by Teri Wilson
He frowned and shoved his casserole into the oven.
“Whoa.” Brody rattled the front-page section of the Bee in his hands. “That nut job who keeps complaining about the parenting column wrote another letter to the editor, and this one’s a doozy.”
“Speaking of people who need to get a life.” Wade rolled his eyes.
Sweat broke out on the back of Jack’s neck. Nut job, here. Present and accounted for. “Who wants orange juice?”
He didn’t wait for an answer, sloshing OJ into four glasses and plonking them down on the table purely in an attempt to avoid this next conversational land mine.
Was he proud of his latest missive? No, he was not. He’d gone too far when he’d called for the columnist’s resignation. He wasn’t out to get anyone fired, but come on. Parents didn’t need to know what babies to follow on Instagram. They needed to know how to sleep train their six-month-old twins.
Hypothetically speaking, of course.
It’s not hypothetical at all. The guys are right. You’re losing it, my friend.
“The reporter’s angry little pen pal says she should quit.” Brody let out a whistle as he finished reading the letter to the editor, then passed it around the table for the others to peruse at their leisure.
Super.
“Did she?” Jack asked, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
“Did she what?” Brody took a swig of his juice. “Quit?”
“Apparently not,” Wade said, spreading open the paper’s lifestyle section. “She’s got a new column in here—‘Five easy applesauce recipes for your infant or toddler.’”
Another listicle, like something that might be posted to Buzzfeed online. But hey, at least it was somewhat useful. And at least he wouldn’t have a reporter’s firing weighing on his conscience.
Thank God. He knew he needed to take it down a notch. He didn’t use to be like this. He’d actually been a fun-loving guy at one point in time. A nice guy. A decent guy. Too decent, according to his ex. Maybe she’d find whatever she was looking for in San Francisco—a big life in the big city with a not-so-decent man and zero children.
Jack hoped so. He wanted her to be happy, because somewhere deep down he was still kind and decent. The past year had been a struggle, but he was coming out of the woods. Mostly.
“Do the twins like applesauce?” Wade said, folding the page with the parenting column into a neat square.
Jack raked a hand through his hair. “I honestly don’t know. I’ve only recently begun letting them try something other than formula. They’re pretty crazy about mashed bananas.”
“Well, here. Maybe your mom could give one of the recipes a try.” Wade offered the square of newsprint to Jack.
He was almost afraid to touch it, lest it burst into flames and give him away as the letter-writing nutjob. At least there was a fire extinguisher nearby.
“Thanks.” Jack looked down at the words on the page and ran the pad of his thumb over the columnist’s name, Queen Bee, clearly a nom de plume.
She could be anyone. She could have a Pulitzer for all he knew, but whoever she was, Jack was fairly certain she knew next to nothing about raising a child.
And that was absolutely none of his business. He didn’t need to rely on his small-town newspaper for parenting advice. There was a pile of parenting books from the library stacked on his nightstand for that very purpose. He just hadn’t come up with a spare minute to crack one of them open.
He wasn’t sure why he’d made the irrational choice to channel all his frustration into complaining about Queen Bee’s silly articles, but it needed to stop.
Probably.
No, definitely. It definitely needed to stop.
“Actually, I think I’ll whip up some applesauce myself. My mom’s doing enough.” He tucked the article into the back pocket of his regulation Normex pants for safekeeping.
No way would he ask his mother to make his daughters homemade applesauce. She already insisted on taking care of the twins while he was on duty. The girls even had matching cribs in the room formerly known as his dad’s man cave in the red brick house where Jack and his sister had grown up. He wasn’t sure what he would have done without his family this past year, especially in the days right after Natalie had decided that motherhood “wasn’t for her.”
“Hey.” Cap looked up from the sports page. “I know exactly what you need, Jack.”
Please don’t say a woman.
Jack sighed. Wasn’t there a fire somewhere that needed putting out? Nothing major, just a small flame to get everyone’s attention off him and onto something else. Preferably something that didn’t involve Queen Bee and his letters to the editor.
“You need a night nanny.” Cap shot him a triumphant grin.
“A what?” Jack said.
Cap shrugged. “A night nanny—someone to come in and take care of the girls at night while you sleep.”
“Is that a thing?” Jack glanced around the table. Was he the only one who’d never heard of such a profession?
Brody nodded. “Oh, yeah. My brother and his wife got one of those when Susan went back to work. They said it was a lifesaver. She came over around ten at night and stayed until six in the morning.”
Wade frowned. “I’m not sure I could sleep at night knowing there was a stranger lurking around my house.”
Jack snorted. So not a problem. The entire population of Lovestruck could throw a party in his living room and he’d probably snooze through the entire thing.
“I’m telling you, a night nanny is the perfect solution. I can’t believe I’m just now thinking of it.” Cap sipped from his coffee cup, then peered into it when he realized it was empty.
Jack grabbed the pot from the coffeemaker on the kitchen counter and filled it for him. “Better late than never. I’ll look into it.”
Of course if Queen Bee had written a single column offering advice for new parents returning to work, he might have already gotten a night nanny. But no. Instead, his head was filled with useless information like the four cutest toddler shoes for fall and the top bathing suits for a summer in the baby pool.
At least he had a blueprint for applesauce in his back pocket. That was something.
Cap nodded. “Just wait. A night nanny will change your life.”
Jack poured himself a steaming cup of Folgers breakfast blend—black, like his mood.
Change my life?
Maybe a night nanny wasn’t such a bad idea.
Chapter Three
Dear Editor,
While I’m pleased to see Queen Bee, your parenting “expert,” writing about practical matters, the first applesauce recipe in Tuesday’s column was bitter to the point of being inedible. I’ve yet to attempt the other four recipes, but based on past experience with this columnist’s work, I’m not holding my breath.
Sincerely,
Fired Up in Lovestruck
Madison maneuvered her grocery cart from the front entrance of Lovestruck’s Village Market toward the produce section, nearly plowing down a tower of maple syrup jugs in the process. She needed to slow down. She knew this, but she was just so, so...enraged...that she couldn’t help banging into a few things along the way.
Her pen pal had written yet another letter to the editor. Short and sweet this time and not quite as critical as the previous letters, but still. Couldn’t Fired Up in Lovestruck tell she was trying?
Okay, so she hadn’t exactly put each of the applesauce recipes to the test, but there hadn’t been time to do so. The electricity in her apartment above the barn was still nonexistent. Thank you, rural utilities services. She’d been forced to sleep in Aunt Alice’s guest room in the farmhouse the past two nights, and while her aunt genuinely didn’t seem to mind, Madison hated to impose. She was also having a difficult time growing accustomed to her bedmate—Ali
ce’s rescue dog, Toby.
Madison generally loved dogs. If not for the strict no-pets policy in her apartment building in Manhattan, she’d have adopted one herself by now. Last year Vogue hired a delivery service to bring ten adoptable puppies to the office for Take Your Dog to Work Day, and she’d very nearly tucked a sweet long-haired Chihuahua mix into her handbag and walked away with it, Elle Woods style.
Toby wasn’t exactly an ordinary dog, though. He was Chinese crested—delicate, fine boned and, other than some wisps of fur on his ankles and the tiptop of his head, completely hairless. Madison hadn’t gotten Alice to admit it yet, but she was fairly certain her aunt had adopted a hairless dog just so she could knit him sweaters. Toby’s doggy closet runneth over. Madison was legitimately envious of his wardrobe. The poor naked thing was a bona fide fashionista, which may have been why he’d formed such a strong bond with her. It was as if he’d sensed a kindred spirit in Madison. When he wasn’t at Main Street Yarn with Aunt Alice, he was curled into a ball in Madison’s lap or hogging her pillow at bedtime. Honestly, the pup was a sweetheart, but he had an odd habit of burrowing beneath the bedsheets during the night. One of these days Madison would get used to her feet coming into contact with bare dog skin in the wee hours of the morning. She just hoped it happened sooner rather than later.
But Madison had bigger problems than hairless dogs and her dead flat iron at the moment. Mr. Grant didn’t seem to mind Fired Up’s latest letter much. It was short, sweet—sort of...at least compared to the previous letters—and to the point. But it bothered Madison more than any of the others had, probably because she’d actually believed in her applesauce column. It had seemed like just the sort of solid, hands-on advice that her readers wanted.
Correction: reader. Singular.
Plus, the quotation marks Fired Up had put around the word expert had really gotten to her. It was basically a troll’s way of making those annoying air quotes that everybody hated. The fact that she wasn’t actually an expert was beside the point. Fired Up didn’t know a thing about her background. He didn’t even know her real name.
She wasn’t going to sit back and take the criticism this time. Enough was enough. Her job was at stake—not just her lame position at the Lovestruck Bee, but whatever glittering future awaited her back in Manhattan. Getting fired would put a huge dark stain on her résumé and make finding a new job in fashion journalism all the more impossible. She couldn’t risk it. She was going to have to put that troll in his place, once and for all. All she needed was a bushelful of apples, a little quality time in Aunt Alice’s kitchen and her laptop.
Lucky for her, Lovestruck was flush with apples this time of year. The town was dotted with orchards, and since late summer was peak tourist season, farmers made daily deliveries to the market. Apples of all varieties—Gala, Quinti, Ida Red, Jersey Mac—spilled over the edges of bushel baskets piled in the center of the produce section.
Madison brought her grocery cart to an angry halt and reached for a rich, red piece of fruit, still warm from the summer sun. But just as her fingertips came into contact with the apple’s shiny peel, someone plucked it out of her grasp.
Vermont still hated her, apparently, as did most of its inhabitants.
“Um, excuse me,” she said to the apple thief’s broad back.
Madison wasn’t usually quite so confrontational. Not even in New York, where she’d once witnessed two grown men get into an actual brawl in the checkout line at CVS. But she’d had it with this place. She really had.
The man turned around, and she squared her shoulders, fully prepared to demand an apology. But he was awfully tall—tall enough that she had to tip her head back to get a good look at him, and as she did so, her gaze snagged on three red letters situated just above the pocket on his dark blue T-shirt.
LFD.
They seemed vaguely familiar, but Madison couldn’t place them right away, probably because she was still in denial that she resided in L now instead of NY. A nagging sense of foreboding swept over her. Then the pectoral muscle beneath the letters flexed, and her mouth grew dry.
“Oh,” the bearer of the rock-hard physique said.
He sounded less than pleased, which managed to snap Madison back to her senses long enough to meet his familiar steely gaze. Only one man in all of Vermont could possibly have eyes that blue paired with such a deep frown.
LFD.
Lovestruck Fire Department.
Of course.
“It’s you,” they both said simultaneously.
His gaze homed in on her mass of unruly curls, and the corner of his lips twitched. Madison had the sudden urge to grab an apple from her cart and conk him over his annoyingly handsome head.
She couldn’t, obviously, because her cart was empty.
She lifted her chin. “You took my apple.”
His gaze narrowed. “Pardon?”
“You stole it right out of my hand.” Why had that sounded so much less crazy in her head?
“I assure you that wasn’t my intention.” He gestured toward the contents of his grocery cart. “Be my guest.”
A dozen or more apples rolled around in the bottom of his basket. Madison couldn’t have identified the apple in question if her life had depended on it.
Now was the time to back off and apologize. There were a million more apples in Vermont—hundreds, if not thousands, in this very store. It certainly didn’t seem as if he’d intentionally plucked it from her hands.
But Madison didn’t back down. She couldn’t, because her life was a complete and total mess. And for some humiliating reason, Lieutenant Jack Cole seemed to have a front-row seat for her most embarrassing moments. Was clinging on to some tiny shred of pride really such a bad thing?
“Very well.” She picked an apple at random and transferred it from his cart to hers.
“That’s the one, huh? You sure?” His lips twitched again as if biting back a smile.
Sure, this he smiles at.
“I’m positive,” she said. Why, oh why, had she chosen this hill to die on?
He nodded. “Okay, then.”
“Okay,” she echoed.
Then they both stood there, regarding each other for a beat. Madison desperately wanted to ask him why he needed so many apples. There wasn’t a single other thing in his cart. Since he was wearing his Lovestruck Fire Department shirt, she figured this must be an official fireman grocery store run. But gosh, how much fruit did they go through down at the station? A lot, apparently, because he reached for another from the bushel basket at the same moment that Madison did, causing their hands to collide.
There it was again—that little zing of electricity she’d felt the last time he’d touched her. Madison couldn’t move all of a sudden. She was paralyzed, unable to do anything except blink up at the beautiful blue warmth of his irises. His gaze dropped to her mouth, and her heart felt like it might beat right out of her chest right there in the produce section.
But in a flash, his eyes met hers again. Icy blue, this time. Stone cold.
A fresh wave of embarrassment washed over her. Clearly, she’d been imagining things. Lieutenant Cole wasn’t attracted to her in the slightest, and that was fine. More than fine. She didn’t even like the man.
She took a giant backward step, eager to put some space between them. But in her haste to get away, she moved too fast, teetering on her red-soled stilettos—a holdover from her former, fashionable life. Before she could right herself, she stumbled into a row of bushel baskets. One basket tipped over, then another...and another, sending apples careening everywhere and flying in all directions.
She scrambled after them at first, trying to scoop them up and deposit as many as she could into her cart. But the sheer number of them was staggering. It was an apple avalanche, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it.
Not even a card-carrying hero like
Jack Cole.
Apples bounced around Jack’s feet, falling faster than he could possibly catch them. He tried—oh, how he tried. He dove at them as they spilled onto the floor, but within seconds, Madison and Jack were both shin-deep in fruit.
She would have run away if she could, but a few hundred apples blocked the path to her getaway. Super.
Jack narrowed his gaze at her. “Pardon me for asking, but are you always this...”
Her face burned with heat as adjective after adjective spun round in her head, none of them flattering—clumsy...ridiculous...
Infatuated.
An apple must have hit her on the head and knocked a screw loose, because no way was she attracted to this man. He clearly brought out the very worst in her.
“Hostile?” he finally said.
“Hostile?” Her voice rose an octave or six, making her sound more like a cartoon character than a person, which seemed almost appropriate, given her current circumstances. Seriously though, if anyone was hostile around here, it was him. “I’ll have you know that most people find me charming.”
“Is that so?” He let out an unprecedented laugh, and a dimple flashed in his left cheek, because of course it did.
Dimple or not, the man was impossible. One minute he was glaring at her and the next, he was laughing at her. Except there’d been a sliver of a moment when he’d looked at her as if he’d wanted to kiss her. She was sure of it.
She lifted her chin. “Yes, it’s absolutely so.”
He said nothing. He just silently bent down, picked up one of the runaway apples and took a bite out of it while she stared at him in complete and utter confusion. What in the world was he doing?
The mind reeled.
Forbidden fruit, she thought, and for some strange reason, her heart started beating hard and fast again...so fast that she suddenly had trouble catching her breath.
Until a staticky voice rang out overhead, ending the magic spell once and for all.