Page 34 of Marrying the Nanny

“Tiffany and Wilf? I think they genuinely cared for each other. They laughed a lot. She told him to cut back on salt and said things like she wanted him around for Storm. She was forever looking up tips for new moms. Wilf was very laid-back and would say that she was worrying about nothing. I got the impression Tiffany had battled through life pretty much on her own. She thought she had finally found someone she could count on.”

Reid bit back a snort. He could only imagine what sort of bar had been set in Tiffany’s childhood if Wilf Fraser had been deemed solid. Immovable and intractable, yes. There when you needed him? Not if you married him.

“What was he like with Storm?” The question put a corrosive sensation in his windpipe.

“He loved her. Carried her around and called her fart monster and Squeak. He played with her, laughed when he made her giggle. It was sweet.”

Reid had no idea who that man was that she was describing. Wilf hadn’t been cruel, but he sure as hell hadn’t been affectionate. When it came to work, he showed you how to do it, then told you to do it. A slap on the back or an offered beer had been the only signs of approval Reid had ever got out of him. Wilf’s primary method of communication had been the sarcastic trash talk Reid and his brothers still employed with each other to this day.

“Tiffany was ambitious,” Emma mused, picking up a photograph of the pair from the night table and using the cuff of her robe to polish it. “Determined to make something of herself. I think she’d been trying to do that a long time. She wanted to build the sort of life for Storm she wished she had had. She never sat still. I joke that she was mainlining caffeine, but she was always making plans and painting a chair and rearranging cupboards. The only time she sat down to relax was when she nursed Storm. She was very tender with her. Happy.”

Guilt panged through Reid. He couldn’t say he was happy to have Storm. Or relaxed. None of them were. He could hear Logan over the landing, going into the baby’s room with Glenda, trying to cut a deal where he would observe the diaper change.

Being a smartass was the only way Logan knew how to behave, but it hit Reid that the three of them were all Storm would have. She would have no memory of Wilf and Tiffany except what Reid and his brothers chose to share when they spoke about a man they had each turned their back on because Wilf hadn’t been the kind of father they wanted.

What had they wanted? Whatever it was, Storm should have it. She deserved the better man they’d been seeking, but who was he? A man who had told them he loved them? Reid balked at the thought. That was something other families might voice, but it was too stark an intimacy for this one.

A father who had been reliable would have been nice. Sure, there had always been food on the table, but Wilf hadn’t been afraid to blow up his sons’ lives with his undisciplined dick. He was still doing it, for Christ’s sake.

Reid had met the sort of woman Tiffany seemed to have been, ambitious, but riding the coattails of a lover. They usually hadn’t had a decent man in their life, which led them to cling to the wrong ones. Was that how he wanted his sister to turn out?

Hell no.

It was rapidly becoming obvious that Storm would need a lot more than shelter and a midnight application of teething gel. She would need hugs and guidance and help learning to read. Someone who would tell her it was okay to wear dresses and use power tools—but not at the same time because safety first.

She needed someone who wouldn’t uproot her at eight. Or drop a bomb on her at seven. Or five. She needed a rock. A foundation.

He didn’t know how to be that guy. Which one of them did? They’d all been raised by the same lousy example.

“Tiffany couldn’t wait until Storm could talk and they could do things together.” Emma’s voice husked with emotion. “I thought it was funny. Like, she wanted to go shopping with her? Take the water taxi and browse the thrift store in Bella Bella?” Her smile reversed, corners of her lips diving deep. “She was looking forward to watching Storm grow up is what she meant.”

Ah, shit. He was trying really hard to keep it together. He still had the service to get through. He cleared his throat and nodded, blinked to clear his vision as he wrote.

Eighteen years, Glenda had said. He mentally heard the sound effect from the movies, the one where the metal prison door slammed and auto-locked.

Emma was sniffling. Her voice was strained. “Tiffany started a baby book for Storm. We could ask people to write in it?”

“Good idea,” he rasped.

“I’ll go find it.”

She left and he sat there, chest aching, eyes hot, wondering how the hell to be a man he didn’t know.

Chapter Seven

“You didn’t have to get up,” Reid said in a sleep-graveled voice when Emma followed him down to the kitchen at four thirty in the morning.

Yesterday had been a very long and draining day. Emma had staggered under the weight of it, and she had only been briefly acquainted with Wilf and Tiffany. Wilf’s loss had deeply impacted the tightly knit community. People had grieved openly and hard, leaning on the Fraser brothers as they did.

Through it all, the men had been red-eyed, but unbroken. They had spoken with fondness of a man who had a great sense of humor and could find a “ten-cent solution to any problem.”

“Our father built this community,” Logan had said at the end of the eulogy. “We know what it means to you, and we’ll do everything we can to keep it afloat.”

Emma had wished she could have taken some of the burden off them. Logan had let her take Storm every time she offered, but at six o’clock on the dot, Reid had taken Storm and insisted on bathing and putting her to bed himself. Emma had hovered uselessly, only able to say that he should wake her if he needed her in the night. She heard them up once at eleven thirty, but he’d put Storm back to sleep without her.

This time, however, he wouldn’t be so lucky.

“That’s her hungry cry. Teething gel isn’t going to cut it.”

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