Baby Lessons

even less than they had during her first attempt at night nannying, but at least she knew how to properly diaper and feed them. They just never seemed to want to do those things at the same time, which was most inconvenient. While Ella slept, Madison took care of Emma. Then once Emma drifted off, Ella would invariably wake up and the cycle would start all over again.
She finally got them both down for the night around three in the morning, thanks to the glider rocker and an early copy of the September issue of Vogue. She read the pages aloud to them for almost an hour. Maybe it was only her imagination, but they seemed to love it. Once she had the babies tucked back into their cribs, Madison cleaned up a little bit. She even did a load of Jack’s laundry—her way of saying thanks for not being fired.
Had she buried her face into his LFD T-shirt, just to get a whiff of his manly, kitten-saving scent? Yes. Yes, she had. She wasn’t proud of that little moment of weakness, but she couldn’t quite help it. The soft cotton material had felt so good against her cheek, and the woodsy aroma of cypress smoke and fresh summer air was somehow comforting and enticing, all at once.
Maybe it was time to admit that Jack Cole wasn’t entirely terrible. In a purely platonic way, of course.
Because platonic friends go around sniffing each others’ laundry all the time.
Madison rolled her eyes at herself as she walked up the front steps of the Lovestruck Public Library to the sounds of church bells marking the hour as they always did, seven days a week. She’d decided to chalk the embarrassing laundry incident up to sleep deprivation. It wouldn’t be repeated, nor would she linger every so often outside Jack’s closed bedroom door and listen to the rhythmic sound of his breathing, wondering if he ever dreamed about her.
He clearly didn’t.
There was just something so unexpectedly intimate about being in a man’s home while he slept. A house says a lot about a person, and Madison loved the bookshelves in Jack’s living room, filled with cracked spines and beloved classics like Where the Red Fern Grows and Call of the Wild. She loved the fact that there were even a few books of poetry tucked in between the novels and that Jack did the Lovestruck Bee’s Sunday crossword puzzle. She knew more about him than she should have; that was all. She wasn’t developing actual feelings for him. That would just be crazy.
He’d been so nice to her when she’d tried to quit the nanny job, though. Far nicer than she’d deserved, since she’d definitely overstated her experience with babies in order to snag the position. And when he’d sat down beside her on the park bench outside the fire station a few days ago, she could have sworn he’d almost reached for her hand. Just the thought of it had caused her palm to go all tingly.
Who was she, and what had she done with the real Madison Jules?
She was supposed to be concentrating on getting out of Lovestruck and back to Manhattan, where babysitting and holding hands with firemen on quaint park benches were nowhere on her radar. Now wasn’t the time to succumb to the charms of small-town Vermont or its heroic inhabitants. Her column was gaining serious ground, and at long last, her meanie pen pal had caved and admitted she’d been right about something. Oh, glorious day.
Madison took a deep breath as she walked into the hushed interior of the library and reached into the pocket of the oversize knit sweater Alice had insisted she start wearing to her night nanny shifts. She’d tucked the latest letter from Fired Up in Lovestruck inside so she could take it out and reread it when she needed an extra shot of confidence.
The only thing that would have made his short and sweet missive any better was if Mr. Grant would have printed it in the newspaper. On the front page, preferably. In sixty-point font.
Mr. Grant couldn’t print it at all, though, because unlike his other letters, this one hadn’t been addressed to the editor. It had been written to Madison personally. She wasn’t sure what to make of that significant detail. On one hand, it was possible that Fired Up in Lovestruck was simply trying to avoid publicly admitting her column wasn’t complete and total garbage.
But at the same time, she sort of liked the intimacy of a letter addressed just to her. At least he seemed to view her as a real living, breathing person now instead of just a faceless reporter churning out a “whimsical dribble of words” on the regular.
In any case, she decided to hold on to the letter so she could refer back to it the next time she was feeling terrible about the sad state of her journalism career. Her phone hadn’t exactly been ringing off the hook with interview requests at fashion magazines, so she could certainly use a pep talk every now and then—even a pep talk that consisted of a mere four words.
Touché. You got me.
“Oh, hi!” A woman with piles of blond hair twisted into a ballerina bun peered at Madison over the tall stack of books in her arms. “You must be Madison. Alice told us you’d be coming by today to read to the children. I’m Honey, the head librarian.”
“Hello. It’s nice to meet you.” On instinct, Madison stuck out her hand.
Honey juggled her books to one arm and attempted an awkward shake. “Sorry, I’m in the middle of shelving. We’ve got about fifteen minutes until story hour, but kids are already starting to arrive and get settled.”
Madison glanced toward the children’s section of the library, where half a dozen toddlers and elementary school–aged kids were sitting cross-legged around a white rocking chair.
“Why don’t you pick out a few books to read? The picture books are all shelved along