An Unexpected Father Read online

  The deep voice echoed in her ear as she heard the man say, “Hello?”

  Her heart lodged itself in her throat.

  Here goes everything, Harper thought.

  “Hello, Mr. Fortune? This is Harper Radcliffe. You called me earlier today about needing my services,” she said, trying to sound as cheerful as she could. She waited for his response. When there wasn’t one immediately, Harper thought that his cell reception might have possibly gone down. “Hello, Mr. Fortune? Are you still there? Did you hear me?”

  Brady had heard her—and there was something strangely familiar in her voice, but he couldn’t quite figure out what it was. He shook his head and dismissed the sensation.

  Realizing that the woman was still waiting for some sort of response, he answered, “Sorry. Yes, I heard you. Um, about the reason that I called,” he began.

  “Yes, of course.” Push on, Harper, push on, she silently ordered. “Why don’t I meet you at Provisions tomorrow, say about eleven o’clock, to discuss the matter? If that fits in with your schedule, of course,” she quickly tacked on.

  “Provisions,” Brady repeated. Was that how these shrinks did things? Get you eating and then get you talking? Curious, he couldn’t help asking, “Isn’t that a little unusual?”

  If this potential client had turned out to be a woman, she would have readily gone to their house. Harper thought. But this was a man and after her last experience with her employer’s husband, she wanted to meet this man somewhere out in the open.

  But she couldn’t very well tell him that because he might take offense, so she said, “I prefer our first meeting to take place in a neutral location.”

  Neutral location. The woman on the other end of the call made it sound as if they were about to negotiate some sort of a peace treaty, not discuss a problem he might be having with suddenly finding himself raising two rambunctious little boys.

  But then, what did he know? Maybe this was the new approach to psychology. He was game for anything.

  “Sure. Why not,” Brady sportingly agreed. “Eleven o’clock tomorrow at Provisions,” he repeated. “I’ll be the harried-looking man on his way to having his hair turn prematurely gray.”

  Thinking he was trying to lighten the mood by joking, Harper laughed. She actually understood how he probably felt. Some of the fathers she had worked for in the past acted as if fatherhood was the hardest job in the world instead of the absolute joy it could be. To her way of thinking, it was her job, in part, to show them the way.

  “All right, then, Mr. Fortune. I’ll see you tomorrow at eleven,” Harper said just before she hung up the receiver.

  This was it, Harper thought, looking down at the phone. This could very well be the job she had been hoping for.

  The long, frustrating dry spell might finally be over!

  Her heart racing, Harper hurried over to the closet where she had hung up her small wardrobe to pick out just the right outfit for the meeting tomorrow. Aware that first impressions were everything, she needed to look her most competent for the interview.

  * * *

  The next day, Brady was surprised that he was nervous. He hadn’t thought he would be, but he actually was.

  It didn’t matter, really. Even if the idea of talking to someone about his feelings made him uncomfortable, he reminded himself that this wasn’t about him. He was doing it for the boys, to get a better handle on how he could give them the best life possible.

  Maybe, he admitted, just maybe he was doing it for himself, too. So that he could manage to keep them all together, so that he could see the boys grow up to become young men.

  Damn, Brady thought as he straightened his tie, life had become much too complicated in these last six months. But then, he thought, if things weren’t complicated and confounding, he wouldn’t have to be meeting with this Harper Radcliffe and the woman would probably be out of a job.

  Brady sighed. He was overthinking this, he told himself. And overdressing as well, he decided, taking another look at himself in the full-length mirror. He looked as if he was dressed to meet some high-class dignitary—not a therapist.

  He glanced at his watch. It was too late to change, he thought—unless he wanted to be late. And he knew if he was, Ms. Radcliffe would probably make some sort of a big deal out of that, claiming it was an unconscious attempt to demonstrate his superiority over her or some such nonsense.

  No, he wasn’t going to waste time changing into something more casual. Besides, maybe this woman would be impressed—or intimidated—by what he was wearing. Either way, it might wind up working in his favor.

  And so would being on time for this meeting, Brady told himself as he left the house.

  Right now, Brady was really grateful that he had gotten the twins registered yesterday. Because dragging the boys to this meeting might have proven to be difficult at best.

  He didn’t want to consider what it might have wound up being at its worst.

  Brady did his best to bolster his confidence. Maybe he’d even learn something, he thought as he drove to the restaurant.

  What he needed to do was keep an open mind, Brady told himself. After all, that was why he had made the phone call to begin with, right? To learn something that he could actually use when it came to dealing with the twins—or possibly even learn what it was that he was doing wrong with them.

  Because, to his way of thinking, by all rights, Toby and Tyler should have been calming down by now—shouldn’t they? He had to be doing something wrong, he thought. Possibly even failing them. But how?

  The question continued gnawing at him—and his gut—as he got out in the restaurant parking lot.

  It suddenly occurred to him, as he walked toward the restaurant’s entrance, that he should have asked for this woman’s description. Otherwise, how was he going to recognize this person that Mrs. Ferguson had recommended to him? He didn’t have a clue what this woman looked like. Until she had called him back, he hadn’t even known that she was a woman.

  Walking in through the restaurant’s double doors, Brady stood in the entrance and looked around the restaurant.

  How was he—?

  Brady abruptly stopped as he stared into the dining area.

  Wasn’t that...?

  The knockout he’d had coffee with at Roja yesterday—or had begun to have coffee with, he amended, recognizing the woman he had met.

  What was she doing here, he wondered. This had to qualify as one hell of a coincidence, Brady couldn’t help thinking. Unless...

  And then it hit him like a ton of bricks.

  Oh wow!

  The knockout and the woman he was meeting were one and the same.

  * * *

  Harper saw him from across the room. The man who had bought her coffee yesterday because, according to him, he had needed to talk to someone. Then, as she proceeded to do just that, attempting to give him a little advice as well, the man had abruptly pulled back and walked out of the restaurant.

  And then it suddenly hit her. That was why the man on the answering machine had sounded so familiar to her. It was him. The widower with the twins, she recalled.

  He was the one she was meeting?

  Wow, talk about it being a small world, Harper thought. They just couldn’t make this kind of stuff up, she silently marveled, watching as the man from yesterday’s abbreviated encounter at Roja began to walk toward her.

  “Harper Radcliffe, I presume?” Brady asked as he came up to the table where she was seated.

  For Harper’s part, she smiled at him as she inclined her head.

  “Brady Fortune,” she said. Because it was the polite thing to do, she put out her hand to him. “Nice to formally make your acquaintance.”

  Brady took her hand in his. He couldn’t help thinking how delicate it felt to him.

  “Same here,” he responded.
/>   And then something in his head suddenly yelled May-day! He couldn’t go through with this, Brady decided. “Although, I’ve thought it over,” he told her, “and I’ve changed my mind.”

  Harper wasn’t sure that she was following what he was saying to her, although part of her did have a very uneasy feeling that she knew. The man was dumping her before he even gave her a chance.

  Why?

  She pressed on, feigning ignorance.

  “Changed your mind about what?” she asked him.

  Brady was straightforward in his answer—or at least he thought he was. “About retaining your services.”

  Another person would have taken that as their cue to leave. They would have stood up and just walked away with their dignity intact.

  But another person wasn’t as desperate as she was to be gainfully employed again. Employed in not just any field, but the field of her choice. As a nanny.

  So rather than just pick up and leave, Harper decided to press the matter. “May I ask why?”

  “Because I don’t believe in them,” he told her point-blank.

  “You don’t believe in them?” she repeated, utterly confused. What was that supposed to mean? And just what did he mean by them?

  “Are you going to question and take apart everything I say?” Brady asked, not knowing whether he was offended or just confused.

  “Sorry,” she responded crisply. “I’m just trying to wrap my head around why a grown man is telling me that he doesn’t believe in nannies.”

  Brady blinked, totally confused now. What was this woman talking about? “What?”

  Okay, Harper thought, now this extremely handsome, infuriating idiot was just trying to bait her for some unknown reason. “Why you don’t believe in nannies?” she repeated, enunciating every word slowly and clearly.

  “I didn’t say that,” Brady insisted.

  Harper took a deep breath, digging deep for the patience that served her well when she worked with children. This man was a real challenge, she thought.

  “You just said you don’t believe in what I do for a living. You referred to them as my services.” Her eyes pinned him against the wall. “Are you with me so far?”

  He stared at her, his confusion only growing. “What sort of a mind game is this?” he wanted to know. “Because if this is your way of trying to get me to spill my guts to you, well, it’s failing. I’m just not about to do that.”

  Harper did a mental double take. He must have had a hell of a childhood, she couldn’t help thinking. “Why would you want to do that anyway?” she questioned. She had absolutely no desire to be privy to this man’s spilled “guts.”

  “Well, isn’t that what you people want?” he challenged. “To get your would-be patient to share their so-called deepest, darkest secrets with you?”

  “Okay, back up here,” Harper told him, holding up her hands as if that would somehow physically make him stop talking. “What exactly do you mean by ‘you people’?” she wanted to know.

  “You,” he said, gesturing at her. Then elaborated by adding, “Shrinks.”

  “Shrinks?” she repeated, staring at him. “The only thing I ever ‘shrank,’” she informed the man sitting opposite her, “was a load of laundry when I wasn’t accustomed to the washing machine.”

  And then she realized that it was all starting to make sense now. The man’s hostility as well as his confusion, it all made sense.

  “Are you telling me that you think I’m a psychologist—or a psychiatrist?” She wasn’t sure which he was accusing her of being. The only thing she knew was that while she respected the vocations, she was neither of those professions.

  “Aren’t you?” he asked, beginning to feel just the slightest bit foolish. If this was a colossal mix-up, how did he fix it?

  “Oh lord, no,” Harper answered with a laugh. “If I were one, I’d probably be a little more together than I am now. Maybe a lot more together,” she amended with a genial shrug.

  Wow, talk about making a mistake, Brady thought, totally embarrassed now. He had just made a huge mistake by inserting not just his foot in his mouth, but both of them.

  All the way in.

  At the same time.

  “Then what are you?” he asked, thinking back to the card that Mrs. Ferguson had pressed into his hand. The card with this woman’s phone number on it. He’d thought that Mrs. Ferguson had believed he needed help and had mistakenly thought she was giving him the name of a psychiatrist to help him find his way out of this emotional maze.

  “I’m a nanny,” Harper told him. “I thought you knew that.”

  Brady shook his head. “There was nothing about you being a nanny on the card I was given. It had your name on it and the slogan ‘Help when you need it.’” His eyes met hers. “That’s not exactly crystal clear,” Brady complained.

  Harper closed her eyes. Damn, she thought.

  When she opened them again, she said, “You’re absolutely right. That was my fault. I should have been clearer.” She made a mental note to redo her business cards.

  Since she was being so nice about it, Brady was willing to share in the blame. “I guess I just read into it,” he admitted.

  Harper brightened. “Let’s start all over again.” She put out her hand to him. “Hello, I’m Harper Radcliffe and I’m a nanny currently between jobs. Would you have any interest in making use of my services?” she asked him.

  For a second, he just stared at her. And then he smiled. Broadly. “You have no idea how much I would love to make use of your services, Ms. Radcliffe,” he told her.

  Maybe it was the fact that he had used the word love or maybe her last experience with her boss’s husband had completely colored her reaction to men in general and she would have reacted this way no matter what he said. In any case, Harper suddenly felt a cold wave washing over her, warning her that this had turned out to be a really bad idea.

  To make matters worse, this man was just too damn handsome for either one of their own good. Besides, she had learned to be very wary of gorgeous men, predominantly because they were accustomed to getting their way whenever they wanted.

  Taking a job with this man was just asking for trouble and she had had enough trouble, as far as she was concerned, to last her a lifetime.

  “On second thought,” Harper told the man before her, “I’ve decided that maybe we’re not such a good match after all.” She rose to her feet before the stunned Brady was able say anything in response. “Thank you, but no thank you.”

  And with that, Harper turned on her heel to walk out of the restaurant.

  Chapter Six

  “Wait, Harper—Ms. Radcliffe,” Brady corrected himself, calling to the woman he had begun to think of as his potential lifesaver. “You’re leaving?”

  The way he said it, he sounded stunned, like someone surprised to find themselves being abandoned. Against her better judgment, Harper turned around and decided to give the man an extra minute before retreating.

  “I’m afraid this isn’t going to work out,” she told him.

  Brady continued to stare at her, totally at a loss. “But why are you turning this job down before you even meet Toby and Tyler?” he asked her. “Isn’t that against the rules in the Nanny Handbook?”

  He knew she needed the work. Why else would someone who was a professional nanny by trade have been looking into getting a waitressing job at Roja? It certainly couldn’t have been the enticement of being on her feet for eight hours a day or more, carrying heavy trays and putting up with irate, irrational customers’ complaints.

  He waited for her to make him understand—or to change her mind about her decision.

  Before Harper could frame any sort of a response to Brady’s question, two young, pretty blondes who had obviously heard the exchange between her and Brady approached their booth.

  And
from the look on Brady’s face, he recognized them.

  Were they ganging up on her, Harper wondered.

  “Brady, I thought I heard your voice,” one of the women declared. She was obviously pleased to see him, but she appeared to also be concerned at the same time. “Is there something wrong?” she wanted to know, looking from him to Harper.

  She looked down at the table. “It can’t be the food. There’s nothing here. Is it my waitress? Is she taking too long to bring you your order?” the woman asked.

  Not waiting for an answer, her eyes shifted to Harper. She smiled and extended her hand. “Hello, I’m Ashley Fortune and this lovely creature next to me is my sister, Megan. We’re Brady’s cousins and the owners of this restaurant. And you are...?”

  “Harper Radcliffe,” Harper replied, feeling just a little awkward about the way the two women were regarding her.

  Megan only had enough time to say, “Hi,” To Harper before Ashley returned to what she viewed as the problem. “Is there anything I can do to make this a better dining experience for you?” she asked, looking at her cousin.

  He knew that his cousin was referring to the food at the restaurant, but all Brady could think of was that he was losing his shot at getting a nanny—one that had come recommended by Mrs. Ferguson. And he still hadn’t the slightest idea why that was happening.

  Desperate, Brady glanced at both his cousins and said, “You can use those charms of yours to talk Ms. Radcliffe here into being the twins’ nanny. Maybe if she came over to the house to meet them, she might change her mind about turning the job down.”

  It was a long shot, but it was the only one he had left, Brady thought.

  Megan’s face instantly lit up. “Oh my lord, yes. Those sweet boys could definitely benefit from a woman’s steady presence in their lives. You would be a virtual lifesaver, Ms....Radcliffe, is it?” Megan asked her, obviously uncertain if she had heard the last name correctly.