Page 4 of Marrying the Nanny

He wore a suit tailored to the same dynamic frame his brothers possessed. Despite the polish, his clean shave, and his scrupulously trimmed dark brown hair, his features were rugged and untamed. Imposing.

He didn’t look like a warm, paternal man. He looked like the rough-faced brick wall one battered themselves against to no avail. This was the hard-ass side of Wilf that Emma had only seen once, when Tiffany had said one of the laborers had made an off-color remark. Wilf had “had a word with him” and the guy hadn’t been seen since.

“Twenty minutes late, right on time,” Logan drawled, setting down his phone and making no mention of the fact he had arrived only moments ago himself.

“Reid.” Trystan moved from the window to take a chair at the table.

“Trys. Logan.”

This was a somber occasion, but their polite stiffness was downright peculiar.

Dennis walked around the table to greet Reid. The lawyer seemed extra obsequious as he shook Reid’s hand.

“George is running late. Harpreet is with the Ministry of Children and Family Development. Emma is Storm’s nanny. Do you want to sit?” Dennis asked Emma with a perplexed crinkle in his brow.

“I’ll stand.” Emma smiled and took up a more aggressive sway and jiggle, sway and jiggle. Please stop, Storm. We’re making zero friends.

“Does she need to be here?” One corner of Reid’s mouth dug in with dismay.

Wow. She stopped swaying, dumbfounded.

“Perhaps you’d like to wait in the foyer?” Dennis asked brightly, then his smile dimmed with concern as he realized that would inflict Storm on the rest of his colleagues.

Reid took a step back, preparing to open the door for her. So freaking chivalrous.

Emma was a pleaser. She was patient to a fault. She too often stenciled Welcome on her chest and invited people to wipe their wellies.

But she had her limits. She had been in a state of panic and dread for two solid days. Her deepest fear, that she was the only person left who cared one solid damn about Storm, was proving true. Did he realize how callous he sounded?

“I would love to wait in the foyer.” Snatching up the nappy bag from the floor, she plopped it onto boardroom table, then offered Storm to Mr. Freaking Fancy Suit. “You’ll take her, I presume, seeing as she’s one of you?”

Reid’s hard stare nearly pinned back her ears, it was so loud with warning against challenging his authority.

She was blowing her chance to keep Storm, she knew that. Her heart shrank inside her chest, but she pushed back on him anyway. She held his death-ray glower while she stubbornly held out the bleating baby, daring him to reject his tiny, helpless sibling. To shuffle her off to some room where he wouldn’t have to suffer her.

“I think—” Harpreet started to say, but with impeccable timing, Storm’s little digestive tract kicked in.

The gurgle was loud enough to belong to a seasoned freight driver with a crook stomach. An olive-colored stain appeared on Storm’s onesie and a sickly perfume released into the air.

Chapter Two

“Was that her?” Logan let out a robust laugh exactly like their father’s, right down to it being sparked by something completely juvenile.

The laugh sent a preternatural chill down Reid Fraser’s spine, penetrating the shield of to do’s he was using to deflect any emotions he might otherwise have to withstand. His scalp tingled and a cold prickle raced across his shoulders and down his chest, lifting a clammy sweat beneath the rain-damp wool of his suit.

He didn’t allow himself to dwell on the fact he would never hear Wilf laugh like that again. Hell, he’d barely been speaking to his father so he probably wouldn’t have heard it anyway.

He swallowed away the hollow scrape in his throat and kept his focus on the task at hand—read the will and plan the service. The ministry was taking responsibility for the baby so he didn’t understand why she was here.

Or why the nanny was offering her like a human sacrifice.

He ignored the wet fart and held the woman’s green-eyed glare. Aside from those moss-colored eyes, she was as plain as a post with her brown hair pulled back from her round, pale face. She had thin lips, brows with a steep, judgmental arch, and an uptilted nose that disparaged the hell out of him.

He wasn’t insecure enough to need approval so he wasn’t affected by her lack of it.

“Shouldn’t you take her somewhere to change her?” Dennis’s tone fell between humor and discomfort, his body still half bent on his way to taking his seat.

“Is there a changing table in your toilet? Maybe the desk in your office?” Emma suggested in a snippy tone.

---