Page 106 of Marrying the Nanny

“I shouldn’t have been so hard on you.” She held on to her elbows, unable to look at Reid. He would see how guilty she felt over taking out her anger with him on all of them in the lowest possible blow. “I know this hasn’t been easy for any of you.”

“Including you.” Trystan scooped all the bacon onto a paper towel on a plate and snapped off the burner. “What you said about Storm only having us? You’re one of us. Part of the family. Team Fraser, right? We gotta get her a hat,” he said to Reid.

Reid snorted, but his smile faded before it formed. He searched her expression, which she was pretty sure was melting with emotion.

“Really?” Her eyes welled and her mouth trembled. They really thought she was one of them? She swallowed, but the lump stayed in her throat.

“Oh, Em.” Reid came across to draw her into his side, which made her feel safe and sad and so conflicted.

“Um-um-um,” Storm gabbled.

Reid stiffened against her. “Is she trying to say ‘Emma’?”

Emma jerked her head up in time to take Storm as she lurched out of Logan’s hold into her and Reid.

“Mama?” Trystan suggested, setting aside the batter he was pouring to come over to their startled little circle.

“M is one of the first sounds babies master,” Emma said, glowing with so much flustered pleasure, she didn’t know where to look. “Either way, I’ll take it.”

She would. This was what she wanted, she recalled with a swerve in her chest. She wanted to be a mother. Reid was giving her a child, one who cuddled into her as naturally as any baby who felt safe in her mama’s arms. The fact that Emma hadn’t made her didn’t matter. She loved her as if she had. Which made her realize she had to quit setting her expectations at “perfection” and being desolate when they came out differently.

It was okay if her husband only cared about her. At least he wasn’t lying and saying words he didn’t mean.

Storm twisted in her hold to grin at Trystan, reaching out to him.

“We’ve got ourselves a butterfly,” Trystan said, taking her. “Has to visit all the flowers this morning. Let’s see if Logan’s pouring the batter right.” He airplaned her across the kitchen to buzz Logan, who had moved to take over at the stove.

Reid’s arm was still around Emma, looser now, but his hand drew light circles on the back of her shoulder.

She dragged her gaze off the happy baby to the deep lines of concern in his face.

“It’s okay,” she murmured, curling her arms around his waist.

She felt the tension in him ease and his arm came around her more firmly. This is enough, she told herself. It had to be.

Chapter Seventeen

Emma said they were okay, but they weren’t. She was holding back from him. Reid recognized it because it was exactly the sort of there-not-there accessibility he had perfected. She allowed them to drop back onto the same footing of joking and touching and making love they’d had since they married, but he felt the wall she’d erected.

It was subtle, but it was there in a light deflection of a question or a moment of eye contact that didn’t sustain or a hesitation in a kiss before she allowed passion to take over. This morning, twelve days after that day in his office, it was the way she left the bed right after they’d made love, not lingering for afterglow and pillow talk.

It wasn’t meant to hurt him. She was limiting the intimacy so he couldn’t hurt her. He understood that, but he was dying a death by a thousand cuts.

He missed her.

And he had no one to blame but himself.

She came out of the closet dressed in jeans and a T-shirt instead of the pajamas and robe she usually wore to eat breakfast and drink her two cups of coffee.

“Where are you going?”

“Trys and I are hiking today. I thought you heard us setting it up last night.” She brushed her hair into a ponytail without looking at him in the mirror.

And now he was jealous. Absolutely nauseated with it. Unjustifiably, because the last thing Emma would ever do was cheat on someone. She had told him she loved him. He knew she’d meant it.

But she hadn’t said it again.

She left the bedroom, and he sat in their bed with his wrists braced on his upraised knees, trying to catch his breath from a kick in the groin that hadn’t happened.

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