looked at Brooke, then at the baby in her arms and glanced toward the desk, where more wailing could be heard, if not seen. Suddenly, Morgan stopped crying, though she was sure it would be short-lived. He eyed the frowning triplets edging toward the door. “Looks like you have your hands full,” he said to Brooke, setting the nanny-wanted ad on the credenza. “Allow me. I’m pretty good with babies.”
He stepped toward her, arms extended as if to take her child, and Brooke stepped back, shielding Mikey from him.
“Listen, bucko, I don’t know you,” she said.
God, he really did have the most gorgeous blue eyes with long dark lashes. The slightest of five-o’clock shadows graced his strong jawline.
Shelley Satler was staring at him. “Hey, aren’t you Nick Garroway?” she asked him. “You were a year ahead of us in high school. You played football and baseball, if I remember correctly.”
“You do,” he said with a smile. “And of course I remember you three. The lovely and smart Satler triplets. Copresidents of your class. One of you—maybe all of you, at various points—used to babysit my younger brother. It’s very nice to see you again.”
The triplets beamed and swooned and chatted with this Nick Garroway about old times.
So, he wasn’t an axe murderer. Or baby-napper. The Satlers were four years older than Brooke, so Nick was out of high school by the time Brooke would have been a freshman. She would have had a serious crush on him if she’d known him back then.
He stepped closer again. “May I?” he said, reaching for Mikey. “If you direct me to a changing area, I’ll take care of this ASAP and you can continue your meeting.”
Uh, I guess? How weird was this? She handed him the diaper, the wipes, and her precious baby son, and pointed toward the restroom, where she had a changing station set up. “Where I can see your every move,” she whispered to him, and he nodded as he took Mikey inside, keeping the door half open. The Satlers couldn’t see into the bathroom from where they stood—thank heavens—but they could all hear him humming a lullaby. Brahms’s.
“Well, Brooke, looks like you found your new nanny,” Shelley said with a grin. “And just in time.”
“You mean her new manny,” Samantha corrected, with a wiggle of her eyebrows. “Male plus nanny equals manny.”
“A hot manny,” Suzannah put in. She grinned at Brooke, tipping her lemon-yellow leather cowboy hat at her. “Brooke, you seriously impress! Listen, why don’t you write up a comprehensive plan for our wedding, with all the new info we discussed here today, and we’ll go over it, but we’re 99 percent going to hire you and Dream Weddings for our big day.”
Thank you, universe.
And thank you, Hot Manny.
The man himself emerged from the restroom, with Mikey smiling and grabbing Nick’s chiseled jawline. “Now this little dude smells like snips and snails and puppy dog tails and everything else good that little boys are made of.”
Brooke stared at him, speechless. Where on earth had he come from? Was he even from earth?
Each Satler sister winked at Brooke, made a little fuss over Mikey, said goodbye to Nick with one last admiring glance at him and then left.
“The job is yours,” Brooke said to him as she pointed at the ad. “Can you start immediately? I guess you already have.”
The Hot Manny tilted his head and stared at her. “Oh, I’m not here about the job.”
“I’m confused,” Brooke said, reaching for the baby in Nick’s arms.
He almost didn’t want to let the little guy go. He liked how the sturdy small weight felt in his arms, against his chest. He’d been surprised by that back in Afghanistan—how satisfying, how gratifying it was to hold a tiny baby. How hard it was to hand the baby over.
Some things just sneaked up on a former US Army combat soldier unexpectedly. Like how raw he felt about his reason for being here. The sooner he gave back Mikey, the sooner he’d have to explain why he’d come. He had no idea how that conversation was going to go.
“You’re not here to apply for the nanny position?” she asked, taking the baby and giving Mikey a kiss on his cheek. Mikey gurgled and then immediately spit up on the jacket of Brooke’s white pantsuit. It had to take courage to wear something like that with baby twins.
She barely seemed to notice. She reached under the desk, grabbed a burp cloth, dabbed the drool, tossed the cloth on her shoulder, and then put Mikey in his swing and transferred the twin beside him. With both babies occupied and playing with chew toys attached to the swing, she turned her attention back to him.
Those driftwood-brown eyes of hers had stopped him in his tracks when he’d seen that one photo of her on Will Parker’s phone. Intelligent and assessing. And tired now. He could see the dark shadows and the pull of exhaustion. He’d known she was pretty. But the instant wham of connection he’d felt when he’d first laid eyes on her in person was anything but expected.
“No,” he said. “I was on my way to see you and happened to notice the ad for a nanny in the Gazette. I ripped it out so I’d have your phone number if you weren’t at home.”
But she had been at home. Fortified with caffeine from the diner, he’d pulled up in front of her house, taking note of the well-kept small white Cape Cod with black shutters and a red door, the lawn tended to, two black-and-white cats snoozing on a padded swing, two cars in the driveway—one a brand-new Range Rover that must have cost a mint. He now realized the Range Rover probably belonged to the Satlers. The second car was a decade-old Honda. He’d breathed a sigh of relief that Brooke Timber was clearly doing fine and that he could be on his way to dealing with number two on his list. But then he’d heard the sound of babies wailing and high-pitched shrieks from adults, and that hadn’t sounded too okay, so he’d followed the noise to the side door, a business entrance, and marched in.
Brooke hadn’t looked fine at all, not in the slightest. He’d sprung into action, as was his wont, and somehow the four women in the room had managed to mistake him for a nanny.
At six foot two, 185 pounds, with a small tattoo of “purple mountain majesties” on his left bicep and size-thirteen black work boots, he wouldn’t have thought anyone would confuse him with an applicant for a babysitting job—Gazette ad in hand or not.
“Ah! So you must be a prospective client,” Brooke said. “When’s the big day?”
Client? Big day? What was she talking about? Then he remembered the Satler triplets with their huge rock engagement rings and the shingle outside her side door. Brooke was a wedding planner.
“Good God, no,” he said with a shake of his head. Now he was taken for a groom? “I’m not the marrying kind.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Everyone is the marrying kind. My clients have been all sorts. Last year, a search-and-rescue worker fell in love with a man who lived off the grid, in the mountains, without electricity or running water. She got him to upgrade
