Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 92417 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 462(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92417 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 462(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
Veronica shook her head. “I really can’t.”
“But then where—”
“She said she’s not comfortable with it, Mabel.” I gave my sister a look that said drop it.
“I didn’t say that.”
“Huh?” I squinted at Veronica.
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t be comfortable with it,” she clarified. “I just don’t want to be a bother.”
“You’re not a bother at all,” Mabel insisted. “In our family, we were taught to extend a welcome to everyone and offer a helping hand when it’s needed. And after what you’ve been through, you could use a little generosity. Clearly, my brother can see that.”
I clenched my jaw.
“You shouldn’t leave Cherry Tree Harbor feeling like it’s not a friendly place,” Mabel went on. “Right, Xander?”
“Right.” My dickhead brother nodded. “In this town, we open our hearts and homes to those in need.”
“Then it’s settled.” Mabel’s expression was triumphant. “She stays here for the night. Okay, Austin?”
I was caught in a trap. Unless I wanted my kids to see me act like a real asshole and toss this broke, stranded girl out on the street, I had to agree. “Fine. One night.”
“That’s really nice of you.” Veronica smiled at me. “Thanks.”
I swear I wasn’t imagining the look in her eyes that said, I won this round, didn’t I?
“Why don’t you grab your bag and come out to the garage with me now?” Mabel suggested. “I’ll show you the room and we can drink our wine while I finish packing. Then I’ll head over to my dad’s.”
“Sounds good.” Veronica pushed her chair back and stood up. Then she ran her fingertips over the smooth, glossy surface of the table, which I’d fashioned out of salvaged barn wood. “Wow. This table is really beautiful.”
Okay, fine. She had good taste.
“Dude, I can’t believe you turned her down for the job,” Xander said to me after Veronica and Mabel had gone out to the garage, the kids in tow. We were in the kitchen, filling bowls with pasta from the pot on the stove.
“You’d believe it if you’d been here when she interviewed,” I said, grabbing a beer from the fridge.
“Get me one too,” Xander said as he headed for the table.
I hooked a second bottle with my fingers before bumping the fridge door shut with my hip. Taking my seat again, I sent one bottle sliding toward my brother.
He caught it easily. “So tell me why you didn’t hire her.”
First, I uncapped my beer and took a long pull. “She wasn’t qualified.”
“But she’s hot.”
“If you had kids, you’d know that being hot is the least important quality in a nanny.”
“It doesn’t hurt,” Xander said. “Listen, I love those two kids like they are mine, and I’m just saying, I’d give that girl a chance. She seems cool. Honest. Trustworthy.” He tapped his temple. “I have good instincts about that stuff.”
“She has zero experience. No car. No references. And she can’t cook,” I said, digging into the pasta. “We’ll starve.”
“So you eat takeout.”
“I’ll go broke. And I’m not crazy about a stranger living here anyway.”
Xander was quiet for a minute or two. “Don’t go all grizzly bear on me for suggesting this, but what about a longer visit in California?”
“No.” I shook my head. “Not an option.”
“Austin, you have those kids fifty-one weeks a year.”
“And the one they’re gone is tough enough.”
“But they’re not babies anymore. Sansa can handle two seven-year-olds for a summer, can’t she?”
“Not an option.”
“But couldn’t you—”
I leveled him with a look. “Not. An option.”
“Okay, okay.” Xander backed off. “Just trying to help. And it’s never seemed fair to me that you’re the only full-time parent.”
“It’s how things had to be,” I said. “It was either full-time dad or nothing. She didn’t want kids.”
I hadn’t either—not yet, anyway.
I could still remember the panic that gripped my heart when Sansa—an art student I’d met on vacation in Santa Cruz and spent several tequila-fueled, sex-filled days with at the beach—reached out to let me know she was pregnant. She was only twenty-one, still in college, up to her neck in student loans, scared out of her mind, not sure she even wanted children, and definitely not ready to be a parent at that point in her life. She was willing to have the baby, she said, but then planned to give it up for adoption.
My reaction was immediate. “I’ll raise it,” I told her, even though I was terrified. “Have the baby, and I’ll raise it.”
Of course, the phone call two weeks later came as even more of a shock—she was pregnant with twins.
“Do you still want them?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said as the room spun around me. “I’ll raise them both.”
After we hung up, I passed out.
I helped Mabel load her bags into her car.
“Take care of yourself,” I said gruffly, as we hugged goodbye in the driveway. I wasn’t big on displays of affection. “Don’t fall in any holes on the dig.”