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Colt approached Sadie and also kneeled down in front of her. “Nope.”
Sadie tilted her head. “What is nope?”
“It’s a nice English way of saying no,” Anna explained.
“Oh,” Sadie said. “Nope,” she repeated, trying out the word. “Nope. Nope, I won’t ever take anything that doesn’t belong to me.”
The agent smiled. “You promised and that’s good enough for me. But I do have to bring Sparkles back to his rightful owner. He’s a little girl’s Christmas present.”
“Sparkles?” Sadie wiped her tears away and smiled. “That’s a good name.”
“So is Sadie,” he said, standing up. He turned to Anna. “And your name is Cousin?”
Anna smiled. “No. It’s Anna. Anna Miller. The word for cousin is a bit difficult to pronounce in Pennsylvania Dutch, so Sadie has always called me cousin. Our community is English-speaking, but we always use certain Pennsylvania-Dutch words. The language evolved from German settlers to colonial Pennsylvania, and Amish communities across the country use it. For Mother and Father—Mamm and Daed—for example. Gut for good. Ja for yes.” Why was she rambling? Because the man was so close and so good-looking and green-eyed that her stomach was fluttering. When was the last time a man’s presence had made her feel anything? Maybe never.
Sadie handed over Sparkles’s cage to the agent. “He sure is cute.”
“Ja,” Colt said, and both Sadie and Anna burst into grins. “He is. Looks like you took care of him.”
“I’m really sorry,” Sadie said again, then threw her arms around Anna for a few seconds and fled.
The agent watched her run off, then turned back to Anna. “Sometimes, all’s well that ends well.”
Anna smiled. “Shakespeare. I recently read that play.”
The sunlight streaming in the open doors of the barn lit the agent’s lush dark hair and his forearms, which were strong and muscular. She could stare at him all day. There was a slight cleft in his chin. “So you’re Sadie’s cousin but you’re not Amish?” he asked.
“I am Amish.”
He looked confused, and she realized she was in her barn clothes instead of the usual long dress and head covering. “These are my daed’s old overalls. I wear them when I’m caring for the calves or painting furniture that our community makes to sell at market in Grass Creek.”
“Ah, now I understand. My line of work doesn’t bring me into contact with the Amish so I don’t know all that much about your culture. I suppose I’m just used to seeing Amish women in long dresses and bonnets.”
For a moment, they stared at each other. Anna couldn’t take her eyes off the man, and granted, she had earned the unfortunate nickname of Fanciful Anna, but he seemed unable to look away from her, as well. While wearing coveralls and a baseball cap and smelling like the barn? She almost laughed. Fanciful Anna, indeed.
“Agent Asher, I’m sorry that your time was taken up by this. And I appreciate your kindness to my cousin. I think she was overcome with desire to have something from the English world. Not that I’m excusing her behavior. But I do try to understand Sadie so that I can better guide her.”
“Colt,” he said. “Well, the moment I return Sparkles, I’m on vacation, so no worries about my time.”
“Vacation,” she repeated, hearing the wistfulness in her own voice. “Are you going somewhere special?”
“I haven’t decided. I have two weeks off, so the first ten days or so I plan to spend somewhere amazing, like Rome or Machu Picchu or a Hawaiian island.”
She sighed. “I would love to eat pasta in Rome.” She imagined herself tossing coins in the Trevi Fountain. Seeing the Colosseum with her own eyes.
He smiled. “Vacation coming up?”
She shook her head. “The Amish don’t vacation. It’s not our way to spend money on such things. Sunday is our day of rest and that’s plenty.” She turned to the acres of farmland, which always made her feel connected to the world. Usually. “I’ve never been beyond Grass Creek...well, except for the hospital in Houston. I’ve read about all the places you’ve mentioned, though. Must be hard to come back home from such special destinations.”
“Well, wherever I go, I am actually looking forward to returning to Texas since I’ll be spending a few days visiting with my twin brother and his family. I was adopted as a baby and just discovered he existed a few months ago. I’m still grappling with it a bit, to be honest.”
Anna gasped. “I have a cousin I didn’t know existed until a few months ago. She was shunned before I was born and she fled the community. She was only seventeen.”
“Shunned?” Colt said. “What did she do?”
Anna shrugged. “No one will talk about it. But it’s not hard to break the rules of our community. It makes me very sad to think about, though. I wonder if she misses us. She must.”
“I’m sure she does,” he said. “I met my twin brother, just briefly, for the first time back in May. Turns out he didn’t know about my existence until recently, either. I’ve thought about him so much these past few months. I can’t imagine your cousin doesn’t miss all of you like crazy. And she never even got to meet you.”
Lately, Anna often thought about her cousin Mara. Her aunt and uncle never talked about their niece, but Anna had found some of her things while helping to clear out Kate and Eli’s attic, and her aenti had finally told Anna about Mara.
“Is your twin brother your only sibling?” she asked to change the subject. She didn’t want to talk about herself. She would much prefer to learn more about Colt Asher.
“I have a sister. She was also adopted by my parents. She’s married with twin boys herself. They’re seven months old now. Very cute.” He gestured at her painting area in the back corner of the barn. “I see you’re painting a cradle. I bought my sister cribs from the Amish market in Grass Creek.”
She smiled. “I might have done the finishing. I love working on baby furniture. I have a special weakness for infants. The past couple of months I’ve been helping to care for the Sanderson triplets. Their parents have three young ones and now three babies.”
“Must be a noisy house. It’s quiet here,” he said, glancing around. From his expression, she could see that he appreciated the quiet and the land. The Amish community stretched for miles in this rural area, and Anna could barely see the roof of her aenti and onkel’s house in the near distance. Sometimes she loved the solitude, when it was just her and her thoughts and her books. But other times, she yearned for conversations like this one, where she’d hear things she’d only read about.
“Ja. I live alone. My parents are gone. It’s just me now. Do you live in Grass Creek?” She wanted to know everything about him. A glance at his left hand told her he wasn’t married. She wondered if he had a girlfriend. Or a fiancée. Sex before marriage was forbidden in her community, but it wasn’t in his world. Her thoughts traveled in a direction that made her toes tingle and her cheeks flame. His hard chest, flat stomach and muscles were obvious through the shirt he wore.
“Next door, in Houston,” he said, reminding her that she’d asked a question and shouldn’t be ogling the man. “In a skyscraper condo on the thirty-second floor.”
She sighed again, this time inwardly. He lived in the sky and chased bad guys for a living. He was unlike anyone she knew. Anyone she’d ever know...here. But he was like her, too. He had close family he didn’t know—his twin brother. Just like she had close family she didn’t know, her cousin Mara. She wished she could talk to him more about that, over coffee. But she couldn’t exactly invite the man inside her home. His car had been parked by her barn long enough that someone must have spotted it. She had no doubt they were being watched by the curious and the worried.
Ignore them, she told herself. This gorgeous specimen of a man is here, right now, so talk to him while you can.
“The thirty-second floor,” she said, imagining being in a building that high up, looking out on the lights of a city like Houston. “That sounds wonderful. I’ve always dreamed of seeing the world outside this village, outside of Grass Creek. My aunt, Sadie’s mother, thinks I should take my long-put-off rumspringa—experience life as an Englisher—so I can commit or not to the faith.”
“Why don’t you?” he asked.
Before she could respond, one of the calves mooed and she realized she still had one more calf to feed. She could stand here and talk to the agent all day. Stare at the agent all day. But why prolong this? He would leave any minute now and she would never see him again unless she happened to cross his path at the Amish market. Fanciful Anna needed to be realistic, as her aenti and onkel always said. “I’d better feed the little guy or he’ll come charging. Which is good—he’s in perfect health now and ready to go home.”
The agent nodded—and held her gaze a beat longer than the usual. She wasn’t imagining his attraction to her, coveralls and paint stains and calf poop and all. This interaction with the agent would sustain her a good long time. No matter how unsettled she might be feeling about her life and what she wanted, her thoughts were her own and now they’d be filled with this man.
“And I’d better get Sparkles back,” he said. “Thank you again for your help. You handled the situation very kindly.”
Neither of them moved.
She glanced at Sparkles in his cage. Brought together by a black-and-white guinea pig, she thought with a smile. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to cover the cage from prying eyes.”
He nodded and she found a large cloth. “Merry Christmas, sweet Sparkles,” she said to the critter, then covered the cage. He took it in his right hand, gave her something of a smile and then held the cage in front of him as he walked to his car. She stood in the doorway of the barn, watching him go. Wishing he could stay. He quickly put the cage in the back, then glanced toward her and held up a hand.
She held up hers. Then he got inside and drove back up the dirt road, leaving her strangely bereft.
Any moment now, her entire village would descend on her, curious about what the Englisher wanted with them. She would say it had to do with a missing pet and she’d explain that none of the villagers was missing a pet. Not the truth, exactly, but not a lie.
She watched the agent’s car disappear up the long drive, then she closed her eyes to commit everything about him to memory.
* * *
After dropping off Sparkles with the boss’s relieved wife, Colt was officially on vacation. The muscles in his shoulders relaxed just a bit. He stood in front of the world map in his living room and tried to settle on a destination. Europe? Asia? Stick closer to home? Someplace warm like the Florida Keys, maybe.
He couldn’t decide because he was distracted. And not by the last case or the deceitful woman who’d managed to con him.
But by Anna Miller. The Amish woman. Her inquisitive pale brown eyes and pink-red lips, which were unadorned. The long blond braid that fell down past her shoulders almost to her waist. Her curiosity. The way she’d listened so intently.
His intercom system buzzed, jarring him out of his thoughts. His doorman informed him his sister and her husband were on their way up. That was weird. Cathy and Chris lived just a few miles away and weren’t the “stop by” kind of people. The parents of seven-month-old twins, they were regimented to a fault—they planned, made lists and scheduled their lives around sleep times.
The doorbell rang and he opened the door; his sister wheeled in the twins in their double stroller, while her husband carried a small suitcase and a huge tote bag. The two of them looked harried. Thirty-year-old Cathy seemed on the verge of tears, and Chris looked exhausted, like he’d been up all night with babies. Probably had been.
“Remember when we spoke this morning, you mentioned you hadn’t picked a vacation destination yet and had no tickets booked anywhere?” Cathy asked, a small glob of what looked and smelled like peach puree on her shoulder.
He narrowed his eyes at her. “I remember.”
“Our nanny just canceled on us!” Cathy said, tears glistening in her eyes. “She had the dates of our cruise wrong and now she can’t watch the twins for the week. She’s wonderful—not just a neighbor we’ve known for years, but a loving, fun grandmother with so much experience.”
Oh, God. He was beginning to see where this was going.
“We haven’t been away from the boys in seven months,” Cathy said. “The cruise is our Christmas present to each other and we board in three hours. We’ll have to cancel unless...”
He stared at Cathy. He stared at Chris.
No. No, no. This couldn’t be happening. He loved his nephews, but his experience at babysitting had been limited to an hour here and there while visiting so his sister could get some treadmill time or watch a TV show and his brother-in-law could tinker with his car. Watching the twins in their family room, all baby-proofed and set up with foam pads and crawling areas and toys, when their parents were screaming distance away, was a piece of cake.
But Cathy was asking him to babysit two seven-month-olds for an entire week.
It was almost funny.
“Pleeeease,” Cathy begged.
“Please. God, please,” his brother-in-law added.
Colt’s stomach twisted. He glanced at Noah on the left side of the stroller. The very cute tyke was chewing some kind of cloth-like book with pictures of monkeys. Nathaniel, equally adorable on the right, was picking up what looked like Cheerios from the tray table and examining them. He flung one and giggled.
Cathy stepped in front of the stroller, blocking them and their criminal ways. “It’s just seven days, Colt. You’ll still have a solid week left of your vacation to recuperate.”
Just seven days. Just seven days?
“Merry Christmas?” his sister said, pleading with her eyes. He had a mental montage of all the times his sister had been there for him from the time they were little. She and her husband needed a break, he had the time and so that was that.
“Merry Christmas,” Colt said on a sigh.
The relief on his brother-in-law’s face almost made Colt smile. Chris dropped the suitcase and tote on the floor near the stroller and gave his shoulder a good rotation.
“We left the car seats in the lobby with the doorman,” Cathy said. “And everything else you need is in there,” she added, pointing to the bags. “Plus their schedule and all the pertinent information. They’re fed, changed and ready for a nap, so at least your vacation will start sort of restfully.” She spent a good five minutes going over what to do in an emergency, which was also detailed in a list in the tote bag. Finally, she threw her arms around him. “I owe you,” she added, then she and Chris booked out before Colt could even say “bon voyage.”
“Well, guys,” Colt said to the twins, one still chewing his book, one now alternating between eating his Cheerios and throwing them. “It’s just the three of us. For a week.”
He could handle this. He was thirty-two years old. He was an FBI agent with ten years’ experience under his belt. He’d taken down ruthless criminals. He’d found a missing guinea pig in record time. He could take care of two cute babies, his own nephews, for a week.
Noah, older by one and a half minutes, started fussing, his face crumbling into a combination of discomfort and rage. Uh-oh. He flung his little book and started wiggling his arms. Colt unbuckled his harness and took him out of the stroller, praying the tyke would smell like his usual baby shampoo and baby lotion, and not like a baby who needed to be changed.
He hoisted Noah in his arms and the baby squeezed his chin. “Good grip, kid,” he said, trying to sound soothing, the way his brother-in-law always did. He bounced Noah a bit and the baby seemed to like that. He visited his nephews once a month or so, dropping by with little gifts, but never stayed very long. He really had no idea how to take care of a baby, let alone two, but he could follow directions.
He carefully kneeled down with Noah in one arm to open the tote bag. He saw bottles and formula and diapers and ointment and pacifiers and teething toys and little stuffed animals. In the suitcase was clothing and blankets. He found the schedule, which was a mile long. Lots of baby lingo. This wasn’t going to be easy.
He pulled out his phone and called his sister. “Cathy, I’ve got the schedule in my hand. Are you sure I can do this?”
“Absolutely,” his sister said with conviction. “Don’t worry, Colt. If you’re confused, just remember that they’ll tell you what they need.”
“Um, Cathy? They don’t talk.”
“Yes, but they cry. And if they cry, they’re either hungry, need changing, are tired, want their lovies, want their pacifiers or want to be picked up. Or they want to crawl.”
“And how do I know what cry means what?” Colt asked, eyeing the baby in his arms. Noah was now examining Colt’s ear, giving the lobe little tugs.
“Trial and error. In a few hours, you’ll just know. Oooh, Colt, we’re at the ship! ’Bye now!”
Noah’s fascination with his uncle’s ear stopped suddenly. He began fussing and wiggling. His face crumpled. Then the wailing started. Man, that was a loud sound from such a tiny child. A sniff in the direction of the baby’s padded bottom told Colt he didn’t need changing. His sister had said they were fed right before they’d left home. He tried bouncing him a little, but that made the little guy fuss harder. He was stretching out his little arms. Should he set him down to crawl? On the hardwood floor?
Suddenly, an earsplitting shriek came from the stroller. Nathaniel was holding up his arms, his little face angry.
Well, he couldn’t pick up Nathaniel with Noah in his arms. He put Noah back in the stroller and reclined the seat, then handed Noah a pacifier. The baby immediately settled down, his big blue eyes getting droopy. Success! Except that his brother’s cries were going to keep him from his nap. Colt quickly took Nathaniel out of the stroller, bounced him against his chest for a few minutes until the baby quieted, then settled him back in the stroller, reclined the seat, popped a pacifier in his mouth and his eyes began drifting shut, too. He remembered from a visit to his sister’s house that the boys liked falling asleep to their lullaby player, so he poked around the tote until he found it and hung it on the stroller, Brahms’s Lullaby playing softy.
The knots were back in Colt’s shoulders. He’d handled this okay, but what about when they woke up and both needed changing. Feeding. Burping. And all that other baby stuff. How would he know what to do and when? He could hire a nanny, a baby nurse, to help out for the week. He sat down at his desk in front of his laptop and typed “nanny services” into the search engine and a bunch popped up. After calling several he learned that no one had anyone available on such short notice and especially so close to Christmas. One service had a trainee available with no experience, but that was Colt himself, so little good that would do.
He was going to need help. Suddenly, the Amish woman’s pretty face popped into his mind again. Hadn’t she said she loved babies? Hadn’t she been helping to take care of infant triplets for the past two months? Add to that the way she’d been so kind to her little cousin when that could have turned out very differently for the girl. And the way Anna had listened to him talk about his life, as though it was the most exciting thing she’d ever heard, though it probably was.
The way she dreamed of experiencing life outside her village. Perhaps being his nanny could be her...what had she called it? Rumspringa. She’d get to live as an “Englisher.” He’d get a homespun nanny.
He grabbed his phone and then realized he didn’t have a telephone number for her, and he was pretty sure the Amish didn’t have telephones in their homes. Which meant a drive back to the Amish village.
Now he just had to manage to get Noah and Nathaniel in their car seats without waking them up. The odds were not in his favor.
Chapter Three
Just over two hours after her conversation with Colt Asher, Anna still could not stop thinking about him—his handsome face, the thick, silky dark hair, his green eyes, the slight cleft in his chin and how tall and fit he was. She and her aenti, onkel and young cousin were in the barn, Kate and Sadie wrapping the painted furniture that Anna and Eli were loading into the pony wagon parked outside. Thinking of the FBI agent in his condo in the sky made the chore of lugging furniture much more enjoyable.
As Anna and her onkel carried the bureau, a black SUV came down the long dirt drive into their village.
Colt was back. Goose bumps rose on every bit of her body at the idea of seeing him again.
But why was he here? Was there a problem with the guinea pig? Had he changed his mind about Sadie’s lack of punishment? A flash of fear crawled inside her.
“Is he the same Englisher who was here earlier?” her onkel asked as they finished loading the bureau into the wagon.
“Ja,” she said, spotting his unforgettable face through the windshield. “I wonder what he wants.”
As the FBI agent parked, her aenti and cousin emerged from the barn, Sadie wide-eyed.
Colt got out of his car, the engine still running, the windows lowered halfway. “Anna, I was hoping to speak to you.”
“About?” her onkel asked, stepping forward. “I’m Eli Miller, Anna’s uncle.”
To the Amish, men were heads of the household, but this was Anna’s house and she ran her own life. Something her onkel didn’t forget but ignored. Still, she wouldn’t show disrespect to Eli in front of a stranger. But later, she would let him know she would speak for and answer for herself.
“A job offer,” Colt said, his gaze on Anna.
While Anna stared at him, she could see out of the corner of her eye that her cousin and aenti were looking at each other with wide eyes.
“A job offer? What do you mean?” Anna asked, stepping forward next to her onkel.
“If you come over to my car, you’ll see,” Colt said, gesturing all of them over to the black SUV.
They all looked at one another, then followed him to the car.
Anna peered in. The front seats were empty. In the back were two car seats, rear-facing. She moved to the back of the car so she could look at the babies. They were about six months old, she’d say, and not identical but did look a lot alike. Both had wispy dark hair and big cheeks. Both were also fast asleep, with little stuffed animals on their laps. One baby had his toy clutched in his tiny fist.
Colt was married? A father? Had she been fantasizing about a married man? He didn’t wear a wedding ring, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t married. Disappointment and shame hit her hard in the stomach.
“Your children are beautiful,” Anna said, forcing herself not to sound disappointed.
He smiled and shook his head. “They’re not mine. Noah and Nathaniel are my nephews. My sister and her husband were scheduled to leave for a cruise today but their nanny had the dates wrong and couldn’t watch the twins. That leaves me as the babysitter.”
All four Millers gawked at him. “You’re the babysitter?” Sadie said with a grin.
“I am. But I could use some help. I would like to hire you, Anna, to be the twins’ nanny for the seven days.”
Anna was so gobsmacked she could hardly think, let alone speak.
“Not in your home,” Onkel Eli said to Colt, lifting his chin.
Her aenti nodded. “That would not be proper.”
“Not in my home,” Colt said. “Now that I’m on baby duty, my plan is to visit my twin brother and his wife, who have a newborn. They live in Blue Gulch, a few hours’ drive from here. I would book two rooms at an inn downtown, one for me and one for Anna. I will pay her well for her time and expertise.”
Onkel Eli was frowning. Aenti Kate was thinking—Anna could tell. Sadie’s eyes were as big as saucers.
“I accept your offer,” Anna said. She wouldn’t think about it. She wouldn’t ask her aenti and onkel for their opinions. She was being offered a very good way to have her rumspringa, years late, and she would take it.