Page 42 of Marrying the Nanny

“Emma, I need you to understand something about me. My mother gets upset, really upset, about things that don’t always make sense to me. I’ve learned not to discount her feelings. They’re valid. They’re real. But because they’re counter to my own logic, I don’t try to guess or resolve anything until I understand exactly what we’re fighting about. Otherwise, I’m making things worse. You’re angry. You have to explain to me why.”

“Because I thought we were a team,” she blurted, halting and pivoting to hurl the words at him. “And you’re treating me like a piece of tail. One that any one of you could have if you wanted to, but you’ll skip it because it would be inconvenient for you. Did my feelings come up at all in your policy conference? Because I’ve slept with one man, mate, and he wasn’t a shining example of why dicks are so great I have to jump on the next one I see.”

He stopped and balanced the boxes on the short post at the bottom of the drive. Reflectors were nailed to it to stop people driving into the gully if they backed out at night. He barely noticed. His brain was nothing but wisps of smoke and scorched earth.

“You’ve only slept with your husband?”

“That’s what you heard? Jesus.” She continued up the hill.

“Emma. Stop. Let me say this back to you.” Sometimes his mother’s therapists taught him skills that transferred. “You feel excluded? Disrespected?”

“Yes.” She halted and spun on him again. “And if you call it a gentlemen’s agreement, I will kick you in the meat.”

He shifted slightly so the boxes were balanced to better shield his fly.

“You’re right,” he conceded without shame. “I wasn’t thinking about whether you were interested in sleeping with any of us. I was more concerned that one of us sleeping with you would further complicate an already difficult situation. Because we need you, Emma. You are part of the team.”

“Don’t patronize me,” she choked out, arms crossed, face to the water, raindrops on her cheeks.

He hoped that was rain. A heavy rock sat in his gut as he stared at that gleaming drop.

“Anyone can show us how to change a diaper, Emma. We need you to show us how to care.”

She didn’t move. Only her chin tensed as she pressed her lips into a line. After a moment, she sniffed and swiped at her cheek.

“I want you to care for her,” she said on a burst of breath. “I want her to grow up feeling loved. It kills me that I won’t be the person who does that.” She ran the inside of her wrist against her cheekbone and he felt it like a swipe of claws across his heart. “I’m frustrated and scared and I want you guys to like me so you’ll let me stay as long as I can.”

“We do like you.”

“You don’t even know me! If you did—” She stood there hugging herself looking as though she was enduring the setting of a broken bone. “My husband slept with anything that moved, but hardly ever slept with me. I don’t have a lot of self-esteem about sex so it feels very gutty that three strangers would make decisions about who I can sleep with when it’s such a huge decision for me.”

He was stunned all over again.

“It is your decision,” he assured her. “I wasn’t trying to take that from you at all.”

He wanted to point out that she was attractive and tempting. That’s why they’d made the rule, but he didn’t think that would help right now.

“I shouldn’t be such a baby about it,” Emma mumbled, digging up a crumpled tissue and blowing her nose into it. “Look at Glenda. Her husband cheated and she stayed with him for twenty years.”

And Reid’s mother had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital on three different occasions because she’d been so upset over it.

“Cheating is a lousy thing to do to someone no matter what,” Reid said. “If you feel like we were betraying you by talking behind your back, then I’m sorry. We’ll include you in future conversations, especially if they’re about you or Storm.”

“Thank you.”

She looked very small in that moment. Delicate and vulnerable and confused by the world around her. Not unlike Storm in the middle of the night. He had the weirdest urge to gather her up and try to comfort her.

He shook it off and carried the boxes toward her. She fell into step beside him as they finished the walk up the driveway.

“I also get really mad when men are being sexist. My dad was the worst, my brother just like him. Very much a boys’ club. Mum played right along. I was always telling them to pull their head out of their ass, but it was an uphill battle.”

“I don’t know what to tell you on that. Dad was pretty sexist. We’re products of our upbringing so I don’t know that we’re much better.”

“Wilf wasn’t doing it to keep women down. He was oblivious about why a comment was inappropriate, but he let Sophie run the marina. Tiffany was in charge of the renovations even though she wasn’t as qualified as she could have been. He was more of a ‘don’t hit girls’ sexist. Not a ‘stay in the kitchen where you belong’ kind.”

“I’m definitely a ‘don’t hit girls’ kind. I also hold doors and bring flowers. I once gave a girl my sweatshirt, but I never saw it again so I’m less inclined to lend clothing.”

“And here we have this giant mud puddle,” she said, halting and waving at it. “I was hoping you were going to throw your coat over it for me.”

---