Gosh, she was hopeless.
“Might I make a suggestion?” Mr. Grant said.
Please do. Madison nodded.
“Spend some time with real kids.” He waved a hand toward the window in his office overlooking Main Street as if some kind of toddler parade was taking place outside. “Honestly, it’s the best thing you could possibly do.”
She opened her mouth and then closed it again.
This wasn’t the sort of advice she’d anticipated. She’d expected a list of possible column topics or maybe some actual editorial guidance. But no, her boss wanted her to babysit.
“Trust me. Do it, and your column will practically write itself.” He glanced down at the letter and then back at her, and his expression hardened into a tight smile. “I hate to say this, but your job just might depend on it.”
One of the things Jack liked best about being a fireman was the sense of camaraderie among the firefighters. A station was often referred to as a firehouse for a reason—the men and women who worked there functioned as a unit. They worked together, they exercised together, they ate together. Heck, they even slept together in one big dormitory-style bedroom outfitted with bunk beds.
They had rules, like no cell phones or tablets during mealtime. They binge-watched the same shows from the double rows of recliners facing the giant flat screen in the station’s community living room. They went on grocery runs together and kept a chores chart outlining who was responsible for meal prep and cleanup during shifts.
The twelve firefighters who operated out of Lovestruck’s sole station were a true band of brothers. They worked in teams—A, B or C—with each team pulling a twenty-four-hour shift, followed by forty-eight hours off duty. Jack was on the C team, as was his friend Wade and the other two firefighters who’d responded to the hair-related emergency out at the barn on the outskirts of town yesterday morning. The four men had been working the C shift together for years, so yeah, they were basically family.
It also meant they felt perfectly comfortable commenting on Jack’s personal life at any given time. Ah, the joys of family.
Jack cracked eggs into a mixing bowl while Wade, Brody and Jason, whom they only ever called Cap—short for Captain—discussed his chaotic home life as if he wasn’t even present. As usual, they all had a few choice words to say about Natalie. Jack did his best to tune them out and concentrate on the swirl of yellow egg yolks in the bowl, even though he’d made breakfast casserole so many times that he could have probably done it in his sleep.
Natalie was gone, and she wasn’t coming back. The signed divorce papers that had arrived on his doorstep on the very day the twins had turned two months old were a pretty firm indication that his marriage was over. What was there left to say on the matter?
“Enough about Natalie. It’s time for Jack to move on,” Wade said. “I keep telling him that, but he won’t listen.”
“I hear you loud and clear,” Jack muttered, tossing a few handfuls of ground sausage into his batter. “I just disagree. Vehemently.”
He’d already had to delete the dating app from his phone that the guys had installed during one of Jack’s many impromptu naps. Twice. When were they going to take the hint?
“Look, we know you’re stretched for time. But maybe if you had some sort of semblance of a personal life, you’d be more pleasant to be around.” Cap unfolded the firehouse’s copy of the Lovestruck Bee, snagging the sports page before anyone else had a chance to claim it.
Okay, then. Wade wasn’t the only one who thought Jack was a jerk. His boss agreed. Note taken.
Jack stirred the egg mixture with a little too much force. “I have a life, thank you very much.”
If anything, he had too much life. Too much responsibility. Not that he didn’t love his twins. Jack’s love for his girls ran deep—so deep it almost scared him sometimes. He couldn’t imagine life without them. All he needed was a few uninterrupted nights’ sleep and he’d be right as rain.
At work, what little sleep he got was interrupted by emergency calls, and at home...well, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept for more than two consecutive hours in his own bed. Surely, the twins would start sleeping through the night soon. He hoped so, anyway. A man could dream.
Dream.
He blinked, suddenly remembering the strange dreams that kept him tossing and turning the night before. So vivid, so real...and all of them centered around the woman from the call at the barn the day before—all polka dots, wild hair and big doe eyes.
He frowned and shoved his casserole into the oven.
“Whoa.” Brody rattled the front-page section of the Bee in his hands. “That nut job who keeps complaining about the parenting column wrote another letter to the editor, and this one’s a doozy.”
“Speaking of people who need to get a life.” Wade rolled his eyes.
Sweat broke out on the back of Jack’s neck. Nut job, here. Present and accounted for. “Who wants orange juice?”
He didn’t wait for an answer, sloshing OJ into four glasses and plonking them down on the table purely in an attempt to avoid this next conversational land mine.
Was he proud of his latest missive? No, he was not. He’d gone too far when he’d called for the columnist’s resignation. He wasn’t out to get anyone fired, but come on. Parents didn’t need to know what babies to follow on Instagram. They needed to know how to sleep train their six-month-old twins.
Hypothetically speaking, of course.
It’s not hypothetical at all. The guys are right. You’re losing it, my friend.
“The reporter’s angry little pen pal says she should quit.” Brody let out a whistle as he finished reading the letter to the editor, then passed it around the table for the others to peruse at their leisure.
Super.
“Did she?” Jack asked, shifting his weight from one foot to the
