“I don’t wheedle,” Zach snorted. “I charm. You should try it sometime. Works a lot better than pensive brooding.”
Nate stared. “How are we related?”
“I ask myself that question all the time. Will you just call her? Meet her? We’re running out of time to sort this out.”
Nate sighed. That much was true, at least. Isolated as it was, Ravenswood wasn’t exactly brimming with live-in nanny options. Especially since most people around here would rather swallow fistfuls of their own hair than work for Nate. Small towns had long memories, and he had not been the most… agreeable kid.
But apparently, Hannah was willing to give it a shot. He should be rushing to call her right now, honestly. He had no idea why he wasn’t, especially when he’d seen how good she was with kids. Christ, he’d even wished that some of his nanny options were more like her. Well, apparently, she was an option.
Why didn’t he want to call her?
The question was like smoke, hard to see and harder to grasp. Nate set it aside and focused on more important things, like Ma’s needs, Zach already being on thin ice at work, and his own excruciating anxiety about how very unprepared they all were for any emergencies.
Then he pulled out his phone and made the call.
4
Ruth: Good luck btw.
Hannah: Why are you awake before midday? Are you sleeping okay? Did you get a full eight hours?
Ruth: …
Ruth: Evan says not to answer.
Hannah stared down at the varnished tabletop of the Unicorn’s finest booth and wondered how the hell she’d ended up here.
Three hours ago, she’d been sitting in bed, staring at her blog—yes, Hannah had a blog—trying and failing to write. She’d wondered if she should Google some Oscar Wilde quotes to kickstart her creativity, because, while Oscar Wilde could be kind of a prick, he wasn’t half motivational, bless him.
As she was in the midst of pondering her mental lethargy—wondering if maybe she should take a walk to get her ideas going, or make a doctor’s appointment to discuss the ever-constant threat of falling into The Pit of Mental Despair—her phone had rung.
So now, here she was, stuffed into her best skirt like a pretty little sausage, sitting in the pub waiting for...
“Here you go.” Nate put the lemonade she’d asked for on the table, then sat down opposite her, pint in hand. He lifted the amber liquid and said, “I don’t usually drink in the day.”
She wondered why he’d bothered saying that. He was hardly the only man in the pub with a lunch larger. And the Nate Davis he’d been back in school—the one who’d given teachers heart palpitations on an hourly basis—wouldn’t have bothered to explain himself. Ever.
But then, they weren’t at school anymore. Hannah wondered when her still-pounding heart would remember that fact.
Ugh. Hearts. Who needed them, anyway?
“Shall we get down to business?” she asked briskly, batting away her own wayward thoughts.
He smiled. “You haven’t changed much, have you?”
“I’m sorry?”
“You’re still very direct. Not big on small talk.”
She pursed her lips and glared at her lemonade as if it might make this whole conversation easier. “I don’t like to waste time. That’s all. Things are so much more efficient when everyone gets to the point, don’t you think?”
Nate stretched slightly, making those impossibly broad shoulders even broader for a moment. Then his head fell back, resting against the top of the leather seat, which put his face at an angle she could only call unfortunate. Unfortunate for her, that is. It highlighted the hard line of his jaw, the softness of that wide mouth, the icy gleam of his eyes. He was unavoidably handsome. The prick.
And, to her surprise, he appeared to be actually considering her words. Good Lord. Didn’t he know a polite turn of phrase when he heard one?
Finally, he said, “I think efficiency has its place. But personally, I like to take my time. Savour small moments. Life is easier to digest when you go slow.”
She paused for a second, unexpectedly blindsided by his response. The words hit her hard, sinking into her skin like little hooks, and she knew—the way she instinctively did sometimes—that she’d lie in bed thinking about them tonight. They’d be top on her list of daily minutiae to agonise over, to replay again and again, courtesy of her steel-trap mind. But she couldn’t quite put her finger on what made them so hypnotising.
She took a fortifying sip of lemonade and reminded herself that navel-gazing could wait