Brenda Harlen – Baby Talk and Wedding Bells (страница 2)
He hadn’t known it was possible to love someone so instantly and completely, until that first moment when his baby girl was put into his arms.
I want a better life for her than I could give her on my own—a real home with two parents who will both love her as much as I do.
It didn’t seem too much to ask, but they’d let Lindsay down. And he couldn’t help but worry that Saige would one day realize they’d let her down, too.
For now, she was an incredibly happy child, seemingly unaffected by her motherless status. Still, it wasn’t quite the family that Lindsay had envisioned for her baby girl when she’d signed the adoption papers—or that Braden wanted for Saige, either.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he promised his daughter now. “Daddy will always be here for you, I promise.”
“Da-da.” Saige’s smile didn’t just curve her lips, it shone in her eyes and filled his whole heart.
“That’s right—it’s you and me kid.”
“Ga-ma?”
“Yes, we’ve got Grandma and Grandpa in our corner, too. And lots of aunts, uncles and cousins.”
“Na-na?”
He smiled. “Yeah, some of them are bananas, but we don’t hold that against them.”
She stretched out her arms, her hands splayed wide open. “Aw dun.”
“Good girl.” He moistened a washcloth under the tap to wipe her hands and face, then removed the tray from her high chair and unbuckled the safety belt around her waist.
As soon as the clip was unfastened, she threw herself at him. He caught her against his chest as her little arms wrapped around his neck, but he felt the squeeze deep inside his heart.
“Ready to go to Grandma’s now?”
When Saige nodded enthusiastically, he slung her diaper bag over his shoulder, then picked up his briefcase and headed toward the door. His hand was on the knob when the phone rang. He was already fifteen minutes late leaving for work, but he took three steps back to check the display, and immediately recognized his parents’ home number. Crap.
He dropped his briefcase and picked up the receiver. “Hi, Mom. We’re just on our way out the door.”
“Then it’s lucky I caught you,” Ellen said. “I chipped a tooth on my granola and I’m on my way to the dentist.”
“Ouch,” he said sympathetically, even as he mentally began juggling his morning plans to accommodate taking Saige into the office with him.
“I’m so sorry to cancel at the last minute,” she said.
“Don’t be silly, Mom. Of course you have to have your tooth looked at, and Saige is always happy to hang out at my office.”
“You can’t take her to the office,” his mother protested.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s Tuesday,” she pointed out.
“And every Tuesday, I meet with Nathan and Andrew,” he reminded her.
“Tuesday at ten o’clock is Baby Talk at the library.”
“Right—Baby Talk,” he said, as if he’d remembered. As if he had any intention of blowing off a business meeting to take his fifteen-month-old daughter to the library instead.
“Saige loves Baby Talk,” his mother told him.
“I’m sure she does,” he acknowledged. “But songs and stories at the library aren’t really my thing.”
“Maybe not, but they’re Saige’s thing,” Ellen retorted. “And you’re her father, and it’s not going to hurt you to take an hour out of your schedule so that she doesn’t have to miss it this week.”
“I have meetings all morning.”
“Meetings with your cousins,” she noted, “both fathers themselves who wouldn’t hesitate to reschedule if their kids needed them.”
Which he couldn’t deny was true. “But...Baby Talk?”
“Yes,” his mother said firmly, even as Saige began singing “wound an’ wound”—her version of the chorus from the “Wheels on the Bus” song that she’d apparently learned in the library group. “Miss MacKinnon—the librarian—will steer you in the right direction.”
He sighed. “Okay, I’ll let Nate and Andrew know that I have to reschedule.”
“Your daughter appreciates it,” Ellen said.
He looked at the little girl still propped on his hip, and she looked back at him, her big brown eyes sparkling as she continued to sing softly.
She truly was the light of his life, and his mother knew there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for her.
“Well, Saige, I guess today is the day that Daddy discovers what Baby Talk is all about.”
His daughter smiled and clapped her hands together.
* * *
The main branch of the Charisma Public Library was located downtown, across from the Bean There Café and only a short walk from the hospital and the courthouse. It was a three-story building of stone and glass with a large open foyer filled with natural light and tall, potted plants. The information desk was a circular area in the center, designed to be accessible to patrons from all sides.
Cassandra MacKinnon sat at that desk, scanning the monthly calendar to confirm the schedule of upcoming events. The library wasn’t just a warehouse of books waiting to be borrowed—it was a hub of social activity. She nodded to Luisa Todd and Ginny Stafford, who came in together with bulky knitting bags in hand. The two older women—friends since childhood—had started the Knit & Purl group and were always the first to arrive on Tuesday mornings.
Ginny stopped at the desk and took a gift bag out of her tote. “Will you be visiting with Irene this week?” she asked Cassie, referring to the former head librarian who now lived at Serenity Gardens, a seniors’ residence in town.
“Tomorrow,” Cassie confirmed.
“Would you mind taking this for me?” Ginny asked, passing the bag over the desk. “Irene always complains about having cold feet in that place, so I knitted her a couple pairs of socks. I had planned to see her on the weekend, but my son and daughter-in-law were in town with their three kids and I couldn’t tear myself away from them.”
“Of course, I wouldn’t mind,” Cassie told her. “And I know she’ll love the socks.”
Luisa snorted; Ginny smiled wryly. “Well, I’m sure she’ll appreciate having warm feet, anyway.”
Cassie tucked the bag under the counter and the two women continued on their way.
She spent a little bit of time checking in the materials that had been returned through the book drop overnight, then arranging them on the cart for Helen Darrow to put back on the shelves. Helen was a career part-time employee of the library who had been hired when Irene Houlahan was in charge. An older woman inherently distrustful of technology, Helen refused to touch the computers and spent most of her time finding books to fill online and call-in requests of patrons, putting them back when they were returned—and shushing anyone who dared to speak above a whisper in the book stacks.
“Hey, Miss Mac.”
Cassie glanced up to see Tanya Fielding, a high school senior and regular at the Soc & Study group, at the desk. “Good morning, Tanya. Aren’t you supposed to be in school this morning?”
The teen shook her head. “Our history teacher is giving us time to work on our independent research projects this week.”
“What’s your topic?”
“The role of German U-boats in the Second World War.”
“Do you want to sign on to one of the computers?”
“No. Mr. Paretsky wants—” she made air quotes with her fingers “—real sources, actual paper books so that we can do proper page citations and aren’t relying on made-up stuff that someone posted on the internet.”
Cassie pushed her chair away from the desk. “Nonfiction is upstairs. Let’s go see what we can find.”
After the teen was settled at a table with a pile of books, Cassie checked that the Dickens Room was ready for the ESL group coming in at ten thirty and picked up a stack of abandoned magazines from a window ledge near the true crime section.
She put the magazines on Helen’s cart and returned to her desk just as George Bowman came in. George and his wife, Margie, were familiar faces at the library. She knew all of the library’s regular patrons—not just their names and faces, but also their reading habits and preferences. And, over the years, she’d gotten to know many of them on a personal level, too.
She was chatting with Mr. Bowman when the tall, dark and extremely handsome stranger stepped into view. Her heart gave a little bump against her ribs, as if to make sure she was paying attention, and warm tingles spread slowly through her veins. But he wasn’t just a stranger, he was an outsider. The expensive suit jacket that stretched across his broad shoulders, the silk tie neatly knotted at his throat and the square, cleanly shaven jaw all screamed “corporate executive.”
She would have been less surprised to see a rainbow-colored unicorn prancing across the floor than this man moving toward her. Moving rather slowly and with short strides considering his long legs, she thought—and then she saw the little girl toddling beside him.
The child she did recognize. Saige regularly attended Baby Talk at the library with her grandmother, which meant that the man holding the tiny hand had to be her dad: Braden Garrett, Charisma’s very own crown prince.
* * *
A lot of years had passed since Braden was last inside the Charisma Public Library, and when he stepped through the front doors, he had a moment of doubt that he was even in the right place. In the past twenty years, the building had undergone major renovations so that the address was the only part of the library that remained unchanged.