No more.
“I appreciate what you’re doing for my daughters,” he rasped, and cleared his throat. “But I want to take care of them from now on. I’ll get up with them at night.”
Hadley stared at him. “You have no idea what you’re talking about, do you?”
“Uh, well...” Should he brazen it out or admit defeat? God Almighty, he hated admitting any kind of weakness. But chances were good she’d already figured out he wasn’t the brightest bulb on the board when it came to babies. “I’m going to learn. Trial by fire is how I operate best.”
“They’re not going to pull out AK-47s, Kyle.” Hadley hid a smile but not very well and handed him a cup of steaming coffee. “Sugar and creamer are on the table.”
“I like it black, thanks.” He sipped and added good coffee to his list of things he was thankful for. “Tell me the things I need to know about my kids.”
“Okay.” She nodded and went over a list of basics, which Kyle committed to memory. Eating. Bathing. Sleeping. Check, check, check. Stuff all humans needed, but his little humans couldn’t do these things for themselves. He just had to help them, the way he would a wounded teammate.
“Can I see them?” he asked. Felt weird to be asking permission, but he didn’t want to mess up anything.
“You can. They’re sleeping, but we can sneak in. You can be quiet, right?”
“Quiet enough to take out a barracks full of enemy soldiers without getting caught,” he said without a trace of irony. Hadley just smiled as though he was kidding.
He followed Hadley to the nursery, a mysterious place full of pink and tiny beds with bars. The girls were asleep in their cribs, and he watched them for a moment, his throat tight. Their little faces—how could anything be that tiny and survive? A better question was, how did your heart stay stitched together when it felt as if it would burst from all the stuff swelling up inside it?
“I was their nanny first, you know,” she whispered. “Before I married Liam.”
What did a nanny even do? Was she like a babysitter and a substitute mom all rolled up into one? If so, that seemed like a bonus, and he’d be cutting off his nose to spite his face to relieve her of her duties. She could keep on being the nanny as far as he was concerned, as long as Grace was okay with it. She must be. Liam had hired Hadley, after all, and Grace seemed pretty impressed with them as a team.
“I’m not trying to take away your job,” he mumbled.
Did she see it as a job? If she and Liam wanted to adopt the girls, she’d obviously grown very attached to them. Was it better to cut off their contact with the babies instead? Get them used to the idea?
If so, he couldn’t do it. It seemed unnecessarily cruel and besides, he needed the help.
“I didn’t think you were. It’s admirable that you want to care for them, but there’s a huge learning curve and they won’t do well with a big disruption. Let’s take it one step at a time.”
He could do that. You didn’t drop a green recruit into the middle of a Taliban hotbed and expect him to wipe out the insurgents as his first assignment. You started him out with something simple, like surveillance. “Can I watch you feed them?”
“Sure, when they wake up.”
They tiptoed from the room and Kyle considered that a pretty successful start to Operation: Fatherhood.
Next up, Operation: Do Something About Grace. Because he’d lain awake last night thinking about her more than he’d wanted to, as well. Somehow, he had to shut down the spark between them. Or hose it off with a big, wet kiss.
* * *
Grace sat in her car outside of Wade House and pretended that she was going over some notes in her case file. In truth, her stomach was doing a cancan at the prospect of seeing Kyle again, and she couldn’t get it to settle.
She’d gone a long time without seeing him. What was so different now?
Nothing. She was a professional and she would do her job. Get out of the car, she admonished herself. Get in there and do your assessment. The faster she gathered the facts needed to remove the babies from Kyle’s presence and provide a recommendation for their permanent home, the better.
Hadley let her into the house and directed her to the second floor, where Kyle was hanging out with the babies. Perfect. She could watch him interact with them and record some impartial observations in her files.
But when Grace poked her head into the nursery with a bright smile, it died on her face. Kyle dozed in the rocking chair, Maddie against one shoulder, Maggie the other. Both babies were asleep, swaddled in soft pink blankets, an odd contrast to Kyle’s masculine attire.