The month of January is all about character interviews. Today, I’m firing questions at Emma from award-winning and USA Today bestselling author Dani Collins’ latest release Marrying the Nanny, book one in the Raven’s Cove series, a contemporary romance.
****
1. First off, tell us who you are and what role you play in the novel.
Emma: Hi, I’m Emma Wright. I’m 25. I grew up in New Zealand and married my brother’s best friend. Our parents were also friends from the yacht club. Everyone thought it would be perfect, including me, but he was a total wanker. He cheated on my *constantly* and even left me with an STI that cost me my fertility. I’ve always wanted a family, but when we divorced, my family sided with ‘keeping the peace’ which meant sticking with him. I sold everything I had and took a job as a nanny in Canada. I wound up working for this couple who live in a very remote fishing village on the Westcoast of British Columbia. They were a May-December situation, but really nice and I *adore* their baby, Storm. They left her with me when they flew to Vegas to marry, but their small plane went down. Now I’m all this baby has. I love her to pieces. I want her to be mine more than I want anything else in this world. One of her half-brothers is supposed to take custody, though. I’m freaking out! They’re about as domesticated as a pack of wolves! What’s going to happen to her? There’s nothing for me back in NZ so if I can’t be her mother, where will I go?
2. Share with us your hobbies and interests, and why you enjoy them.
Emma: I used to be a real estate agent so lipstick make-overs is something I’ve always loved. I spent a lot of time looking after my niece and nephew and running around for my parents so I’ve never had a lot of time for myself. Now I’m looking after three men and a baby. It’s kind of all I can handle!
3. Tell us how you feel about being in a novel, and if you are happy with how your author presented you to readers.
Emma: Ha. Yeah, I don’t think I would have ever found a place as beautiful as Raven’s Cove if the author hadn’t gone to visit the place that inspired it (Denny Island, BC.)
She kind of gave me the hardest hard-a$$ brother as my hero, which has given me some heartache, for sure, but now that I know Reid better, I really, really love him. He had a rough childhood, but I know that when it comes to being a dad to Storm, he’ll be amazing.
4. If your author was to create another novel with you in mind, give us a quick blurb of what it would be about. And be sure to give the title.
Emma: She did! Granted the other two stories aren’t about me as much as they are about my brothers-in-law and the women they fall for.
I have a real soft spot for the second book, Forgiving Her First Love, of course. That one features my very best friend in the world: Sophie. I don’t know what happened between her and Reid’s brother Logan, but it was *bad.* She *hates* him when they show up to look after Storm, especially because they have to work together at the marina.
Honestly, I had my doubts about Logan when we first met. He’s got a playboy attitude that reminds me of my ex, but he’s got a heart of gold under that tarnished exterior.
Secretly, I think we all love Trystan the most. He’s definitely the easiest to love, even though he acts like he’d rather be left alone. That’s how he became a celebrity with all his survivalist videos—by being alone in the wilderness while also being his star-powered self.
I’m scared what it means for him to fall for Storm’s aunt, though. Cloe is a wild-card. When she shows up to see Storm, is she really planning to take the baby from all of us? I’m so thankful that Trystan steps in to keep an eye on her and take her on his whale-watching cruises, but is something more going on between them?
5. Which character in the novel do you like the most, and why?
Emma: Storm, of course! She’s the cutest baby you ever did meet!
After such a troubled past with my own family, I love all of this found family I’ve become part of here in Canada. I have to give an honorable mention shout-out to Glenda, too. She’s Logan’s mother and stepmom to all these boys. She teaches me a lot about loving unconditionally. We all adore her.
6. Which character in the novel do you dislike the most, and why?
Emma: My brother shows up and, let me tell you, he’s a bigger wanker than my ex! I won’t tell you what Reid did to him, but it was pretty funny. It was definitely the moment I began to fall in love with him.
7. Tell us why we should read the featured novel and what we will find most intriguing about you.
Emma: I’ve never felt intriguing to anyone, but Reid and everyone else seem to think I’m fun to be around so I guess I am. Those brothers are forever trash-talking each other, which is pretty funny. Sophie is also hilarious. Definitely turn up for some of the non-stop banter.
If you love reading about grumpy, incompetent men who fall in love with a baby and learn to be tender with her, you want to read the Raven’s Cove trilogy because there’s buckets of silly love in them.
There’s also some heartbreaks and forgiveness and—ahem—some pretty hot moments. I’m speaking for myself and Reid here, but given the way Logan and Sophie look at each other, I’m pretty sure they’re tearing up the sheets and Trystan and Cloe *definitely* have chemistry from the get-go.
It’s just a fun, rolicking adventure about three men and a baby on an island. Who doesn’t love that?
****
Title: Marrying the Nanny
Series: Raven’s Cove, Book One
Author: Dani Collins
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Heat Rating: 4 Flames (open-door sex, explicit language used)
Length: 85,000 words/316 pages
Release Date: March 5, 2024
Publisher: Tule Publishing
Can this grumpy corporate consultant learn to love his orphaned baby sister?
Blurb: When infant Storm is orphaned, nanny Emma Wright, on a work visa and still reeling from a painful divorce, yearns to adopt her but must relinquish Storm to her three adult half-brothers. They remind her of a pack of wolves—protective, but not prepared to care for a baby. Alpha male Reid is especially aloof and intimidating.
Like his younger brothers, Reid Fraser left the Westcoast village of Raven’s Cove at eighteen and never looked back. Now a successful corporate consultant who rescues failing businesses—which is what this fly-in fishing resort has become, Reid must rally his brothers to save Storm’s inheritance, but he and his estranged brothers barely get along. They can’t deal with an infant, too. They need the nanny.
As Emma coaches Reid through midnight feedings and teething, they try to ignore the sexual pull between them. Then they learn Storm may have family who could take her from them. Reid proposes a marriage of convenience, but will it be enough to keep this fractured family together?
Purchase at:
Amazon | Kobo | B&N | Apple | Google Play | Author’s Website
When Emma meets baby Storm’s older brothers and none of them looks like father material…
Exasperated as Emma was, she would take the privilege of holding this cranky baby as long as she could. What if they gave Storm to a stranger? The thought had been torturing her every minute since she’d heard the terrible news.
Maybe the eldest brother—
Oh. Hello.
Reid Fraser entered and swept the room in a glance that seemed to gather the various threads of energy into an iron fist and squeeze. Everyone looked to him without him saying a word. Emma was conscious of catching her breath and holding it.
He wore a suit tailored to the same dynamic frame his brothers possessed. Despite the polish, his clean shave, and his scrupulously trimmed dark brown hair, his features were rugged and untamed. Imposing.
He didn’t look like a warm, paternal man. He looked like the rough-faced brick wall one battered themselves against to no avail. This was the hard-ass side of Wilf that Emma had only seen once, when Tiffany had said one of the laborers had made an off-color remark. Wilf had “had a word with him” and the guy hadn’t been seen since.
“Twenty minutes late, right on time,” Logan drawled, setting down his phone and making no mention of the fact he had arrived only moments ago himself.
“Reid.” Trystan moved from the window to take a chair at the table.
“Trys. Logan.”
This was a somber occasion, but their polite stiffness was downright peculiar.
Dennis walked around the table to greet Reid. The lawyer seemed extra obsequious as he shook Reid’s hand.
“George is running late. Harpreet is with the Ministry of Children and Family Development. Emma is Storm’s nanny. Do you want to sit?” Dennis asked Emma with a perplexed crinkle in his brow.
“I’ll stand.” Emma smiled and took up a more aggressive sway and jiggle, sway and jiggle. Please stop crying, Storm. We’re making zero friends.
“Does she need to be here?” One corner of Reid’s mouth dug in with dismay.
Wow. She stopped swaying, dumbfounded.
“Perhaps you’d like to wait in the foyer?” Dennis asked brightly, then his smile dimmed with concern as he realized that would inflict Storm on the rest of his colleagues.
Reid took a step back, preparing to open the door for her. So freaking chivalrous.
Emma was a pleaser. She was patient to a fault. She too often stenciled Welcome on her chest and invited people to wipe their wellies.
But she had her limits. She had been in a state of panic and dread for two solid days. Her deepest fear, that she was the only person left who cared one solid damn about Storm, was proving true. Did he realize how callous he sounded?
“I would love to wait in the foyer.” Snatching up the nappy bag from the floor, she plopped it onto boardroom table, then offered Storm to Mr. Freaking Fancy Suit. “You’ll take her, I presume, seeing as she’s one of you?”
Reid’s hard stare nearly pinned back her ears, it was so loud with warning against challenging his authority.
She was blowing her chance to keep Storm, she knew that. Her heart shrank inside her chest, but she pushed back on him anyway. She held his death-ray glower while she stubbornly held out the bleating baby, daring him to reject his tiny, helpless sibling. To shuffle her off to some room where he wouldn’t have to suffer her.
“I think—” Harpreet started to say, but with impeccable timing, Storm’s little digestive tract kicked in.
The gurgle was loud enough to belong to a seasoned freight driver with a crook stomach. An olive-colored stain appeared on Storm’s onesie and a sickly perfume released into the air.
~ * ~
“Was that her?” Logan let out a robust laugh exactly like their father’s, right down to it being sparked by something completely juvenile.
The laugh sent a preternatural chill down Reid Fraser’s spine, penetrating the shield of to do’s he was using to deflect any emotions he might otherwise have to withstand. His scalp tingled and a cold prickle raced across his shoulders and down his chest, lifting a clammy sweat beneath the rain-damp wool of his suit.
He didn’t allow himself to dwell on the fact he would never hear Wilf laugh like that again. Hell, he’d barely been speaking to his father so he probably wouldn’t have heard it anyway.
He swallowed away the hollow scrape in his throat and kept his focus on the task at hand—read the will and plan the service. The ministry was taking responsibility for the baby so he didn’t understand why she was here.
Or why the nanny was offering her like a human sacrifice.
He ignored the wet fart and held the woman’s green-eyed glare. Aside from those moss-colored eyes, she was as plain as a post with her brown hair pulled back from her round, pale face. She had thin lips, brows with a steep, judgmental arch, and an uptilted nose that disparaged the hell out of him.
He wasn’t insecure enough to need approval so he wasn’t affected by her lack of it.
“Shouldn’t you take her somewhere to change her?” Dennis’s tone fell between humor and discomfort, his body still half bent on his way to taking his seat.
“Is there a changing table in your toilet? Maybe the desk in your office?” Emma suggested in a snippy tone.
“No,” Dennis asserted strongly.
“Here, then.” Emma snugged the baby onto her shoulder with one arm and yanked a folded pad from her bag. She flipped it flat on the table, then set a clean diaper and a tub of wet wipes beside it. The baby went onto the mat.
“No,” Reid said in the tone that halted engineers and marketing executives and union reps and bean counters.
“You want to do it? That’d be great ’cause I haven’t had a minute to myself since your father and Tiffany left Raven’s Cove.” She sounded Australian. Maybe South African. “If you’re ready to take her, I’ll book into a hotel and catch up on my beauty sleep.”
Kiwi, he decided, as her anger accentuated the vowels. Kitch up on moy beauty slip.
“Emma has agreed to stay on as Storm’s au pair,” Harpreet said, voice pitched to a defusing tone. “Perhaps we should start with custody arrangements?”
Reid snapped a look at her. “The email said the government is taking her.”
“We ensure her needs are met, yes, but I don’t physically take her into my home. Someone else has to do that. We’re here to decide who that someone is.” Harpreet sounded reasonable, but her message was outrageous.
He looked with disbelief at the baby.
The kid rolled onto her tummy and stuck her toes into the ends of her pink pajamas. The green stain spread farther up her back. She had finally quit bawling and looked down the table at the startled faces, then dropped her head to chew her fist, moaning snottily around it.
That noise was also like nails on a chalkboard, grating inside Reid’s ears.
“Am I going for coffee?” Emma asked him, one hand on the baby to keep her from rolling off both mat and table.
It was a bluff. Otherwise, she would be out the door, not standing here with her chin thrust out in belligerence.
Reid always called a bluff, especially when he was in his natural environment—a boardroom. This was where he prevailed. He did his best work when he had a half dozen pairs of eyes watching to see if he’d flinch.
But his mind was still reeling. Custody? Really?
“Your sister’s name is Storm, by the way,” Emma prodded.
She was trying to instill him with a sense of obligation, but emotional blackmail didn’t work on him. He’d been inoculated back when he’d been filling his own pants.
“Be sure to restock the formula and nappies,” she goaded. “The spit-up towel is there.”
Lay it on thick, sweetheart. He refused to blink, even though— Dear God what had that child eaten?
He never backed down from a power struggle. He waited for her to break, confident he wouldn’t have to risk letting that excrement machine near this bespoke Italian suit.
“For Christ’s sake,” Logan muttered. “Point taken, lady. Neutralize that aroma. My eyes are watering.”
“Wow.” She shot Logan an infuriated look and moved in front of Reid. Her surprisingly round and very cute ass was suddenly right in front of his fly.
He flicked the switch on that and moved to the side. It was hardly the time for fantasies, but the Neanderthal in him hit save to revisit the image later.
“Don’t express concern for her all at once.” Emma’s accent gave her sarcasm a musical lilt. “You’ll frighten the poor wee thing.” She began unsnapping the baby’s clothes to reveal a striped undershirt that snapped in the crotch and was stained by the blowout.
“This is a trying time for everyone,” Harpreet said in a tone that attempted to soothe riled nerves. “I’m sure you’re all in shock. I didn’t know your father, but it sounds as though he’ll be deeply missed.”
Was that how it sounded? Reid took a few more steps to remove himself from the noxious fumes. He didn’t like giving up the power position at the head of the table. Was it symbolic his dad’s latest kid had taken it by taking a crap?
It was par for the course that Wilf Fraser’s last act was a migraine-inducing custody mess. How had Reid not seen this coming?
****
Award-winning, USA Today Bestselling author Dani Collins thrives on giving readers emotional, compelling, heart-soaring romance with laughter and heat thrown in, just like real life. While she is best known for writing contemporary romance for Harlequin Presents and Tule Publishing, she also writes historical and erotic romance. When she’s not writing—just kidding, she’s always writing. Dani lives in Southern BC, Canada with her high school sweetheart husband.
Follow Dani: Link Tree| Website | Tik-Tok | Newsletter Sign-Up
Maggie Blackbird 