Chapter 9 Knock, Knock
KNOCK, KNOCK
Simone
Twinkie.
That’s what he called me.
Whether it was in reference to my size or the fact that people thought I sometimes looked years younger than my actual age, it certainly wasn’t meant kindly.
But it wasn’t actually Niall Black’s harsh indictment of my looks (or maybe my character? I still wasn’t sure) that disturbed me so much. I’d been volunteering in the hospital long enough to see all manner of reactions to me from patients of all ages.
It was his son’s response to it that was so disturbing. I couldn’t shake it the whole bus ride home that evening.
The transformation from the quiet, thoughtful man I’d spoken to, even embraced at the bar and come close to something…else…right there in the ICU (I wasn’t even going to think about that moment right now) into the ruthless warrior was, in a word, terrifying.
He’d assumed a mask as quickly as a knight slamming down a visor. One moment, his face was full of kindness and emotion. The next, it was no different from an iron sheath.
And the fact that this alternate personality had been lurking so close to the surface was downright spooky.
“Sel?” I called when I returned to the apartment a few minutes before six.
There was no answer. There was no one home, and what’s more, my sister’s and Kylie’s things were gone. So were a bunch of my toiletries and a few snacks out of the pantry.
This wasn’t a surprise. Selena always tended to come and go like the wind. When she’d returned today just after one, she’d mentioned that she planned to leave as soon as possible, since she knew when she “wasn’t wanted.”
Again, not a surprise. Especially after I’d emptied my savings account to pay half the debt she owed. My guess was she took Kylie back to Providence, but really, who knew?
She’d be back sooner than later. I’d given her a key, after all. And there was still the rest of that debt to take care of.
Several glances at my phone told me she still hadn’t bothered to call.
Or apologize for leaving me with Kylie all morning.
Or tell me where she’d gone, either. With a heavy feeling in my chest, I went to work cleaning up the chaos my sister had left in her wake, focusing my energy on scrubbing the kitchen, putting the sofa back to order, changing my sheets, and getting ready to take an extra load to the laundromat.
At least it was my night off from the bar. That meant time for baking too. It was still work, but it was the best kind.
The kind I actually wanted.
Just as I was pulling out the twenty-five-gallon bin of flour I kept under the worktable in the center of the kitchen, the buzzer to my apartment went off. I frowned. Selena had probably already lost her key.
“Hello?” I answered.
“Simone Bishop?” The voice was female. And definitely not my sister’s, considering it sounded British.
I pressed the speak button. “Yes.”
“I’ve got a delivery for you, ma’am. Can I bring it up, please?”
I frowned. I wasn’t expecting anything. “What is it?”
“It’s a gift, ma’am.” Definitely British.
A gift. From who?
For some reason, Brendan’s chiseled face flashed through my mind. Those dark green eyes. The lurking soul behind the coldness. The yearning for something—compassion, maybe—he didn’t quite let out.
No, it couldn’t be from him.
I buzzed the delivery in. A few minutes later, there was a knock at the door.
I opened it to find a smiling woman who looked like she was in her mid-to-late sixties.
“Ms. Bishop?”
“That’s me.” I looked around her. “Where’s the delivery?”
The woman’s smile broadened. “Ginnifer Holland, at your service, but you can call me Ginny, dear. Is the little girl at home?”
“What? What little girl?”
Ginny looked over my shoulder into the apartment, then back at me with some confusion. “I was told you had a four-year-old niece that you needed some help with.”
My mouth fell open. “I—she’s not here right now, but—I’m sorry, who told you that?”
Ginny didn’t look surprised at my dumbfounded response. “Oh, dear. He didn’t mention me, did he?”
“Who didn’t tell me what?”
“God love our Brendan, sweet as candy, he is, but he never did learn to communicate.” She patted my shoulder kindly.
“I’m the gift, lovey. From Brendan Black.
Told me to come here straight away, said you might need help caring for a little girl.
” She procured a piece of paper from her shoulder bag and held it out to me.
“That’s my résumé, which includes the years I served as nanny to the Black family.
Raised all three boys and the girl myself, if I do say so.
Since then, I’ve worked for other families they knew, but I retired with my Barney five years ago.
He just passed, God love him, and I do feel the need to work every now and then.
It’s good to keep occupied, I think. Got to have a purpose. ”
I stared at the résumé as she rattled on. It listed her work history along with the contact numbers of the most famous families in Boston. The longer I looked, the more I thought it was a joke.
“Brendan Black sent me his nanny? Like Mary Poppins?” I almost asked her if she floated in on the East Wind too.
Her kind brow wrinkled. “I’m sorry, love, do you not need one?”
I looked behind me at the empty apartment, then back at her. “Er, that’s…complicated. But I don’t think—”
“That you should accept my services? Understandable, of course. We’ve only just met.”
Ginny wasn’t even looking at me anymore, but over my shoulder as she took in the scope—or lack—of the apartment. Meanwhile, I was trying to figure out how to deal with Mrs. Doubtfire.
I couldn’t call Brendan to ask what was going on. I didn’t even have his number.
Even so, the fact remained that, if—no, when—Selena appeared again, I couldn’t afford to drop my life to take care of hers either.
Just the fact that Brendan had anticipated that. Had taken the time so casually to send help…
No one had ever done something so singularly thoughtful for me in my life.
“I don’t know what to say.” I couldn’t quite keep my chin from wobbling.
Immediately, Ginny dropped her bag and gathered me into her arms.
She felt as motherly as she looked and smelled like Werther’s caramels and hot tea. Exactly like a mother or grandmother should. Like mine might have if she’d made it this far.
The thought only made me want to cry more.
“There, there.” Ginny stroked my hair. “You let it out. Anyone can see you’re as overwhelmed as it gets, aren’t you? You just take your time.”
I sniffed but didn’t argue with her. Oddly, it was nice to be seen that way.
A few moments later, I stepped away, still wiping my eyes. “Thank you. I don’t know what got into me.”
“We all have our moments.”
I laughed through a few final tears. “That we do. I, um…I have to get back to work.” I waved the résumé in the direction of the kitchen, where the ingredients of my side hustle awaited. “I don’t need your help right now since my sister and her daughter aren’t here. But maybe when they come back…”
“My number’s right there, love.” Ginny smiled again as she picked up her bag. “You take care, dearie.”
“Thank you.”
I closed the door and set the résumé on the pile of mail I still needed to go through from the week.
I’d just fallen apart on the shoulder of a kind, strange lady.
A nanny sent to me by Brendan Black, of all people, right after he’d stroked my face at the hospital like I was something precious.
What even was this day?
Bewildered, I went back to making bread. Early this morning, while Kylie had jabbered at me over breakfast, I’d set up the dough for this week’s orders, now ready to be divided, rested, and shaped for the second proof.
I tied my apron around my waist, put on my favorite album (Joni Mitchell’s Blue), then pulled out the first big bin of dough from the proofer and set it on the battered worktable.
I punched my hands into the mixture and teased it onto the wood surface.
The dough had a good latticed texture today.
Good. The gluten had been doing its work.
As I divided the dough into ten stretchy mounds to be sprinkled with flour, I kept going back to the moments before Mr. Black had woken up, when Brendan had been warm and friendly, his eyes soft and gentle. He had looked at my lips again, I was sure of it.
I’d looked at his lips too. I wasn’t going to lie to myself and say I hadn’t. They were nice lips. Full, but firm-looking, and the left corner of his mouth quirked in a way that was particularly entrancing every time I said something nice to him.
I also wasn’t going to lie and say I didn’t feel something there. Some kind of electricity crackled every time we interacted. And when we touched…when we hugged…when he traced the outline of my lip with his thumb…
Maybe I was just lonely. It had been a long time since I’d been intimate with anyone. Lord, it had been forever since I’d even kissed anyone other than my niece.
But loneliness alone couldn’t explain the electricity. That was definitely new.
I divided a second bin of dough and folded each mound to rest on the counter next to the first set of ten. There had been warmth, concern, and maybe even desire lingering in Brendan’s stormy eyes. Right until his father started yelling, and it had all iced over.
He was a complicated man. With a family like that, how could he not be?
I could only imagine the demons a man like that might live with.
And with such a harsh father…
I shuddered to think about it as I folded the tenth loaf, then covered all of them with flour sack cloths before taking out the third bin to continue my work.
My father had his own problems, sure. He was distant, neglectful, rarely present anymore in any genuine way. But he’d never been outright abusive. Maybe I could chalk that up to him not caring, but honestly, it was really just an effect of my mother’s death.
She was his whole life. The cornerstone for all of us.
And when she was gone, all that was left was a husk of a man with two daughters running rampant around a farm he couldn’t or wouldn’t manage.
I understood neglect. Knew the unique hurt and pain it caused. But for all his flaws and weaknesses, Dad had never spoken to me the way Mr. Black had to his son today. And so, I’d never had to react to anyone the way Brendan had to him.
So which was the true Brendan? The softer, kinder man who had shared his stories at the bar? Who had checked in with me with such grace and kindness?
Or the sharp-tongued, controlling person who had emerged in an instant?
I’d probably never know.
Not that it mattered. Niall Black was discharged today, so nanny or not, I doubted I’d ever see Brendan again.
I made quick work of the last ten loaves, and while they rested, I preheated the oven for the batch I’d set to rise the night before, removed those from the proofer, and went to shape the boules in their proofing baskets for the week.
The work was meditative, soothing, and left me covered in flour.
Before long, all thoughts of the Blacks and my own family dysfunction slipped out of my mind.
I hummed along with “River,” dreaming of the creek behind the far pasture at the farm and pretending I wasn’t surrounded by brick buildings and honking horns, but out in the country where the only things serenading me to sleep were the sounds of wind blowing through the oaks and maples and birds settling in for the evening.
I had just finished shaping the last of the boules when a sharp knock at my door pulled me from my bliss. I blinked, still caught in the daze of Joni’s voice and the scent of baking bread.
“Sel?” I called, unsure if I’d actually heard it.
A series of raps answered me, three in a brisk row.
I frowned, threw the towel I’d been using to dust my hands over my shoulder, and went to answer it.
“Hey,” I said as I opened the door. “Did you forget your key—”
“I did not.”
I jerked up at the sound of that deep, sonorous voice. At the sight of the tall, imposing man filling my doorway.
“I—Mr. Black—Brendan?”
Those dark eyes widened at the use of his given name, and we stood there, staring at each other’s equally frozen form.
Then, instead of answering or even saying anything at all, he stepped over my threshold, wrapped an arm around my waist, and set his mouth on mine.