Dax wasn’t so sure. Yet, here he was. That made him an enabler, didn’t it? But he had debts to pay off and the girls to raise and working for a petroleum company paid well. Six-figures well, which was more than double what he’d been pulling in before from research grants.
Don’t overanalyze. It’s a steady job. Just do it. But “doing it” meant he required full-time help with the twins more than ever. He rubbed the back of his neck as he scrolled down the emails in his inbox, finally spotting one from Melissa. He needed her here yesterday. He opened the email, but the knots in his neck only tightened. You’ve got to be kidding me.
“Ivy! Fern! Come in here. Now.”
The carved wood door to their room swung open and the two appeared dressed in shorts and T-shirts with their wet hair loose and half-combed out. Their eyes flitted toward his laptop and back up to him, widening just enough to look innocent.
“What’s up?”
“Nanny Number Seven quit. What do you two know about this?”
“I thought we weren’t supposed to call her that,” Fern said.
“I’m a little upset here, so I’ll call her Seven if I want to, especially since I now have to take time I don’t have to search for Eight.” He was sounding just like the twins. He squeezed his eyes shut and inhaled, long and deep.
“He’s at a 5.0,” Ivy muttered. “We’ll live.”
“Are you kidding? His neck is red. That puts him at a 6.5,” Fern countered.
Dax ignored their habit of using the Richter scale to gauge how mad he was at their shenanigans.
“It says in her email that the giant spider in her purse was the last straw.”
“It was fake. Besides, that’s such an overused prank, she should have expected it. She’s just a wimp. So much for her acting all sergeant-like. All bark and no bite. And she’s lazy—anyone who uses that as an excuse to quit doesn’t really want to work,” Ivy said.
“And you two certainly are a job.” He had no doubt the spider had only been a warm-up for the twins. A test. It didn’t come close to their somewhat scary creative capacity.
“It was harmless, Dad. We pulled it out of our Halloween supplies. We were just having fun. Fun is a necessary part of raising well-rounded, healthy, psychologically balanced children,” Fern added.
Wow. Just wow.
He closed his laptop. Three years and he still had to pause and ask himself what Sandy would do. Only lately, he kept coming up blank. She didn’t even visit in his dreams anymore...not the way she had after she’d left him and kept the girls. They had been five at the time.
Looking back, he couldn’t blame her for leaving. She’d been right. He’d been too busy chasing after his obsession to find better ways of predicting earthquakes and saving lives. He’d spent more time in tents doing field research than he had at home, protecting his family.
But he had tried to make it up to her. He’d been as present as he could possibly be after her diagnosis...but it had been too late.
He checked his watch again. He was supposed to be at the site by midmorning tomorrow to start setting up equipment, laying out geophones and cables. But now he had no nanny and there was no way he was taking the girls to the site. Too dangerous and not allowed.
He stared pointedly at each one. They looked so much like their mother all three could have been triplets, but for the generation gap. Their hair had lightened back to dark blond as it dried, and their hazel eyes sparkled with hints of gold that matched the freckles on their noses. That reminded him to pull out the sunscreen from their bags.
“Ivy. Fern. You need to think before you act. Everything you do has consequences.” Now he was sounding like his mother. He cringed. “That fake but—according to your nanny—very realistic spider caused her to scream and jolt. That caused her to spill her hot coffee all over her hand and into her purse, which resulted in both a burned hand and a fried cell phone, which I’ll be paying to replace. Nope. Correction. Which you’ll be paying to replace.”
Ha. There was an inkling of parental genius in him yet. The twins crinkled their foreheads, and the corners of their mouths sank.
“We’re really sorry,” they said simultaneously. It almost...almost...sounded rehearsed. Like synchronized swimming. Maybe he should look into signing them up for a class. Burn off some of that energy.
“Apology accepted.”
“So how do we earn the money to pay for her cell phone? We need jobs, right?” Fern asked. Always the logical one.
Jobs. He hadn’t thought that far ahead. Darn it. At their now-rented-out house in Houston, he could have had them weeding for the neighbors. But here? No way were they sticking their hands under shrubs where predators could be lurking. Not that the lodge needed any help with weeding. There were no jobs for eleven-year-olds here, not even lemonade stands or bake sales or... It hit him. That was Fern’s not-so-innocent point. No job availability. They were trying to get out of paying. Not happening. He scratched the back of his neck and stood up.
“You’ll stick to our bargain regarding your next nanny. Behave and you’ll get an allowance bonus. Consider yourselves docked for losing Melissa, so you’ll have to earn that back, too. And for now, your allowance goes to paying it off. Plus, I’ll pay a few extra bucks for keeping your room clean, beds made and bathroom wiped down.”
“Sounds fair,” Ivy said.
“Good. Now go brush out your hair and get your shoes on so we can get a bite to eat.”
The two closed their room door behind them, and Dax leaned his head back against the wall. The tribal mask hanging over his bed on the opposite side of the room scowled at him, as if it disapproved of his parenting skills. This was going to be a long day.
He started to head for his bathroom, but their whispers stopped him. He didn’t mean to eavesdrop—or maybe he did. The words he picked up required listening to. It was his parental duty.
“Doesn’t he realize?” That was Fern.
“Are you kidding? Maybe there’s an advantage to him being too busy to pay attention to us most of the time. It makes it easier to get away with things.”
“Yeah, like the fact that, technically, he’s the one paying for the broken cell phone. If you take into account that cleaning up is part of getting our allowance to begin with, then add the bonus for doing so, it covers what we were docked and then some.”
“And on top of that, we have a little freedom before he hires us a supervisor. But do you think we should get rid of the worms we put in his shaving kit before he opens it in the morning? If he docks us for that, we’ll be in the red.”
“You’re right. He hates worms about as much as Number Seven hates spiders.”
My shaving kit?
Dax gritted his teeth and eyed his toiletry bag. He’d always wanted to try the short-stubble look.
God, he needed to focus on his job, not the twins’ antics. He needed to be able to work without worrying. He’d made a lot of sacrifices to get through the past few years, but having the twins grow up away from him was where he drew the line.
He’d promised Sandy that he would stay with them. Keep them safe. Their grandparents disagreed with him moving them every time his job took him somewhere for months. They had insisted that the girls required structure and time management. As far as he was concerned, he could provide that. Sticking to a schedule wasn’t rocket science.
He just had to find a nanny who could do it.
* * *
PIPPA HARPER TUGGED against the stiff leather of her watch band and finally forced it to unbuckle. She