Page 18 of Marrying the Nanny

The house was perched on an elevated point surrounded by water on three sides. When his parents had built it thirty-two years ago, it had been a dream home on a coveted piece of real estate. He hadn’t appreciated that as a child and didn’t now. Not when reality was settling on him like a lead blanket.

Logan and Trystan stood beside him. He ensured his expression hid the fact that a cold lump had lodged in his chest, the same one he’d felt as a boy when he had been so alone and terrified that his mother wouldn’t live for him to see her again, faced with no choice but to do as he was told.

As he glanced at the two profiles beside him, so like his own, he saw the same impassiveness he was striving to project. To say it was comforting when Logan caught his eye wasn’t true. Their thoughts might have been aligned, but Logan’s unease amplified his own.

Wilf wasn’t here. What the hell were they going to do?

Emma flicked on a light in the kitchen, cutting through the gloom of dusk and casting their reflection onto the glass. They all turned and moved past the dining area, through the archway into the kitchen.

Trystan swore at the shambles of torn-out cabinetry and appliances pulled away from the walls.

“Tiffany was hoping the kitchen would be redone by the time she got back, but when we got the news, the men…left.” Emma shrugged. She had one arm gripped around the baby, holding her facing out so Storm’s big blue eyes were round as an owl’s as she chewed her fist. “They were afraid they wouldn’t get paid. I didn’t know what to tell them.”

“Light a match?” Logan suggested, moving back into the dining area.

Reid kept thinking the house seemed smaller. And dated. Thirty years ago, it had been the showpiece Reid’s mother had yearned for—cedar siding, porcelain sinks, skylights, and greenhouse walls that jutted out to let the sporadic bursts of sunshine in.

By today’s standards, it was an impractical construction of split-levels and odd angles, like children’s building blocks set askew. The kitchen was closed off from the dining area, the stairs were hidden by a wall. The living room was down a step, its hardwood floor in desperate need of refinishing. The furniture was threadbare, the walls scuffed, the view blocked by evergreens that should have been dropped before they became widow-makers.

“Those are going to be a bitch to fall,” Trystan noted.

“Yeah.” Even as Reid wondered why their father, a certified workaholic, had let things get this bad, it struck him that Wilf had been on his own here for nine years. No young, strong backs to rake needles or wash windows or scrub the mold from the deck.

Reid’s attention snagged on a photo of Wilf and Tiffany. She was a stacked blonde of thirty to Wilf’s sixty. Was it any wonder he’d allowed a hot, energetic, motivated woman to take charge?

“This is a lot of work.” Logan had his hand in his hair as he gazed up at the light fixtures. They were frosted hexagons with gold curlicues scrolled between the frames. One glowed, one was dead.

Emma trailed them watchfully as they went up the stairs. The room Logan and Trystan had shared was now pink. It held a crib, a changing table, and a single bed.

On the other side of the Jack and Jill bathroom, Reid’s childhood bedroom was occupied by Emma. His old desk was still there, shoved into the corner where it held a hairbrush, blow dryer, and a soap dish full of colorful hair ties.

“This shag carpet is giving me an asthma attack just looking at it,” Logan said as they climbed the final half flight to the main bedroom suite.

Perched at the top of the house for the best view, the room had a walk-in closet and a walk-out balcony. The en suite held a soaker tub surrounded by windows.

But the outside of the glass was coated in algae. The tiles around the tub were cracked. The taps were caked with lime scale.

Trystan picked up Wilf’s watch from the dresser top. Scowled. “I guess we’re going to have to go through all of this. What do you do with it?”

Reid had no freaking idea. He was feeling the heat of what he was up against as executor. He took off his jacket, hooking it over the post on the footboard. The headboard was a late-eighties relic of dark-stained, built-in shelving with a mirror. He didn’t let himself think about what that mirror had reflected over the years.

“Hey.” Logan pointed at his jacket. “This isn’t your room.”

Reid hadn’t been staking a claim, but it hit him that this was the only free bedroom they’d seen.

“I don’t think Emma wants me sleeping with her. Do you?” he asked her facetiously.

“What?” Her eyes went big. “No!”

“Me and Trys are supposed to bunk with the baby in her cradle?” Logan thumbed toward the stairs.

The baby was batting her arms and blowing raspberries, completely oblivious to the emotions trailing them like ghosts through the house.

“Cuddle here with me if you want to,” Reid offered.

“It’s just like you to walk in here and act like you own the fucking place,” Logan charged.

Reid took it as the knee to the crotch that it was meant to be. Cold washed over him even as the heat of temper struck. “I was eight. I never asked to come here.”

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