Page 36 of Legacy

“Me or Teagan?” I asked.

“Either one. His parents are out of town on a well-deserved vacation, and his sitter decided to go on a tour with one of her favorite bands. Meaning Thatcher’s going to need another nanny.”

“Yeah, I can help. And I’ll help find a nanny too. I know Thatcher’s been working his ass off trying to make sure that the kids have steady people in their lives, but I can’t believe the way that his recent nannies have been behaving.”

“Like the one that hit on him?” I asked, rolling my eyes. “She was like twenty.”

“The age gap really wasn’t the problem since the person was an adult. It was the fact that she wouldn’t take no for an answer and wasn’t even taking care of the kids.” Rune shook his head. “Honestly, I think he and Kellan should just pool their houses together and get somebody that can watch all six kids.”

“I don’t know if I would say having one person to watch two middle schoolers and four teenagers is a good idea,” I said with a laugh. Although I couldn’t help but wonder if Rune had been serious about the whole age gap thing. No, I wasn’t going to think about that. I couldn’t.

“Honestly, the two should work together.”

I nodded at Teagan’s words. “They used to when the kids were younger. But with all of the different activities that teenagers have these days, it’s kind of hard to make it work, especially when you’re the town doctor and the fire captain. It’s not like you have decent hours.”

“We’ll help out. All of us. But I’m just glad that Promise and Finnian figured out childcare for their girls.”

My younger brother, Finnian, had four-year-old twins with Promise. Though the two weren’t together anymore, they had a great co-parenting plan. They even lived next door to each other to ensure that the girls could feel like they were home and not shuffled around. Between Promise’s parents and all of the Ashford siblings, we made sure those kids were taken care of.

“Okay, here’s the beer that you need, and how about at dinner tonight Teagan and I will try to work up a flow chart or spreadsheet or something for all of our friends with kids? That way, we can figure out childcare.”

“You’re a good man, Callum Ashford,” Rune said with a smile, and I did not want to correct him.

I wasn’t a good man. I couldn’t be a good man.

If my friends and family needed me, I was there.

But I was keeping secrets. Secrets that would probably ruin my friendship with the man in front of me.

So I would do what I could to help the others, but honestly, there was no helping myself.

Chapter 5

Felicity

So, were there no available apartments in Ashford Creek? It didn’t make any sense that every single place to live would be full at this point. There had to be people moving out or new buildings being put in. Yes, the town wasn’t that big, but it wasn’t a postage stamp in the mountains.

I rubbed my temples, annoyed with myself for continuing to get my hopes up.

Not only had the last apartment I had looked at been a bust, but the first date I had gone on with a tourist on a dating app had walked into the bakery, taken one look at me, laughed, and walked right out.

I really should have been slightly offended at that, but at that point, I didn’t have the energy. I was too busy trying to run out of the place before Fiona came out from the back and noticed. It was only some luck that she hadn’t been out front when I had been sitting in my little seat, waiting for this stranger to show up. Of course, she had video cameras all over the place and probably rewatched it in glee, waiting for the perfect moment to jump out of the shadows and terrorize me with it.

I’d gone from a wonderful day at work, a fantastic lunch with my parents, to an apartment filled with cockroaches, trash, and some form of white substance I never wanted to think about again. I’d known that it was going to take forever for me to find a place. I just hadn’t realized it would be so fraught with ridiculousness. All I wanted was to cement myself in town, grow roots, and maybe, just maybe, move on. It was just hard to do that when everything felt as if it were pushing against me.

Maybe I was being slightly dramatic, but my date had laughed at me.

“Doing okay, Felicity?” I looked up at Gregory Teller and smiled. He leaned against the doorway, his white hair fluffy since he needed a haircut, and the lines around his eyes and mouth deepened as he smiled at me.

“Just frustrated. I can’t find a place to live.”

“I’m sure your parents would love to have you stay with them. After all, you don’t need to quit having a multi-generational home just because you’ve grown up.”

“That is very true. But I’d like to try this part of my own independence. It’s just finding something in my budget and available in town is oddly difficult.”

“The town council is very particular about what buildings are allowed to be built on town grounds. So, it does limit the full population potential. Not to mention all the short-term rental properties out there for tourists. It’s ruining the housing market.”

“Don’t even get me started. Don’t even get my mother started. She could probably stand on that chair right over there and have an entire speech ready for you. She hates short-term rentals. It ruins neighborhoods.”