9. Madison
MADISON
As it turned out, sometimes setting aside your dignity and crawling through a doggy door was worth it.
Would I have said that when I’d first arrived to find grumpy Alistair in the kitchen?
Hell no. But about a week into this nanny gig, I had to admit that having free run of a literal castle was pretty epic.
Kenna and I made good use of the space, playing hide and seek among the various sitting rooms and racing Princess up and down long, echoing corridors.
I’d expected him to haunt the halls, spying on us—me—but he’d been surprisingly absent when he was working except when he went in search of food or more tea.
I wasn’t sure if that meant he trusted me with his daughter or if he had hidden cameras all over the place.
I was ninety-six percent sure he didn’t.
Have cameras, that is. Otherwise, some of our games would’ve brought him out of his office with questions.
I probably owed him more of an explanation as to why I was in Scotland, but at the time, I’d felt as if I was laying my whole life out for him to scrutinize, and while I was prone to overshare, for some reason, I didn’t that time.
Of course, if Florence, Alistair’s housekeeper, had been here, I’d have caved the moment the woman set one of her sweet treats in front of me—her Scottish macaroons had my whole heart.
“Hey, Ken?” I called, shifting through the gift bags to put away the presents that had been relocated to her playroom in the days since Christmas.
I removed a handful of red wrapping paper, my face lighting up as I found a small jewelry-making kit.
Heck yeah! I adored making jewelry, and I bet Kenna would too.
It was basically a little girl rite of passage. “What do you think about this?”
Kenna looked up from her toy kitchen, tiny wooden spoon in hand. “Santa got it for me.”
“I know,” I said. Santa had gotten her everything.
Alistair had clearly gone a bit overboard, buying anything and everything that looked like a good present for a four-year-old girl.
It made sense, after the year they’d had and the upheaval of the move, that he would pull out all the stops to make her happy.
And to be fair, she was. Some gifts, like her toy kitchen, she’d taken to right away.
Others, like the jewelry kit, had gotten pushed aside.
“Wouldn’t it be fun to play with this?” I prompted.
Kenna’s little lips pursed as she considered it. “I don’t know how.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “Because I am a jewelry-making expert. And I’ll teach you everything I know. You can be my apprentice.”
“Okay!” Kenna said excitedly, popping up to take the kit from my hand. She gave it a shake, making the beads rattle. “I want to make a pink one. And Princess will make a purple one.”
“Princess is unfortunately lacking thumbs,” I said. “So we’ll have to make something for her. Maybe we can design a cute little charm for her collar?”
Kenna looked down at Princess with grave concern. “You don’t have any thumbs so you can’t use the beads, okay?”
Princess yipped as if in agreement, rolling onto her back for a belly rub.
“Why don’t we relocate this jewelry-making party to the kitchen,” I said. “I think we’re gonna need space to let our creativity flow.”
I grabbed a bucket of craft supplies from the shelf in the corner, Kenna picked up a stuffed bear she’d abandoned earlier, and together we headed down to the kitchen.
“Mind if we work in here?” I asked Florence as she was unpacking groceries into the cupboards.
She smiled and shook her head. In my limited experience, the woman didn’t say much, but she was sweet with Kenna and, again, her daily sweet treats had me in a chokehold.
While Kenna climbed onto her stool, I borrowed some bowls from the cupboards, pouring beads into each.
It would be easier for Kenna to grab and sort through them this way than out of the tiny boxes they were jammed into.
I set the bowls down in front of her. She squirmed with anticipation. “Now, the first thing we do is cut a length of string. Do you want to make one necklace or two bracelets?” That was about the extent of what you could do with the supplies in the kit.
“One bracelet and one thing for Princess,” she said.
“Okay,” I said, cutting the string for her. I passed it off. She immediately strung a bead onto the string. It went sliding off the other end, hitting the floor with a small tick.
“Oops.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “We just have to tie a knot in the end like this so the beads don’t fall.” I adjusted the bracelet for her, then sat down on the stool next to hers, digging through the bead options. “What kind of charm do you think we should make for Princess?”
“A purple one.”
I laughed. “I agree, purple is an optimal color. But what should it look like? Hmm, should we make it in the shape of a little dog bone?”
“Yeah!” Kenna cheered. She screwed her face up, tongue out as she threaded a particularly sparkly bead onto her bracelet.
“Who’re you making that for?”
“For me,” she said excitedly. “No! For Daddy.”
“Ah, I see. I definitely think he’s a sparkly bead kind of guy. Sorta got that Barbie Dreamhouse thing going on with the hair. Very Ken-worthy.”
“Yeah,” Kenna agreed.
I caught a flash of amusement flicker across Florence’s face. She finished with her task, setting off for another room. Kenna and I settled in, working on our respective tasks.
“Done!” she announced a few minutes later, holding up her bracelet. “Now what?”
I examined the kit again. “Usually, there are little clasps you can attach to the ends,” I said. “Hmm…I don’t think this kit comes with any.”
Kenna pouted.
“It’s okay,” I said, unclasping one of my own handmade necklaces from around my neck.
“We’ll just borrow one from mine.” I carefully removed the lobster clasp and tied off the ends, slipping the rest of the necklace into my pocket to repair later.
Then I helped her tie both ends of the clasp to her bracelet. “Ta-da!”
Kenna squealed. “Let’s make another one!”
I glanced at what was left of her beads.
“I think you might have just enough to make a little bracelet for yourself.” I cut and prepped another length of string for her.
When she was done with that bracelet, I sacrificed another one of my own pieces of jewelry so we could fasten it to her wrist with a proper clasp.
“I love it!” Kenna said, shaking her arm to admire our handiwork.
“And look what else is done,” I said, holding up Princess’s tiny bone-shaped charm. “Want to help me put it on her?”
Kenna hopped off her stool and scooped Princess into her arms. She held her while I attached the charm to her collar.
“Princess is so cute now,” Kenna declared, kissing the top of her head before setting her down. It was so adorable my chest actually ached. “Can we make a necklace now?”
“Sorry, Ken, I think that’s all there was in the kit.”
She frowned, climbing back up the stool to look for herself. Her eyebrows pinched together. “But I want to make more jewelry.”
“Well, even if the kit’s done, I can show you how to make other kinds of jewelry,” I offered. I hopped off my stool, going to the cupboard. Hopefully, Florence wouldn’t hate me. “Have you ever made a macaroni necklace?”
Kenna shook her head.
I found a bag of tube-shaped pasta. “Then you’re in for a real treat.”
While I showed Kenna how to color her macaroni like jewels using markers, she told me all about who would be getting a necklace.
Since Alistair already had a bracelet, she needed one for Florence, Uncle Weston, Auntie Lena, Aisling, Uncle Locke, and Auntie Isla.
She also wanted to make one for the various pets—Milo, Ranger, and Bonnie.
It took me a hot minute to figure out Bonnie was a pony.
Once her pasta was colored, I showed her how to thread it onto the string.
“Just like a bead, see?” Her little tongue appeared again, all focus.
And as I watched her, impressed at how quickly she caught on to everything I was teaching her, I considered how small her circle really was.
Everyone she’d mentioned—minus Aisling and the animals—was an adult.
“Hey, Ken, do you know any kids your own age?”
“Yeah, lots.”
“Why don’t you make them a macaroni necklace too?”
She tilted her head back, looking at me sadly. “’Cause they’re not here. We moved away.”
“You mean they were friends from London?”
Kenna nodded. “At nursery.”
“I see.” I’d been around Scotland long enough to figure out that at Kenna’s age, nursery was sort of the equivalent to daycare.
“We had to leave because everyone was mean to Daddy.”
I hated that she understood that. “Who was mean?”
Kenna held up her hands like she was taking a photo. “The ’razzi.”
“Paparazzi?”
She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Sometimes they chased our car.”
“That’s so silly,” I said, trying to keep things light.
She laughed a bit. “Yeah.”
As she returned to her coloring, I stewed in my thoughts. Kenna’s world had shrunk to these echoey castle corridors all because of those slimy tabloids. Despite all the toys in her playroom, she was probably really missing her friends. No wonder she’d been so thrilled when Princess and I turned up.
Given all the trouble he was having finding a nanny, I wondered why he hadn’t enrolled her in a nursery in Braeburn.
Maybe he was afraid of the way people would treat her once they realized who her father was.
I once again realized just how difficult this move must have been for both of them.
Kenna had to be lonely after losing most of her social circle.
But moving all the way out here was probably the only way Alistair felt he could truly protect her.
How long would it be before he felt safe enough to open her world up again? She deserved the chance to be around other people. Other kids.
“This one is going to be for Princess!” Kenna announced, holding up her macaroni creation. She held it out to the dog, then frowned. “Oh, it’s too big.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “Let’s make her a paper necklace instead.”
Kenna didn’t look convinced until I introduced her to the world of paper chains, which we elevated by decorating with her stash of glitter glue.
For the next twenty minutes, we explored the fine art of making paper loops adorned with glitter blobs.
Once Kenna had mastered the loops, I added paper crowns to her inventory, and Princess lived up to her name as we decked her out in all the homemade bling.
“And what do we have going on here?”
I glanced over my shoulder as Alistair walked through the doorway, his eyes drifting across the island. I expected him to look at least mildly horrified at the sheer amount of creativity going on, but he just seemed amused and fond—because of Kenna, of course. I laughed lightly.
Princess raced up to him, but not too close, yipping like she was about to start peddling him cheap costume jewels.
“You’ve just entered a jewelry-making workshop,” I said. There were strips of paper and tubes of glitter and pipe cleaners and pompoms and macaroni noodles everywhere.
“I…see that,” Alistair said.
“Don’t worry, I’ll clean it all up.”
“Daddy!” Kenna cried excitedly. “Look what I made!”
“Wow,” he exclaimed, dialing up the drama for her. “This is amazing.”
Kenna beamed, holding the beaded bracelet out to him. “Try it on. Madison said I have to check if it’s big enough.”
He held his wrist out so she could slip it into place. “Perfect. Are you sure you actually made this all by yourself?” he said, teasing her. “I think you bought this from a shop.”
“No, Daddy, I made it,” Kenna said, touching her chest.
“Maybe you ordered it off the computer. Did the postman deliver it?”
Kenna stood up on her stool, giggling. “I really made it!”
Alistair held his arms out, and she jumped into them, pecking him on the cheek. “Then it’s extra amazing,” he said.
“I agree. She’s got some real potential in jewelry making.” I couldn’t help smiling at the way he interacted with her. At that soft, doting look he got every time his eyes landed on his daughter. He may be trying to hold the entire world at a distance, but it was clear she was his entire world.
“Here, Daddy,” Kenna said, reaching for a paper crown on the island. She grabbed it and plopped it on his head.
“How’s it look?” he asked.
“Beautiful,” she said, immediately reaching for one of the paper chain necklaces we’d made. She strung that over his head. “You look like Princess.”
“That’s exactly what I want to hear.”
My lips twisted with amusement as he allowed her to bedeck him with everything she’d made. His gaze cut in my direction. “You’re really starting to pull off the lord part of Lord Crankypants,” I informed him.
His eyes narrowed in a way that was more playful than irritated.
“So,” I said, turning from Kenna and lowering my voice slightly. “Since we’re no longer snowed in, I noticed that there’s a cat café in town. I was thinking I might take Kenna down there tomorrow morning if that’s cool?”
“Definitely not cool,” Alistair said, his eyes narrowing.
“Why not?”
“Because I have meetings.”
“You don’t have to come,” I said. “That’s the whole point of having a nanny, isn’t it? You work. I keep an eye on Kenna. Maybe she’ll even meet a few more kids her age while we’re there. Oh! Then I could set up playdates and—”
“No,” he growled. “No town without me. And no playdates.”
I frowned at him. I was perfectly capable of keeping Kenna safe, but the way he scowled at me, I could tell he thought otherwise. And now Lord Crankypants was actually irritated. I sighed. Apparently, opening up Kenna’s world was going to be more difficult than I’d thought.