Page 56 of Marrying the Nanny

“Looks good in here.” He’d only been gone a couple of days, but the work they’d all been doing was adding up.

Reid admired where they’d finished the floor in the living room and painted while he’d been away. Now that the fireplace insert had been switched out, the chimney stone cleaned and freshly sealed, and the furniture replaced with a new sectional and glass-topped coffee table that Tiffany had ordered, it looked like a modern home.

The real star was the wall of windows, though, no longer clouded by salt spray and fogged with condensation between the panes. There was no longer anything to obstruct the view of the trees that obstructed the view and threatened the house.

“I talked to my cousin.” Trystan noted where Reid was looking. Through his mother, Trystan was related to half the central coast. In this case he meant the cousin who worked as a faller. “He’s coming next week. I sent him pictures. He thinks he can drop a couple down to the water and float them to the sawmill. The more dangerous ones he’ll skim as he goes up, then drop the rounds on his way down. I told him to get them on the ground however he has to and we’ll handle cleanup.”

Reid exchanged a look with Logan. They had all bucked, swamped, and burned enough branches in their day to know exactly how much work that was.

“Thanks, Trys,” Logan said dryly.

“You want it to cost one thousand or ten?”

“It’s all good,” Reid assured him. “Did you get the powder room finished? I didn’t look.”

“Yeah. I put the old vanity into the downstairs bath.”

“Good idea.” The basement bathroom had always been more utility than showpiece, but after thirty years of hard use, the basin had been hanging off the wall. “We have to get that shower tiled at some point, too.”

Logan had hit the concrete stall with plenty of bleach when they moved in, but like everything else, it was showing its age.

“I’m thinking to work on your room next,” Trystan said. “There’s not as much to do in Emma’s or the bathroom between her and Storm. Better to tackle the big jobs before I’m tied up launching the tours.”

Reid swore. “I keep looking at the closet in there, thinking I should start going through it.” He’d moved the things off one dresser into a couple of boxes and left them in there with the rest, too overwhelmed to tackle it. “What do you do with it? And Tiffany’s stuff?”

“Emma?” Trystan suggested.

Storm turned her head, causing Reid to smear her latest bite of cereal across her cheek.

“She’s not here right now,” Reid told her again with a dry chuckle. He scraped the streak of food off her face and tucked it into her mouth, then glanced at his brothers. “She might know who we are, but she freaking loves Em.”

“I know. I keep wondering what’s going to happen when she has to go home? The kid has already lost both her parents.” Logan nodded at the baby. “Then the only other mom she knows disappears? Good job, us, scarring her for life.”

“I think about that, too,” Trystan said tightly. “If she were mine, I could give her to one of my relatives. That’s how it should be if you’re not in a position to raise a kid. We should be able to adopt her to whoever we believe is best for her. Like Em.”

“Right?” Logan said. “They’re already bonded. All I can think about is what Mom said. Eighteen years. That means puberty. Talking to her about boys. Or girls. Maybe she’s not even a girl, for all we know. Regardless, one of us will have to explain hygiene products, and that is not a conversation I’m keen to have.”

“I hear you,” Reid said. “In those first days, I thought private adoption might be the way to go, but now…”

Even mentioning it provoked a hard resistance in his chest, a refutation he couldn’t articulate. The bond between Storm and Emma was undeniable, but—He bit back a curse. He suspected he was forming one with Storm. Not the sort of pithy, loose one he had with his brothers, either. It had more of the complex, protective aspects of the one he had with his mother, but it was different from that, too.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t comfortable and refused to be ignored.

“Look, if Em lived up the street, it would be different,” Reid said. “I don’t imagine the paperwork of adopting a Canadian child to a single woman from another country is easy. Storm’s technically a ward of the ministry. If we say we’re willing to give her up, is it our choice where she goes? Much as I like and trust Em, would you want our sister living in New Zealand?”

His brothers went quiet and somber. Reid shoveled a few bites of his own dinner into his mouth, then turned back to continue feeding Storm.

“Florida is a long way from both of you if I took her,” Logan pointed out. “I can’t see how to make it work anyway. I live on a boat and fly at the drop of a hat to meet new clients or visit the shipyard. I’m barely hanging on to the clients I have and that’s only because you two and Emma are here. If I had Storm full-time, I’d need a nanny anyway so…?”

Reid heard frustration and regret mixed into Logan’s refusal.

“I don’t get how anyone works when they have a kid,” Trystan said. “Not without family to help.”

“You don’t want to take her with you to Outer Mongolia? Weird,” Reid said.

“Actually”—Trystan scooped another helping of salad—“what do you think of her starring in a novelty episode of backwoods baby hacks? Face kept off camera, day hikes only.”

“Really?” Logan asked with amusement. “Well done on finding a way to make living off-grid even harder.”

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