by Teri Wilson
“Wow, that’s more than just a line or two. This person seems almost obsessed with what you’ve been writing.” Meghan pulled a face.
Jack closed his eyes. What was happening?
“I can’t believe your night nanny is Queen Bee. I had no idea.” Jack’s mom shook her head. “Did you?”
He wasn’t sure how to answer that, so he didn’t.
Because deep down, he’d had a pretty good inkling as to Queen Bee’s identity. He’d just managed to convince himself otherwise, especially after the diaper article.
Actually, that wasn’t completely true. On some level, he’d known since that fateful day in the library when she’d dropped the truth at his feet. He’d somehow hoped he could wish it away, because he wasn’t sure where to go from here.
You have to tell her you’re Fired Up from Lovestruck.
He ground his teeth as he watched more of his words flash across the picture. Taken altogether, they looked so much worse than he could have possibly imagined. No wonder Wade had been worried about him. Now everyone in America would know what he’d been up to in his spare time.
At least they didn’t know who he was. It was his only saving grace.
“Jack, sweetheart. Are you okay?” His mom eyed him with concern.
Say something.
“Fine,” he lied. He wasn’t fine at all. He was a mess.
She scrunched her face. “You smell like a campfire.”
“Occupational hazard,” he said absently, still mesmerized by what was playing out on his television screen.
His mother was only half paying attention, now that the interview was drawing to a close. She cleaned the twins’ messy hands with a damp cloth and replaced their mashed bananas with sippy cups of apple juice. “Why don’t you take a quick shower and get cleaned up before I head out?”
“Sounds good. Thanks, Mom,” he muttered, reaching to turn the television off.
Maybe a blast of cold water could help him forget what he’d just seen. Then again, maybe not. Because in the moment before the screen went dark, Meghan Ashley had a special message, just for him.
“Fired Up in Lovestruck, come out of hiding. The world wants to know who you are!”
Chapter Ten
Madison slumped in the backseat of the taxi that was hauling her from Burlington back to Lovestruck after her Good Morning Sunshine appearance. The fifty miles was sure to cost a fortune, but picking up the tab was the least the Bee could do after forcing her to confront every single one of Fired Up in Lovestruck’s insults in front of millions of television viewers. If she ended up staying in Vermont permanently, she’d probably need to learn how to drive. Lovestruck was small enough to navigate on foot or via her antique cruiser bike, but getting to the airport was another story. If she became an actual Lovestruck resident, she’d occasionally need to travel more than a handful of miles, and as of now, she couldn’t even rent a car.
Wait. She frowned at the dreamy, mist-covered mountains through the car window. What was she thinking? She wasn’t going to stay in Lovestruck. Staying had never been her Plan B. It had never even been her Plan C or D. Since the day Anna Wintour had oh-so-fashionably handed Madison her pink slip, she’d had one plan and one plan only: New York or bust. Lovestruck was nothing more than a layover.
She was just tired; that was all. It had been almost ten o’clock by the time she’d gotten all settled into her hotel near Times Square the night before, and her call time at the NBC studios this morning had been 4 a.m. Plus, she’d barely slept a wink. It was funny, really. When she’d first moved to Vermont, she’d missed the city noises of Manhattan so much that she’d resorted to using an app on her phone at bedtime. It had been weeks since she’d needed the wail of sirens and honking horns to lull her to sleep, though.
She blamed Ella and Emma for the fact that she now preferred lullabies and bedtime stories to ambient noise. As challenging as it could be to get two infants to sleep at the same time, there was something undeniably comforting about their soothing bedtime ritual. It was growing on Madison. A lot of things were.
She’d been dreading the Good Morning Sunshine segment with every fiber of her being, but the closer her flight had gotten to JFK, the more excited she’d been to set foot in her beloved Big Apple once again. The lights of Manhattan glowed beneath the airplane window like starlight, luminous and beautiful in the velvety darkness.
But she’d forgotten how gritty and overheated summer in the city could be. She’d forgotten how the rumble of the subway beneath her feet sometimes made her feel sick to her stomach, just like she’d forgotten how packed the sidewalks of Times Square always were. The simple act of getting from the airport to her hotel had been so sticky and exhausting that she’d found herself inexplicably homesick for Lovestruck.
And now here she was, sitting in the backseat of a cab on its way to Jack’s house, glancing at the time on her phone every few seconds in anticipation.
Or maybe she was mistaking the tangle of nerves low in her belly for anticipation when it really meant dread. She’d tried to get ahold of Jack to explain the whole Queen Bee thing before he saw it on television, like everyone else. Naturally, he’d been too busy saving baby ducks, putting out fires and being generally heroic to answer his phone. Just as well, because she wasn’t quite sure why she felt such a need to confess. He probably didn’t care what she got up to in her spare time. She was his night nanny, nothing more.
Still, when the cab pulled up in front of his familiar, cozy cottage, her heart gave an undeniable tug. She gathered her things, paid the cab driver and tried to tell herself it was only jet lag. Because she couldn’t be developing real feelings for Jack Cole. Likewise, she had no business gazing wistfully in the shop windows of the posh baby boutiques on Park Avenue, fantasizing about going on a full-on baby fashionista shopping spree for Emma and Ella. But she’d done exactly that after her segment had ended, when her time would have been better spent pounding the pavement for a real job.
“Thank you,” she said, pressing a stack of bills into the driver’s hand.
“Anytime. Welcome home.” The older man nodded toward the overnight bag slung over her shoulder. “Let me get that for you, dear.”
Welcome home.
An annoying little lump lodged itself in her throat, and she swallowed around it as she handed the driver her bags. She knew better than to argue with a Vermonter, and honestly, having someone care enough to haul her things and walk her to Jack’s door wasn’t terrible. Such a thing never would have happened in New York—not in a million years.
“Thanks again, I’ll get it from here,” she said once they’d reached the threshold.
The driver ambled back to his car and pulled away, leaving Madison alone to take a deep breath and knock lightly on the door, in case Emma and Ella were sleeping.
The seconds before Jack answered her knock were excruciating. For a moment she managed to convince herself that he’d been too busy saving the good citizens of Lovestruck—human and animal alike—from imminent danger while also caring for his infant daughters to watch Good Morning Sunshine. But it didn’t matter whether or not he’d seen it for himself. The small town rumor mill had had all day to work its magic. Someone would have filled him in by now.
At last, the door swung open, and for an insane instant, Madison felt like throwing herself at him, which was ridiculous. She’d just returned from a quickie overnight jaunt to her favorite city on the planet, not a voyage around the world.
“Hi.” She smiled a nervous smile.
“Hi,” he said back, gaze flitting briefly to her partially smoothed-down hair. Her curls had started to spring back to life the closer she’d gotten to Vermont, as if they’d sensed her reentry into the land that had killed her best hair straightener. “The girls are sleeping. Come on in.”
She could tell just by the way Jack was looking at her that he knew
all about Good Morning Sunshine. He knew about Queen Bee and her war with Fired Up in Lovestruck. She may as well have been standing on his front porch completely naked.
“Sorry about the baggage.” She nodded toward her overnight bag as she stepped inside, although the sentiment applied in myriad ways. “I came here straight from the airport.”
He took her luggage from her, along with the pastel shopping bags filled with sweet little onesies and ruffled bibs for the girls, and gently set them down on top of a worn leather trunk he kept by the door. Ever the gentleman, ever the hero.
She suddenly felt like the biggest liar in the world. “Jack, I...”
“Madison, I...” he said at the same time, both of them talking over each other.
Then they both stopped and laughed. And Madison felt just like she had when they’d knelt beside the bathtub together, on the verge of something wonderful.
“I’m sorry,” she blurted. She didn’t want to stand with one foot in New York and the other right here, with Jack and the twins, when the here and now was beginning to feel far more important than anything else.
His eyes went dark, and he shook his head. As usual, she had no clue what he was thinking, but something about his expression made her heart clench. Maybe the fact that she was Queen Bee was a bigger deal than she’d thought. She’d expected him to be surprised, but thought they’d eventually laugh about it and move on. He’d probably never want to kiss her again, since she hadn’t been exactly one hundred percent honest about who she was, but that was okay—for the best, really.
Almost kissing Jack Cole had turned out to be a massive distraction. Actually kissing him might be more than she could handle.
She bit down hard on her lip. Stop thinking about kissing. But his signature brooding expression was doing strange things to her insides. She felt all fluttery and warm, like she’d just been sipping brandy by a fire on a cold winter’s night instead of trekking all over the Northeast in the dog days of summer. She averted her gaze in an effort to steady herself, but her attention snagged on the big wooden bowl of apples on the kitchen island and it reminded her of their run-in at the Village Market.
“Please don’t apologize,” he finally said, sounding oddly tortured.
The fruit in the bowl glistened like rubies in the moonlight streaming through the kitchen windows. Madison couldn’t seem to take her eyes off it, or maybe she was just looking for a distraction from this conversation, which had suddenly taken an awkward turn.
Funny, she’d never figured out why Jack needed so many apples.
* * *
She kept apologizing.
Jack had to get her to stop. He needed to just tell her the truth and admit he was Fired Up in Lovestruck, because he couldn’t bear to stand there and listen to her say she was sorry when he was the one with so much to apologize for.
“I should have told you sooner,” she said. “I actually tried a couple of times, and I know it must have been weird to see me talking about my column on television.”
She had no clue precisely how weird it had been.
“So I really am sorry. I hope this doesn’t...um...change anything?” There were questions in her luminous eyes—so many questions, and Jack had an awful feeling that the answers might break her heart.
“Please. Just—” he held up his hands “—don’t.”
Madison’s gaze moved from something over his left shoulder back to his face, and she gave him a wobbly smile that made him feel like his heart had just been put through a paper shredder. “Fine. I’ll stop.”
He raked a hand through his hair, panicked at the thought of how to proceed.
It wasn’t as if he hadn’t had time to consider the wording of his confession. He’d thought of little else during the hours he’d waited for her to turn up at his door. He’d even practiced his conciliatory speech in between Ella and Emma’s diaper changes and mealtimes. He’d figured it all out, too. He knew just what to say...
Or he had, anyway. Now that she was there, standing close enough to touch, words escaped him. He didn’t want to admit that he’d been actively trying to sabotage her career since the day she’d begun writing for the Bee. He wanted to gather her into his arms, pull her close and tell her how much he’d missed her in the days and nights that had passed since they’d knelt beside the bubble bath together. He wanted to kiss her until her knees buckled, and then he wanted to carry her to his bed and show her how much the past few weeks had changed him—how much she’d changed him.
He felt like a man again. Not a dad, not a firefighter, not a husband, but a man—a man completely enchanted by a woman who’d swept into his life with her accusations of apple thievery and against all odds, had woken him up after a long, lonely slumber.
And now with five terrible words, it would all come to an end.
I’m Fired Up in Lovestruck.
He inhaled a ragged breath. “There’s something I need to say.”
She wrapped her arms around her slender frame as if steadying herself for what was about to come. “I’m listening.”
“I’m sure you’ve heard about my ex-wife through the Lovestruck grapevine. Small-town gossip tends to go into overdrive when a mom walks out on her husband and newborn twins.”
Madison nodded, clearing her throat. “I might have heard a thing or two...”
“I’d like to say I didn’t see it coming, but that would be a lie. Natalie and I hadn’t been happy for quite some time, and to be honest, when she left, I felt responsible. I’ll always know that it’s partly my fault that Emma and Ella will never know what it’s like to have a mom.” He looked away so he wouldn’t have to see the pity in her gaze. He’d never wanted anyone to regard him that way, especially Madison.
Why was he telling her these things? Doing a deep dive into his most secret emotions hadn’t been his intention at all. He never talked about Natalie—ever.
But maybe if he could explain what a mess he’d been, he could make her understand why he’d started writing the letters. Doubtful, but he’d already started going down that road and now he had to finish it.
“You know it wasn’t your fault, right?” Madison said, her voice going all soft and tender. Jack was beginning to hate himself all over again. “Even if your marriage was over, she didn’t have to leave those two little girls.”
Jack nodded. His family and friends had expressed the same sentiment time and time again, but it was a tough thing to remember when he imagined all the Mother’s Days in Ella and Emma’s future—all the birthdays, dance recitals and Christmas Eves. As hard as he tried, he knew Natalie’s absence would always be an open wound he’d never be able to fix all on his own.
“I wish it were that simple but it’s not. What I’m trying to say is that I wasn’t in a very good place. I was going through the motions and doing the best I could, and...” I took out all my frustrations on a byline, and as it turns out, that byline was the one person I finally wanted to let in.
His throat grew thick, and Madison was looking up at him, eyes wide and luminous, and he couldn’t bring himself to say it. Not yet. “And then I met you, and things changed.”
It was every bit as truthful as his secret identity, maybe more so. But she still didn’t have a crucial part of the puzzle.
“How so?” Madison took a step closer and rested a delicate hand on his chest. It was the gentlest of touches, but Jack felt it down to his very core. “Tell me how things changed.”
They were entering dangerously intimate territory, and even though Jack’s head told him to stay put, his stubborn heart wanted to follow Madison right down that road of temptation.
“It got a lot messier, for starters.” He made an exploding motion with one of his hands. “Baby powder everywhere.”
She swatted playfully at him. “Very funny. We both know I’m far from perfect, but you refuse to fire me, so here I am.�
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Yes, here she was, and Jack couldn’t leave it at that. She needed to know the truth—all of it, not just the terrible part.
So he touched a fingertip to her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze and with quiet sincerity, he said, “That’s because I find all your imperfections utterly perfect.”
“You do?” She rose up on her tiptoes, and suddenly her pillowy lips were within kissing distance.
“I do,” he said, and it took every ounce of self-control he could muster to take a small backward step. But he still hadn’t finished telling her what he needed to say, and kissing her now would make him the worst sort of liar.
Madison blinked, clearly confused by his sudden withdrawal. For a brief moment her face crumpled, and then she cleared her throat and pasted on a smile.
“Sorry, I...” She shook her head and let out a nervous laugh. “We shouldn’t.”
“Wait. I just need to finish...”
“No explanation needed. Truly. I mean, you’re right, of course. This—” she gestured back and forth between them “—would never work.”
Jack’s mouth abruptly closed before he could manage to steer the conversation back toward his troublesome secret identity. He felt himself frown.
She thought they would never work?
“You know,” she continued. “Because of the whole nanny and boss thing.”
“Right,” he said. The fact that she was his night nanny was just the tip of the iceberg. Madison just wasn’t privy to that information...yet.
“Plus, you have a family to take care of. I’m not exactly mom material, as that horrible letter writer is so intent on reminding me over and over again.” Ouch. “Plus, I don’t even live here. Not really.”
She was stumbling over her sentences, talking a mile a minute, which he usually found adorable, if somewhat difficult to keep up with. But his mind snagged on one tiny, significant detail that wasn’t adorable in any way.
