Dear Editor,
This letter is in response to the recent correspondence from Fired Up in Lovestruck regarding my column last Tuesday, “Five easy applesauce recipes for your infant or toddler.” According to Fired Up, the first recipe listed in the article was “bitter to the point of being inedible.”
Since Fired Up seems especially interested in the accuracy of my column, might I make a gentle suggestion? Followed correctly, the recipe yields a deliciously mild applesauce, perfect for babies. A common mistake when making applesauce is failing to remove all of the apple’s seeds. This happens most often when using a food processor, which is understandable since cooking the apples with their skin is advisable in order to keep important nutrients as well as give your applesauce a nice, rosy color. Removing the seeds is quite important, though, because they are tannic. As a result, cooking them with the apples will leave the applesauce with a bitter flavor.
I would suggest that Fired Up try the recipe again. If my dear reader still considers the recipe too bitter, a dash of good old-fashioned Vermont maple syrup could be added. But if my suspicions are correct, Fired Up is the bitter one. Not my applesauce.
Sincerely,
Queen Bee
“What’s all this?”
Wade’s question startled Jack so much that he nearly hit his head on the inside of the refrigerator in the firehouse’s kitchen where he was busy stacking Tupperware containers of homemade applesauce. Yesterday had been his day off, and when he hadn’t been busy changing diapers or warming up bottles of formula, he’d been at the stove, trying to use up all the apples he’d purchased after the apple avalanche at the Village Market. Two tiny babies could only eat so much applesauce, though. And if fourteen years as a firefighter had taught him anything, it was that a group of guys stuck under one roof together for any period of time would eat just about anything.
“It’s applesauce.” Jack waved a Tupperware bowl in Wade’s general direction. “Want some?”
“No, thanks. I just ate.” Wade narrowed his gaze at the packed refrigerator shelves. “How much did you make? I thought you were trying out recipes for the girls. This looks like enough applesauce to feed an ar—”
Jack tensed as Wade’s voice drifted off. He had the distinct feeling he was about to be busted in a major way. Couldn’t a man make a few gallons of homemade applesauce without getting the third degree from his coworker?
Note to self: find some regular hobbies.
“Tell me this doesn’t mean what I think it does.” Wade shook his head. “My God, it does, doesn’t it? Fired Up in Lovestruck. I can’t believe I didn’t see it until now.”
“It’s not a big deal.” Jack slid a bowl and spoon across the counter toward Wade. Maybe if he could trick his friend into stuffing his face, they wouldn’t have to talk to each other, and he could avoid this painful conversation altogether.
“It sure seems like one.” Wade peeled the lid off the bowl and peered at its contents. “You’ve basically started an all-out war with a local reporter.”
“Hardly.” Jack swallowed. “It’s more of a minor skirmish, not a war.”
“Dude,” Wade said around a mouthful of applesauce. “She wrote a letter to the editor of her own newspaper calling you bitter. Everyone in town is talking about it. That’s not normal. None of this is normal.”
He had a point. Still, Jack had actually felt relieved when he’d spotted her letter in the Bee. She’d called him out, and rightfully so. He’d definitely tossed the apples into his food processor, seeds and all. And now he had apples coming out of his ears—more than enough to experiment with, thanks to his recent flirtation in the produce department at the Village Market.
Thinking about it again, something hardened deep in his gut. He hadn’t been flirting, or more accurately, if he had, it had been purely accidental. He had neither the time, nor the desire, for a woman in his life—especially a woman like the wild-haired beauty he kept bumping into.
Liar. You might not have the time, but the desire is another matter entirely.
Their fingertips had touched as they’d reached for the same apple, and boom. Jack had been hit with a longing so raw and so deep that he’d nearly kissed her right there in the produce section. It was insane. They didn’t even know each other, and he was fairly certain she despised him.
Scratch that. She definitely despised him.
At least the new development in his ongoing feud with Queen Bee had helped keep his mind off his new crush. In the hours he’d spent making applesauce, he hadn’t thought about her big doe eyes or bow-shaped lips more than a handful of times. Ten, tops.
Liar…again.
“You’re not going to tell Cap, are you?” Jack said, gaze flitting in the direction of the apparatus bay where he’d last seen his boss inspecting one of the rigs.
Wade arched a brow. “Why not, since it’s completely normal and healthy to be arguing with a woman you don’t know via the local paper?”
Jack sighed.
“Fiiiine.” Wade pointed his spoon at Jack. “But swear to me you’re getting a night nanny. I have to believe all this nonsense is just temporary insanity brought on by single fatherhood and lack of sleep.”
Jack raked a hand through his hair. “It’s not as easy as it sounds. I called that service that Brody’s sister recommended, and none of the résumés they emailed me were acceptable.”
Maybe he was being overprotective, but nothing was more important than his girls. As much as he needed some help, he was having a hard time imagining letting a stranger take care of them. So far only Jack himself and other family members had watched over them.
Of course, that demographic included his ex-wife, and odds were, anyone the nanny service sent to him would probably be more interested in the twins than Natalie ever had been.
“Not a single one of them?” Wade tossed his spoon into the now-empty bowl with a clang. “I don’t believe that for a minute. You’ve got to let go, man. Just a little bit.”
Let go. It sounded so easy. So…doable. Except he’d been holding on so tightly to things for so long that relaxing his grip seemed impossible.
“I’ll try,” he conceded as he inserted a pod into the coffeemaker.
Wade brushed past him on the way to the refrigerator. “Nope. No trying. Either you hire the next applicant for the night nanny position, or I tell Cap about your secret identity.”
“You’re going to blackmail me into turning my children over to a complete stranger?” His head ached. There wasn’t enough coffee in the world for this.
“A competent stranger,” Wade countered. “Are you forgetting that you’re going to be at home while he or she takes care of the girls? It’s just part-time, while you sleep.”
“I’m aware,” Jack said, then took a long, fortifying sip from his coffee cup.
“Good. Either you hire the very next person who applies for the nanny job, or I’ll tell everyone at the station about your cute little pseudonym.” Wade slapped him on the back. “Don’t worry. You’ll thank me later. Deal?”
Jack nodded, only half paying attention, because his mind had begun to stray again. Apples tumbled through his thoughts and with them, a sublime ache. He’d forgotten what it felt like to be attracted to a woman, to wonder what it might be like to bury his hands in her hair and kiss her silly. He’d forgotten how good they smelled, especially this woman, like warm honey and apples…like home. He’d forgotten so damn much.
“Deal,” he said absently.
Ready or not, Jack Cole was starting to remember.
* * *
Seeing her rebuttal letter printed in the paper gave Madison a definite thrill.
Take that, Fired Up.
Sure, it was an unconventional approach to dealing with the problem, but the Lovestruck Bee had only itself to blame. Its mandatary print-every-letter-to-the-editor policy had finally worked in her favor. She was practically skipping through the office when Mr. Grant tapped her on the shoulder and told her he needed to speak with her in his office.
Her stomach lurched. As much as she liked her boss, being called into his office was never a good thing.
“Yes, sir.” She tightened her grip on her coffee cup as she followed him through the maze of desks toward his corner office overlooking Main Street.
Her mug was emblazoned with the words Busy Bee and featured a cartoon black-and-yellow honeybee zipping around with a pair of oversize glasses on its little bee face. It was part of the office kitchen’s collection of bee-themed coffee cups. The day before, she’d sipped her hazelnut blend from a mug that said Bee Happy. She hoped this morning’s Busy Bee message was a sign she wasn’t about to bee fired.
“Sit.” Mr. Grant waved a hand toward the worn leather chair opposite his desk.
Madison took a deep breath and sat down.
“I’m going to be honest,” her boss said, glancing out the window as he spoke. Across the street a few retirees were lined up in rocking chairs on the porch of the library. Farther down Madison could see the pristine brick exterior of the firehouse, Engine Co. 24.
Her gaze lingered on the fire truck parked out front, shiny and red, like a perfectly ripe apple. She wondered if Lieutenant Cole and his dreamy blue eyes were inside the building doing something heroic like sliding down a pole or walking around shirtless, covered in soot.
Or maybe he was off somewhere saving a kitten in a tree. Ugh, why did he have to be a firefighter? It made him infinitely hotter.
No pun intended.
Mr. Grant cleared his throat, dragging her attention back to the matter at hand—her possible imminent termination.
She squirmed in her chair. “Sorry. You were saying?”
“Right. Well.” He folded his hands on the desk in front of him. “I’m sure you know why I wanted to speak with you.”
The Busy Bee mug shook slightly in Madison’s hands. Coffee sloshed dangerously close to the rim. “This is about my letter to the editor.”
He shot finger guns at her. “Bingo.”
Her stomach took another tumble, but at the same time she realized Mr. Grant was smiling. Why was he smiling?
Her boss wasn’t exactly the smiley type, which meant this was either an uncommonly friendly firing or he actually had something positive to say.
“It was a brilliant idea,” he said.
“It was?” Madison sat up a little straighter. “Right. I mean, it was.”
“Positively brilliant.” Mr. Grant’s smile grew wider. “The phone’s been ringing off the hook all day. My email in-box is full. Until this morning I didn’t even realize such a thing could happen.”
“Do you want me to help you clear it out?” she said, still unsure where exactly this meeting was headed.
“What? No.” He shook his head. “I want you to keep it up.”
She blinked. “Keep what up, exactly?”
“Keep arguing with Fired Up in Lovestruck in the letters-to-the-editor section. The readers are eating it up.” He cupped a hand to his ear. “Do you hear that? It’s the sound of phones ringing out front. You have fans now.”
“Wow.” Madison’s throat clogged. She was fully aware this was just a small-town newspaper, not at all in the same league as a New York fashion magazine. But never once had she had this sort of praise heaped on her at Vogue.
It wasn’t terrible. In fact, it felt sort of awesome. She was surprised at how much Mr. Grant’s kind words meant to her. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything at the moment, because I haven’t gotten a new letter from Fired Up. Hopefully, I will. And when that letter comes, I want you to respond again. Got it?”
Madison nodded. “Got it.”
“Also, I still want you to spend some time with real-life kids. Your column needs to be good. Is that understood?” He jabbed his pointer finger onto the copy of the Lovestruck Bee spread open on his desk.
Madison was much more comfortable with this familiar, less effusive version of Mr. Grant. She nodded. “Absolutely. My aunt set me up with the library for story circle time on Saturday mornings, and tonight I’m attending knitting class in hopes of lining up a few babysitting gigs.”
Her boss grunted. “I don’t need the specifics. I just need you to turn in some good copy and keep arguing with Fired Up in Lovestruck.”
She could do that, especially the second part. In fact, nothing would thrill her more. “Yes, sir.”
Madison practically floated back to her desk, and she kept floating for the rest of the day, right up until it was time to walk next door for the baby booties class at Main Street Yarn.
“You look happy,” Aunt Alice said as she gave Madison a hug and a kiss on the cheek.
“It’s been a good day.” Madison smiled. “A great day, actually.”
“That’s my girl.” Alice winked, and Toby hopped off the crocheted dog bed tucked in the corner of the cash register area to scamper toward Madison and paw at her shins.
She scooped the tiny dog into her arms and looked around. The walls of the shop were all lined with cubby holes, each stacked with either skeins of yarn or yarn that had been wound into balls. From a distance, they almost looked like colored Easter eggs or crayons in a box. The cubby holes closest to the front of the store held yarn in delicate shades of white and ivory, which eventually switched to gentle pastel hues and ultimately, an explosion of vivid color near the back of the shop.
A large round table sat in the center of the sales floor, its beloved maple surface worn smooth with age. A ceramic bowl sat in the center of the table, piled high with balls of yarn in tints straight out of a baby shower—pale ballet pink, baby blue, minty green and a fair shade of yellow that reminded Madison of the fuzzy baby chicks she sometimes saw for sale at the Lovestruck Farmers’ Market. Knitting patterns labeled Baby Booties for Beginners had been placed in front of the six chairs surrounding the table.
Back when she was a little girl, Madison typically spent a week of each summer vacation in Lovestruck with Aunt Alice. Her dad was usually too busy at work to tear himself from the office, so Alice would meet her at the train station and dote on her for the entire week as if Madison were her own. Aunt Alice had taught her how to make hats on a round loom at this very table.
The memory made Madison smile. In a way, her aunt had been the one to introduce her to fashion. She still had some of the hats she’d made on that loom, along with her sad, juvenile attempts at crocheted scarves.
“Do you remember how to cast on?” Alice said as she offered Madison a pair of slender, wooden knitting needles.
She placed Toby on the floor so he could resume his spot of honor on his crocheted dog bed and took the needles. They felt completely foreign in her grasp. “Not at all.”
Alice winked. “No worries. This is a beginner class. You’ll fit right in.”
Her aunt was right…mostly. Two of Madison’s classmates were regulars at Main Street Yarn who signed up for all of Alice’s classes, regardless of skill level. The other three women who occupied seats alongside her at the old maple table were totally new to knitting. Two of them were in the late stages of pregnancy, both glowing as they struggled with a basic garter stitch. The third, situated right next to Madison, appeared to be around Aunt Alice’s age and wore a cute pair of eyeglasses with cheerful red cat eye frames. She wondered if the older woman might be a grandmother, but didn’t want to assume.
In any event, there wasn’t an actual baby in sight. Madison tried to tamp down her disappointment as she fumbled with her knitting.
“I’m sorry,” Aunt Alice mouthed to her at a quiet moment when all the other students had their heads bent over their booties in the making.
“It’s fine,” Madison mouthed back. “I’m having fun!”
She held up her tangle of pink yarn as evidence. In no way did the mess attached to her knitting needles resemble a tiny sock, but this was only the first night of the four-week-long class. Rome wasn’t built in a day and all that.
Except Mr. Grant was expecting her to morph into Mary Poppins overnight, and for that, she needed to get her hands on some living, breathing babies—not just their shoes. She’d bought herself a little time with the buzz generated by her response to Fired Up, but who knew how long it would last? There was no guarantee her cranky correspondent would even write another letter to the editor.
Meanwhile, the only thing Madison had in common with Mary Poppins was an appreciation for polka dots. Seriously, Emily Blunt’s wardrobe in the recent movie sequel had been amazing, but somehow Madison doubted she could get a workable column out of it. Oh, how she longed for her days at Vogue.
Once class was over, Madison straightened up the shop, readying it for closing like she’d done when she was a little girl while Alice helped a few lingering students at the checkout area. The table was covered with bits of yarn and practice rows stitched together in pastel colors. But as Madison picked through the discarded items, she found a tiny toe-shaped tip of a baby bootie still attached to a slender bamboo knitting needle. It was crafted from pale, peachy-pink yarn—the same yarn her knitting neighbor to her right had been using during class.
She looked up, hoping to catch a glimpse of the woman with the red cat-eye glasses, but she wasn’t among the small crowd gathered near the register.
Uh-oh.
Aunt Alice had assigned them all homework, and if the knitter didn’t get ten new rows added to her project, she’d never be able to catch up during the next class. Madison grabbed the knitting needle and the ball of yarn it was attached to and hurried to the front of the shop.
“Knitting emergency!” She dashed past her aunt, waving the needles in explanation as she pushed through the shop’s front door. “I’ll be right back.”
She caught sight of the cute cat-eye glasses just a few feet away, where the woman was about to climb into the driver’s seat of a boxy little minivan.
“Wait!” Madison called out. “You forgot something.”
She caught up to her fellow student just in time.
The woman pressed a hand to her heart when she spotted her creation in Madison’s grasp. “Oh, my. I can’t believe I left that behind! Thank you so much.”
“No problem. I’m glad I caught up to you.” Madison handed her the bundle of knitting. “I’m Madison, by the way.”
“Thanks again, Madison. I’m Sarah.” The older woman smiled, and as she bent to tuck the yarn and needles into her bag, Madison caught sight of two infant car seats tucked neatly into the backseat of Sarah’s minivan.
She gasped. Now what, though?
Nice to meet you, Sarah. Can I borrow your babies?
Sarah let out a laugh. “My husband is home alone with our two granddaughters. They’re only six months old, so I thought I’d rush home in case he needed rescuing.”
Correction: Can I borrow your grandbabies?
Madison cleared her throat. “Wow, twins.”
“Yes, they’re precious. Honestly, they’re both the sweetest little angels. But twins can be a handful, so we try and help out when we can.” Sarah nodded and gave a tiny shrug as if Madison knew precisely how much of a handful a pair of angelic twin baby girls could be.
She didn’t, obviously. She had no clue whatsoever. If she’d had any idea at all, she never would have blurted out the words that followed. “They sound adorable. Let me know if you ever need a babysitter. I’d…um…love to help out sometime.”
Sarah peered at Madison over her cat-eye frames. “Really?”
“Really.” Madison nodded. If she could handle one baby, surely she could handle two.
How much harder could it be?
Warning bells sounded in the back of her head, reminding Madison that she’d never in her life changed a single diaper, much less two at a time.
“Well, well, Madison. You just might be the answer to all our prayers.” Sarah beamed.
I highly doubt it. And yet, Madison pasted on a smile. She’d worked for the toughest editor on Madison Avenue and lived to tell about it. She could survive a few hours with twin six-month-olds. Her career—as pathetic as it was at the moment—depended on it.
“It just so happens my son, John, is looking to hire a part-time night nanny. The mother isn’t…well, let’s just say she’s no longer in the picture.” Sarah looked Madison up and down. “I have a feeling the two of you should meet. The sooner, the better.”