got her to the office. As soon as he tried to lay her down, Saige was wide-awake and wanting his attention. He dumped the toys from her diaper bag into the playpen—squishy blocks and finger puppets and board books—so that she could occupy herself while he worked. She decided to invent a new game: throw things at Daddy. Thankfully, she wasn’t strong enough to fling the books very far, but after several blocks bounced across the surface of his desk, he decided there was no point in hanging around the office when he obviously wasn’t going to get anything accomplished.
There were definite advantages to working in a family business, and since his baby wouldn’t be a baby forever, he decided to take the rest of the day off to spend with her. He took her to the indoor play center, where she could jump and climb and swing and burn off all of the energy she seemed to have in abundance. Then, when she was finally tired of all of that, he took her to “Aunt” Rachel’s shop—Buds & Blooms—to pick out some flowers, then to his parents’ house to see how Ellen had fared at the dentist.
“Ga-ma!” Saige said, flinging herself at her grandmother’s legs.
“I didn’t think I was going to get to see you today,” Ellen said, ruffling her granddaughter’s silky black hair. “And I was missing you.”
“I’m sure she missed you more,” Braden said, handing the bouquet to his mother. “She was not a happy camper at the office today.”
“Offices aren’t fun places for little ones.” Ellen brought the flowers closer to her nose and inhaled their fragrant scent. “These are beautiful—what’s the occasion?”
“No occasion—I just realized that I take for granted how much you do for me and Saige every day and wanted to show our appreciation,” he told her. “But now that I see the swelling of your jaw, I’m thinking they might be ‘get well’ flowers—what did the dentist do to you?”
“He extracted the tooth.”
“I thought it was only a chip.”
“So did I,” she admitted, lowering herself into a chair, which Saige interpreted as an invitation to crawl into her lap. “Apparently the chip caused a crack that went all the way down to the root, so they had to take it out.”
He winced instinctively.
“Now I have to decide whether I want a bridge or an implant.”
“And I’ll bet you’re wishing you had oatmeal instead of granola for breakfast,” he noted, filling a vase with water for her flowers.
“It will definitely be oatmeal tomorrow,” she said. “How was Baby Talk?”
“Fine,” he said, “aside from the fact that I was the only man in a room full of women, apparently all of whom know my life story.”
“They don’t know your whole life story,” his mother denied.
“How much do they know?”
“I might have mentioned that you’re a single father.”
“Might have mentioned?” he echoed suspiciously.
“Well, in a group of much younger women, it was immediately apparent that Saige isn’t my child. Someone—I think it was Annalise—asked if I looked after her while her mother was at work and I said no, that I looked after her while her dad’s at work because Saige doesn’t have a mother.”
“Hmm,” he said. He couldn’t fault his mother for answering the question, but he didn’t like the way she made him sound like some kind of “super dad” just because he was taking care of his daughter—especially when they both knew there was no way he’d be able to manage without Ellen’s help.
“And you’re not the only single parent with a child in the group,” she pointed out. “There are a couple of single moms there, too.”
“I met Heather,” he admitted.
“She’s a pretty girl. And a loving mother.”
“I’m not interested in a woman who’s obviously looking for a man to be a father to her child,” he warned.
“She told you that?”
“She gave me the ‘single parenthood is so much harder than most people realize’ speech.”
“Which you already know,” she pointed out.
He nodded again.
“So maybe you should think about finding a new mother for Saige,” she urged.
“Because the third time’s the charm?” he asked skeptically.
“Because a little girl needs a mother,” she said firmly. “And because you deserve to have someone in your life, too.”
“I have Saige,” he reminded her, as he always did when she started in on this particular topic. But this time the automatic response was followed by a picture of the pretty librarian forming in his mind.
“And no one doubts how much you love her,” Ellen acknowledged. “But if you do your job as a parent right—and I expect you will—she’s going to grow up and go off to live her own life one day, and then who will you have?”
“I think I’ve got a few years before I need to worry about that,” he pointed out. “And maybe by then, I’ll be ready to start dating again.”
His mother’s sigh was filled with resignation.
“By the way,” he said, in a desperate effort to shift the topic of conversation away from his blank social calendar, “Cassie said that she hopes you feel better soon.”
As soon as he mentioned the librarian’s name, a speculative gleam sparked in his mother’s eyes that warned his effort had been for naught.
“She’s such a sweet girl,” Ellen said. “Smart and beautiful, and so ideally suited for her job.”
Braden had intended to keep his mouth firmly shut, not wanting to be drawn into a discussion about Miss MacKinnon’s many attributes. But the last part of his mother’s statement piqued his curiosity. “She’s a librarian—what kind of qualifications does she need?”
His mother frowned her disapproval. “The janitor who scrubs the floors of a surgery is just as crucial as the doctor who performs the operation,” she reminded him.
“But she’s not a surgeon or a janitor,” he pointed out. “She’s a librarian.” And he didn’t think keeping a collection of books in order required any particular knowledge outside of the twenty-six letters of the alphabet.
“With a master’s degree in library studies.”
“I didn’t know there was such a discipline,” he acknowledged.
“Apparently there are a lot of things you don’t know,” she said pointedly.
He nodded an acknowledgment of the fact. “I guess, when I went into the library, I was expecting to find someone more like Miss Houlahan behind the desk.”
His mother chuckled. “Irene Houlahan’s been retired more than half a dozen years now.”
“I’m relieved to know she’s no longer terrifying young book borrowers.”
“She wasn’t terrifying,” Ellen chided. “You were only afraid of her because you lost a library book.”
“I didn’t lose it,” he denied. “I just couldn’t find it when it was due. And you made me pay the late fines out of my allowance.”
“Because you were the one who misplaced it,” she pointed out logically.
“That’s probably why I buy my books now—I’d rather pay for them up front and without guilt.”
Which didn’t begin to explain why he was now carrying a library card in his wallet—or his determination to put it to use in