“Thank you,” he said, “for everything.”
“Anytime,” I said, placing their check on the corner of the table. “Next time when you come in and get ice cream with your pie, you can tell me how your bunny is doing.”
“He sleeps all the time. I think it’s because he’s a boy,” she said.
“What makes you say that?”
“My teacher said men are lazy.”
“What?” I asked. “Oh, is this Mrs. Henderson? Yeah, she’s going through a divorce. Maybe don’t pay any attention to what she says about boys right now, okay?” I said with a nervous giggle.
“I think the rabbit sleeps all the time because he’s overfed,” Max said, taking a bite of pie. “So this will make us lazy too, all this food and then good pie on top of it.”
“Are we gonna be lazy bunnies at home?” Sadie giggled.
“Sure, baby. We can be lazy bunnies and watch some Paw Patrol after you have your bath.”
“Daddy, I’m not a baby. I don’t watch baby stuff.”
“Ouch. Okay, we can watch CSPAN. Find out what’s going on in Congress today,” he said. I snickered.
“Even I’m not that grown-up,” I said.
“Neither am I,” he admitted. “But if she wants to watch a grown-up show, it’s gonna be government operations. That should cure anyone of wanting to be an adult.”
“I think I’d need some serious sugar to keep me awake through CSPAN. How ‘bout one of those boring History Channel shows?”
“Those are excellent. Either you love the History Channel or you’re—”
“Under the age of seventy?” I teased. He laughed. Max had a great laugh, deep and rumbly. I felt my cheeks flush.
“Fine, so maybe I watch TV like I qualify for Medicare. I’m an old dad. I’m required to grill all summer, complain about the weather no matter what it is, and yell at kids to stay off my lawn.”
“Daddy, you watch outside man shows,” Sadie proclaimed.
I looked to Max for clarification. “Survival shows, hunting shows, that kind of stuff.”
I looked at Sadie who shrugged. “He yells at the TV when they chop down trees wrong. When I’m trying to sleep, he’ll go, ’you wasted so much wood.’”
I laughed, “So you heckle Bear Grylls?”
“You can’t watch it without heckling. Trust me,” he said.
“I’ll take your word for it. I don’t get to watch a lot of TV.”
“Masha and the Bear is really, really good,” Sadie said. “And Elena of Avalor —or it would be if we had Disney.”
“Solid burn, kiddo,” he said, clearly amused. “We’re not getting Disney. We already have Netflix, and my goal in life isn’t to get you to watch more TV.”
“Baby Yoda’s on Disney!” she protested.
“You are not watching that show. It isn’t a kid’s show.”
“Maggie’s mom let us watch it,” she said.
“And that’s why you don’t go play at Maggie’s anymore,” he said. “Because her parents have different ideas than I do on what’s okay for you to see.” He didn’t sound annoyed, just tired.
“Sadie, there’s two more bites of pie. Go for it,” I said. “You guys drive safe.”
“Thanks, Miss Rachel,” Sadie chimed in. “Don’t forget to watch Masha and the Bear!”
“Thanks,” he said, watching his daughter scoop a huge bite of pie into her mouth, crust and all.
I didn’t really want to walk away. I wanted to stand there and stall them, get them to linger in the diner and talk to them longer. I wanted to slide into the booth next to Sadie and fix that ponytail. I was careful with that though. I didn’t want her to feel like there was anything wrong with her messy hair, and I didn’t want him to think I was judging his parenting. He was just crap at doing little girl hair. She probably hated having it brushed, I thought. And I felt a little twinge, because it would be so fun to brush out her hair and braid it, paint those little nails, do the girly stuff with her. But it wasn’t my place. I wasn’t a close family friend. Best I could tell, Max didn’t really have any close friends, and Lord knew he didn’t have family here. No wonder he looked tired. He was trying to do it all on his own.
2
Max
Sadie slid between her “too-babyish” sheets in her Elsa pajamas and handed me a book.
“This one, please,” she said, her sunny voice not tired at all. I suppressed a yawn and managed to smile.
“You love this one, don’t you?” I asked, snuggling in beside her.
Sadie nestled into my side and looked up at me. “That’s because it’s the best one, Daddy,” she said.
“Okay, then we’ll read it again,” I said.
I read her the mermaid fairytale. We’d read it every night for nearly a month. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t hope she picked a new favorite book soon. We needed to hit the library, get some fresh books in this place in the next couple of days before I had read that book so many times, I started calling everyone Ariel.
“That was good. I like when you do the lobster voice.”
“Thanks. It’s a crab, not a lobster.”
“He’s red,” she said reasonably as if to prove her point.
“So are crabs. And that’s what he is. I swear.”
Sadie looked at me like she wasn’t so sure, but she let it drop.
“Do I get to sing to you? Or are you too big for that suddenly? Maybe you should start reading to me,” I teased her.
“Daddy, I can only read kindergarten stuff. The dog sits. The cat sits. The dog runs. The cat runs. That’s not much of a story,” she said.
“Okay, I’ll let you off the hook for now, but when you can read a longer book, it’s your turn. We practiced your sight words after school. Should we do them again? So you can learn to read faster and take the load off your old man?”
“No, Daddy. I like when you read to me,” she said, exasperated. “I want a song. But only if it’s Twinkle Twinkle.”
“It’s a deal,” I said, switching off her lamp and singing to her.
It was the same lullaby I’d sung to her when I was suddenly a father with a screaming newborn in my arms, swaying and so scared I’d drop her. Smoothing back her hair, I couldn’t believe how big she had gotten, how smart she was. I swallowed hard, trying to fight getting sentimental. I kissed her on the head and tucked her in.
“I love you, Sadie,” I said. “Sweet dreams.”
“I love you, too, Daddy. Check on me!”
“I will, and you better be in dreamland,” I told her fondly.
I shut the door and then did up the breakfast dishes from the morning, cleaned up around the kitchen, and put in some laundry. I popped a beer from the fridge and turned on the TV to try and stay awake long enough to put the clothes in the dryer. Sadie was about out of clean socks that matched, so I needed to get the load done before bed, or she’d be at school in mismatched socks tomorrow. It shouldn’t be a big deal, but as a single dad, I tried to be extra careful about stuff like that. Make sure she washed behind her ears, a healthy lunch was packed, and I’d checked her school folder to see if I needed to sign anything. I didn’t want people thinking I didn’t try or that she needed a mother. A mother wasn’t something I thought about in connection with my little girl very often. We had each other and that was enough. She filled up my heart—the kid I hadn’t known I wanted until she was here. Nothing could come between us now.
I looked around my living room and felt a surge of pride. I was glad I’d moved to Rockford Falls to bring up my daughter. Our cabin right at the foot of the mountain ridge was close enough to town for her to go to public school but far enough away that it was quiet, peaceful. I’d gotten a hell of a deal on the place and fixed it up. I mostly bought it for the stand of timber in the back, acres of forest that stretched up into the foothills. But our little two-bedroom was snug and as tidy as I could make it with Sadie leaving about four hundred crayons everywhere.
I was happy with my
choices in life. If you’d asked me ten years ago what I wanted, I’d have said I wanted to be a partner in the investment firm where I was a rising star, and I wanted to have a vacation home in Italy. But I’d veered off the fast track when Sadie came along and never regretted it once. There was a steep learning curve to making timber successful, but I’d hired a lumberjack from north Georgia to come out and train me for a few weeks, and I’d been fortunate enough to be able to hire help to take care of Sadie while I got on my feet. Now I had a successful business, a healthy, happy daughter, and time on my hands.
What had begun as a way to keep idle hands busy by whittling a small figure or a dollhouse table and chairs had evolved into making full-size accent tables and bookcases, cutting boards, and inlaid charcuterie boards and serving trays. It was a use for scrap wood that prevented it going to waste and it was satisfying to make something unique out of what was left over.
There was no way I could have predicted that this would be the life I wanted. Living on my own land in a cabin in the mountains with my daughter, working with my hands and loving it, feeling more grounded and happier than I could ever remember. I could have just retired on the money I’d already made; bought the brownstone I’d been living in and hired a nanny. I wouldn’t have had to work another day in my life, but I wanted a different kind of upbringing for my daughter. She needed room to play and fresh air and something more wholesome than the rat race and the social climbers that surrounded me in New York. We both deserved better, and I’d made it happen. I had a standing order for timber, and I milled some of my own at the place outside Overton, plus I chopped firewood to sell in town and made furniture and other custom pieces. I liked to keep my hands busy, and more money seemed to follow.
I leaned back and shut my eyes. It had been a good day, but sometimes, just once in a while, the nighttime was lonely. In an ideal world, I would’ve had someone to talk things over with. Someone to show the gleaming river the teal epoxy made down the center of that table just the way I intended, and someone to laugh over the things Sadie said about being so grown up. And somebody to share the fact that I had a pang of sadness over it, too, the idea that she was no bigger than a football the day I met her and now she was full of opinions and definitely didn’t eat enough vegetables. I sighed.
Rachel had an easy way with Sadie. I wondered if she had nieces and nephews, because she was really good with kids. She didn’t act stupid, and baby talk at Sadie, which my daughter hated above all things. I had seen her hand flutter toward the God-awful ponytail and then withdraw. She had restraint and respect for Sadie. She didn’t try to fix what she wasn’t asked to fix or criticize her appearance. I knew that my kid could’ve been dressed like a damn Kardashian offspring if I wanted to do it—carrying some kid-sized Birkin bag and wearing Gucci leggings. But I got her clothes at the Target in Overton when we went to the seafood place there once in a while. She wore lime green leggings and a blue t-shirt with a glittery sloth on it. It’s what she picked out, and as long as she was clean and comfortable, I wasn’t bothered about it.
Rachel let Sadie be Sadie and went along with her, asking about things that she was interested in, getting her to try a vegetable. I was grateful for their rapport, and grateful that she didn’t try to push for anything else. I’d had enough women try to worm their way into my bed by fussing over my daughter. Women who were more than happy to be an instant wife and mother if I’d have them. The perky brunettes who came to my door with tater tot casseroles and hair bows and suggestions about setting up play dates for Sadie with their own daughters or nieces, and ideas about how they could make things so much easier for me by helping out with her. Calling her ‘sugar’ and ‘little miss’ which she despised. “Sadie Catherine,” she would correct them, and I’d try not to laugh behind my hand.
I loved who my daughter was, and I wasn’t in the market for someone to change her or tell her she should be different, or that a family of two was wrong. That didn’t mean I wasn’t lonely sometimes. It meant that I didn’t have time for the drama, and women, in my experience, had been nothing but drama. They’d want to change things, and insist their way was better. They’d come between Sadie and me, try to make her, make us both into something more suitable. Make us into people who didn’t go outside barefoot in all weather, or who didn’t buy our clothes at the discount store or build dollhouse furniture at the kitchen table and get wood shavings all over the place. She had the fun and free, sticky face, dirty feet, outdoor upbringing I wished I’d had.
Despite my better judgement, I couldn’t stop thinking of our favorite waitress.
Rachel’s high, golden ponytail swished when she walked, and she had a sort of apple-cheeked prettiness that wouldn’t have been out of place on a movie screen as the beautiful girl next door. She made delicious pies and had a great body, all curves, and a warm voice. Rachel’s voice made me want to shut my eyes and listen to her forever. It was low and husky, somehow sexy and comforting at once. She had everything under control and no matter how busy she was, she always made time to talk to Sadie. Sometimes I watched them together, and I felt a twinge of jealousy. Their rapport was easy, and they were so focused on each other, on this sweet, casual relationship that somehow made me feel left out. I couldn’t decide whose attention I was more jealous of, and that was a question I didn’t want to examine too closely.
There was no way I had any business looking at Rachel as anything other than a competent and friendly server at the diner. I didn’t date, and I didn’t do one-night stands either. Not that I thought Rachel was dying to have a fling in the stock room or anything. She seemed pretty busy as well. And like she was exactly the sort of person who was entirely self-sufficient and didn’t need anyone for anything. As far as I could tell, she ran the entire diner singlehandedly. She was gorgeous and funny and talented. What would she want with a lumberjack checking her out while she worked? I meant no disrespect. I just couldn’t help noticing the way she moved, her grace and energy.
Rachel was not someone I should be thinking of when I was alone in the evening, feeling weary and a bit wistful that I didn’t have that person, that partner to share my daughter and my days with. Sometimes it felt urgent, tragic even that there was no other witness than me to the way Sadie changed and grew, to the things she said. That no one else under the sun shared that knowledge or understood her or loved her as well as I did. It was an honor, but a lonesome one. I was just tired. It was natural that since Rachel had been kind to Sadie, I’d have thoughts of her mixed up with being lonely in my cabin at night, fifteen miles from Rockford Falls, without another soul nearby except my sleeping child. A passing attraction for her was nothing to take note of. It would wane and I’d forget all about her. Maybe we’d quit going into the diner every week. Sadie liked routine and looked forward to seeing Rachel and checking the progress of the daffodils and having some pie. But, if my interest in Rachel grew, I’d have to quit going in there. We’d just start a new tradition that didn’t have me thinking longingly of a smart-mouthed blonde with a ponytail, a killer piecrust recipe, and a sweet rapport with my daughter.
3
Rachel
Margaritas with Laura and Trixie were exactly what I needed. It was nice to sit down someplace and let another human bring me a drink for a change. I didn’t mind waiting tables but relaxing with my friends on a rare night out was a huge treat. Laura and Trixie appreciated it because, with their little ones at home, they hardly ever got out except to go to work. Otherwise, it was the grocery run with a toddler sitting in the cart kicking their shoes off or fussing because it was past naptime. Still, here they sat, showing pics of their kids to me, flipping through jam-packed camera rolls full of cute, chubby babies who chewed on silly things or sat in a chair upside down or put shoes on their hands.
“This morning, Brenna cried because I gave her Fruit Loops. Which she wants for breakfast every single day and will have a massive tantrum if I try to feed her anything else. But today, the damn toucan faile
d me. She screamed for toast, and then I cut it the wrong way. My mom makes it in squares, and I did it in triangles. I mean, this was a nuclear fallout level meltdown. The last time it got this bad was when we had to leave the park,” Laura said, shaking her head. The woman had faced down—and gunned down—a serial killer. She shuddered at the thought of her two-year-old angel-faced daughter’s tantrum.
“You bring that baby to me. I’ll cut that toast however she wants. She doesn’t have to see a Fruit Loop ever again,” I said, “No wonder she cried when she could be having Aunt Rachel’s blueberry pie for breakfast instead of some rainbow-colored crap in a bowl.”
“Yeah, I give her crap all the time,” Laura snarked. “Way to show solidarity.”
“I don’t have kids. I don’t even have time for a cat. What solidarity? I work all the time,” I countered.
“Ashton’s getting another tooth. It’s brutal. I swear he’s been teething since he was seven months old. Like one after another, and it’s miserable. I just hate to see him suffer,” Trixie added.
“Teething’s a bitch. We gave Brenna a frozen strawberry in one of those mesh fruit feeder things to gnaw on and it helped the pain. Looks like she’s dribbling blood down her chin, but whatever helps, right?” Laura said.
“So, do they just keep getting teeth over and over? It’s not a thing where they get the first four and then the next four and then boom, you’re done? It’s ongoing?” I asked.
“It’s a never-ending hell of screaming, crying, and snot,” Laura supplied.
“Ashton doesn’t cry. He whimpers and it breaks my heart. Damon was leaving for work and kissed him, and Ashton whined a little and Damon goes, ‘I fucking hate teeth. Who can we pay to make all the teeth come in at once with no pain?’ and I’m like… God? I don’t know. That’s not really a thing.”
“Dads can’t take it,” Laura agreed. “Brody damn near cried when Brenna had an ear infection the first time. We didn’t know how to make her feel better and she just cried and clung to me. I didn’t want to put her down for the doctor to examine her. I made them do it while I held her, and I thought he was going to lose it and have to be escorted from the building.”
The Lumberjack's Nanny: A Forbidden Romance (Rockford Falls Romance) Page 2
