Marrying the Northbridge Nanny (4 page)

“Sure, absolutely,” she said, agreeing enthusiastically—and resisting the urge to spout technical termi
nology. “Certainly Tia doesn’t need a psychologist there, you just need someone who can remove her if she puts up a fuss like any three-year-old might around new people in a strange situation.”

“Exactly,” Logan confirmed.

“You said this is the first time you’ll be meeting Theresa, but what about her other grandchildren? That would make Wyatt, Marti and Ry your new cousins—have you met them yet?”

“Yeah, the triplets,” he answered. “They all came out last week to fill us in on things,” Logan continued. “It was a pretty big shock to Hadley and me to find out that we’re related. That our mom had been adopted.”

“You had no idea?” Meg asked.

“Not a clue. Neither did our mother, apparently. We’ve talked to our other grandmother—Mom’s adopted mother—”

“My sister, Kate, told me it was Anne and Shamus Wimmer who adopted the baby.”

“Right. Gramps passed away a few years ago, but Gran is still alive and lives in Florida. When we first found out about this whole thing we called her. It took some persuading but she finally told us the truth. They never let anyone know they’d adopted. Apparently Gran even pretended to be pregnant at the same time Theresa was and then made a birth announcement as if she’d had the baby. And they never told a single soul anything different, including the rest of their families and my mother.”

“Who passed away, too, if I’m remembering right.”

“When Hadley was almost three and I was five. She was pregnant with what would have been our baby
brother and there were complications. They both died,” Logan confirmed. “But Mom died never knowing anything about being adopted.”

“Or suspecting anything?”

“I’m sure she didn’t. To my grandparents, she was a gift—they doted on her and adored her. Which is more than I can say for Hadley and I being raised by a stepmother. But then I guess adopted kids are more wanted than stepkids.”

“That was what you and Hadley ended up as—stepkids…” Meg said to prompt him to go on. Because not only did she want to have her facts straight, but since he’d added that, it was obviously on his mind and she thought he might want to talk about it.

She must have been right because he didn’t hesitate to go on.

“My father remarried six months later—Hadley was two and a half, I had just turned five. He said kids needed a mother and he couldn’t take care of us on his own. And almost nine months to the day after that wedding the second batch of McKendricks started to arrive—the
real
family, according to my stepmother,” Logan said with an edge of bitterness to his tone. “She never let anyone forget that Hadley and I weren’t her kids, and she didn’t hide her resentment that she’d been stuck raising another woman’s children.”

“That’s awful,” Meg said simply.

After a moment, Logan collected himself, smiling a half smile and said, “What were we talking about that got us onto this?”

But looking at the curve of his mouth when it formed
that smile stalled Meg’s memory and made her think something else.

It made her think about kissing him.

The thoughts were out of the blue, uninvited and unwelcome, but there they were anyway—she was wondering what it might be like for him to kiss her. Wondering and wanting him to—just a little…

Meg forced herself to veer away from that, to actually answer his question. “I believe we were talking about me going with you guys tomorrow when you meet Theresa so I can wrangle Tia if need be,” she finally said, relieved that she’d been able to pull it together enough to make the recollection.

“Ah, that’s right. So, you don’t mind?”

“I’m happy to,” she assured.

“Can I ask you one more thing?”

“Sure.”

“Tia said she wore a cape of yours today and she wants one of her own…”

The thong panties.

Meg hadn’t heard Tia say that but just knowing what the little girl was referring to made her cheeks heat. She hoped it wasn’t visible in the porch light. She also had no idea how she was going to explain the
cape
without abject embarrassment.

Lie. That was all she could think to do.

“It was just a towel I tied around her shoulders. I’m sure she’ll forget all about it by tomorrow.” At least Meg hoped to high heaven that she did…

She hoped, too, that the faint frown that tugged at Logan’s brows again didn’t mean that Tia had described
her
cape
in enough detail for him to know it couldn’t have been merely a towel.

But rather than give him the opportunity to question her more about it, she took the first two steps toward her apartment to indicate that it was time for this to end.

Logan apparently got the hint because he said, “I should let you get going.” He pushed off the garage wall to stand up straight.

Between her raised height on the steps and his movement forward, for a moment they were so near that her breasts were just a whisper from meeting his chest. So near that it would have taken next to nothing for him to kiss her just the way she was sort of wishing he would…

He pivoted in a hurry, though, and that ended that.

“See you in the morning,” Logan said then, as if nothing had happened. Because with the exception of invading each other’s space a little, nothing had.

“See you in the morning,” Meg repeated, her voice quiet.

But as she began to climb the remaining stairs, she knew she was going to be seeing him much, much sooner than the next morning. She was actually still seeing him as she went into her apartment. Seeing him in her mind’s eye.

And even though it was something that had been happening over and over again since she’d met the man, this was a new, more vivid, more real image of him. An image that not only included how great-looking he was, but how fabulous he smelled, and how powerful a presence that muscular body was up close, and how he seemed to give off a kind of heat that had made her melt a little inside…

An image that she knew was also now going to include how much taller he was when they were nearly chest-to-chest, and how much he would have to bend, how much she would have to rise, in order for their mouths to meet…

I’m supposed to be fighting these kinds of thoughts,
she reminded herself as she closed the door behind her.

And there in the dark of the studio apartment that Logan had built, fight them she did.

Only they were stronger than she was…

M
eg thought that the meeting with Theresa Grayson on Tuesday afternoon couldn’t have gone better. Despite voicing some pre-meeting jitters, Logan and Hadley had obviously relaxed within minutes of going into the Graysons’ house. More than just behaving well, having Tia there had served to cut some of the older woman’s tension, awkwardness and emotion. Tia had provided an upbeat and unifying focus for everyone, including Marti, Wyatt, Ry, the nurse-caregiver Mary Pat, and Meg.

The explanation of who Theresa was had gone over Tia’s head but she’d accepted the suggestion that she call her Great-Gram. And after some initial shyness, Tia had even agreed to sit on Great-Gram’s lap. Only briefly, but Theresa had seemed pleased.

Tia had been thrilled with having cookies served on
china and juice in a cup and saucer. She had liked that there were flowers on the dinnerware. The little girl’s only faux pas was to turn her nose up at the small, beautifully handcarved wooden sleigh that Theresa had given her—one of Theresa’s own childhood toys. Tia had politely asked what it did and showed her disinterest by setting it aside after she learned that it didn’t actually
do
anything.

Logan, on the other hand, had admired it and Meg suspected it would end up belonging to him.

Meg had also been glad to see how open, friendly and welcoming Marti, Wyatt and Ry were to Logan and Hadley. The three grandchildren who had guardianship of Theresa and who had spent their lives sharing her care showed no qualms at all about having two more family members introduced into the mix. Instead, they’d seemed open to including Logan and Hadley, and making them as much a part of Theresa’s life as Logan and Hadley wanted to be, giving them an open invitation to visit anytime.

For Logan’s and Hadley’s part, Meg had not been able to tell much about what they were thinking or feeling beyond a continuing shock to have so recently found out that their background wasn’t what they’d always believed it to be. But there hadn’t been time to talk about any of it because when they’d all arrived home again they discovered an overflowing toilet had wreaked some havoc in the downstairs bathroom.

While Logan found the water shutoff and Hadley tried to do some cleanup, Meg had taken Tia with her to the apartment where Tia couldn’t get into the mess that the three-year-old saw as a chance for indoor-puddle-jumping.

From the apartment, Meg called her brother Noah. Noah was the local contractor and he promised to get his plumber there right away.

Dinner ended up being sandwiches that Meg made, leaving a plate of them for Logan, Hadley and the plumber, and taking hers and Tia’s outdoors for an impromptu picnic. Then she’d given Tia her bath at the apartment and when the plumbing problems were fixed, Hadley had come to get Tia to take her home to bed, ending a day that was in no way lacking activity.

What it had lacked—for Meg—was any kind of concentrated time with Logan. Which shouldn’t have been an issue. And yet it had her feeling restless and deprived just when she should have been relaxing.

It was ridiculous, she told herself again and again as she finished what was left of her unpacking. Logan was nothing more than a peripheral part of why she was there, and seeing him only in conjunction with the events of the day—the same way she’d seen Hadley—shouldn’t have made a single bit of difference.

And yet it wasn’t Hadley she kept thinking about.

It was Logan…

By ten o’clock the overhead lights and the table lamps had been on all evening, causing the apartment to be hot and stuffy. Between that and the absurdly low spirits Meg had been left in because Logan hadn’t been a part of her evening, she decided to open all the windows, turn off the lights, and sit outside until the place cooled off. And maybe she would, too…

It didn’t help much that when she went to sit on the stair landing she was facing the rear of the main house
and looking right into the window over the kitchen sink. Or that she could see Logan there.

He was looking downward, washing his hands, his angular face expressionless, the lower half of it stubbled by a five-o’clock shadow that gave him a sexy, scruffy, bad-boy air.

He’d taken off the shirt he’d been wearing to meet his newest grandmother and now had on only a white crewneck T-shirt that fitted him like a second skin and left no doubt about how well built his upper body was—including the massive biceps that stretched the short sleeves tight.

Did he still have on the jeans he’d been wearing earlier? Meg wondered. Or was he ready for bed and in pajama pants? Or did he wear pajamas at all? Maybe he was just in his shorts…

Ashamed of herself for even thinking that, Meg clamped her eyes shut and shook her head.

But a moment later, when she heard the main house’s back door creak, she opened her eyes just in time to see Logan step out onto the deck.

The jeans. He was still wearing the jeans—just tight enough to accentuate that remarkable lower half, not so tight that they looked like he had anything to prove.

And she didn’t know if he’d caught sight of her from the kitchen window when she’d had her eyes closed, or just as he’d come outside, but he gave her a little wave and headed across the yard.

That was enough to speed up her pulse even if he hadn’t had such a great walk. But he really did have a great walk.

It wasn’t something she’d ever noticed with anyone else, but drinking in the sight of every step he took with the faintest bit of swagger, sent her pulse into full double time.

She half expected him to stay standing at the bottom of the stairs but he didn’t. And as he climbed them, Meg moved over to make room for him.

He didn’t come all the way to the landing to sit, though. He sat on the step below her, turned toward her, and braced himself on an elbow on the landing so he was facing her almost as if he were lying down.

Meg pivoted to face him, too, having a slight advantage over him that let her look straight at him without much distance separating them and with the full glow of the outside lights bathing those striking features. And she couldn’t keep from smiling for no reason other than that she was just so unreasonably pleased she was getting a few minutes alone with him after all…

It was the weary sigh that came with his settling in that prompted her to say, “Plumbing problems fixed?”

“Finally. You know that last trip to the bathroom that I sent Tia on just before we left? Well, it got Diving Man flushed,” Logan said.

Diving Man was Tia’s tub toy.

“Ah, she was complaining when I gave her tonight’s bath over here that she didn’t have Diving Man.”

“She won’t ever have him again—Diving Man tried to make a run for it all the way out to the pipes and got stuck. We had to pull the whole toilet off and break him in half to get him out. Which made Tia mad.”

While Meg knew that Logan was tired and had just had
to tear his bathroom apart as a result of the three-year-old, Meg was having trouble suppressing a laugh.

Which Logan must have been able to tell because he cracked a tight-lipped smile himself even as he chastised, “It wasn’t funny.”

“I don’t know, if you’re Diving Man the tub is pretty much just snorkeling, but the toilet is the real deal—deep-sea scuba diving, isn’t it? Tia was just giving him the bigger adventure,” she said as laughter took over.

“Yeah, I suppose,” Logan agreed, giving in to laughter himself. “That kid’s gonna give me gray hair.”

But it was such nice hair—thick and just unruly enough to add to his sex appeal. Brown or gray, it would still be fabulous hair…

Of course that wasn’t what Meg said. She said, “So from now on tub toys stay out of Tia’s reach until she’s in the tub to play with them and has supervision?”

“And let’s remind her a lot about what
doesn’t
get flushed,” Logan added as if they were a team.

“Poor Diving Man—you ruined all his fun,” Meg teased, making Logan laugh again.

“What a day,” he said then.

“I’ll say,” she agreed to commiserate with him. “Diver-recovery on top of meeting a grandmother you didn’t know you had and becoming part of a whole other family.”

“Yeah, that was weird, wasn’t it—meeting Theresa and having perfect strangers talking about Hadley and Tia and me being their family?”

“I understand
that
weirdness completely,” Meg commiserated.

“Because you sort of had the same thing happen, didn’t you?”

“We did end up meeting one of our grandmothers—Celeste—only recently,” she confirmed, unsure how much of her own situation Logan knew about since he’d been out of Northbridge during the discoveries and revelations that had recently changed the dynamics of her own family.

“I know the Reverend’s wife running off with bank robbers was one of the old town scandals,” he said.

“Not to mention that it was the Reverend’s biggest embarrassment. But before you or I were even born, she slipped back into town, calling herself Leslie—”

“The large lady who worked at the dry cleaners.”

“Right. It was all the weight she’d gained after she ran away and then was deserted by her lover that made her unrecognizable. When she realized that, she reinvented herself and became just another Northbridge newcomer.”

“Nobody figured it out until now?”

“The Reverend figured out who she was but only after a few years and a slip of the tongue she made that gave her away. But even then he didn’t tell anyone because he liked that she had to stay on the sidelines of her own family—it was his retribution. But all that time she was right here—our grandmother and we didn’t even know it. Now that we do, we’ve all been working at a relationship with her in our own ways.”

“In other words, most families have some weirdness to them?” Logan said.

“I don’t think there’s a lot of families with weird-nesses quite like yours or mine, but to some extent
families can frequently have some twisted history to them that people have to deal with.”

“So how are you working at a relationship with Celeste-who-was-Leslie?” Logan asked.

“I can’t say I’ve done a whole lot,” she admitted confidentially.

“But you
are
making an effort?”

“Sure. She’s family…”

“And you think I should make an effort with Theresa?”

“I’d never tell you what to do or not to do with that, no,” Meg was quick to say.

“But in your own situation, regardless of the history, Celeste is family and you’re treating her accordingly.”

“That’s just me. It isn’t a model for what anyone else should do.”

He smiled again, this time knowingly. “Family is important to you even if part of that family includes someone who ran off with a bank robber and the Reverend—who couldn’t have been a lot of laughs to have as a grandfather.”

“No laughs at all,” Meg confirmed.

“What kind of an impact did the Reverend have on you?”

It was Meg’s turn to smile knowingly. “You’ve been wondering that since you remembered he’s my grandfather when we first talked on Saturday. And making assumptions about it,” Meg said, wishing it hadn’t come out quite as coyly as it had.

“Have I?” he challenged with another half smile of his own and a hint of flirting to his tone, too.

“The whole communal-living thing,” Meg said. “I
saw the wheels turning in your head when I wanted to make sure I hadn’t misunderstood the living arrangements. You remembered who my grandfather is and thought I was a huge prude.”

His grin gave him away and let her know that was exactly what he’d thought. “A little prudishness in a nanny is probably a good thing. I just liked giving you a hard time. But
did
being the Reverend’s granddaughter make you a
huge
prude?”

“I wouldn’t say
huge
—”

“That
is
what you said.”

“I said that was what you thought I was,” she persisted.

“Okay, so maybe you’re not a
huge
prude, but you are a prude?”

She knew he was enjoying giving her a hard time. But she didn’t mind. She was enjoying their back-and-forth just as much. Probably more than she should have been.

“I’d say that there’s a little of the prude in me, yes,” she conceded reluctantly.

“Uh-huh…” he said as if that were a given. “And what else did being the Reverend’s granddaughter make you?”

“Oh, I don’t know…Worried about being offensive if I’m too bold or outspoken, I guess. According to my grandfather a female’s place is only in the background, in a serving position, hoping a man—any man—will want her and make her worth something.”

“He doesn’t think girls are worth anything otherwise?”

“No. It’s part of a girls-aren’t-as-good-as-boys mentality that also made me feel as if I had to be twice as diligent and work harder than everyone else just to
matter. And I suppose I’ll always have a second-class citizen sort of insecurity and self-image—”

“Second-class citizen? That’s so wrong…”

“I agree with you. But when you grow up under someone who tells you how unworthy you are over and over again, it has an effect.”

“A rotten one.”

She liked that he was so outraged by the stance that she’d hated all her life, too. “I said that all members of a family have an impact, I didn’t say it was always a good one. But it did make me ambitious—more quietly than most people, but still, that pushed me to get my education and to do what I’ve done so far.”

“I’ll bet there were some strict limitations on dating.”

“You’d win that bet! Anything other than going out with a group of kids was prohibited until senior prom—and we all had a strict eleven-o’clock curfew even that night.”

“You’re kidding!”

“Nope. Not that we didn’t all date under the cloak of going out with a group, but until senior prom we had to use that cover. And then worry that we’d be found out—it put a crimp in things. For me, at least, not a lot of boys wanted to bother with the subterfuge.”

Logan shook his head. “I don’t know what was wrong with those boys!”

Meg appreciated his compliment and laughed. “Then, too, I was painfully bashful and awkward and tongue-tied around boys, so even if the Reverend’s rules hadn’t been in place, I doubt there would have been a line of guys waiting outside my door.”