Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The memory wouldn’t leave Noah’s mind—the way Delaney’s face had transformed from terror to relief when she’d spotted him in the crowd.
Something primal had stirred, a need to protect her from harm. He still didn’t know what she’d been afraid of. When he’d asked, she’d offered nothing but a quick head shake, obviously not wanting to say anything in front of Charlotte.
The park had been transformed for the evening’s festivities, with tables and chairs set on the grass.
Food trucks lined the road nearby, offering everything from barbecue to seafood to tacos.
People waited in lines and carried plates and drinks, looking for a place to sit.
The band played a country song, and a few couples were two-stepping along the edge of the temporary dance floor.
Noah watched Delaney across the table, her face illuminated by the strings of lights hanging over the whole area. The glow softened her features, caught in the loose strands of her hair that had escaped her ponytail as she laughed at something Charlotte said.
They were beautiful, the two of them together, and that word he’d been trying not to think about knocked on the front door of his mind again.
Family.
Except Charlotte wasn’t his, and neither was Delaney. But…maybe they could be. Both of them.
Sure, Jasper had shut Noah down when he’d said he wanted to adopt her. But Jasper had proved incapable of loving his daughter.
Maybe he’d change his mind. Maybe he’d realize that the last thing Charlotte needed was for her world to be turned upside down again.
And then there was Delaney. She was off-limits, but did she have to be? If Noah weren’t her boss and she weren’t the nanny, could he pursue her? Could they date, maybe fall in love?
No. Of course not.
But…why not? Why couldn’t he be with her? She was almost thirty, not nearly as young as she looked. A decade younger than he was, but they were both adults. She loved Charlotte, and obviously, he couldn’t deny the chemistry between him and Delaney. Their kiss had proved that.
Would it be so awful if he were to pursue the nanny?
Maybe…maybe the three of them really could be a family.
They’d bought a single fried seafood platter. Even shared among the three of them, it was a lot of food. Charlotte was more interested in looking around than eating, and Delaney… Miss Wright didn’t seem to have much of an appetite.
“Can I go play now?” Charlotte asked Miss Wright.
She nodded to him. “Ask Uncle Noah. He’s in charge.”
“Please, Uncle Noah? Shanyn and Polly are playing.” Charlotte practically batted her long eyelashes at him. Were all females born with the ability to cajole men?
“Her friends are right over there.” Miss Wright indicated a group of girls on the playground.
He met Charlotte’s eyes. “I’ll let you play, but if you wander off, then you’ll have to come back here and sit until it’s time to go. Do you promise to stay where we can see you?”
She considered his question, then nodded. “I promise.”
“Okay, then. Have fun”
She bounded off her chair and ran to her friends. Shanyn grabbed her hand, and the girls ran for the slides.
“I should probably take her home soon.” Miss Wright’s focus was on Charlotte. “It’s getting late.”
“You’re off the clock. This is your town now, too, you know. You should enjoy the festival.”
Something flickered across her face, reminding him of the terror he’d seen there earlier. “What had you spooked?”
She glanced at him, then back at Charlotte.
“I went for a walk, and I thought somebody might be following me, and then when I turned back…” Though she’d started strong, now her voice shook.
“There was a man there, an older guy with gray hair. He told me to tell you the merger’s not going to happen, that you should give it up. ”
Noah’s jaw tightened. “Frederick Hayes.”
She lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “I don’t know him.”
Noah navigated his phone to the Hayes Industries website, found a photo of the man, and showed it to her.
“Yeah.” She looked up from studying it. “That’s him.”
“You should have called me immediately.”
“By the time you got there, I would have been back here. I was just a couple blocks away. I felt safe once I found you.”
Maybe Hayes was the one who’d cut the brake line on her car. Noah had run into Hayes at the restaurant that night. Maybe he’d hired someone else to do it? Maybe he’d been at the restaurant to see Noah’s reaction to her call.
That didn’t make sense, though. Noah was spinning conspiracy theories out of nothing.
“You need to be more careful, and don’t wander off by yourself.” He was issuing orders like he had the right to tell her what to do. “I don’t care if it’s inconvenient.”
He waited for an argument, but she nodded, then turned her gaze to the playground, where Charlotte was climbing the monkey bars. “She’s gotten so much stronger.”
Noah watched Charlotte swing from bar to bar. She was laughing with her friends, so different from the little girl who’d come to live with him.
“Kids are amazingly resilient,” Miss Wright said.
“You’ve got an impressive understanding of kids.” Noah’s gaze drifted back to her face.
Her lips curved into a small smile, though she barely glanced away from Charlotte.
“I’ve been babysitting for a long time, most of my life, really.
Even though I was second-to-youngest, I was often tasked with keeping an eye on my little sister.
And then watching other people’s children.
You see a lot of different situations, different families.
Some kids have been through things you wouldn’t believe, but they find ways to adapt, to keep going. ”
She spoke with such certainty. He prayed she was right, that Charlotte would be able to heal from the difficult first few years of her life.
“Tell me about your family.”
Miss Wright’s gaze tracked Charlotte as she moved from the monkey bars to the slide. “My father was an agent for the CIA.”
“No kidding? An actual spy?”
“I guess. I don’t know much about what he did. Just that he was gone a lot, sometimes for months at a time. We usually had no idea where he was.”
Noah leaned forward, putting puzzle pieces together. “That explains a few things.”
“What do you mean?”
“You never let your guard down when you’re watching Charlotte. And the way you handled yourself after the accident, calling 911, then locking yourself in your vehicle when that other car approached. You kept yourself out of danger. Your father must have taught you to be cautious.”
Her lips quirked. “Basic self-defense, and of course, how to spot a tail, which I proved today I didn’t learn very well.
” She laughed softly. “My sisters and I used to complain about his paranoia, but it’s come in handy.
” Her grin faded. “I’d better not tell Dad how I wandered off by myself today. He would not be impressed.”
“Nobody can be vigilant a hundred percent of the time.”
“Don’t tell my dad that or you’ll get an earful.”
“What about your mother?”
“She’s amazing. She held everything together while Dad was away.
” Her expression softened, the change on her face lovely in the glow of the twinkle lights.
“Five girls under one roof—you can imagine the crazy emotional swings in our house, but Mom was always calm and rational, always kind and gentle.”
“You take after her, I think.”
Miss Wright looked down. She tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear, gazing at him through her lashes.
Oh, boy.
The urge to lean closer was nearly unbearable. He sat back instead. “Did you always want to be a nanny, or did you have goals?”
By the way her shoulders stiffened, he’d said something wrong. He thought back over his words and realized how they’d sounded. “Not that there’s anything wrong with being a nanny. It’s a great dream. I didn’t mean that the way it came out.”
“I get it.” She watched Charlotte on the playground. “Most people would consider what I do a fallback, not a dream. But…” She glanced at him but didn’t hold his eye contact. “This is what I always wanted to do. Watch other people’s kids until…”
Her words faded, and he guessed what she was about to say. “Until you have your own?”
“Someday, God willing.”
“You’ll be a great mother.”
Her smile was shy and too endearing.
Charlotte and her friends were on the play fort, engaged in some game of pretend. It was getting late, but he wasn’t ready for his niece, or her nanny, to leave him yet.
“When I was sixteen,” Delaney said, “my parents’ friends asked me to stay with their kids overnight while they went with my parents to some big event in DC.”
“You were sixteen? That seems young.”
“I’d had years of babysitting experience by then. They lived just down the coast from here.”
“From here? You were far from home.”
“I was familiar with the area. We’d visited that family a number of times.
It would have been fine, except there was a tropical storm.
It was forecasted to turn out to sea long before it hit Virginia, but it didn’t.
It turned into a hurricane and came straight at us.
All of a sudden, what had been gentle rain turned heavy, and the wind picked up.
Sirens went off, telling us to take shelter. ”
“You must’ve been terrified.”
Her laugh was low and lighthearted. “We were inside, and I’d never lived through a hurricane, so I had no idea what could happen. We had everything we needed. We hadn’t been ordered to evacuate. I figured we’d be fine.”
By the tone of her voice, it hadn’t been fine. “What happened?”
“The kids were seven and two, both boys. I had them in the house, hunkered down, when a door flew open. I’d forgotten to lock it, so that was my fault.”
“Could’ve happened to anyone,”
“Maybe. And it should’ve been an easy fix. But the dog ran out, and before I could stop him, the seven-year-old followed.”
“Uh-oh.” It was ridiculous the way his stomach clenched as if Delaney and that boy were in peril right now.