigeon stood and stretched, making her way up the mattress to curl in the space between them.

Juno turned a page. “Did you know female giraffes go back to where they were born to give birth?”

Jess ran her fingers through Juno’s hair; the strands were still damp from her bath. “I did not know that.”

“The baby just plops onto the ground.” Juno threw her arms out in a dramatic splat.

“I guess if your mom is a giraffe that’d be a pretty big fall.”

Juno angled the book for her, displaying a photo of a giraffe and her baby. “But the baby just gets up and runs.” She turned the page. “And their necks have the same number of vertebrae as humans. Do you know how many that is?”

“I think seven?”

“Yep.” Juno nodded once. “Good job.”

Jess listened as her daughter read, but her head was a spin cycle, the conversation from dinner tumbling over and over and over inside. She wasn’t sure whether she was more insulted by the suggestion that she’d agree, or mad that she was thinking about agreeing. She’d be crazy to pass something like that up, right? It would make up for the Jennings account; it’d take care of health care for the rest of the year.