Adding Up to Marriage

“Hah. Not if I want to get any actual work done. Besides, I’m out showing properties more than I’m in, anyway. I owe my babysitter my life.”

His eyes cut to hers. Purring madly, the cat stretched out one paw to rest it on Silas’s arm. “She wouldn’t have any openings, would she?”

Tess’s brow creased in reply. “No luck with the day care?”

Tad bellowed behind him, making him flinch. “One place has a possible opening in October. Mid-October. Possible being the key word here.”

“Donna should be okay by then—”

“After raising the four of us, she wants her life back.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh. Can’t say as I blame her.”

Tess’s gaze shifted to her mother-in-law, holding court on the loveseat across the room, clearly enjoying the hell out of playing Queen Bee. “No,” Tess sighed out. “I wouldn’t blame her, either. I thought my two were energy suckers, but yours have mine beat by a mile.”

“Thanks.”

“Hey … maybe Rachel could fill in? She could probably use the extra bucks—”

“Did somebody say extra bucks?” his youngest sister-in-law said, her long, dark hair streaked with burgundy, her long, legginged legs ending in a pair of those dumb, fat suede boots. Pink ones, no less.

“I need a babysitter—”

Lime green fingernails flashed as Rach’s hand shot up. “Sorry, Si, but I’m doing well to handle this one,” she said, bouncing pudgy Caiti on her hip, “and school as it is. I’d really like to help, but I’m majorly slammed this semester.” She wrinkled her pierced nose. “We still good?”

“Of course, I understand completely.” Silas slumped forward, holding his head, as she strode off. “I’m doomed.”

“Why are you doomed?” Noah said, commandeering the chair Tess had just vacated and simultaneously digging into a plate of leftovers. Because clearly the first two helpings weren’t enough.

Tess gave Silas’s back a sympathetic pat. “Sweetie can’t find anybody to watch the boys.”

“Yeah,” Noah said, chewing, “that’s the problem with kids, the way somebody always has to watch ‘em.” He swallowed, pointing his fork at Silas. “A problem, you will note, I do not have.”

“Jerk,” Silas muttered without heat, since it was no secret the dude would kill for his nieces and nephews, even if the idea of having his own kids gave him hives.

A piece of chicken vanished into his brother’s mouth. “What about Jewel?”

Silas’s head snapped up. “Jewel?”

“Yeah. She said she’s got some medical bills or something—she was kind of rambling, I didn’t quite get all of it—and she’s pretty desperate for some part-time work. Even asked me if we could use her over at the shop. Hey,” he said to Silas’s frown, “you said yourself she was great with the boys. And they like her, right? So why not? You need a sitter, she needs a job …” He shrugged those big shoulders of his. “Sounds like a win-win to me—”

“What it sounds like, is a disaster in the making.”

Noah and Tess exchanged a glance before Noah met Silas’s gaze again. “Be-cause …?”

Where would they like him to start? “What if she has to go on a call while she’s got the kids? What then?”

“Oh, between all of us,” Tess said, far too enthusiastically, “I’m sure we could fill in any gaps. I’m with Noah—it sounds like a perfect plan to me.”

Yeah. The perfect plan from hell.

“Uh-oh,” Noah said. “He’s got that look on his face.”

Silas glared at him. “What look?”

“The I-don’t-wanna look. Never mind there’s not one good reason why this isn’t a good idea. For cripe’s sake, she’s a nurse, she knows CPR and stuff. And she cooks—”

“Ow!” Silas said when Tess cuffed the back of his head.

“What the—?”

“Hell, if you don’t hire her, I will. So call her. Before somebody else snatches her up.”

His mouth open to protest, Silas shut it again. Because Tess was right—maybe the thought of having Jewel in his house every day gave him the heebie-jeebies, but she could probably find a temporary nanny position in a heartbeat, if not here, in Santa Fe or Taos. And he was desperate.

Not so desperate, however, that he couldn’t wait to call until he got home, since for damn sure he didn’t need an audience to add to his humiliation.

So, an hour later, the boys bellowing and sloshing blissfully in the tub, Silas ducked back into their room to make the call, so focused on them through the door he almost forgot who he was calling until she said, “Silas?” in a voice far raspier than he remembered, or expected, or wanted, or needed, and for a moment he was torn between praying she’d say yes and fervently hoping somebody else would snatch her up.

Thereby saving him from a fate worse than death.

Chapter Three

It took Jewel so long to process Silas’s number on the display that her voice mail nearly clicked in before she answered. “Uh … hello—?”

“Noah says you’re looking for work?”

Three thoughts zipped through simultaneously. One, that warp-speed Internet connection had nothing on Tierra Rosa’s gossip mill, especially when major chunks of the mill were related to each other; two, that he sounded about as thrilled about making this call as he would have making an appointment for one of those exams; and three, Wow. Deep voice.

“Um … yeah? You know of something?”

He sighed. The kind of sigh that precedes bad news. “Turns out there are no day-care openings, anywhere. At least not for several weeks. Meaning I need a part-time nanny. And the boys like you. So. You want the job?”

Oh, no. Nononononono. Because that little ping of awareness she’d thought a onetime thing? Yeah, well … apparently not. She tried—oh, how she tried—to send her hormones back into time-out, but since there was only one of her and five quadrillion of them …

“Gee, Silas, I don’t know. Um … what if I get called out on a birth?”

“But how often does that happen? Couple times a month?”

Her mouth twisted. “Maybe. But there’s prenatal appointments, and follow-up visits …”

“Even three days a week would work. Or just in the afternoons. Or mornings, whatever works for you.” Silence. “I’m really, really in a bind.”

“You must be to ask me.”

More silence. “The good news is, we’d rarely be around each other.”