He felt totally lost, not to mention outnumbered.
Until he had begun to spend more time with Toby and Tyler on a regular, far more personal level, Brady had actually believed that most children under the age of seven or eight were innocent and pretty much just mischievous.
As it turned out, he was the clueless one.
It took Brady a while, but he finally realized that he was dealing with two adorable, devious little con artists who were out to get away with as much as they possibly could at any given time.
He was ashamed to acknowledge it now, but because Toby and Tyler had such innocent-looking little faces, they actually had him believing that their parents allowed them to stay up late every single night. Not only that, but they claimed—“innocently” again—that they were allowed to eat whatever they wanted to whenever they wanted.
What they didn’t want to eat were vegetables or anything that could be viewed as even remotely healthy. Because he had grown up with Gord, who had been just as carefree, wild and unpredictable as his twin sons were now, Brady believed all these wild allegation that the twins were solemnly telling him—at first.
But then it slowly began to dawn on him that even Gord would have put his foot down at some point. And even if his friend hadn’t, Brady became convinced that his friend’s wife, Gina, would have.
It was around that time of his awakening that Brady realized that he couldn’t allow things to slide like this any longer. He needed to do something about the situation—and fast—because it was all coming apart at the seams right before his very eyes.
The beginning of the end happened when his exceedingly patient mother, Catherine, cornered him when he came home from work one night, admittedly late, from the sporting goods store that he managed.
He knew something was up by the expression on his mother’s face before he even had a chance to close the door behind him.
“Come here, Brady,” his mother called to him, patting the seat next to her on the sofa.
Tired from his long day, he crossed to Catherine on leaden feet as an urgent voice in his system cried May-day!
“You know I love you, don’t you, Brady?” Catherine Fortune asked her son.
Brady’s heart continued sinking. Opening statements like that didn’t bode well. They only went downhill from there. Still, he tried to console himself, this was his mother he was dealing with.
He hoped for the best.
“Y-e-s?” Brady responded, drawing out the word as if doing that could somehow squash any negative message prefaced by that kind of opening statement.
Brady mentally crossed his fingers.
“And I wouldn’t hurt you for the world,” the tall, still-quite-handsome woman continued.
He could feel his heart sinking down even further in his chest.
“Go on,” Brady said, bracing himself for the worst while desperately praying for the best—or at least not so “worst” if that was at all possible.
“But I quit,” Catherine declared, informing her son with finality.
At first, the word—one he had never associated with his mother before now—wouldn’t process.
“Quit?” he asked.
“Yes, quit,” Catherine repeated, emphatically. “I can’t babysit these little—heaven forgive me—hellions any longer.”
His mother had never resorted to name calling or damning labels before. This had to be really bad.
“What happened, Mom?” Brady asked with a soul-weary sigh.
“They just won’t listen to me,” his mother complained. The whole situation was obviously a source of great pain for her. She didn’t like leaving her son in a lurch like this, but the twins were just too much for her to handle. “And frankly, I’m getting too old for this.”
“You’re not old, Mom,” Brady protested.
Catherine immediately cut him short before he could get any further. “Flattery isn’t going to get you anywhere, darling.”
Brady’s mouth felt dry as he cast about for some sort of a solution that would convince his mother to continue helping out with the twins.
“How about if I try to get them to promise that they’ll behave?” he asked.
It was a desperate question asked by a desperate man because he hadn’t a clue how to begin to get either of the twins to behave. If he had, he wouldn’t have needed the help he was asking for.
Catherine pinned him with a look and summed up the situation neatly. “The only way you could get them to even remotely do that is by nailing the door to their room permanently shut. No, Brady, I’m sorry. It pains me greatly to say this, but my mind is made up.” Rising, Catherine cupped her son’s cheek with sorrowful affection. “I really hate to do this, darling, but I have no choice. Those boys have worn out my soul and you and I know that it’s not going to get any better.”
Brady felt as if his back was up against the proverbial wall and he had nowhere to turn. “What am I supposed to do, Mom?”
“Have you thought of sending them to military school?” Catherine Fortune suggested to her son in all seriousness.
“They’re four, Mom,” Brady pointed out. Because they were such whirlwinds of activity, it was a fact that had a habit of getting lost. “I don’t think a military school would accept them. Besides, I don’t really want their spirits broken—just contained. A lot,” he added with feeling.
Catherine laughed softly under her breath as she shook her head. “Well, good luck with that,” she told Brady.
He was going to need more than luck, Brady thought as he watched his mother leave.
* * *
For a time, after his mother had withdrawn from her baby-sitting duties, he went through a small army of nannies. Vetted by an agency, they came—and went—with a fair amount of regularity. Some of the nannies lasted for a couple of weeks, others lasted only for a couple of days.
But they all had one thing in common. None of them lasted for long. Some left cryptic comments in their wake, others left in icy, stony silence.
Like the other nannies who had left before her, the short, squat woman looked like the very epitome of the perfect nanny, but even Mildred McGinty felt as if she was outmatched.
“I’ve been a professional nanny for twenty-seven years, Mr. Fortune, and I have never, never encountered such insufferable, rude, disrespectful children in all that time.” Mrs. McGinty drew herself up to appear taller than her actual 5′1″ height. “I believed I could put up with anything, but today was the absolute last straw. I caught those two demons—” she pointed a trembling finger in the general direction of the twins “—trying to toast marshmallows in the middle of the living room floor! Somehow, they found matches. If I hadn’t been there, your whole house could have burned down—and most likely would have!” she declared angrily just before she slammed the front door behind her, permanently storming out of Brady’s house.
Well, that would explain the soot marks, Brady thought wearily, looking down at the telltale marks in the middle of the throw rug.
Tyler was pulling on the edge of Brady’s jacket. “We’re sorry, Unca Brady,” the twin said, looking contrite—at least for the moment.
“Yeah, we didn’t mean to set the rug on fire,” Toby piped up. Of the two overactive dynamos, Toby was the unofficial ringleader. “It just got in the way.”
At least they knew enough to apologize, Brady thought. He knew he was grasping at straws, but straws, or pieces of them, were all he had.
They weren’t malicious kids, he told himself, just really, really mischievous. Somehow, some way, that mischief needed to be tamed and contained, Brady decided in desperation.
But how?
He had been through an army of nannies, as well as sitters, and that clearly wasn’t working.
Damn, but he needed help, Brady thought wearily. Big-time.
And soon.
> And then suddenly, as if in a prophesy-like vision, he thought of Rambling Rose, the small Texas town he’d taken the twins to in January. At the time it was for his nephew’s first birthday celebration. His older brothers Adam and Kane had resettled there, and they couldn’t stop talking about how great the place was. They kept stressing how very family-oriented the town was.
He had resisted buying into the idea of living there, although his brothers did their best to talk him into it. At the time he was happy living near their folks in Upstate New York, happy with his job and his lifestyle—but all that was quickly changing and truthfully, it wasn’t even his lifestyle any longer. Abject chaos had replaced what had once been his carefree existence, wiping out weekends spent with friends, watching sports and playing cards, not to mention dating. Nothing serious, but something he had looked forward to. Now there was no time for any of that.
Now all he wanted, heaven help him, was some sort of peace and quiet—or at the very least the promise of peace and quiet. As a matter of fact, given everything that was currently going on, he had begun to feel that he was willing to sell his soul for that.
Funny how things had a way of changing, Brady thought. His requirements had been a great deal different six months ago.
All right, onward and upward, he told himself.
Brady wondered just how surprised his family would be if he suddenly turned up with the twins in tow in the middle of the night.
Copyright © 2021 by Harlequin Books S.A.
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ISBN-13: 9781488075377
His Secret Starlight Baby
Copyright © 2021 by Michelle Major
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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His Secret Starlight Baby Page 21