Marrying the Northbridge Nanny

by Victoria Pade

  But reminder or no reminder, she was so happy to see him that she could barely keep from grinning ear to ear. Not even the fact that he looked like someone who had been traveling all day did anything to diminish Meg’s elation as she stood somewhat behind the family tableau and watched him listen patiently to the avalanche of information Tia was giving—all of it things the little girl had told him on the multitude of phone calls they’d shared every day that he’d been gone.

  And if—between uh-huhs to Tia—his eyes moved beyond Hadley to Meg, and Meg thought there might have been an instant sparkle to them? She’d probably just imagined that, she thought, even as he gave her a small smile that somehow said hello without any words at all and in a way that made her feel as if something might have passed solely between the two of them…

  Boundaries, she reminded herself. Stay within the boundaries.

  But it would have been so much easier if she had just managed to get even a slight hold on herself while he was gone.

  “I know you were sick—you told me every time we talked on the phone, remember?” Logan was saying when Tia began to tell him about her cold as if it were a great revelation. “But now that you’re almost all better, you might want to see what I brought you.”

  That was enough for Tia to wiggle out of his arms and demand to know what was in his suitcase.

  “Let’s open it upstairs, okay?” he suggested. “And then maybe—because Daddy’s really tired tonight—while I shower, I can get Meg or Aunt Had to give you your bath before I read you Goodnight Moon?”

  The last part of that was a plea to Meg and Hadley. And since Meg was wearing the dress and heels she’d worn to the rehearsal, she was certainly not the likeliest candidate to do the three-year-old’s bath.

  But despite that, before Hadley could say anything, Meg said, “Hadley is getting Tia’s cold. Why don’t we let her rest and while you show Tia what you brought her, I’ll change and come back?”

  Hadley put up a very minor protest that Meg waved away.

  “It’s no big deal. I’ll be back in five minutes,” she insisted, leaving again before anything could change.

  And telling herself that her motive really was just to give her new friend a break.

  Not because it would give her a little time with Logan…

  After a mad dash to her apartment, Meg shed her dress, hose and heels in record time and put on one of her tightest pairs of jeans and a tank top that hinted at cleavage—though she was convinced that ease and speed were behind her choices, not thoughts of drawing any kind of attention to herself.

  She’d left her hair loose for the rehearsal and now brushed it to freshen it while checking to make sure that the makeup she’d applied earlier didn’t need to be patched, too.

  The only thing she replenished was her lip gloss, and after applying it she took one final check in the mirror, realizing that her heart was still doing an excited double time beat and that her cheeks were twin spots of pink that announced just how thrilled she was that Logan was home.

  So, to her reflection, she said, “Stop it! He’s your boss, you’re going to give his daughter a bath because that’s your job, and then answer any questions he has about what went on while he was gone. But that’s all you’re going to do!”

  And she meant it.

  She would just allow herself to bask in the fact that Logan was back, she wouldn’t let things go beyond that.

  It would be like sitting beside a lake—she could enjoy the view and getting to be near the water, but she wouldn’t dive in.

  “These are my presents that my daddy brought me and this is Grilla—he falled behind the bed at Uncle Chase’s lof’. We stay’t there before we comed here and I din’t know it and I leaved him there so tha’s why we cooden’ fin’ him nowhere,” Tia explained.

  Meg had given the three-year-old her bath, helped her put on her pajamas, and was ready to turn down Tia’s bed. But it was littered with the sheepishly grinning floppy gorilla Tia referred to as Grilla, a fluffy lion hand puppet, a box of snap-together building blocks, a babydoll and a framed photograph that Meg was particularly interested in.

  “Is this one of your presents, too?” Meg asked of the picture that she picked up first in order to take a closer look.

  “No, Daddy said the movers forgetted some boxes and Uncle Chase is gonna bring ’em wis him when he comes. But that was in one of ’em and Daddy bringed it home now.”

  The photo was of a woman holding a newborn. Meg had to assume it was Tia with her mother. But she wanted to know for sure, so she said, “Is this you when you were just a baby?”

  Tia was more interested in putting her hand inside the puppet and making growling noises to tease Max and Harry who had just bounded into the room and jumped onto the bed, too. “Yeah, tha’s me wis my mom,” the little girl confirmed.

  Tia’s mom.

  Logan’s wife.

  Ex-wife.

  Until Hadley had mentioned Logan’s ex-wife once or twice during their conversations this last week, Meg hadn’t been sure exactly who Tia’s mother had been in Logan’s life. She’d assumed her to be an ex-wife or ex-girlfriend and not a late wife or late girlfriend, but the subject had never come up with Logan or Tia or Hadley before that. As curious as Meg was about Tia’s mother, she’d forced herself not to pry for more information. But now here she was, with a picture of the woman in her hands…

  Blond and strikingly pretty with a refined bone structure and Tia’s same brown eyes, the woman’s smile didn’t look genuine and she wasn’t holding Tia the way an infant was usually held. She was sitting and holding Tia stiffly with Tia’s back braced against her front, hands around Tia’s ribcage as if she were holding a fragile vase up for inspection.

  “You were just a bitty baby,” Meg said, hoping that would prompt the little girl to add something more.

  It didn’t.

  So Meg said, “Do you remember when your mom lived with you?”

  “Huh-uh.”

  “When do you see your mom now?” Meg asked, rationalizing that inquiring about Tia’s relationship with her mother was a reasonable thing to do.

  “I see her sometimes,” Tia answered without stopping her play with her puppies.

  “But not a lot? Is that because she lives far away?”

  “She lives in a house wis lots a books. But you can’t color in ’em. She ge’s mad if you do…”

  Mom had a temper?

  “Do you ever spend the night with your mom?” Meg asked conversationally as she gathered up the remainder of the toys.

  “My bed’s not at her book house,” Tia said as if Meg were slightly dim to need that explained to her. “She comes to our house for a little while and I has to be p’lite.”

  It took Meg a moment to figure out that p’lite was polite. Tia was warned to be polite to her own mother? That didn’t sound like a close parent-child relationship. But it also didn’t seem to bother the child.

  “Would you like to see her more? To ever stay with her?”

  “I like my dad. He knows ’bout guh’night moon and Grilla and what to do when I sneeze—say bless you not use a tissue.”

  Apparently a faux pas her mother had made since Tia did a stilted-sounding mimicry.

  Meg took the toys to the toy box and, with another glance at the photograph, said, “Would you rather have your mom’s picture on your nightstand or over on the dresser?”

  Tia shrugged again. “Dresser,” she said offhandedly, more involved in playing tug with Harry and the hand-puppet than in the decision.

  Tia’s indifference to her mother raised a lot of other questions in Meg’s mind, but just then Logan’s bedroom door opened and he crossed the hall saying, “Okay, girls, it’s story time!”

  “I know you’re tired so I’ll say good-night and let you go to bed, too,” Meg offered half an hour later when she and Logan left Tia’s bedroom after getting the child to sleep.

  Ending the evening already was a reluctant suggestion beca
use Meg would have preferred just a few minutes more with him. But he’d already announced that he was worn out and in the interest of keeping things on the up-and-up with him, she forced herself to say what she knew she should say.

  Logan didn’t disagree, which made her think he might have come home with the same resolution to maintain distance between them.

  He did counter her suggestion with one of his own though. “I’ll drive you around back—I’m going to move my car to the garage anyway. I didn’t feel like dragging my suitcase and carry-on and the rest of my stuff across the yard so I parked out front.”

  Meg had wondered about his parking choice when she’d seen his car there. And while she certainly didn’t need a ride to the garage apartment, it did provide her with those few more minutes.

  “Okay,” she agreed.

  Logan held the front door for her and then the passenger door of his SUV before he walked around to his side. Watching as he did, Meg took in the sight of him freshly showered and shaved, his hair dry now from the dampness it had held when he’d joined her and Tia for Tia’s bedtime story.

  He was wearing a pair of jeans with a ragged tear below one knee and a plain white T-shirt—obviously dressed for comfort, he still managed to be sloppy and sexy at once—and it was difficult for Meg to believe how wonderful it felt to see him.

  Which she knew she should take as a warning all in itself.

  “How was your trip?” she asked as he got behind the wheel, making an effort to keep things superficial.

  “I did everything I needed to do, Chase and I had a couple of nights on the town, and now it’s good to be home. I felt guilty about Tia being sick, and about you and Hadley having to take care of her, though. From what she says it doesn’t sound as if she suffered too much—I hope it wasn’t too bad for you.”

  “It wasn’t bad at all, it got me up to date on the newest kid movies. Besides, Tia is actually a pretty good patient—she wasn’t whiney or cranky, just quiet and she wanted to snuggle a lot.”

  “Which is probably why Hadley is getting the cold now and why you probably will, too.”

  “After working with kids—with an office in a hospital—and getting just about everything I came into contact with the first few years, I’ve built up pretty strong immunity when it comes to kid germs. I feel fine.”

  “Glad to hear it,” he said as he pulled his car into the garage and stopped the engine.

  But it had been such a short trip…

  Maybe it seemed that way to Logan, too, because as they got out of the SUV and left the garage he didn’t merely say good-night and go back to the house. He walked with Meg to the apartment steps, leaned a shoulder against the garage’s corner and went on as if they’d just begun a conversation at a party.

  “Chase and I were talking about that, about you working at a hospital and your Ph.D. and everything. I told him what you told me—that you wanted to experience the lighter side of kids to recharge your batteries. Chase wanted to know more details and I had to admit that I didn’t have any to give him.”

  So he and his business partner had talked about her. Meg wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. She also wasn’t sure she wanted to be more open with him on this subject even though he was obviously hoping she would be.

  But she didn’t like that note of doubt that was in his voice and wondered if his longtime friend had planted seeds of suspicion about why she was being secretive. And she supposed that he had the right to know details about someone he was entrusting his daughter to.

  Plus, if she told him what he was fishing for, it would give her a little more time with him.

  “It’s complicated,” she admitted as she weighed her decision.

  “I kind of thought it was,” Logan said with a smile that welcomed her confidence but didn’t push for it.

  It was the smile that got to her.

  “I had a bad incident a few months ago,” she said, sitting on the second-to-the-bottom step as she did.

  Logan came to sit with her, his back to the garage wall so he was facing her. He propped one foot on the lower step and braced an arm on that raised knee, giving no indication that he was in any hurry to get home to bed.

  “I see kids with a lot of different issues,” Meg continued. “Physical, social, emotional, environmental—you name it, we see it all at Children’s Hospital.”

  “Stuff that will break your heart, I’d imagine.”

  “Oh yeah,” Meg agreed. “And stuff that’s frustrating and maddening and sometimes dangerous…”

  She hadn’t talked too much about this. She’d told her family as little as possible so she didn’t upset them. She’d told her two closest friends in Denver who had helped her when she’d come home after surgery, but again she’d downplayed the event and her own feelings and reactions. Buried it a little, she supposed. And she’d refused any kind of counseling or therapy herself because she thought she could deal with it on her own. And she thought she was. But that still didn’t make it any easier to tell Logan.

  “Dangerous?” he repeated to urge her to go on.

  “Sure, kids can lose it and even small ones can do damage—to themselves, to anyone around them, to a whole room. I’ve been trained in how to restrain them—and have had to on a few occasions—but for the most part I can usually tell when a kid is about to go off and I can defuse the situation and de-escalate before it gets that far.”

  “Usually…”

  Logan was such a good listener and attentive enough to pick up on even the smallest things.

  “Usually,” Meg repeated the word that had apparently given her away.

  “But not always.”

  She shrugged. “I’m dealing with disturbed kids. Some of them really disturbed.”

  And if she was going to be completely honest with him, now was the time, she decided.

  “I had a twelve-year-old boy referred by his school psychologist—the parents and the schools had tried everything and sending him to us for evaluation was the last resort. He came in sullen and annoyed with having to be there, but he wasn’t raging at anything. It was obvious from the start that he was manipulative, there were some incidents of cruelty…” Confidentiality wouldn’t allow her to get too far into the pathology. “Let’s just say that he wasn’t a kid I was comfortable turning my back on,” Meg said with a humorless little laugh, trying to make it sound lighter than it was. Lighter than she felt.

  “But you were alone with him?”

  “That’s part of the job. He couldn’t manipulate me—and believe me, he tried—and he didn’t like that.”

  “So he didn’t like you.”

  Another good guess.

  “I don’t think this particular kid feels anything the way you and I would feel things,” she said, slightly surprised by how ominous it had come out—an indication that she was still shaken.

  But she didn’t let Logan know that. Instead she just went on. “Anyway, I was in a session with the kid and he was doing his best to get me to think what he wanted me to think. It wasn’t working, I was calling him on his lies and tall tales and basically the game he was playing that day—I was confronting him, which is a part of what I do at calculated moments…”

  Meg hesitated, having the same difficulty she always did getting this portion out. She shrugged and glanced at the porch light on the rear of the main house rather than at Logan because it somehow seemed less serious to say it that way.

  “The kid picked up a pencil and stabbed me with it.”

  She didn’t have to be looking at Logan to know the impact that had on him because it was a jolt that yanked his spine a bit straighter.

  “He stabbed you?”

  “In the side. Luckily he didn’t hit any major organs but the pencil went in about three inches and broke off—”

  “My God, Meg…”

  “I know, he could have killed me. And to tell you the truth, he was so calm about it, so…soothed, almost, by doing it, that I was actually afraid he might go
on and do more just for the fun of it. I guess I was lucky that he just laughed and walked out of my office as if he didn’t have a care in the world.”

  “I hope that kid isn’t loose on the streets—ever.”

  “He won’t be for a long time.”

  “What about you? What happened to you then?”

  “I had to have surgery.”

  “And right about then you decided you needed the lighter side of kids for a change—no wonder.”

  “Actually, this was months ago. I was back at work in a week.”

  “You weren’t.”

  “I was. But the whole thing did start me thinking. And evaluating things. And wondering if I was getting burned out—”

  “Yeah, I would think that being stabbed might burn you out just a little,” Logan said, his facetious understatement making her smile and helping to ease some of the tension.

  “Actually, I started to wonder if that’s why I had been stabbed. If, over time, I’d begun to relate less to the kids, if they weren’t relating to me because maybe I’d gotten too detached, too impersonal—”

  “You blamed yourself?” he asked as if he couldn’t believe that.

  “I wouldn’t call it blame. I just wondered if I was off my game. If maybe I wasn’t building the kind of rapport I needed to with my kids and if maybe that had contributed to the situation. I also started thinking about how long it had been since I’d had contact with kids who didn’t have problems, and how much I missed it. I thought I needed a shot of normal. I thought I needed to just get back in touch with…well, the lighter side of kids. Tia is perfect for that.”

  Meg glanced at Logan again then and concluded, “That’s why I’m here, being a nanny instead of a psychologist.”

  And it actually felt better to have been honest with him. But then there was something about being with him that gave her an all-round sense of well-being, that took away the negative fallout from The Incident. It made her attraction to him that much harder to ignore.

  Logan was studying her, though, and rather than letting her last words put an end to this, he proved just how carefully he’d listened to her when they’d talked other times, too. And how much of it he’d retained.