“Bryan! Did you see our socks?” Evie asked by way of greeting Dani’s best friend as the twins rushed him Tuesday morning when Dani let him in.
“Let me see ’em,” Bryan Dreeson instructed, peering down at their feet. “Oh, my gosh! Those socks are great! Red Minnie and Mickey? Why don’t they make them in my size?” he lamented.
“Let’s see yours,” Grady said as he bent over and pulled up one leg of the attorney’s suit pants to reveal snazzy argyles. A love of flashy socks united Dani’s friend with her charges.
“Pretty,” Evie judged with awe.
“And he brought you one of his special quiches for breakfast, too—”
The twins cheered and jumped around like crazy people, laughing at themselves as they did.
“Okay, okay,” Dani said to contain them as she closed the front door behind her friend. “I want you to go down and finish getting dressed while I talk to Bryan, and then you can have breakfast.”
Bryan’s family had lived in the house next door to her grandparents. Being the same age, Dani and Bryan had grown up together and been best friends since soon after Dani had gone to live with Nell and Nick Marconi.
Bryan had called the night before and told her that he would stop by on his way to his office this morning to bring her papers. He was an estate lawyer and had handled the trust Dani’s grandmother had left.
“Mmm...fresh tomatoes, spinach and cheese,” Dani said as she carried the quiche to the kitchen. “The kids love this. And so do I.”
“Because it’s delicious,” Bryan said with no humility whatsoever.
“Are you eating with us or have you already had breakfast?” she asked as they got to the kitchen and she set the quiche on the island.
“I waited so we could eat together. And I’m desperate for a cup of coffee!” he said dramatically, going to the cupboard to get a mug—a familiarity that had developed since he became a frequent visitor after Dani had taken up residence here and left the apartment they shared.
“I have to warn you—I didn’t make the coffee and it’s really strong. Gramma would have called it battery acid.”
“The marine made it?” Bryan asked. They talked almost every day and there was nothing in Dani’s life that Bryan didn’t know about, including every detail of the situation with the twins, her efforts to contact Liam, his arrival and request to move in and that Monday had been designated as the day for that.
“The marine or elves. It was here when I got up,” she said.
“Am I gonna get a look at him?” her impeccably dressed blond friend whispered over his shoulder as he poured the dark brew.
“I haven’t even seen him this morning—he’s an up-before-dawn guy. He says he likes to run at sunrise. Then he had an appointment with a lawyer to deal with paternity if the DNA proves he’s the father,” she said just as softly so the kids didn’t overhear anything.
“Too bad. I wanted to see if he lives up to your description.”
“If he lives up to my description? How did I describe him?” She’d thought she’d described him as average. Even though he was actually far, far above average.
“You made him sound so hot that steam was coming out of my phone,” Bryan claimed.
“I did not,” Dani denied as she got out four plates, silverware and a knife to cut the quiche.
“You sooo did,” Bryan countered. “Down to every tiny little freckle—”
“He doesn’t have freckles.”
“And you should know because you didn’t miss a thing. You had me drooling and hoping he plays for my team.”
“Evie and Grady are probably his so I don’t think he plays for your team,” she whispered again.
“And wouldn’t you be crushed if he did,” Bryan teased.
“No,” she said. Maybe a little too emphatically because it made Bryan laugh.
It also provoked him to give her his fashion once-over. “Your hair is down. Instead of yoga pants or rolling-around-on-the-floor-with-kids jeans you have on a nice pair, and that come-hither pink sweater set? You are dressed for more than work,” he deduced before adding, “It’s all right if you kind of like this guy, you know? This has been a rough few months. You’re due for a little good.”
“Well, it isn’t going to come out of this,” she responded confidently without denying that, like yesterday, she’d primped more for work than usual. But she’d told herself that she had a busy day ahead and that that was the reason. Not Liam Madison.
“Then I’ll keep hoping that he’s gay,” Bryan challenged.
“And I’ll tell Adam on you,” she countered, referring to Bryan’s longtime boyfriend.
The exchange made them both laugh. It was the kind of back and forth they’d shared since childhood.
As Dani cut slices of Bryan’s homemade quiche he took papers out of his briefcase and slid them across the counter to her. “Gramma’s trust,” he said. He’d always called her grandmother Gramma the same way Dani had even though there was no relation. “Since you’re the only beneficiary all ownership has been transferred to you.”
That sobered her. “Already.”
“It’s been six weeks since she passed. We did the trust instead of a will because it would be quicker and easier at the end and wouldn’t have to go into probate like a will. And there’s the proof—no court, no court costs, over and done. You’re now the sole owner of the house and Marconi’s Italian Restaurant.”
Essentially that had been true ever since her grandmother had died, but still, the finality and reality of it, of the loss of her grandmother, landed heavily on Dani all over again.
Dealing with that made her go very quiet and when Evie came up the stairs with a request that she fasten the buttons in the back of her dress, Bryan intercepted her to do it while Dani got down glasses for the twins and poured milk.
Then Evie went downstairs with a promise to Bryan that he was going to love her shoes and Dani took a deep breath to fuel herself to go on.
“Your cousin wants to buy the house,” she said.
Bryan had several cousins. One of them was newly married and she and her husband had rented the house that Dani had grown up in. The house that had belonged to her grandparents and passed to her when her grandmother died.
“I know Shannon loves the house, but I told her not to pressure you about buying it,” Bryan said. “It could be a nice home for you, you know? When some time passes.”
“Or I could sell it and use the money to renovate the restaurant,” Dani said. “Or I could sell them both...” It was a conversation they’d been having since her eighty-year-old grandmother’s death.
So many changes were in the wind. Too many. All of them weighing on her.
And Bryan knew how overwhelmed she was, how torn she was about whether or not to let go of the house she’d grown up in. About whether or not to accept the end of her time with the twins as the end of her own career as a nanny so she could take over where her grandparents had left off with the restaurant. About whether or not to sell the business that had been the lifeblood of her family. The business that had kept her grandparents alive in some ways. The business that couldn’t go on as it had without Dani. About whether or not to genuinely close the door on the people and life she’d always known. And loved.
“Gramma would have been right about this coffee—battery acid!” Bryan said.
Dani knew he was attempting to distract her from her own thoughts and from drifting into the doldrums and grief that were just below the surface.
“Let’s try a little cream and sugar,” he suggested. “I can’t believe Hottie Marine actually drinks this black.”
“‘Hottie Marine’?” she echoed. “That’s the best you could come up with?”
“We haven’t even met,” Bryan defended himself. “Would you prefer Lovely Liam?”
“Oh, that is waaay worse.”
Bryan passed her on his way to the refrigerator for the cream and nudged her with his shoulder. “You okay?” he asked seriously, knowing her well enough to understand what she was feeling.
“Sure,” she answered.
“Lot of decisions on the table—go at them one at a time.”
“I will. But I’m not doing anything about my own future until I know the kids will be okay.”
He kissed her cheek. “That’s why I love you, lady.”
And that small comment brought tears to her eyes that she had to blink back.
“So tell me more about our marine,” he encouraged.
But the twins were finished dressing and both came into the kitchen. Grady was in red-and-white star leggings with a salmon-colored T-shirt—he called it his toucan shirt because of the long-beaked bird on it—and sparkling blue tennis shoes that lit up when he stomped his feet, which he demonstrated for Bryan. Evie wore her predominantly navy blue flowered knit dress with green striped leggings under it and her own light-up, sparkling pink running shoes.
“Wow! You guys are colorful!” Bryan said as if he was impressed.
“Dani let us pick out our own clothes because it’s our bacation and we don’t have to wear umiforms.”
“And what a great job you did,” Bryan commended. “Now come and eat my quiche and tell me how good it is,” he added.
The twins eagerly went to two of the bar stools to climb up and do as he’d instructed.
And Dani wished that Liam was there to watch her friend and maybe pick up a few tips on how to build rapport with the twins.
Although, for some strange reason, she’d been wishing that Liam was there since she got up this morning.
And it didn’t have anything to do with the kids.
* * *
“You say it pit-sails—not piz-els. And these are ours that get saved for us. They’re the broken ones Dani lets us have,” Grady informed Liam.
Liam had been alarmed that the kids had gone behind the bakery case at Marconi’s Italian Restaurant and begun to help themselves from a drawer below it. He’d warned Dani that they were getting into the Italian waffle cookies, pronouncing the name the way it was spelled on the sign where stacks of them were displayed for sale.
“It’s okay,” Dani assured him. Then to the twins she said, “But not too many. You can each have two broken pieces and put the rest in a bag to take home.” Then, using a tissue to take an unbroken one from a stack, she handed it to Liam. “They’re traditional Italian cookies—my grandmother’s recipe with anise oil and anise seed. It tastes like licorice and the cookie itself is buttery and crispy and light...if you’ve never had one.”
“I like licorice,” he said, accepting the pizzelle from her. After tasting it he inclined his head and gave his approval. “Good.”
“Really good,” Evie confirmed. “You can have some of ours.”
That was a positive sign.
It had been a full day.
Liam had arrived home just as Dani was telling the twins after lunch that they had to have a rest time even if they weren’t tired enough to take a nap and herded them to bed.
When naptime concluded they’d gone to the grocery store, where Liam had observed the process without really participating and with an expression of bewilderment when he’d realized that on every aisle the same exchange took place half a dozen times: the kids asked for everything that struck their fancy whether they knew what it was or not. Dani said, “Not today,” and they responded, “For our birthday can we have it?” To which Dani had said yes every time.
“Why not just say no?” he’d reasoned.
Rather than answering that, Dani had shown him why not. She’d said a flat no the next time, when they’d asked if they could have the Chinese noodles in the black-and-red package that had caught their eye.
“For our birthday?” Evie had asked on cue.
“No,” Dani had answered, earning a rash of begging and insistence that even though they didn’t know what the Chinese noodles actually were, they loved them and wanted them.
“Okay, maybe for your birthday,” she’d conceded, and they’d been appeased and agreeable enough to move on.
“That’s just weird,” Liam had commented.
And once more Dani had responded, “They’re four.”
After returning home to put groceries away they’d gone to the park. Although Liam had remained reserved at the grocery store, at the park he’d offered to push Evie and Grady on the swings.
Unfortunately the offer had still been so stiff and formal—similar to her former fiancé Garrett’s attempts—that they hadn’t been responsive and had insisted Dani alone do it.
But there was one thing they always wanted to do at the park that Dani wasn’t physically capable of, and it had occurred to her that tall Liam could do it—especially when she had factored in his expansive shoulders and the biceps that stretched his pale yellow polo shirt to the limits. And made her look at him more often than she’d wanted to.
She’d suggested that maybe Liam could take turns holding the twins up, one at a time, so that they could reach and cross the monkey bars.
She’d had to warn Liam not to let go of them once they were up there, to keep holding them as they reached from one bar to the next without actually bearing any of their own weight, but he’d done it—several times because the man seemed to have the stamina of an ox.
It hadn’t broken down any huge barriers between the three of them, but Dani thought it had at least made a dent.
Then they’d moved on to dinner. Tuesday night was fast-food night for the twins—the only time it was allowed, as she’d explained to Liam.
Tonight Dani had insisted on paying, and had told Liam that when the court had granted her guardianship of the twins, it had also allotted her funds from the estate for their care. Since Tuesday night chicken nuggets were part of the routine, she thought that qualified.
As they did every Tuesday night, the kids had wolfed down their food in order to get to the play area afterward. While they were gone Dani had explained to Liam that the next stop was the Italian restaurant that she was responsible for and needed to check in on.
Which was how they’d come to Marconi’s, using the employees’ entrance in back and prompting a return of the reserved Liam as he’d watched the kids charge in, greet and be greeted warmly by the kitchen staff, then proceed into the restaurant itself and to the bakery case to help themselves.
“They’re just at home here?” he asked Dani when he’d finished his pizzelle. He was observing Grady and Evie getting a brown paper sack from a shelf under the cash register and carefully emptying the container of broken pizzelles into the bag on their own.
“They’ve been here a lot. Especially lately,” she answered before introducing Liam and Griff, her manager, and then consulting with Griff before the day could come to a close.
Liam again seemed very ruminative on the short drive between Marconi’s and the Freelander house, saying only, “They can be kind of loud, can’t they?” when the kids began singing preschool ditties in the back seat.
“They can,” she agreed. “But it’s happy noise,” she added, worrying that he was going to be so stern or sound sensitive that he wanted to stop four-year-olds from singing.
On the alert for his response, she saw him glance in his rearview mirror at them and held her breath, hoping that he wouldn’t tell them to be quiet.
But ultimately all he did was shrug, return his gaze to the road and say, “Yeah, good point.”
It might not have been singing along but it was something, and Dani was grateful for it as they pulled into the driveway to the tune of “The Wheels on the Bus” coming from the back seat.
* * *
“He didn’t do funny voices,” Evie complained an hour later when Dani was tucking in the little girl. It was the same grievance Grady had voiced a moment before when Dani had put him to bed.
She’d persuaded Liam to read the bedtime story and the kids to let him. “Remember what I told you—he’s just learning about you guys. He probably didn’t know you like that book read with funny voices. You had a good time with him at the park, though. You finally got to do the monkey bars.”
“Yeah, that was fun,” Evie recalled as she arranged her doll next to her. “And he likes pizzelles.”
“He does,” Dani confirmed with some amusement that that was a plus. But at that point she was willing to take any encouraging sign she could get.
“I don’t wanna go to that camp, though.”
“Oh, no, that’s just what Liam called it,” she said. After reading the book, Liam had asked them if they’d like to do a boot camp workout with him sometime. Grady had given a reluctant okay—though Dani was reasonably sure he had no idea what he’d agreed to—but Evie had refused outright. “Liam was just asking if you wanted to exercise with him. Kind of like when Bryan comes over and we do yoga.”
“I like Bryan.”
But not Liam—that seemed to be the unspoken part of the sentiment.
“I think you’re going to like Liam, too. He’s just different from Bryan. Maybe you could watch him and Grady when they do the workout and decide if you want to do the exercises, too.”
Evie put the doll named Baby in a headlock and rolled onto her side without responding to that. Dani didn’t push it; she just smoothed Evie’s hair away from her face and said good-night.
Then she left the four-year-old to sleep and went up to the kitchen to find Liam making a hoagie with some of the groceries he’d bought himself.
It didn’t surprise her. He hadn’t eaten a hearty dinner. But she was glad to see him making himself at home, reasoning that the more comfortable he was with his surroundings, the more comfortable he might become with the kids.
“I make a good sandwich,” he bragged as she joined him. “And there’s plenty. Can I interest you?”
Ohhh...too many things about him had interested her as the day and evening had gone on. Dani had been struggling with it. But at that point he was only talking about the food in front of him.
“No, thanks. But if you’d told me you were hungry when we were at the restaurant, we do a really good Italian sub—mortadella, Genoa salami, capicola and prosciutto with provolone, ricotta salata and roasted red peppers on buns we make ourselves.”
“You’re putting my ham, turkey and Swiss to shame.”
“I’m just saying that I could have saved you the trouble.”
Dani took two knives and two carving boards out of a drawer, handing him one of the boards and a carving knife to cut his sandwich, and keeping the second board and a large knife with a serrated edge for herself.
As he sliced his sandwich and wrapped big, capable-looking hands around one portion of it to take a bite—hands she inexplicably thought were the sexiest hands she’d ever seen—she went to her purse and took a large compressed cardboard tube out of it to set on her own carving board.
Liam was watching her and, after swallowing his bite and washing it down with a swig of the beer he’d opened, he said, “I know you wouldn’t tell the kids what that was for when you took it from the restaurant, but how about letting me in on it? And what is it anyway?”
“It’s just the roll the giant commercial plastic wrap comes on. The staff kept it for me.” She measured its length and made a mark that divided it in half. “It’s for a craft project for Evie and Grady,” she added as she started trying to saw through it with the serrated knife, finding the quarter-inch thickness of its walls as strong as wood and not as easy to cut as she’d expected.
“Hold on,” Liam said to stop her. “You need a saw to do that. Is there one around here?”
“I don’t know.”
“I poked my head into the garage this morning—there’s a worktable out there—let me look and see if there might be a saw,” he offered, taking another bite of his sandwich for the trip.
He disappeared through the door that connected the garage and the kitchen, was gone for a while and then came back with a small handsaw.
“There’s all kinds of tools out there,” he informed her. He didn’t give her the saw, though; he took another bite of his sandwich and reached for the tube and second cutting board. “Let me do it.”
Dani watched as one of those sexy hands gripped the tube and the other wielded the saw, making forearms and biceps alike bulge as he worked.
Her mouth was suddenly a little dry and she didn’t like that she was imagining feeling the strength of those arms around her, those hands on her body, so she went to the refrigerator for a bottle of seltzer water.
In that short time, he’d cut the tube in two—something that she knew she’d have been working on for half an hour to accomplish.
“There,” he said, sliding it back to her and continuing to eat as he stood on one side of the island.
Dani went to the opposite side and sat on a stool despite the fact that she knew she should busy herself elsewhere rather than stay there just to enjoy the view. And the company.
“So how’d I do today, Teach?” he asked then.
“I think you had a couple of wins,” she said without much conviction.
“In other words, not great,” he said with a wry chuckle.
He’d been clean-shaven through the day, but in the last few hours a shadow of beard had begun to appear, and she noticed that now it had turned into very sexy scruff.
She didn’t know why her mind kept going there but she curbed it and forced herself to concentrate on tutoring him.
“You were a little looser but...are you scared of them?” she asked, recalling that he’d thought they might be afraid of him the night before but now wondering if it was the other way around.
“Shhh! Marines aren’t scared of anything,” he barked facetiously.
“So you are!” Dani goaded. “A great big macho marine scared of two munchkins.”
“They’re just not what I’m used to. I’m used to order and discipline and rules and regulations and adults who follow them. But kids...they’re all over the place.”
“But in a fun way,” Dani said.
“Just seems like anarchy to me.”
Dani laughed. “That military stuff again,” she groaned. “You have to switch gears. But you did gain some ground with the monkey bars. They always want to do them and I can’t hold them up like that. And you liked pizzelles—”
“Even though I said it wrong and earned a reprimand.”
“But the fact that Evie was willing to share with you was something.”
“And then I screwed up reading to them tonight—Grady said tomorrow night you need to do it. But I don’t know what I did wrong. I can read,” he ended defensively.
Dani laughed. “Sorry. I do dumb voices that they like. But still, you did better today than yesterday. And you’ll get there.” She hoped.
He sighed. “Guess I’ll keep trying anyway.”
He got points with her for that.
“Now tell me about you and this restaurant,” he said as if that had confused him as much as the kids did. “You’re a nanny named Cooper but it seemed like maybe you own a restaurant called Marconi’s?”
“Yeah...” She steeled herself for talking about this. “My mom was Antoinette Marconi, daughter of Nick and Nell Marconi and a full-blooded Italian, so I’m Italian on her side. I’m French, English, Irish and German on my dad’s. I’m the variety pack.”
“Proved to be a good mix,” he said with approval in his voice and in the blue eyes that were taking her in.
Dani tried not to notice. Or to be pleased. But she was.
She forced herself to move on from it, though.
“When my grandparents got married they used their wedding money to start the restaurant,” she told him. “It’s been our family’s business ever since for the last sixty-two years. My grandfather ran it and my grandmother cooked—right up until the day she died six weeks ago.”
“You just lost her—I’m sorry.”
“Thanks. Me, too. But I’m grateful that she went peacefully, in her sleep. And I keep reminding myself that she had a long life. She was eighty—”
“And still working?”
“Making meatballs right to the end,” Dani said, the humor helping.
“Making meatballs at the restaurant?” he said, getting back to what had started this.
“At the restaurant. My mom grew up there. Worked there. She met my dad there. He was a customer and then he worked there, too, before he did a stint in the marines.”
“Your dad was a marine,” Liam noted with respect and camaraderie.
“He enlisted just before my mom realized she was pregnant with me. He served for four years.”
“Good man.”
“He was,” Dani said sadly before she returned to the subject. “I basically grew up at the restaurant the same way my mom did. They kept a crib and a playpen in the corner of the kitchen when she was a baby and then again when I was. I had chores there from when I was little. I went straight there after school. I worked in the kitchen cooking with my grandmother. I bused tables, waited on customers. I learned to read from the menus. I learned math running the cash register and at my grandfather’s side doing the books. I earned money for college there. And even ever since, I’ve pitched in when Gramma needed me...”
The enormity of the tradition weighed on her suddenly the way things had that morning, too, and she sighed. “And now I’m all that’s left of the family, so...it’s mine. Lock, stock and barrel. Officially as of this morning.”
“This morning?”
“Gramma and I have been all that’s left of the family for the last fifteen years since my grandfather died. She’d put everything in a trust that left me the restaurant and the house. As of this morning the trust was dissolved and everything was turned over to me for real.”
Her voice had cracked as she’d talked and apparently he’d caught it because he said, “My mom died just a few months ago. It isn’t easy...”
“No, it isn’t. I’m sorry for your loss, too.”
“And now there’s only you? No brothers or sisters? No more parents?” he asked gently.
“Like I said, my dad was a marine. He served in the Persian Gulf during Desert Storm and came back with some problems.”
“He was wounded?”
“Not physically, but mentally, emotionally... He had really bad PTSD. I know sometimes people don’t think that’s as serious, but they’re wrong. I was the twins’ age when he came back and even I could see how much he was suffering. Sometimes he wouldn’t know where he was. He’d think he was still in combat. And even when it wasn’t the outwardly noticeable stuff, he was so sad... That’s how it seemed to me, but I know it was depression. Bad enough that my mom was afraid to leave him alone.”
“Afraid he’d hurt himself,” Liam said as if she wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know. “I’ve seen PTSD in a few of my men. Had to send them home.”
“He didn’t have any family, but my mom and my grandparents did everything to try to help him. He’d have a few good days here and there, but then it would just hit him again, sometimes worse than other times. My mom bought him a boat because he’d always liked to go boating and that did help—there was something about being out on the water that calmed him. So every chance they got, they took the boat to a lake and spent time on it.”
“Here? In Colorado?”
Dani knew what he was thinking. “Yes. And no, it wasn’t a good solution during the winter months when everything around here freezes over. So when Dad got bad and things here were frozen, they hitched up a trailer for the boat and took it somewhere warmer—Arizona or California or Texas—somewhere they could still get out on the water for a while, until he felt better again.”
“What about their jobs?”
“My dad was on disability. He couldn’t be around a lot of people or noise. Sometimes he helped my grandfather with the paperwork or did some maintenance around the restaurant when it was quiet, but that was about it. The restaurant was my mom’s job and my grandparents understood the situation, so they were okay with her taking off when she needed to.”
“Did you go on these trips?”
“No, I stayed with my grandparents. If my dad needed the boat that meant he was in really bad shape, and I think my mom and my grandparents must have agreed that it was better if I wasn’t around him then. It actually saved my life because when I was six my folks were killed in a boating accident.”
Liam’s dark eyebrows arched. “Oh... I didn’t see that coming. You don’t hear about a lot of those.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “Although it might as well have been on the road—there was drunk driving on New Year’s Eve involved. The holidays had been particularly rough for my dad that year, so the day after Christmas he and my mom headed for Arizona with the boat. We got the call on New Year’s Day. Some college kids rammed full throttle into my parents’ boat. No one survived.”
“And your grandparents raised you from then on?”
“They did. I was lucky that way. I keep wishing that Evie and Grady were that lucky.”
He didn’t comment on that. Instead he said, “But you didn’t stay at the restaurant like your mother—the restaurant that was going to be yours one day—and you became a nanny?”
“My grandmother wanted me to have a college education. She said there was nothing that said I had to stick with the restaurant, and she knew I loved kids—she liked that I seemed to have a knack for working with them. She thought I should be a teacher. I went with childhood development instead. My degree is in educational psychology. I thought I’d still go into the schools, but I was actually recruited by the nanny service just before I graduated and I kind of liked the idea of working more one-on-one with younger kids, so I signed on.”
Liam had finished his sandwich and begun cleaning up after himself just as the buzzer on the dryer gave the alert that the laundry was done.
“I better get that folded,” she said. “Grady was devastated that his favorite hoodie was in the wash today and I swore it would be ready for him tomorrow.”
Dani went downstairs into the laundry room, took the clothes out of the dryer and then brought them in a laundry basket to the couch in the central open space of the kids’ lower level of the house.
She didn’t expect Liam to follow but not only did he, he also sat on the coffee table and dipped into the basket to help her fold the kids’ clothes.
She almost told him he didn’t have to do that. But then she realized that he might soon be in the position of doing the twins’ laundry, and decided to let him get some experience at that, too.
“And now the restaurant is yours,” he said, picking up their conversation as if there hadn’t been any change of venue. “Does that mean you’re switching careers?”
“I don’t know...” Dani answered with a hint of a groan that relayed only a fraction of her own quandary. “So much has happened... I was still reeling from my grandmother dying when the Freelanders were in the accident. My time with the twins will end when the court decides where they go from here, and I guess I’ll have to decide where I go from here, too.”
“Can you do both—take on a new nanny job and keep the restaurant going? I mean, you went in to check on things tonight and it sounded like you were making plans to go in more this week to do some things, and you’re still taking care of the kids...”
Dani shook her head. “I’m in sort of a grace period. Everyone is going to extra lengths at the restaurant so running it isn’t falling completely on my shoulders at the moment. But for the long haul? The restaurant is a full-time job even with a manager as good as Griff. And there are some issues with the building itself—we’ve known for a while that renovations need to be made and those are definitely outside of Griff’s job description. Plus now I’m the only one who knows a lot of the recipes that have kept us going—Gramma was very protective of her recipes,” Dani said, laughing a little at the memory of just how vigilant her grandmother had been about keeping those recipes their family secret. “There’s just no way I can do both the restaurant and nanny or even work in a school.”
“So you loved working with kids enough that your grandmother pushed you out of the restaurant nest to do it. But now, without you, there won’t be any more of a restaurant that has to mean a lot to you.”
“It does mean a lot to me,” she admitted. “And not only does it mean a lot to me, it means a lot to that whole neighborhood, that whole community. Over the years it’s become the heart of it. Marconi’s is the go-to place for wedding and baby showers, and the weddings and wedding receptions themselves—people around there fight for dates to have their events there. You wouldn’t have believed the size of my grandmother’s funeral. It was standing room only—that’s how important she and the restaurant have been to those people. And even since then there’s been an outpouring of sympathy that’s come along with notes and letters and phone calls begging me not to make them lose the restaurant, too.”
“Carries a lot of weight.”
“And that isn’t even the biggest thing,” Dani went on. “I also have to factor in that the restaurant is people’s livelihoods—Griff, a few of the waitstaff and at least half the kitchen staff have been with us literally for decades. They’re like family—”
“And if you close the doors they’re out of work,” Liam finished for her.
The laundry was all folded and Dani set it in piles in the basket to put away, leaving her and Liam merely sitting across from each other without much distance between her on the sofa and him on the coffee table. But he stayed there, looking at her with his full attention.
“So you’re under just a little bit of pressure,” he said with a small sympathetic smile, obviously trying to lighten things up. “On top of stepping up for Grady and Evie,” he added.
It was only then that Dani realized she’d just vented to him in a way she usually only vented to Bryan. And she barely knew Liam.
“Oh, I’m sorry to dump all that on you!”
“It’s okay,” he assured in that strong male voice, laughing a little. “It kept me out of my own head for a while—which, these days, is a good thing because believe it or not there’s a little stress that comes with the idea of becoming a father out of the blue,” he said facetiously.
“No, it was out of line.”
“It really wasn’t. I’m just kind of amazed that you’re in this tough time of your own life and you’re still here doing what you’re doing for the twins.”
“I can take care of myself. They can’t,” she said simply, deflecting the praise that embarrassed her.
He smiled again, a small, thoughtful smile that brought something softer to his expression and drew her focus to his mouth. To his oh-so-supple-looking lips. Making her wonder—out of the blue—what it might be like to have him kiss her.
She didn’t know what had happened to send her thoughts there but she yanked them back into line a split second later and sat up as posture-perfect straight as he was.
“It’s getting late,” she announced. “I’ve been up since early this morning and you had already made coffee by then, so you had to have been up even earlier. You must be tired.”
She heard nervousness in her own voice but thinking about kissing him was so out of left field that it had unnerved her.
If Liam noticed her sudden fluster he didn’t show it, but he also didn’t deny that he was tired—despite the fact that he didn’t look it. And there was something in his eyes that made her think he knew what was unnerving her.
Oh, she hoped not!
Unless maybe it was on his mind, too...
No, no, she couldn’t go there, she told herself sternly.
Then he got to his feet and stepped away from the coffee table and the sofa—and her.
And she could only hope that wasn’t because he’d had any inkling of what she’d just been thinking about.
“I need to have breakfast with my sister tomorrow morning,” he said. “I was at my older brother’s place Sunday night and I’ve talked to Kinsey on the phone, but I haven’t seen her yet—”
“Sure,” Dani agreed too quickly. “It’s supposed to rain and be cold tomorrow so I planned an inside day. That’s what the tubes you cut are for, to keep the kids busy. And I thought we’d watch their favorite movie while I set some dough to rise. They love it when they get to make their own pizzas, so that’ll be dinner tomorrow night.”
He smiled again, though this time there was mischief around the edges. “You’re gonna make me learn to cook, too?”
“I don’t know if putting toppings on a piece of dough counts, but I have faith that if four-year-olds can do it, so can marines,” she goaded him again.
“Fighting words,” he warned with mock affront, helping Dani get over the stress that her wayward thoughts had caused her.
“You’ll just have to prove yourself,” she challenged.
“In so many ways these days...” he groaned, making her laugh at the reemergence of his anxiety over the situation with the kids.
Dani picked up the laundry basket and headed for the twins’ rooms. “We’ll just see you when we see you tomorrow,” she concluded casually.
Then she warned herself to keep it casual as she slipped silently into Grady’s room to put away his clean clothes.
Reminding herself firmly that casual did not mean ever experiencing how Liam Madison kissed.
Not ever.