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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.
He stepped farther into the room, noting that the card catalogue system had been replaced by computer terminals and the checkout desk wasn’t just automated but self-serve—which meant that the kids borrowing books or other materials weren’t subjected to the narrow-eyed stare of Miss Houlahan, the old librarian who marked the cards inside the back covers of the books, her gnarled fingers wielding the stamp like a weapon. He’d been terrified of the woman.
Of course, the librarian had been about a hundred years old when Braden was a kid—or so she’d seemed—so he didn’t really expect to find her still working behind the desk. But the woman seated there now, her fingers moving over the keyboard as she conversed with an elderly gentleman, was at least twenty years younger than he’d expected, with chin-length auburn hair that shone with gold and copper highlights. Her face was heart-shaped with creamy skin and a delicately pointed chin. Her eyes were dark—green, he guessed, to go with the red hair—and her glossy lips curved in response to something the old man said to her.
Saige wiggled again, silently asking to be set down. Since she’d taken her first tentative steps four months earlier, she preferred to walk everywhere. Braden set her on her feet but held firmly to her hand and headed toward the information desk.
The woman he assumed was Miss MacKinnon stopped typing and picked up a pen to jot a note on a piece of paper that she then handed across the desk to the elderly patron.
The old man nodded his thanks. “By the way, Margie wanted me to tell you that our daughter, Karen, is expecting again.”
“This will be her third, won’t it?”
“Third and fourth,” he replied.
Neatly arched brows lifted. “Twins?”
He nodded again. “Our seventh and eighth grandchildren.”
“That’s wonderful news—congratulations to all of you.”
“You know, I keep waiting for the day when you have big news to share.”
The librarian smiled indulgently. “Didn’t I tell you just this morning that there’s a new John Grisham on the shelves?”
Mr. Bowman shook his head. “Marriage plans, Cassie.”
“You’ve been with Mrs. Bowman for almost fifty years—I don’t see you giving her up to run away with me now.”
The old man’s ears flushed red. “Fifty-one,” he said proudly. “And I didn’t mean me. You need a handsome young man to put a ring on your finger and give you beautiful babies.”
“Until that happens, you keep bringing me pictures of your gorgeous grandbabies,” she suggested.
“I certainly will,” he promised.
“In the meantime—” she picked up a flyer from the counter and offered it to Mr. Bowman “—I hope you’re planning to come to our Annual Book & Bake Sale on the fifteenth.”
“It’s already marked on the calendar at home,” he told her. “And Margie’s promised to make a couple dozen muffins.”
“I’ll definitely look forward to those.”
The old man finally moved toward the elevator and Braden stepped forward. “Miss MacKinnon?”
She turned toward him, and he saw that her eyes weren’t green, after all, but a dark chocolate brown and fringed with even darker lashes.
“Good morning,” she said. “How can I help you?”
“I’m here for...Baby Talk?”
Her mouth curved, drawing his attention to her full, glossy lips. “Are you sure?”
“Not entirely,” he admitted, shifting his gaze to meet hers again. “Am I in the right place?”
“You are,” she confirmed. “Baby Talk is in the Bronte Room on the upper level at ten.”
He glanced at the clock on the wall, saw that it wasn’t yet nine thirty. “I guess we’re a little early.”
“Downstairs in the children’s section, there’s a play area with puzzles and games, a puppet theater and a train table.”
“Choo-choo,” Saige urged.
Miss MacKinnon glanced down at his daughter and smiled. “Although if you go there now, you might have trouble tearing your daughter away. You like the trains, don’t you, Saige?”
She nodded, her head bobbing up and down with enthusiasm.
Braden’s brows lifted. He was surprised—and a little disconcerted—to discover that this woman knew something about his daughter that he didn’t. “Obviously she spends more time here than I realized.”
“Your mom brings her twice a week.”
“Well, since you know my mother and Saige, I guess I should introduce myself—I’m Braden Garrett.”
She accepted the hand he offered. He noted that hers was soft, but her grip firm. “Cassie MacKinnon.”
“Are you really the librarian?” he heard himself ask.
“One of them,” she said.
“When I think of librarians, I think of Miss Houlahan.”
“So do I,” she told him. “In fact, she’s the reason I chose to become a librarian.”
“We must be thinking of different Miss Houlahans,” he decided.
“Perhaps,” she allowed. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to check on something upstairs.”
“Something upstairs” sounded rather vague to Braden, and he got the strange feeling that he was being brushed off. Or maybe he was reading too much into those two words. After all, this was a library and she was the librarian—no doubt there were any number of “somethings” she had to do, although he couldn’t begin to imagine what they might be.
As she walked away, Braden found himself admiring the curve of her butt and the sway of her hips and thinking that he might have spent a lot more time in the library as a kid if there had been a librarian like Miss MacKinnon to help him navigate the book stacks.
Chapter Two (#ulink_d40bda9a-38d7-5a18-a1f3-3506e11f3be9)
By the time he managed to drag Saige away from the trains and find the Bronte Room, there were several other parents and children already there—along with Cassie MacKinnon. Apparently one of the “somethings” that she did at the library was lead the stories, songs and games at Baby Talk.
She nodded to him as he entered the room and gestured to an empty place in the circle. “Have a seat,” she invited.
Except there were no seats. All of the moms—and yes, they were all moms, there wasn’t another XY chromosome anywhere to be found, unless it was tucked away in a diaper—were sitting on the beige Berber carpet. He lowered himself to the floor, certain he looked as awkward as he felt as he attempted to cross his legs.
“Did you bring your pillow, Mr. Garrett?”
“Pillow?” he echoed. His mother hadn’t said anything about a pillow, but when he looked around, he saw that all of the moms had square pillows underneath their babies.
“I’ve got an extra that you can borrow,” she said, opening a cabinet to retrieve a big pink square with an enormous daisy embroidered on it.
He managed not to grimace as he thanked her and set the pillow on the floor, then sat Saige down on top of it. She immediately began to clap her hands, excited to begin.
Ellen had told him that Baby Talk was for infants up to eighteen months of age, and looking around, he guessed that his daughter was one of the oldest in the room. A quick glance confirmed that the moms were of various ages, as well. The one thing they had in common: they were all checking out the lone male in the room.
He focused on Cassie, eager to get the class started and finished.
What he learned during the thirty-minute session was that the librarian had a lot more patience than he did. Even when there were babies crying, she continued to read or sing in the same soothing tone. About halfway through the session, she took a bin of plastic instruments out of the cupboard and passed it around so the babies could jingle bells or pound on drums or bang sticks together. Of course, the kids had a lot more enthusiasm than talent—his daughter included—and by the time they were finished, Braden could feel a headache brewing.
“That was a great effort today,” Cassie told them, and he breathed a grateful sigh of relief that they were done. “I’ll see you all next week, and please don’t forget the Book & Bake Sale on the fifteenth—any and all donations of gently used books are appreciated.”
Despite the class being dismissed, none of the moms seemed to be in a hurry to leave, instead continuing to chat with one another about feeding schedules and diaper rashes and teething woes. Braden just wanted to be gone but Saige had somehow managed to pull off her shoes, forcing him to stay put long enough to untie the laces, put the shoes back on her feet and tie them up again.
While he was preoccupied with this task, the woman who had been seated on his left shifted closer. “I’m Heather Turcotte. And this—” she jiggled the baby in her lap “—is Katie.”
“Braden Garrett,” he told her, confident that she already knew his daughter.
“You’re a brave man to subject yourself to a baby class full of women,” she said, then smiled at him.
“I’m only here today because my mom had an appointment.”
“That’s too bad. It would be nice to have another single parent in the group,” she told him. “Most of these women don’t have a clue how hard it is to raise a child on their own. Of course, I didn’t know, either, until I had Katie. All through my pregnancy, I was so certain that I could handle this. But the idea of a baby is a lot different than the reality.”
“That’s true,” he agreed, only half listening to her as he worked Saige’s shoes back onto her feet. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Cassie talking to one of the other moms and cleaning the instruments with antibacterial wipes, which made him feel a little bit better about the bells that his daughter had been chewing on.
“Of course, it helps that I have a flexible schedule at work,” Heather was saying. “As I’m sure you do, considering that your name is on the company letterhead.”
“There are benefits to working for a family business,” he agreed.
Cassie waved goodbye to the other woman and her baby, then carried the bin of instruments to the cupboard.
“Such as being able to take a little extra time to grab a cup of coffee now?” Heather suggested hopefully.
He forced his attention back to her, inwardly wincing at the hopeful expression on her face. “Sorry, I really do need to get to the office.”
She pouted, much like his daughter did when she didn’t get what she wanted, but the look wasn’t nearly as cute on a grown woman who had a daughter of her own.
