He took a breath that expanded his impressive chest and sighed it out. “Guess I’ll start the great climb then,” he said as if he was at the foot of Mount Everest.
“You can use the elevator,” she goaded.
“I’ll pass. I’ve never been in a house with its own elevator either. Seems weird.”
Dani nodded.
“I’ll see you tomorrow and try to loosen up,” he pledged.
She nodded again.
“And by the way,” he said with a beautifully devilish smile, “your hair looks better today.”
Dani laughed, glad to finally have her weird hairstyle of the previous evening acknowledged.
“Thanks. I did it today instead of Evie.”
“I don’t think the kid has a future ahead of her as a stylist.”
Dani laughed yet again. “I don’t think so either.”
Then she watched Liam Madison walk out of the kitchen, hoping that tomorrow he might show the twins more of the human side he’d finally shown her tonight.
And enjoying the sight of tight buns in khakis as a secret reward to herself for a day that hadn’t been any fun until just now.
Chapter Three
“Bryan! Did you see our socks?” Evie asked by way of greeting Dani’s best friend as the twins rushed him Tuesday morning when Dani let him in.
“Let me see ’em,” Bryan Dreeson instructed, peering down at their feet. “Oh, my gosh! Those socks are great! Red Minnie and Mickey? Why don’t they make them in my size?” he lamented.
“Let’s see yours,” Grady said as he bent over and pulled up one leg of the attorney’s suit pants to reveal snazzy argyles. A love of flashy socks united Dani’s friend with her charges.
“Pretty,” Evie judged with awe.
“And he brought you one of his special quiches for breakfast, too—”
The twins cheered and jumped around like crazy people, laughing at themselves as they did.
“Okay, okay,” Dani said to contain them as she closed the front door behind her friend. “I want you to go down and finish getting dressed while I talk to Bryan, and then you can have breakfast.”
Bryan’s family had lived in the house next door to her grandparents. Being the same age, Dani and Bryan had grown up together and been best friends since soon after Dani had gone to live with Nell and Nick Marconi.
Bryan had called the night before and told her that he would stop by on his way to his office this morning to bring her papers. He was an estate lawyer and had handled the trust Dani’s grandmother had left.
“Mmm...fresh tomatoes, spinach and cheese,” Dani said as she carried the quiche to the kitchen. “The kids love this. And so do I.”
“Because it’s delicious,” Bryan said with no humility whatsoever.
“Are you eating with us or have you already had breakfast?” she asked as they got to the kitchen and she set the quiche on the island.
“I waited so we could eat together. And I’m desperate for a cup of coffee!” he said dramatically, going to the cupboard to get a mug—a familiarity that had developed since he became a frequent visitor after Dani had taken up residence here and left the apartment they shared.
“I have to warn you—I didn’t make the coffee and it’s really strong. Gramma would have called it battery acid.”
“The marine made it?” Bryan asked. They talked almost every day and there was nothing in Dani’s life that Bryan didn’t know about, including every detail of the situation with the twins, her efforts to contact Liam, his arrival and request to move in and that Monday had been designated as the day for that.
“The marine or elves. It was here when I got up,” she said.
“Am I gonna get a look at him?” her impeccably dressed blond friend whispered over his shoulder as he poured the dark brew.
“I haven’t even seen him this morning—he’s an up-before-dawn guy. He says he likes to run at sunrise. Then he had an appointment with a lawyer to deal with paternity if the DNA proves he’s the father,” she said just as softly so the kids didn’t overhear anything.
“Too bad. I wanted to see if he lives up to your description.”
“If he lives up to my description? How did I describe him?” She’d thought she’d described him as average. Even though he was actually far, far above average.
“You made him sound so hot that steam was coming out of my phone,” Bryan claimed.
“I did not,” Dani denied as she got out four plates, silverware and a knife to cut the quiche.
“You sooo did,” Bryan countered. “Down to every tiny little freckle—”
“He doesn’t have freckles.”
“And you should know because you didn’t miss a thing. You had me drooling and hoping he plays for my team.”
“Evie and Grady are probably his so I don’t think he plays for your team,” she whispered again.
“And wouldn’t you be crushed if he did,” Bryan teased.
“No,” she said. Maybe a little too emphatically because it made Bryan laugh.
It also provoked him to give her his fashion once-over. “Your hair is down. Instead of yoga pants or rolling-around-on-the-floor-with-kids jeans you have on a nice pair, and that come-hither pink sweater set? You are dressed for more than work,” he deduced before adding, “It’s all right if you kind of like this guy, you know? This has been a rough few months. You’re due for a little good.”
“Well, it isn’t going to come out of this,” she responded confidently without denying that, like yesterday, she’d primped more for work than usual. But she’d told herself that she had a busy day ahead and that that was the reason. Not Liam Madison.
“Then I’ll keep hoping that he’s gay,” Bryan challenged.
“And I’ll tell Adam on you,” she countered, referring to Bryan’s longtime boyfriend.
The exchange made them both laugh. It was the kind of back and forth they’d shared since childhood.
As Dani cut slices of Bryan’s homemade quiche he took papers out of his briefcase and slid them across the counter to her. “Gramma’s trust,” he said. He’d always called her grandmother Gramma the same way Dani had even though there was no relation. “Since you’re the only beneficiary all ownership has been transferred to you.”
That sobered her. “Already.”
“It’s been six weeks since she passed. We did the trust instead of a will because it would be quicker and easier at the end and wouldn’t have to go into probate like a will. And there’s the proof—no court, no court costs, over and done. You’re now the sole owner of the house and Marconi’s Italian Restaurant.”
Essentially that had been true ever since her grandmother had died, but still, the finality and reality of it, of the loss of her grandmother, landed heavily on Dani all over again.
Dealing with that made her go very quiet and when Evie came up the stairs with a request that she fasten the buttons in the back of her dress, Bryan intercepted her to do it while Dani got down glasses for the twins and poured milk.
Then Evie went downstairs with a promise to Bryan that he was going to love her shoes and Dani took a deep breath to fuel herself to go on.
“Your cousin wants to buy the house,” she said.
Bryan had several cousins. One of them was newly married and she and her husband had rented the house that Dani had grown up in. The house that had belonged to her grandparents and passed to her when her grandmother died.
“I know Shannon loves the house, but I told her not to pressure you about buying it,” Bryan said. “It could be a nice home for you, you know? When some time passes.”
“Or I could sell it and use the money to renovate the restaurant,” Dani said. “Or I could sell them both...” It was a conversation they’d been having since her eighty-year-old grandmother’s death.
So many chan
ges were in the wind. Too many. All of them weighing on her.
And Bryan knew how overwhelmed she was, how torn she was about whether or not to let go of the house she’d grown up in. About whether or not to accept the end of her time with the twins as the end of her own career as a nanny so she could take over where her grandparents had left off with the restaurant. About whether or not to sell the business that had been the lifeblood of her family. The business that had kept her grandparents alive in some ways. The business that couldn’t go on as it had without Dani. About whether or not to genuinely close the door on the people and life she’d always known. And loved.
“Gramma would have been right about this coffee—battery acid!” Bryan said.
Dani knew he was attempting to distract her from her own thoughts and from drifting into the doldrums and grief that were just below the surface.
“Let’s try a little cream and sugar,” he suggested. “I can’t believe Hottie Marine actually drinks this black.”
“‘Hottie Marine’?” she echoed. “That’s the best you could come up with?”
“We haven’t even met,” Bryan defended himself. “Would you prefer Lovely Liam?”
“Oh, that is waaay worse.”
Bryan passed her on his way to the refrigerator for the cream and nudged her with his shoulder. “You okay?” he asked seriously, knowing her well enough to understand what she was feeling.
“Sure,” she answered.
“Lot of decisions on the table—go at them one at a time.”
“I will. But I’m not doing anything about my own future until I know the kids will be okay.”
He kissed her cheek. “That’s why I love you, lady.”
And that small comment brought tears to her eyes that she had to blink back.
“So tell me more about our marine,” he encouraged.
But the twins were finished dressing and both came into the kitchen. Grady was in red-and-white star leggings with a salmon-colored T-shirt—he called it his toucan shirt because of the long-beaked bird on it—and sparkling blue tennis shoes that lit up when he stomped his feet, which he demonstrated for Bryan. Evie wore her predominantly navy blue flowered knit dress with green striped leggings under it and her own light-up, sparkling pink running shoes.
“Wow! You guys are colorful!” Bryan said as if he was impressed.
“Dani let us pick out our own clothes because it’s our bacation and we don’t have to wear umiforms.”
“And what a great job you did,” Bryan commended. “Now come and eat my quiche and tell me how good it is,” he added.
The twins eagerly went to two of the bar stools to climb up and do as he’d instructed.
And Dani wished that Liam was there to watch her friend and maybe pick up a few tips on how to build rapport with the twins.
Although, for some strange reason, she’d been wishing that Liam was there since she got up this morning.
And it didn’t have anything to do with the kids.
* * *
“You say it pit-sails—not piz-els. And these are ours that get saved for us. They’re the broken ones Dani lets us have,” Grady informed Liam.
Liam had been alarmed that the kids had gone behind the bakery case at Marconi’s Italian Restaurant and begun to help themselves from a drawer below it. He’d warned Dani that they were getting into the Italian waffle cookies, pronouncing the name the way it was spelled on the sign where stacks of them were displayed for sale.
“It’s okay,” Dani assured him. Then to the twins she said, “But not too many. You can each have two broken pieces and put the rest in a bag to take home.” Then, using a tissue to take an unbroken one from a stack, she handed it to Liam. “They’re traditional Italian cookies—my grandmother’s recipe with anise oil and anise seed. It tastes like licorice and the cookie itself is buttery and crispy and light...if you’ve never had one.”
“I like licorice,” he said, accepting the pizzelle from her. After tasting it he inclined his head and gave his approval. “Good.”
“Really good,” Evie confirmed. “You can have some of ours.”
That was a positive sign.
It had been a full day.
Liam had arrived home just as Dani was telling the twins after lunch that they had to have a rest time even if they weren’t tired enough to take a nap and herded them to bed.
When naptime concluded they’d gone to the grocery store, where Liam had observed the process without really participating and with an expression of bewilderment when he’d realized that on every aisle the same exchange took place half a dozen times: the kids asked for everything that struck their fancy whether they knew what it was or not. Dani said, “Not today,” and they responded, “For our birthday can we have it?” To which Dani had said yes every time.
“Why not just say no?” he’d reasoned.
Rather than answering that, Dani had shown him why not. She’d said a flat no the next time, when they’d asked if they could have the Chinese noodles in the black-and-red package that had caught their eye.
“For our birthday?” Evie had asked on cue.
“No,” Dani had answered, earning a rash of begging and insistence that even though they didn’t know what the Chinese noodles actually were, they loved them and wanted them.
“Okay, maybe for your birthday,” she’d conceded, and they’d been appeased and agreeable enough to move on.
“That’s just weird,” Liam had commented.
And once more Dani had responded, “They’re four.”
After returning home to put groceries away they’d gone to the park. Although Liam had remained reserved at the grocery store, at the park he’d offered to push Evie and Grady on the swings.
Unfortunately the offer had still been so stiff and formal—similar to her former fiancé Garrett’s attempts—that they hadn’t been responsive and had insisted Dani alone do it.
But there was one thing they always wanted to do at the park that Dani wasn’t physically capable of, and it had occurred to her that tall Liam could do it—especially when she had factored in his expansive shoulders and the biceps that stretched his pale yellow polo shirt to the limits. And made her look at him more often than she’d wanted to.
She’d suggested that maybe Liam could take turns holding the twins up, one at a time, so that they could reach and cross the monkey bars.
She’d had to warn Liam not to let go of them once they were up there, to keep holding them as they reached from one bar to the next without actually bearing any of their own weight, but he’d done it—several times because the man seemed to have the stamina of an ox.
It hadn’t broken down any huge barriers between the three of them, but Dani thought it had at least made a dent.
Then they’d moved on to dinner. Tuesday night was fast-food night for the twins—the only time it was allowed, as she’d explained to Liam.
Tonight Dani had insisted on paying, and had told Liam that when the court had granted her guardianship of the twins, it had also allotted her funds from the estate for their care. Since Tuesday night chicken nuggets were part of the routine, she thought that qualified.
As they did every Tuesday night, the kids had wolfed down their food in order to get to the play area afterward. While they were gone Dani had explained to Liam that the next stop was the Italian restaurant that she was responsible for and needed to check in on.
Which was how they’d come to Marconi’s, using the employees’ entrance in back and prompting a return of the reserved Liam as he’d watched the kids charge in, greet and be greeted warmly by the kitchen staff, then proceed into the restaurant itself and to the bakery case to help themselves.
“They’re just at home here?” he asked Dani when he’d finished his pizzelle. He was observing Grady and Evie getting a brown paper sack from a shelf under the cash regi
ster and carefully emptying the container of broken pizzelles into the bag on their own.
“They’ve been here a lot. Especially lately,” she answered before introducing Liam and Griff, her manager, and then consulting with Griff before the day could come to a close.
Liam again seemed very ruminative on the short drive between Marconi’s and the Freelander house, saying only, “They can be kind of loud, can’t they?” when the kids began singing preschool ditties in the back seat.
“They can,” she agreed. “But it’s happy noise,” she added, worrying that he was going to be so stern or sound sensitive that he wanted to stop four-year-olds from singing.
On the alert for his response, she saw him glance in his rearview mirror at them and held her breath, hoping that he wouldn’t tell them to be quiet.
But ultimately all he did was shrug, return his gaze to the road and say, “Yeah, good point.”
It might not have been singing along but it was something, and Dani was grateful for it as they pulled into the driveway to the tune of “The Wheels on the Bus” coming from the back seat.
* * *
“He didn’t do funny voices,” Evie complained an hour later when Dani was tucking in the little girl. It was the same grievance Grady had voiced a moment before when Dani had put him to bed.
She’d persuaded Liam to read the bedtime story and the kids to let him. “Remember what I told you—he’s just learning about you guys. He probably didn’t know you like that book read with funny voices. You had a good time with him at the park, though. You finally got to do the monkey bars.”
“Yeah, that was fun,” Evie recalled as she arranged her doll next to her. “And he likes pizzelles.”
“He does,” Dani confirmed with some amusement that that was a plus. But at that point she was willing to take any encouraging sign she could get.
“I don’t wanna go to that camp, though.”
“Oh, no, that’s just what Liam called it,” she said. After reading the book, Liam had asked them if they’d like to do a boot camp workout with him sometime. Grady had given a reluctant okay—though Dani was reasonably sure he had no idea what he’d agreed to—but Evie had refused outright. “Liam was just asking if you wanted to exercise with him. Kind of like when Bryan comes over and we do yoga.”
Special Forces Father Page 5
