Marrying the Northbridge Nanny

by Victoria Pade

  He just needed to think of her the way he thought of his ex-wife—as a person he had to be civil and courteous to for his daughter’s happiness and well-being.

  Other than that?

  There wouldn’t be anything other than that between him and Meg Perry.

  It was something he swore to himself.

  That no matter what, her brain was not meeting his brawn.

  “You yike it?”

  It took Meg a split second to translate yike. She’d arrived at the McKendrick home just after Tia’s bath, in time for the bedtime story. Logan was perched on Tia’s small twin bed, his daughter by his side as he read Goodnight Moon to her. Meg was on the rocking chair near the bed and the moment Logan finished the book, Tia leaned forward to see Meg—whom she was only beginning to acknowledge—to ask that question.

  Yike was apparently like—did she like the book that Logan had read?

  “I did,” Meg assured the little girl.

  “You din’t say guh’night moon,” Tia accused.

  At the end of the story, after Logan had read the last line, bidding good-night to noises everywhere, Tia had added, “Good night, moon,” and Logan had repeated it. Meg hadn’t.

  So she did now. “Good night, moon.”

  That seemed to satisfy the three-year-old because she sat back against her pillow again.

  Logan threw Meg a smile that crinkled the corners of his striking eyes. She’d lectured herself since she’d left here yesterday that she wasn’t going to notice things like that. But there it was anyway.

  Then, to his daughter, he said, “Tell me what I told you happens tomorrow.”

  “You and An’ Had has to work.”

  “And while we work, who will be here with you?”

  Tia leaned forward again, pointed a finger at Meg, and said, “Her will.”

  “Meg. She’s Meg,” Logan reminded.

  Tia sat back without saying Meg’s name the way her father was obviously prompting her to do.

  “I wanna play wis you and An’ Had,” the little girl said quietly, pushing back on her pillow so she was more hidden by her father when she confided that to him.

  “Aunt Had and I can’t play tomorrow. Meg will be here for you to play with,” he said with a pointed glance at Meg.

  Why did he aim that at me? Meg wondered. Did he think she wasn’t planning to play with his daughter?

  Maybe she was misinterpreting the glance. Certainly she didn’t address it. But she did lean forward so she could see Tia and say, “I have some games and you can show me what toys and games you have that you like to play.”

  “I wanna play wis my dad,” Tia responded in a thanks-but-no-thanks way.

  And why it flashed through Meg’s mind that she might like to play with Tia’s dad herself, Meg had no idea. But she nipped that bit of insanity in the bud, and said, “I’ll tell you what, if you do what we need to do to get the day started, then as a prize, we’ll go to a safe part of the workroom and visit your dad and your aunt Hadley for just a few minutes. Then, if you do whatever we need to do after that, you can get a second visit to see Dad and Aunt Hadley in the afternoon. As long as Dad says that’s okay and that we won’t disturb their work too much.”

  Tia looked up to her father for confirmation.

  “I think that sounds like a good idea,” he said. “But you’ll have to do what Meg tells you to do first.”

  Meg was pleased that he’d gotten the idea—visiting him would be the reward earned for good behavior. She was also glad that he wasn’t opposed to having his work disturbed.

  Tia had also apparently gotten the idea that there was a price to be paid for the privilege, because she frowned mightily. But all she said to her father was, “Will you be here when I wake up?”

  “I will be. We’ll have breakfast together like we always do. Then I’ll go out to the barn to work—like before, when we were at our old house, remember how I would leave to go to work?”

  Tia nodded.

  “Well, it’s the same as that, except I don’t go as far away. And while I do that, Meg will be with you like Nancy used to be.”

  At the mention of Nancy—who Meg could only assume had been Tia’s former nanny—Tia looked at Meg. “Hers like Nancy?” the little girl said, putting it together.

  “Right. Nancy was your nanny in Connecticut, and now Meg is your nanny here—she’ll help take care of you.”

  Tia seemed to accept Meg on those terms—luckily she must have had a good experience with Nancy.

  But the acceptance came only in Tia not saying anything at all, but merely putting her index finger in her mouth. Which was apparently a signal to her father because seeing that, he got off the bed, slid the little girl to lie flat and covered her with her princess-themed top sheet and a light blanket.

  Then he bent over, kissed Tia’s forehead, and said, “Good night, moon. Good night, Tia.”

  Tia took her finger out of her mouth only long enough to say, “Guh’night, moon. Guh’night, Daddy.”

  And Meg had the sense that that was how they said good-night every night. It made her smile before she whispered, “See you tomorrow, Tia.”

  Out of the mouth came the index finger again. “Uhuh. Say guh’night, moon. Guh’night, Tia.”

  “Ahh. Good night, moon. Good night, Tia,” Meg said, following orders, thinking that it was a positive sign that she was being included in the ritual.

  “Guh’night, moon. Guh’night, Meg,” came the small, sleepy voice before the finger went back in the mouth once more and Tia closed her eyes.

  Logan smoothed the little girl’s hair lovingly and then nodded toward the door to let Meg know they should leave.

  In the hallway outside Tia’s room Logan pulled the door closed slightly and whispered, “We’ve been reading that same book and saying those same things every night for at least the last year but no one gets away without it.”

  “Bedtime routines are important for kids,” Meg said. “They can almost be like a sleeping pill.”

  He nodded as if she wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know, and Meg wanted to kick herself for doing the second thing she’d vowed not to do with him—hide her introversion by saying everything as if it were a pearl of wisdom handed down from the mount of her education and experience.

  But it was too late to do anything about it and so she just went with him downstairs.

  Hadley was turning off the television in the living room when they got to the entry. Meg had left her luggage there before going up to watch Logan put Tia to bed but now there wasn’t a suitcase in sight.

  Before she could ask about it, Hadley said, “I took your things out to the apartment—I thought I’d save you guys that much.”

  “Thanks.” This from Logan.

  To Meg, Hadley said, “I think you’ll love the apartment. I know I do. Logan put a lot of his own personal touches on it—and in it. He did everything but the plumbing and electrical work himself. He designed the cutest kitchen table, the couch and easy chairs are his, and the bed is one of his signature pieces, too.”

  “I can’t wait to see it,” Meg answered honestly, pretending not to notice how uncomfortable his sister’s praise was making Logan.

  “No reason to wait,” he said then, as if he were in a hurry to get out of the situation. “Come on, I’ll show it to you.”

  “I left the door unlocked,” Hadley called as they headed for the rear of the house.

  Still, Meg saw Logan grab a set of keys from one of the countertops as they passed through the dated but clean kitchen space. “These are yours,” he told her, handing them to her. “There’s a key to the apartment, keys to the front and back door of this house, and one that will get you into the barn. The only thing you don’t have a key to is Chase’s place, but I didn’t think you’d ever need that,” he explained.

  “I know this place belonged to the Ludwigs before I left Northbridge,” she said as Logan held the back door for her and she stepped into the war
m summer evening air. “Did you buy the whole farm?”

  “What was left of it to buy,” Logan said, following her out. “Chase—Chase Mackey, I don’t know if you knew or remember him…”

  “The name is familiar but that’s about it. He was your age, too, right? I was kind of oblivious to you all.”

  “Yeah, Chase is the same age as me. He’s my business partner. And like a brother to me. Anyway, we bought the property that was left after most of it had been sold off in parts. I guess after old man Ludwig died his kids put the farm as a whole on the market. But when there were no buyers they started selling off parcels of land to the surrounding farms. The house, the garage, the barn and the four acres they sit on were harder to move. But they just happened to meet our needs—personal and business—so Chase and I bought them,” Logan explained as they crossed the backyard.

  “I can tell the house has been freshly painted inside and out—”

  “It didn’t need much more work than that. But the garage and the barn are a different story,” Logan said with a nod at the garage as they approached it. “The lower level of the garage will still be garage, but we added the apartment—that wasn’t there at all originally. The barn will house our work- and showrooms, plus Chase and I have been putting a loft apartment in the upper half of that for him.”

  The garage and the barn were side by side behind the house—the barn directly behind it, the garage off to the left at the end of the driveway that veered around the farmhouse. Not much distance separated any of it and they’d reached the garage where a whitewashed wooden staircase ran up one side to a private entrance to the apartment.

  Logan motioned for Meg to go ahead of him. At the landing she opened the door and went in without waiting for him to do the honors. Hadley had left a table lamp on, so Meg’s first glimpse of the place was well lit and as Logan came in after her, she said, “This is beautiful!”

  And it was. Every detail from the oak cupboards to the chair rails to the hardwood floors to the one wall that was painted a rustic red shouted class and taste and attention to detail. It was so much more than a thrown-together garage apartment—which was what Meg had been afraid it might be.

  “I’m glad you like it,” Logan responded simply, humbly, but in a way that made Meg think that he genuinely was glad he’d pleased her.

  But she told herself she was probably reading more into that than actually existed, and began to wander around to look at everything close-up, thankful that she wasn’t going to be living somewhere awful and loving the place so much she wanted to hug him.

  Another unwarranted thought. And urge.

  No playing with him, no hugging him, she warned herself.

  He showed her the bathroom and the closet, then gave her a tour of the kitchen—reminding her that he was hoping that rather than use it too much she would be eating in the house with Tia, Hadley and himself.

  “You could have just not put in a kitchen—that would have made eating with you guys a necessity,” she pointed out.

  “Not my style.”

  There was something sexy in the way he said that that made her wonder what his style was.

  But thinking of Logan McKendrick as sexy was another item on Meg’s List Of Don’ts. She instantly added wondering what his style was to that same list.

  “So, satisfy some curiosity for me, will you?” he asked then, interrupting her internal struggle to keep her mind on the straight and narrow.

  “Sure,” she agreed.

  “With all your degrees and a big-deal job in Denver, how is it that you’re signing on to be Tia’s nanny?”

  It was a logical question that she’d been expecting. That she had a ready answer for that didn’t reveal too much.

  “At Children’s Hospital I see kids with all kinds of problems that are so much bigger than finding Grilla in the packing boxes or making sure everyone says good night, moon. I want to help them. I like helping them. But it’s been a pretty steady dose of nothing but that for a while now and I just thought that I needed a little of the lighter side of kids for a change to recharge my battery.”

  He was watching her while she recited that. Studying her. And she could see in his handsome face that he wasn’t completely buying it. But it was true. It just wasn’t the whole story and she wasn’t willing to tell him the rest. That would have to satisfy him.

  And rather than saying any more, she countered with a question of her own.

  “What about you? I don’t know a lot about Mackey and McKendrick Furniture Designs but my sister, Kate, sends me the local newspaper and I did see an article—one of those Northbridge-boys-make-good things. I thought you’d built your business and your whole life in New York and Connecticut, but here you are.”

  He shrugged those broad shoulders. “It’s a return to our roots,” he said, giving her the sense that he was holding back, too. Quite a bit, if she were to make a guess.

  But he hadn’t pushed her so she didn’t push him.

  And as if they’d come to that by some kind of silent agreement, he nodded then, and said, “I’ll leave and let you get started unpacking.”

  He headed for the door and Meg went with him, taking in the full and fabulous view of him from behind. His T-shirt outlined every muscle and his jeans molded a rear end that her hands inexplicably itched to cup.

  “By the way,” he said when he reached the door and was halfway across the threshold, turning around to look at her again. “If you want to bring Tia up here and spend tomorrow settling in, you can hold off a day or two before you get to her room. She’s not really suffering the loss of Grilla, she’s just peeved that she doesn’t have him, so waiting a little longer isn’t going to make any difference, and you might as well get comfortable before you dig into her stuff.”

  “That would be good. And are you really okay if I use visiting you while you work as a reward?”

  “Sure. You’ll see when you come out to the barn that the showroom is what you go into first—the workroom is behind it. Just holler to let me know you’re there and I’ll come out so Tia doesn’t get near anything dangerous. But you can come anytime—feel free.”

  He made that sound like an invitation to her, not just as permission to bring Tia. But that probably wasn’t what he’d intended. They were just two people with one aim—to care for his daughter—and Meg told herself that she needed to stop reading too much into things. The same way she needed to stop noticing every little detail about him and finding something sexy in them all.

  She didn’t understand what was going on with her. It wasn’t something she’d ever done before with anyone else. And if ever there was a wrong time, place, situation or person, this was it!

  So she did a mental pulling-in-on-the-reins, again hoping that her reaction to him had something to do with novelty and that when she got to know Logan better she’d be able to take him more in stride.

  “I appreciate the open-door policy, but I won’t abuse it. I have a lot of tricks up my sleeves when it comes to getting children to behave and comply—rewarding Tia with a visit to you will only be one of them,” she told him, hearing the formality that had crept into her tone but unable to stop it because it was just something she was accustomed to hiding behind the way Tia had hidden behind Logan tonight.

  He must have caught the slight alteration of tone, though, because his eyebrows beetled together slightly. But he didn’t say anything about it.

  Instead he merely went on. “Tia isn’t one of those crack-of-dawn kids—she’ll usually sleep until eight or nine, so you can take your time coming over in the morning. Unless you’re an early riser and you need coffee—there will be a pot brewed long before Tia is up and you’re welcome to it.”

  Meg imagined going over at sunrise to start her day with him alone, in the quiet of the morning, just the two of them…

  Much, much too appealing a thought!

  “Let’s just see how it goes,” she said noncommittally, hating how more of that aloofness had echoed
in her voice.

  “Sure. Whatever,” Logan said, those furrows in his brow deepening.

  Then he said good-night and left, and once again Meg wanted to kick herself.

  One minute she’d been friendly, the next she’d been evasive, the next she’d talked like a textbook—if he was worried that he’d hired some kind of nut job he had good reason.

  She was just so all over the place when it came to him.

  But tomorrow was another day, she consoled herself. It was her first day of work, when her complete focus would be on Tia.

  That would probably help, she told herself.

  No, not probably, that would have to help.

  Because she’d come here to get herself back on track.

  Not to hook up with a hot hunk.

  Chapter Three

  “Oh-oh, look-ut Harry did….”

  At the sound of Tia’s voice, Meg stopped putting clothes in a dresser drawer and glanced around to find that the puppy had gone into the apartment’s bathroom, grabbed the end of the toilet paper and unrolled it all the way out into the living room.

  “Harry, not again!” Meg complained because it was the third time the puppy had done that.

  Despite the repeat performance, Tia thought it was hilarious. And as much of a nuisance as the mess was, the fact that it delighted the three-year-old made it worth it to Meg. That kind of simple joy was part of why she was there—it was actually part of what she was hoping to find in this job that was her self-prescribed therapy.

  Tia knew the drill by then—she grabbed Harry to keep him from running wild and unrolling even more of the paper while Meg tore off what he’d slobbered on, threw it away, and re-rolled the rest. By the time she’d done that and come out of the bathroom—again leaving the door open to accommodate Tia’s instant dashes there when she decided at the last minute that she needed to use the facilities—a giggling Tia was sitting on the floor with Max licking her face.