Page 26 of The Grump I Got Stuck With

Madison’s eyebrows rose dramatically. “A month! Are you kidding me?”

“Nannies aren’t just falling out of the sky, especially way out here. I need more than a couple days to find the right person to help me with Kenna. By the time that whole process plays out, it’ll be weeks.” She made a disgruntled groan. “For every week you stay,” I said before she could flat-out refuse. “I’ll pay you a bonus.”

“I can’t stay here for a month!”

“Why not?”

“I have places to go!”

This again? “You’re out here doing the tourist thing, right?”

“Not exactly, but go ahead.”

“So I’ll throw in perks on top of the salary. I founded Voyages. That means I have a ton of connections. I can get you VIP travel experiences all across the country. You want a luxury train trip through the Highlands? Or a stay in Glenapp Castle with private boat trips to see seals and dolphins? Or a private charter around the Isle of Skye? Just tell me where you’re going, and I’ll make it happen.”

“It’s not just a tourist thing,” Madison huffed. She got to her feet, hands on her hips.

“Then what is it?” I asked. What was she really doing here, and how did I get her to stay longer?

She sighed heavily, the puff of air ruffling her blonde bangs. “This isn’t some aimless trek around Scotland,” she said. “This is personal for me.” She glanced at the crackling fire. I could tell she was mulling something over. Something she wasn’t necessarily sure she wanted to share. She caught my eyes again and I knew she wasn’t going to say more.

Could I live with that? I thought about putting my trust in her with my daughter. Under normal circumstances, I would run an extensive background check on her. While I could and would still do that, I wanted to hear why she was here from her. What drew her to Braeburn and sent her crawling through the doggy door besides the weather?

I rubbed the back of my head, different decisions warring in my mind. I needed to do right by my daughter, and Kenna and Madison already had a strong connection. And I would be here with them. A background check would rule out any known criminal activity. Mostly.

“Eventually, I’ll want to hear the actual story,” I warned, watching her face.

She gave me a curt nod. “Eventually,” she repeated.

Fuck it. “You agree to nanny for a month and, if I can, I will help with whatever it is you are doing here. Deal?”

“Deal,” she said in return, and I grinned, relieved that at least Kenna’s care was sorted.

“Welcome to Dunhope, Maddy Poppins.” At her grimace, I couldn’t resist chuckling. “Too much?”

“Way too much.”

9

MADISON

As it turned out, sometimes setting aside your dignity and crawling through a doggy door was worth it. Would I have said that when I’d first arrived to find grumpy Alistair in the kitchen? Hell no. But about a week into this nanny gig, I had to admit that having free run of a literal castle was pretty epic.

Kenna and I made good use of the space, playing hide and seek among the various sitting rooms and racing Princess up and down long, echoing corridors. I’d expected him to haunt the halls, spying on us—me—but he’d been surprisingly absent when he was working except when he went in search of food or more tea. I wasn’t sure if that meant he trusted me with his daughter or if he had hidden cameras all over the place. I was ninety-six percent sure he didn’t. Have cameras, that is. Otherwise, some of our games would’ve brought him out of his office with questions.

I probably owed him more of an explanation as to why I was in Scotland, but at the time, I’d felt as if I was laying my whole life out for him to scrutinize, and while I was prone to overshare, for some reason, I didn’t that time.

Of course, if Florence, Alistair’s housekeeper, had been here, I’d have caved the moment the woman set one of her sweet treats in front of me—her Scottish macaroons had my whole heart.

“Hey, Ken?” I called, shifting through the gift bags to put away the presents that had been relocated to her playroom in the days since Christmas. I removed a handful of red wrapping paper, my face lighting up as I found a small jewelry-making kit. Heck yeah! I adored making jewelry, and I bet Kenna would too. It was basically a little girl rite of passage. “What do you think about this?”

Kenna looked up from her toy kitchen, tiny wooden spoon in hand. “Santa got it for me.”

“I know,” I said. Santa had gotten her everything. Alistair had clearly gone a bit overboard, buying anything and everything that looked like a good present for a four-year-old girl. It made sense, after the year they’d had and the upheaval of the move, that he would pull out all the stops to make her happy. And to be fair, she was. Some gifts, like her toy kitchen, she’d taken to right away. Others, like the jewelry kit, had gotten pushed aside. “Wouldn’t it be fun to play with this?” I prompted.

Kenna’s little lips pursed as she considered it. “I don’t know how.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “Because I am a jewelry-making expert. And I’ll teach you everything I know. You can be my apprentice.”