Baby Lessons

but the entire building and all of its contents suffered heavy smoke damage.
Jack, Wade, Brody and Cap returned to the station covered in black grit and grime. Jack shrugged out of his turnout gear, peeled his T-shirt off and scrubbed his face at the bathroom sink before collapsing into one of the bunk beds. The wakeup bell was scheduled to go off at six-thirty—barely an hour away.
He felt like he’d just closed his eyes when the bell sounded, but he got up, swigged a few cups of coffee and filled out a report on the motorcycle accident in the half hour remaining before the end of his shift. Once all the members of the B team had arrived, he waved at Wade, more than ready to head home.
It was his off-duty day, which meant he’d get to see Madison later. Finally. Three days and nights had never felt so long before. She’d disappeared after their almost-kiss in the bathroom. One minute she’d been there, and the next, he’d looked up from the twins and she was gone. He’d had no idea what to make of it.
They’d shared something in that bathroom while his daughters splashed in the tub—something intimate, something important. He didn’t want to ruin it by pressuring her into explaining why she’d slipped away. He just wanted to hold on to the memory of her face in his hands, the delicious ache that had come over him when her lips parted and the trembling softness in her voice when she’d whispered to him.
I trust you.
He could have lived on that memory until the day he died, but he’d realized something during the past three nights at the firehouse. He didn’t want to live on memories anymore. He wanted to live, period. And he definitely wanted to finish what he and Madison had started.
At least he’d managed to convince himself that she wasn’t Queen Bee. The asinine diaper article had all but settled that question. He couldn’t imagine Madison writing something so ridiculous. She might not know her way around a shaker of baby powder, but he didn’t think for a minute that she’d ever put Ella or Emma in harm’s way. If that had been the case, he never would have hired her.
That diaper bedazzling train wreck of a column had been completely irresponsible. He’d had to write another letter to the editor. It was his civic duty, plain and simple. And now Queen Bee was the very last person in Lovestruck he wanted to waste his time thinking about.
He climbed into the driver’s seat of his car—a dad van, because what else would he drive?—and checked his phone before cranking the engine. The night before had been so chaotic that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d glanced at it, and apparently, Madison had been busy blowing up his phone while he’d been putting out fires.
He had three text messages from her, two missed calls and a voice mail. Jack wasn’t sure which to investigate first. The last time she’d been so anxious to get in touch with him, she’d tried to get him to fire her, so the flurry of notifications on the screen of his iPhone felt like a bad sign.
Up and down Main Street, the sleepy town of Lovestruck was waking up. Shopkeepers were opening their doors, and the usual morning crowd at the Bean hovered around the entrance, sipping drinks and making morning chitchat. In the distance, cool blue mist clung to the base of the Appalachian Mountains, making the horizon look like a watercolor painting. Jack took a deep breath and tapped the text message icon on his screen.
There’s something I need to tell you.
That first message was enough to make him skip the rest and go straight to the voice mail. Her message wasn’t any more forthcoming, though. She just said she’d had to go out of town unexpectedly and would see him later tonight for her regularly scheduled nanny shift. She’d call if she ran into unexpected travel delays and she apologized in advance for “anything that caught him by surprise” between now and then.
Jack went still as stone in the front seat of his van. He stared down at the phone in his hands, willing it to somehow provide him with more information. The screen faded to black, mocking him.
Anything that caught him by surprise...
What did that mean, exactly? He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
He tried returning her call, but it rolled straight to voice mail, so he tucked his phone away and drove home as the sun rose high in the sky, bathing the town in the glittering morning light.
Ella and Emma were wide awake, smearing mashed bananas on the trays of their matching highchairs when Jack walked through the side door and into the kitchen. They were both so immersed in pulverizing their breakfast that they didn’t bother looking up when he entered the room. Likewise, his mom was glued to the small television he kept near the end of the kitchen counter for the occasional moments when he felt like getting caught up on world events or watching UVM football while he washed bottles or strained vegetables.
“Hello?” he said when no one seemed to notice him.
“Jack!” Sarah Cole flew across the kitchen, grabbed him by the arm and dragged him toward the television. “You got home just in time. You’re not going to believe this.”
He was dead on his feet, in no mood for perky morning programming and he could already see the garishly bright set of Good Morning Sunshine over his mom’s shoulder. But when he got a closer look at the woman sitting on the pristine white sofa next to Meghan Ashley, he suddenly understood her sense of urgency.
It was Madison, right there on national television. She’d done something to her hair. It was sleek and smooth, falling over her shoulders in a glossy curtain, but he would have known her anywhere. What he didn’t know was what she was doing on one