Tomorrow was their first nanny interview. Three likely options, not one of them a man. Seemed like male nannies weren’t as common as Jack had hoped. Secretly he kind of liked the idea of a guy, but kept going around in circles in his head. A woman’s influence was probably best, right? But if he said that, was he just subscribing to the whole idea that a baby couldn’t be brought up by a man? Wasn’t that defeating the whole point of what he and Riley were doing?

“What’s wrong?” Riley asked from right next to him.

Jack blinked as he came back from his thoughts and realized Josh no longer stood next to him. Instead Riley was poking at steaks and turning them.

“Nothing’s wrong,” he began. “Well, not exactly.”

“You looked so lost in something I thought I’d come over and see if everything was okay.”

“This nanny thing is getting to me,” Jack admitted carefully. He and Riley saw most things eye to eye, but Riley would never understand the traitorous thoughts going through Jack’s head.

“You think we shouldn’t have a nanny? Maybe change how we work? I could get an interim manager, and Robbie could sub for you mostly.”

Jack considered Riley’s words. Was this what was eating away inside him? At the root of his worries did it make Jack and Riley less as parents just because they had help? Het couples had nannies, and he bet they never thought about whether they were doing the right thing. Well, they probably did, but maybe not for the same reasons as Jack.

“It’s the gay thing,” Jack finally said.

“There’s a gay thing?” Riley asked, bemused. “It’s a bit late to worry about being gay now.” Riley elbowed him and concentrated on flipping the steaks onto a serving plate. “Steaks ready, Mom,” he called to Sandra. Jack hadn’t heard him call Sandra Mom very often. She wasn’t like a mom in the way that Donna was, not at all mom-like in her smart dresses and pearls. She’d mellowed a little with Jim in her life, since Gerald had become a distant memory, but she still clung stubbornly to that air of genteel southern charm. Sandra collected the steaks and took them back to a wide table full of food. She was wearing heels, and God knew how she managed to not fall over in the damn things on the uneven ground.

“She’ll fall ass over head one of these days,” Jack muttered.

“Stop changing the subject,” Riley interjected. “So the gay thing?” He waited expectantly for an answer.

“So we’re a gay couple having twins, with maybe an adoption as well, and we’re looking at a female nanny, but is that because we feel our kids need a female influence? Are we conforming to the stereotype that dictates two men can’t raise kids? Then, if we got a male nanny, are we reinforcing the idea that we only think males can raise kids, and in the process are we starving our kids of female influence.”

Jack finished and turned to face Riley. His husband stood with a fork and a sausage, his mouth open and his eyes wide.

“Riley? You okay?”

“What the hell?” Riley finally said. “You’re seriously worried about female influence? With Beth and Eden and Anna and the moms?”

Said like that, Jack realized Riley was right. It wasn’t as if the twins wouldn’t have female influence, just look at Hayley. If Hayley needed a girly chat she called Eden or Beth.

“And as for the male versus female nanny? Who gives a shit what people think of what we are doing. Hell, making our own way is what got us here today.”

Jack nodded his agreement and briefly closed his eyes. The touch of Riley’s lips to his had him opening them quickly. He liked these kisses—small marks of affection that Riley gave so freely.

“I’m overthinking,” Jack summarized.

“Yep, not going to argue with you there, cowboy.”

“There’s no need to sound so smug. I’m not the one that bought eight cribs because they couldn’t decide on one.”

“If the other twin is a boy I don’t want him sleeping in among pink.”

“In case it turns him gay?” Jack deadpanned.

“Who’s turning who gay?” Josh asked from the other side of the grill.

Jack and Riley smiled at each other, and Jack felt immeasurably lighter.

“Riley is,” Jack explained as he poked at corn. “He’s making it a life mission to turn all the men on the ranch today.”

Josh raised a single eyebrow in amused disbelief.

“I have leaflets and everything,” Riley said. “You want me to get you one?”

“Ha freaking ha,” Josh said. He held out a plate for more cooked meat, and Jack speared burgers, then sausages. Riley waggled the sausage he still had on the fork.

“You know what, Josh? Once you’ve had sausage, you’ll never go back.”

* * * * *

Nanny one was too confident, nanny two was too shy, nanny three was a stunning skinny blonde with the IQ of a potato. The meetings each lasted ten minutes. Jack had made his mind up as soon as each woman walked into the room. The interviews were held at the nanny agency itself, and clearly each nanny that walked in the room considered herself perfect for the role. The skinny blonde spent a long time fiddling with her phone as the interview came to a close. She had it in her lap and turned it over and over, only stopping when she answered a question.

Riley used the escape word he and Jack had pre-agreed on to wrap up the interview, and with a final click and push of buttons the blonde left. When it was just him and Riley in the room, Jack leaned back in the seat with a loud sigh.

“Are we being too picky?”

“None of them were right, but we’ve only just started. We’ve seen three. There must be thousands of qualified nannies in Dallas, let alone Texas.”

“I thought we’d paid money for the nannies to be matched to us? That last one, what was that about with the phone?”

Riley shrugged. “She was young, attached to the cell, I guess. We can mention it to the people in charge, but I definitely don’t want to be leaving our children with someone who kept looking at her cell in a freaking interview.”

They left the office and made their way to the reception area. Greer and Lane Nannies was a big company specializing in placing the right nanny with the right rich and famous family, or so their literature suggested in big red writing. Ms Lane, in her early sixties with a solid, sprayed-within-an-inch-of-its-life cap of bottle-auburn hair looked up at them as they approached her wide desk.

“What did we think?” she asked in a soft, whispery voice.

Jack opened his mouth to speak, but Riley was in there before he could make excuses as to why none of them were right.

“The first was too confident and told us how she would do things. We weren’t impressed. The second was way too shy. We live on a ranch and mostly in chaos and she’d run home after day one. As for the third girl? You need to seriously check your vetting procedures. She had a cell in her lap and appeared more interested in what car I drove than in the children. I thought this was a professional agency?”

Jack listened as Riley spoke. Whereas he would have ma’am’ed his way out of this, Riley with his years as a Hayes appeared to have no compunction to hold back. Ms Lane tightened her grip on the pen in her hand so hard Jack thought it might snap in two.

Finally she spoke. Precise and still very quiet. Creepily quiet. “I can assure you, Mr Hayes, that every potential nanny is vetted, and only those suitable for your… lifestyle… were considered.”

“Campbell-Hayes,” Riley corrected firmly. “And am I right in reading into your previous statement that you are suggesting we have a lifestyle that is out of the norm?”

Jack looked at Riley, then back at Ms Lane’s face. It was a picture to behold. Her silver eyes glittered with shock at how Riley was talking to her, and twin flags of scarlet colored her cheeks. Evidently she was biting back a hell of a lot of things she wanted to say.