Page 46 of Marrying the Nanny

Emma would love to believe that the anguish of their inability to conceive was the reason Kevin had cheated on her, but no. He was just a serial philanderer. Wilf sounded about the same.

“How did you wind up living with Wilf instead of her?”

He pulled up, sighed shortly. “I hate talking about this stuff. How come you can’t just listen to gossip like everyone else?”

“Sophie’s my only friend. She’s busy these days.”

“Hmph.”

They hiked in silence awhile. She thought he’d decided not to talk about it any longer and she was trying to respect that when he surprised her.

“Glenda slept with Dad while he was married to Reid’s mom. She took it as karma that he cheated on her with my mom. She didn’t divorce him because she had Logan, but she felt for Mom. Mom was the first among all her relatives to pursue a degree. It was a big deal. She didn’t want to give it up. Glenda said she would look after me if Mom wanted to continue her education. Mom took a year off, then left me here with Dad and Glenda while she went to Victoria.”

“That must have been hard for her.”

“She thought she was doing the right thing for me, letting me get to know my father and brothers. She thought it was right for herself, too. For our people and even the environment. Once she completed her degree, she worked on research and studies that informed government policy, fishery limits, things like that. It’s all well and good for us to tell the government they’re destroying our planet, but you have to be able to tell them in the language they understand.”

“Science. Math.”

“Exactly. Which meant she worked away for months at a time, but I saw her when she came back and her brothers took me into the bush all the time. Our living arrangement wasn’t something that really bothered me. Not until I was old enough to understand the scandal of how I’d been conceived. I couldn’t care less now, but at seven it carried a lot of shame.”

“I can see why it felt like a big deal as a kid, but you’re right. It doesn’t mean anything. A parent’s choices should never be a reflection on a child.”

“No, but Mom has some regrets around not spending more time with me. She had a very difficult relationship with her own mother and feels like she repeated history instead of healing it.”

“Do you feel like that?”

“Not with her,” he said flatly.

Wilf, he meant. They had all left and never came back. Like his brothers, Trystan would never get the opportunity to close the distance he created.

She let that be the end of their talking for now.

A while later, they arrived at the tiny lake that became the site of their picnic lunch. Storm woke when Trystan took off the carrier. Emma released her and put her on her back on the metallic survival blanket that Trystan spread on the ground.

Storm immediately rolled onto her stomach.

Emma chuckled. “I love that look on her face after she rolls, like she doesn’t understand how she wound up there.”

Trystan was crouched a short distance away, boiling the water while keeping one eye on Storm. “I’m not used to having company when I’m hiking, let alone someone who needs so much looking after.”

“You’re talking about me?” Emma said in deliberate misunderstanding. “It’s because I love the idea of being in nature, but I’ve never had the nerve to figure out how to do it. How did you get so comfortable? Did you camp with Wilf and your brothers?”

He snorted. “Dad had a lot of faults, but shirking work wasn’t one of them. If anything, he was the kind of workaholic who failed to see his own limitations. He was always starting something that didn’t get finished.” He lifted a brow and nodded at Storm. “So there was no time for vacations, especially summer ones. That’s fishing season and we were needed here. My show started as a school project. I had been learning the traditional ways from my uncles and applied for a government grant for a heritage project, making short films of indigenous culture. I liked being out here and—timing is everything—I started posting survival hacks before the world was flooded with influencers. I built a following, sold the show…”

“The rest is history.”

“Yup.”

“Speaking of history”—Emma nodded at Storm—“she’s trying to make some.”

Storm had been doing her pushups and, with the help of the uneven ground beneath her, was almost rolling onto her back. “Come on, baby. You can do it.”

Storm was tipping, tipping—

“Haha!” Emma cheered as Storm rolled onto her back and looked up at the sky with bewilderment. “You did it!”

“She rolls over all the time.”

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