Nanny For The Soldier Bear

by Meg Ripley

  I got up and went to her, wrapping my arms around her and holding her close. “I know. It’s horrible.”

  “Help them,” she sputtered. “Please. Peyton is so sweet; you’ll just love her. And now she—she—doesn’t have parents!”

  I let her sob on my shoulder for a long while, my shirt damp with her tears, her face red and splotchy. She kept saying over and over, “I just can’t believe it. I can’t believe they’re both gone.”

  After mulling the thought over in my mind, I began to reconsider. How hard could this really be, anyway? It’s not like Peyton’s a baby; she’s six. And I do need a job… “Okay, I’ll do it, Nikki. I’ll do whatever I can, even if it’s just for now.”

  That night, I lay in bed, wondering what I had gotten myself into. It was only my first day in town; my sister’s friends had been murdered, and I was going to be a nanny? Home and the diner were looking better every hour.

  4

  Conner

  I knew Mason was beside me. I knew Owen was there, too. I had a vague idea of where I was—in a church somewhere—and I knew the most important fact. The one undeniable, inescapable fact. I was at a funeral for my brother and sister-in-law. They were both gone. And I was about to become the guardian of their daughter.

  My stomach turned and I closed my eyes to stop the room from spinning. The medication wasn’t helping. The nightmares still came. The flashbacks still came. Things were getting tangled up in my mind. The years I spent on deployment in the Marines, the deaths I’d seen there, the deaths I’d seen here. Faces moved and morphed. My commanding officer was pulled from the swamp, then he became my brother, then my fellow soldier.

  I woke up night after night in a sweat, reaching for someone. I hadn’t been able to save Zeke when he’d been shot. I hadn’t been able to save Logan and Alaina, either. I reached for them; I reached for them every damn night. And I woke up feeling inadequate with a heavy pressure on me, telling me I’d failed them all. My therapist prescribed a pill that was supposed to keep the nightmares away, another to calm my racing heart, and yet another to help quell my depression. I don’t think any of them did a damn thing.

  I’d been given time off from work, but the last thing I wanted to do was sit at home with my thoughts. I wanted to be out there; to be out saving people. At least let me save someone. Let me find some way to relieve the guilt and stress.

  The service had started at some point. I hadn’t noticed exactly when, but some minister began to speak. Who was that guy? Who had chosen him? He was talking about my brother. He walked over to a small CD player and pressed a button. The sound emanating from the speakers was tinny—and too quiet, yet too loud at the same time—but the melody hit me like a bullet to the chest. A sudden flash. Logan. Me. Screaming along to this song. Goofing off. Driving too fast. Drinking too much. Dancing our asses off at his wedding. He loved that song. And I’d never be able to listen to it again.

  I stood up when the wave moved to my stomach. Hurrying out the back, I saw the bathroom sign, rushed in and heaved up the contents of my stomach. I hadn’t stress puked like that in years. That was one thing my therapist had helped me with, though, the bottle of whiskey I’d guzzled down the night before probably wasn’t helping, either.

  Just then, I heard the lawyer’s voice again. “It means that you’re Peyton’s legal guardian.”

  How was it that neither Alaina nor Logan had any other capable family members? My mother was still alive, but she was far too ill to take care of a six-year-old. She’d barely made it to the funeral, requiring the assistance of a home nurse to leave the house. “There is no one else,” the lawyer said. “The will specifies you, Mr. Griffin.”

  If my brother’s death wasn’t enough to cope with, I was going to be a fucking father, too? I mean, don’t get me wrong, Peyton was adorable. The times I spent with her, she always seemed to have fun, but seeing me once a week for a few hours wasn’t exactly the same as living with me. What would she do at my house? I didn’t have a pink room or dolls. I didn’t have toys. I probably didn’t have anything a child would need. And how could I? I had no idea what kind of stuff kids need to have around.

  “The house is yours, too,” the lawyer said. “Well, technically, it’s Peyton’s, but it’s yours until she’s eighteen. There are funds allocated for her care and education.”

  I figured we would stay at their house; at least she’d have everything of hers there. It would already be childproofed or whatever parents did to a house to make it safe. It would have her memories. But that meant I’d be sleeping in my brother’s room. Looking at his clothes, his razor in the bathroom and his boots by the front door. For the time being, that was the plan. But I didn’t know how long I would be able to take it.

  Admittedly, I’d tried to get out of it. “If you don’t take her, she’ll go into foster care,” the lawyer warned. God, I was such a selfish asshole. Peyton was part of my brother. She was the most important person on the planet to him besides his wife. How could I have abandoned her? I couldn’t. And coming from shifter parents—and being a shifter herself—she couldn’t be safe just anywhere; it’s not like there was a shifter adoption service in the area. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing, but I would have to step up and figure it out. If not for Peyton, then for my brother. That was the only thing I could still do for him at that point.

  I splashed water on my face and stumbled out the door, trying to compose myself. In the lobby, a woman sat on a bench near the bathrooms. I didn’t recognize her, but her curves caught my eye, making my inner bear groan. But I noticed she was on her phone, and for some irrational reason, it caused me to rage out. How dare she sit there all casual, chatting away, while my brother and his wife were lying dead in the next room?

  “Who are you?” I barked at her.

  She looked up, shocked, then glanced around. “Who, me?”

  “You.” I walked over to her and crossed my arms. I wanted to yank her off the seat and throw her phone as hard as I could, watching it shatter into millions of tiny pieces.

  “I… uhh…” Her face turned red and she swallowed hard. “I’m here for my sister?”

  “Is that your answer, or a question?”

  Her face reddened. Good, I thought. She should be ashamed of herself.

  “I’m… here for my sister.”

  “Who’s your sister?”

  “Um…Nikki?” Her eyes widened slightly and she said, “Nikki. She was friends with Alaina.”

  “But you weren’t.”

  “I’m new to town. I came for her, and to meet the brother of…the deceased.”

  “Logan,” I seethed. God, she could’ve at least had the decency to know whose funeral she was crashing.

  “Right. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you, I just didn’t think it would be appropriate for me to be in there since I never knew either of them. But, Logan. I understand his brother needs a nanny for their little girl, so I’m here to meet him.”

  “So you’re a nanny?”

  “No, but I have a degree in elementary education and I’m available. Nikki seemed to think that since I’m her sister and she was friends with Alaina, I’d be a good fit.” She shrugged. “I need a job and he needs a nanny, so I guess it could work out.”

  I reassessed her from a new angle. She was dressed modestly and her mousy brown hair was pulled back. Not too much make up on. Not that any of those things meant she was capable, but it seemed like the way an elementary school teacher would be. And she was right about one thing: I needed someone immediately. I didn’t know this ‘Nikki,’ but I knew Alaina, and if Alaina was friends with her, then Nikki must have been a stand-up person.

  “384 Olive Street. Sunday at 10.” I turned from her and started to walk away.

  “Wait! Are you…?”

  I looked back over my shoulder. “Logan’s brother. Conner.”

  Her mouth was still hanging open as I walked back into the sanctuary.

  5

  Jessie


  “No, no, no,” I insisted. “Nikki, he was a complete jerk! I don’t even think Peyton should be subject to him; I’m certainly not going to deal with that asshole every day. Thank you for setting this up for me, but I just can’t do it.”

  We were back home after the funeral and Nikki put her hands on my shoulders. After my encounter with Conner, I had been in shock at first, and then, was angry. Who did he think he was talking to me like that?

  “Please,” she begged. “I know he can be a little…”

  “Of a dick?”

  She winced. “I was going to say rough around the edges, but he’s been through a lot.”

  I sighed. “I know. But I’m not ready for something so difficult. It’s hard enough moving here to a new place, leaving all my friends and Biscuit and Muffin with Mom and Dad.” My throat thickened when I thought about home. My parents, my cuddly cat, Biscuit, and my loyal and loving dog, Muffin, were all there waiting for me. I came to the area to be with my sister, but she was all I had there. My whole life was back home. I sat down on her couch and covered my face, sighing.

  Nikki sat beside me. “Jessie, I know you’re a compassionate person. I also know you’re an awesome secret keeper, so I’m going to tell you something about Conner.” She drew in a deep breath. “He was in the Army, and he saw some of his friends get killed. Alaina said that he has nightmares and PTSD from it and that he blames himself. He has some issues, and this is obviously making everything so much worse. That’s no excuse for his behavior, but give the guy a break. He just lost his brother and sister-in-law and became a dad out of nowhere. That’s going to be hard for anyone, on top of his other struggles, so you can’t blame him for being in a bad mood.”

  My sister knew me too well. Her words tugged on my heart strings and made me feel sorry for him—and for Peyton. If he was having this trouble, the little girl would need someone to be there for her; someone who had the wherewithal to be compassionate and patient.

  “Just try it for a little while,” Nikki continued. “Let him get settled and get back to some kind of schedule. Let Peyton adjust as much as she can. Look, you don’t have another job, anyway; any time you could devote to them would be such a help to him and Peyton—and really, to Alaina and Logan, too. They would want someone amazing to take care of their daughter, and you’re just that someone.”

  I chewed my lower lip.

  “You can always bail,” she went on. “You can always find something else. But don’t do either until you give it a chance. I mean, attitude aside, you’ve gotta admit, Conner’s pretty hot.” She gave me a grimacing smile.

  I rolled my eyes. “Like that matters.”

  “He’s nice to look at, is all I’m saying. I wouldn’t mind having a live-in boss who looks like that.”

  “Too bad he’s a complete jerk.”

  “Not a complete jerk. Just a…situational jerk. Once he heals a little, he’ll get better. It’s a lot to deal with all at once.”

  “Yeah.” I let out a slow, long breath. “I suppose it is.”

  6

  Conner

  “What do you want to do today, honey?”

  Peyton sat on the couch and I was on the floor so that my face was close to her level. Somewhere, someone had told me you had to get down on their level so it didn’t seem like you were a big giant to them. A pain struck my chest when I realized it had been Logan.

  Peyton didn’t respond to my question. She just looked at her hands.

  “Do you want to…watch TV? Read a book? Color?”

  She lifted her shoulder the tiniest bit.

  “How about we take a walk?”

  She shook her head slightly. I blew out a hard breath. Weren’t you supposed to talk to kids and get them to do stuff? If she were old enough to be more in control of her shifting, we could go for a long run; I know it helped me deal with the pain. But she’d been spontaneously shifting as she dealt with the stress of everything. She was still in that childhood phase of being a shifter where you couldn’t control it easily, and when it happened spontaneously, it was the result of an extreme situation. Like finding out your parents were dead.

  “Do you have any homework?”

  “We don’t get homework,” she mumbled.

  It took me a second to work out what she’d said. “You have to get homework. All kids get homework.”

  “We don’t.”

  I narrowed my eyes at her. Even in kindergarten, I was pretty sure there was homework. I’d have to…my first instinct was to talk to Logan about it. But obviously, I couldn’t do that. I guess I’d have to talk to the teacher. Whatever homework she might have had would have been due days ago; before all this. How much school had she missed so far? Lord. How in the world was I going to do this?

  I got up and went to the kitchen. My half-finished beer sat on the counter, slightly warm by then, and I guzzled it down; it wasn’t strong enough to deal with the day I’d been having. How much have I had to drink so far this morning? I rubbed at my face, looking at the cans piled in the recycle bin. When was the last time I’d emptied it? How many days’ worth of drinking was that from? What day is this?

  My eyes burned and my head felt light and spun a bit, just the way I liked it to. Has the kid eaten yet today?

  “You hungry?” I called into the living room. No answer. “Peyton. Are you hungry?” When she didn’t answer again, my anger flared. This kid had better start listening to me. I stormed into the living room. “Hey! I asked if you were hungry, and when I ask you a question, you need to answer it, okay?”

  She looked at me and her lip quivered. She shook her head.

  “Fine.” I stomped back into the kitchen. What was I supposed to do with a kid who didn’t talk and wouldn’t do anything? She was supposed to be getting into therapy; my own therapist had suggested that, but the sessions hadn’t started yet. In the meantime, I was losing my mind trying to get her to do anything at all. What six-year-old didn’t even want to watch TV?

  A little voice in the back of my head told me, one who just lost her parents, you asshole.

  Yeah. I wasn’t cut out for this. I was failing her already and it was making us both miserable. It’d been days since the funeral—and that meant it’d been days since we were left there, alone, in her parents’ house. She obviously didn’t want to be there with me and, truth be told, I didn’t really want to be there with her, either. I wanted my own house. My own shit. My own space that wasn’t full of memories and chick decorations. God, what a nightmare it would be to have a wife, I thought. I couldn’t take it. I’d never marry. But, I’d never planned to have kids, either, and look how that worked out.

  My head swung to the side as someone knocked on the door. People had been dropping off food and stopping by. The food wasn’t bad, but I hated drop-bys. Who just showed up and didn’t call first? Rude. We weren’t expecting anyone, and I was tempted to ignore it. But after the knocking came again, Peyton got up and went to the door.

  “I’ll get it,” I said. Kids weren’t supposed to answer the door, were they?

  I opened it to see someone vaguely familiar standing on the front steps. She must have been at the funeral or something.

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “Hi, um, I’m Jessie?”

  I narrowed my eyes at her. “Is that a question?”

  She clenched her jaw. “I’m Jessie.”

  “Well, what do you want? I have things to do.”

  “You…told me to come today…”

  I tried to remember. Why in the world would I have told her to come over? I mean, she was a hot piece of ass, but… “What for?”

  “I’m the nanny?”

  I managed to keep myself from rolling my eyes. Why did people insist on making statements into questions?

  “The nanny,” I repeated. Then I recalled a moment at the funeral. Outside the bathroom. Right. “Yeah, okay. Come in then, I guess.”

  She walked in and looked around. I gestured toward Peyton in the living roo
m.

  “She’s over there. If you can get her to talk or do anything, the job is yours.” I went back to the kitchen and cracked another beer. I didn’t want to make it obvious I was observing her, but I needed to know what was going on in there, so I stayed within earshot. It seemed like something a responsible parent would do. Not that I was neither responsible nor a parent.

  I heard her soft voice speaking to Peyton. “Hi, I’m Jessie. I’m going to be spending some time with you, I hope. Maybe before and after school, to help out a little. Does that sound okay?”

  I didn’t hear Peyton respond. Of course she wouldn’t. This Jessie girl had her work cut out for her.

  “You’re Peyton, right?”

  I snorted. This girl wasn’t sure of her own name or anyone else’s.

  “That’s such a pretty name. Do you have a middle name?”

  To my shock, I heard Peyton reply. “Rose. After my grandma.”

  “Oh, I love that name!” Jessie exclaimed. “Does that mean roses are your favorite flower?”

  No response again. I smiled smugly.

  “I love roses,” she continued, “but do you know what I love even more? Tulips. Bright yellow and red tulips. They’re so colorful and cheerful. I like to rub the soft petals between my fingers. Have you ever done that?”

  Peyton either didn’t answer or made a head gesture, but I didn’t know for sure. Staying in the kitchen wasn’t going to work; I needed to see what was happening. I moved a few steps forward until I could peek into the living room. Jessie was kneeling down in front of Peyton, who still sat on the couch. Yeah, I did that getting down to their level thing, too, I thought. Didn’t help.

  Then she said, “This is a really hard time for you, isn’t it?”