The woman took the correction in stride. “Oh. My apologies,” she said. “I meant no disrespect.” She looked at Harper and Brady. Her expression seemed to say that if they weren’t a couple, they should be. “It’s just that you all made such a perfect picture.”
“Pictures are just illusions,” Harper told the woman a little too quickly.
“Of course.” The saleswoman offered her an embarrassed smile and retreated.
Picking up the clothes that Harper had ultimately selected for the twins, Brady followed behind her and the twins, going to the register.
Harper’s reaction to the saleswoman’s assumption bothered him. “Just what is your problem?” he asked Harper under his breath, placing his credit card down beside the pile of clothing.
Afraid that this might wind up quickly escalating into something extremely awkward, Harper placed herself between Brady and the boys.
She seemed to almost be shielding them with her body, he thought.
“This is not the time or the place to talk about this,” she informed Brady between gritted teeth.
“Fair enough,” he agreed as he signed his name on the bottom of the sales receipt. “But this isn’t over,” Brady informed her. “We’re going to talk about this again—and very soon.”
A chill ran down her spine. Harper didn’t answer him. Instead, placing a hand on each of their shoulders, she ushered the boys out of the store. That left Brady to follow behind, carrying the bags.
He brought the bags over to the car and put them into his trunk.
Because he didn’t want to upset the twins—and he did want to be able to talk to Harper freely—Brady waited until he drove them all home.
The twins didn’t even take any notice of the silence. They were too busy filling the car with their exuberant, high voices.
But Brady noticed the silence.
As did Harper.
The moment he pulled up in the driveway and the twins were freed from their car seat restraints, the duo bolted into the backyard.
Brady took out the shopping bags and carried them into the house, then left them in the living room. Once he was confident that the twins were playing and occupied, and he and Harper were alone, he cornered Harper, picking up their unfinished conversation.
“Okay, just what was all that about in the store?” Brady wanted to know. When she didn’t answer him immediately, he pressed, “Why were you acting so weird?”
“I wasn’t acting weird,” Harper denied, her voice going up.
Avoiding his eyes, she moved about the kitchen, preparing everyone’s lunch.
But Brady wasn’t about to back down. As she went from counter to stove, then to the refrigerator, he continued to follow her around. He was determined to get a straight answer out of her.
When she still didn’t say anything, he informed her, “Then you weren’t in the same conversation as I was back in that store.”
He was just going to keep following her until she gave him some sort of an answer, Harper thought, so she turned to him. “All right, maybe I was being a little erratic back there,” she admitted. “But you have to understand, I just can’t risk another fiasco.”
“Another fiasco?” Brady echoed. “What was the first one?”
She really hadn’t wanted to get into this. With no choice, she gave him an abbreviated version of what had transpired with her last position.
“The last family I worked for, the situation got a little...dicey,” she concluded. “It finally got to the point where I decided that I had to leave—”
“What happened?” he wanted to know.
She wasn’t ready to get into that. “It doesn’t matter,” she told him. “What matters is that leaving was very difficult. The little girls I was taking care of...they cried when I left.” As she said it, she felt like she was reliving the whole ordeal. It became almost difficult for her to breathe. “They had gotten too attached to me,” she confided.
What she didn’t add was that she was afraid that she was getting too attached to Brady and the twins—and that carried its own set of consequences with it.
“I see,” Brady responded, thinking the situation over. “Okay,” he decided, “maybe I let all this get out of hand.” Although he really didn’t believe that, it was obvious that Harper did. So, for now, until he could resolve this satisfactorily, Brady humored her. “I’ll just remind the kids that it’s your job to be with them and nothing more.”
He saw that what he had just said had made her wince. Can’t win for losing, he thought.
“Now what?” he asked out loud.
“Well, I’m afraid when you put it that way, it makes me sound so...mercenary,” she finally complained.
At his wit’s end, Brady threw up his hands in frustration. “Women can really be so damn confusing!” he cried.
“I’m not confusing,” Harper all but snapped. “Don’t you understand? I just don’t want Tyler and Toby to get hurt.” Or me, either, she added silently.
“Well, they wouldn’t be if you didn’t keep going up and then down and then up again about all of this. It’s like trying to keep my eye on a yo-yo or a...”
His voice trailed off as he suddenly looked at her from a brand-new perspective. “Hey, I know what’s going on here,” he declared as things began coming together in his head.
“What?” she asked apprehensively, not knowing what to expect.
Brady grinned. “You like me.” He said it as if it was the final answer to a puzzle.
“Well, of course I like you,” she told him. And then it suddenly occurred to her what he meant by that. Harper quickly took back what she’d just said. “But I don’t like you. Not like that,” she cried.
She was scared. He could understand that. In a way, he had to admit that he was, too.
Brady pulled away, letting his hand fall to hers. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to overstep.”
Harper responded, “I know you didn’t. Neither of us did. This is mutual. Brady—I just don’t want to get carried away.”
He met her gaze, and he could see that she was feeling the same conflicted emotions he was. Longing. Desire. Hesitation. It was in her eyes, and the way she had worded her protest.
“Neither do I.” His voice was soft, coaxing. Skimming along her skin seductively. And then, just like that, almost against his will, he finally did what he had been dying to do for days now.
He kissed Harper.
As she felt his kiss’s effects all but explode throughout her entire body, Harper tried to get a grip on both herself and the situation.
Pulling away from him, she put her hand on Brady’s chest, keeping him at bay. “Brady, maybe we shouldn’t be doing this,” she told him breathlessly. But she knew her words were a lame attempt to put a wall up against the swell of need she felt—and wanted to give in to. Her fingers remained on Brady’s chest, feeling him breathe.
Despite what she said, he could see that she wanted this as much as he did. It was in her eyes, and in the way she had worded her protest. But he didn’t try to talk her out of pulling away. He just continued looking at her.
And just like that, they were back in each other’s arms, kissing again.
Somehow, they had managed to get onto the sofa and the situation only grew hotter and more demanding from that point on.
Passion grew as he went on kissing her. The moment, the feeling, just continued to escalate until they found themselves tottering on the apex of the moment.
Breathing heavily, Brady drew back for a second, knowing that any second now, they would be crossing a line that he hadn’t really considered crossing—until just now.
A line that, once crossed, would result in changing everything.
But as he leaned back in, ready to continue, ready to change the entire dynamic of their relationship, it was Harper who surprise
d him. She put her hands on his shoulders and pushed him back.
Confused, bewildered, Brady looked at her, an obvious question in his eyes.
“I can’t,” she told him again. “I just can’t let this happen.” She was crying now and seeing her like that, suffering like that, almost succeeded in breaking Brady’s heart.
He tried his best to comfort her, but she shook her head, getting up from the sofa.
“I have to leave,” she told him, her voice almost breaking.
Brady didn’t understand what she was telling him. “The room?”
Harper shook her head. “No. Here. You, the kids. I have to leave,” she repeated, tears sliding down her cheeks.
“But what about the kids?” he asked her, trying to make sense of what she was telling him. She kept pointing out how happy being a nanny made her. What was going on here? “They’ll be devastated. Not to mention that they’ll feel abandoned. And I have to work,” he reminded her. “I need you to be here with the twins.”
“I won’t leave you in the lurch,” she told him. “I’ll look after them until you can find someone else to take care of them. But I can’t live here anymore,” she told him. “I’m going to move out,” she said in case that wasn’t clear.
And then she quickly left the room before she lost her nerve.
Chapter Seventeen
Harper went through the motions of preparing a full dinner for the family as if nothing had happened. For the most part, Brady stayed out of her way, but he did peek into the kitchen a couple of times to make sure that everything was going well—and that she hadn’t abruptly left.
When he saw that she was still there, still cooking, he began to hope that maybe Harper had changed her mind about leaving after all. Maybe life might actually go back to what it had been before all this had gone down.
Brady mentally crossed his fingers. After all, if she actually left, he didn’t know what he would do without her. He realized that he had grown to care for her a great deal.
However, at the dinner table, Brady noticed that the twins did almost all of the talking, going from one thing to another like bees that couldn’t make up their minds which flower to land on.
For her part, Harper hardly said anything at all and that really worried him. He was at a loss as to how to make the situation right without making her feel that he was crowding her.
After dinner was over and Harper had cleared away all the dishes and washed them, instead of joining them in the living room where Brady was playing a game with Toby and Tyler the way she usually did, or taking them out for an evening walk, Harper quietly withdrew and disappeared into her room.
The twins were having an argument over the plot of a cartoon they had watched earlier, but seeing Harper leave the room had brought their “discussion” to a skidding halt.
Tyler looked at Brady, concern etched into his small face. “Is Harper sick?” he wanted to know.
“What makes you think that?” Brady asked, wanting to avoid discussing what was going on with the boys if he possibly could. He sought for a way to redirect the conversation.
“She always plays with us,” Toby stressed, speaking up. And then he pointed out the obvious. “She’s not playing with us now.”
Sensing that the boys needed to talk about it, Brady came as close to the truth as he could. “I think she just wants some time to herself.” Mentally, he crossed his fingers that that was all there was to it.
“Did going shopping with us make her tired?” Tyler wanted to know, concern puckering his small face.
“Something like that,” Brady answered vaguely.
“Well, I’m going to go and cheer her up,” Toby announced. And before Brady could stop him, the twin took off.
The boy was quickly followed by Tyler. It was clear that the twin believed that if one of them could offer comfort, then two could offer twice as much.
Brady stood there for a moment, torn between letting them go and stopping them. He compromised by following the well-intentioned duo to Harper’s room.
By the time he had reached it, the twins had already knocked on Harper’s door and had gotten her to let them in.
Brady walked into Harper’s room in time to see the sight of the nanny’s opened suitcase stop the twins dead in their tracks. Something akin to shock registered on their expressive faces.
“Why are you packing up your things?” Tyler wanted to know.
“Are you going somewhere?” Toby asked, frowning at the suitcase.
A horror-stricken look came over Tyler’s face as he asked, “Are you going away?”
Harper wasn’t about to lie to the twins. “I’m going back to my apartment,” she replied, placing a stack of blouses into the suitcase.
That just gave birth to a worse thought. “Are you leaving us?” Toby cried in disbelief.
Harper knew that Brady was watching her and it surprised her that he wasn’t interfering or attempting to set the twins straight. Instead, he was leaving this all up to her.
She didn’t know whether to feel grateful or feel abandoned.
For the time being, she decided to take the easy way out and just go along with the simplest explanation for her actions. To go into any explanation as to what she was really feeling was just too painful for her. She was afraid that she would start crying.
“Well, you’re not sick anymore so you don’t need me to be here every night, all night. I still have my apartment,” she told them, which was true. Before she had accepted the position as their nanny, she had signed a short-term lease. It wasn’t up yet and the landlord had refused to release her from the agreement—which now seemed like a good thing.
“Can’t you get rid of it?” Toby wanted to know.
As she packed up the last of her things, she kept her answer simple. “Not really.”
Toby’s eyebrows knitted together in consternation. “Why?” he wanted to know.
This was harder than she had anticipated. “It’s complicated,” she answered.
Obviously that still didn’t make any sense to the boy. “What does that mean?” he asked.
“It’s what grown-ups say when they don’t want to tell you something,” Tyler, the more sensitive of the two, explained.
This was just going around in circles. It was time to wind the topic up. “I’ll be back in the morning to make you breakfast,” she promised the twins, zipping the suitcase and swinging it off the bed. “Probably before either one of you even wakes up.”
Toby still looked skeptical. But Tyler just wanted something to hold on to. “You promise?” he asked her, looking up into her eyes.
“I promise,” she answered without hesitation. “Now behave, both of you. And listen to your uncle Brady. I expect you to be good,” she warned, adding, “I’ll be back tomorrow for a full report,” as she made her way down the stairs.
Setting the suitcase down, Harper extended the handle and pulled the luggage over to the door.
She wanted to pause and blow both boys a kiss, but she knew if she turned around to look at them, she wouldn’t be able to make it out the front door. So she just kept going.
She was actually going through with it, Brady thought, watching Harper walk out. He really hadn’t thought she would do it. He felt numb, like someone trapped in a bizarre dream, desperate to wake up.
“She left us,” Toby cried, his voice vibrated in disbelief.
Tyler sighed heavily. “Everybody leaves us,” he said sadly. “Mommy and Daddy left. Harper left and someday,” he continued, turning to look at Brady before he said to Toby, “Unca Brady will leave us, too. ’Cause we’re bad boys.” His lower lip quivered. “Everybody says so.”
That was when Brady realized that Tyler was crying and Toby was sniffling, doing his best not to cry.
The whole scene—and the declaration behind it—hit Brady like a po
werful punch to the gut. He could remember his initial reaction when he found out that he had been appointed the twins’ guardian. At the time all he had wanted to do was turn tail and run.
But at this moment, he realized that he didn’t feel that way any longer. Somewhere along the line, without being aware of it, he had grown to love these two over-energized little boys. Love them fiercely with all his heart.
“Come here, guys,” he said to them, sitting down on the sofa.
He drew the twins to him. For once, there was no jockeying for position, no fighting over who sat where. The twins just sank down on the sofa, one on either side of their “Unca” Brady.
Brady put one arm around each small boy and hugged the sad little soldiers to him.
“I’m not going to go anywhere,” he told them. “And I will always, always be here to take care of you.”
Tyler looked up at him. “You promise?”
“I promise,” he told the twins, adding, “Even when you don’t want me to.”
“We’ll always want you to,” Tyler said solemnly, speaking for both himself and for Toby.
Though touched by the boy’s serious expression, Brady could only laugh. “Remember saying that in ten or eleven years,” he told the boy, knowing firsthand what teenage kids could be like.
“We’ll remember,” Tyler promised, nodding his head up and down.
“Yeah, we’ll remember for a hundred years, not just eleven,” Toby told Brady confidently.
The serious moment was lightened. We’ll see, Brady thought, feeling his heart filling with love.
He continued sitting there with the twins, doing his best to offer them comfort and reassurance.
He also found himself thinking that maybe Harper had been right after all. The twins were getting too attached to her.
As for him, well, it was too late for him. He was attracted to Harper as well as attached and there was nothing he could do about it.
For whatever reason, she seemed to have some sort of emotional baggage weighing her down. She needed to deal with that before she could deal with anything else.
An Unexpected Father Page 15
