Love on the Outskirts of Town

by Zoe York

  Matt swallowed hard. Thanks a fucking lot, Jake. “That was four years ago. And someone else’s assessment of me, not my own words. But he was right about what a real man would do. And if it had been me instead of Jake four years ago, I’d have wanted your baby even if it wasn’t mine. Emily is amazing.”

  Her eyes glittered. “I know. That was a weird tangent, sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It’s Christmas. The holidays are emotional, or so I hear. I’ve been emotionally unavailable my whole life, so this is new and fascinating to me.” He scooted his chair back from the table and turned it so he was facing her, nothing in between them. “I never thought about having kids or being a parent before I met you. I spent my entire adult life avoiding second dates. Commitment wasn’t anywhere on my radar. But that’s all in the past. Okay?”

  “Yes.” She leaned in and kissed him. “Thank you for not freaking out.”

  “I’m good. What other hard topics should we cover? Or are you ready to talk about this morning?”

  “Which part?”

  “All of it.”

  “Sometimes I really don’t like my ex,” she admitted.

  He resisted the urge to agree with her. David was arrogant and awkward, at least around Natasha, and the way Matt saw it, he’d made that bed for himself with poor choices. The natural consequence of abandoning a woman to raise your child by herself is that woman not liking you, and not wanting you in her house.

  “But then there’s another part of me that worries that he might be right. That I’m in over my head. Because when the furnace stopped? That felt true. And then I get angry about that, because fuck him and his judgement.”

  “This is your first real speed bump as a homeowner. It’s natural to worry about how you’ll sort it out. But you will.”

  She bit her lip as she looked at him, her eyebrows pulled together. “I spent more than I should have on my construction supplies. There were some good deals, and I had an extra discount, and now…suddenly I’m perilously close to running out of money. If I don’t get the units up and running soon, I’ll suddenly find myself in a financial hole every month. I—I have never been reckless with money before, but I’ve never owed money on this scale, either.”

  “You said you loved the challenge of all of this. Is some of that waning?”

  “I guess. That was before it got real. Now I’m back to being terrified. Last night I thought, maybe I should try and sell it.”

  “Wow. Really?”

  She shrugged. “I feel like I’ve bitten off more than I can chew, and doing a quick flip of the house would cut my losses. Sell the potential. I don’t know. If I can get it sold at a profit, with the work I’ve put into it and a new furnace, someone else with more capital might be able to do what I was thinking without the stress of riding it so close to the line. I don’t know if I want that extra pressure.” She licked her lips and dropped her gaze.

  “What?”

  “Wrong thought, wrong time.”

  “No, never. You can tell me anything.”

  She lifted her eyes, glittering with unshed tears. “It might be easier for me to move closer to David.”

  That punched Matt in the chest. Hard. He wanted to tell her no, that she should stand her ground. The asshole didn’t want her or Emily three years ago. He’d had his chance to have them close. Now Matt wanted them, and he’d do whatever it took.

  Except he wouldn’t tell Tasha how to live. Or where to live.

  He loved her enough to let her make whatever choice she needed to make for her daughter, or herself.

  He opened his mouth to say something—anything—but nothing came out.

  “I know that’s not the right answer…”

  Did she? Good, because he hated it and couldn’t say that out loud.

  “Matt…”

  He re-focused on her face as the first tear rolled down her cheek, fat and full of sorrow. Shit.

  “What if I make a bad decision out of stubborn pride or spite, and it ends up hurting Emily?”

  He squeezed her arms and shook his head. “You are an amazing mother. You would never hurt her. Trust your gut.”

  She blinked solemnly and more tears fell.

  He took her face in his hands, wiping away each tear, drying her cheeks. “I have all sorts of selfish reasons to say you shouldn’t move, but I can think of one really good reason that has nothing to do with me. Your dream matters, Tasha. It really does.

  “Remember what you said to me. You are all that you need. You are stronger than strong. You will slay this dragon. But you are not alone. You could do this on your own, but you don't need to. I have your back.”

  “I know you do.”

  “And I know people.”

  “No, Matt, I can’t…” She trailed off.

  He knew she wanted to figure it out all on her own. But she had a boyfriend who had her back, and he came with brothers who loved nothing more than leaping into the fray. It was a Foster trait, for better or worse. “Just promise me you’ll think about it. That’s all.”

  “Okay,” she finally said. “It’s not that I want to sell. I just don’t want to be selfish, either.”

  “You’re not. You deserve happiness.” Let me be your happiness. “And this house is the first step in your master plan for world domination. Don’t let a speed bump derail that.”

  “Right.” But she whispered it like she really wasn’t sure.

  He kissed her. “You’re going to be just fine.”

  “I want your confidence,” she said with a little laugh.

  He stopped and pressed his forehead against hers. “You know what? I don’t have a lot of confidence right now. But when I told you about my troubles at work, you had faith in me. Even when I don’t have that faith in myself. This is the same thing. Let me be your biggest cheerleader.”

  Her eyes, big and dark and wide, searched his face.

  Matt had never let anyone in like this. A friend to share dreams with, a lover to confess one’s biggest fears. It would be foolish to fall in love with a woman who just told him she might leave him, but for the first time in his life, Matt didn’t care if he was being a fool.

  And he wasn’t going to passively wait for her to figure out how he felt, either.

  “I love you, Tasha,” he said quietly. “And that’s the scariest thing I’ve ever said in my entire life. I promise I won’t ever hurt you like David did. I’ll never make you doubt yourself.”

  She slid her hands over his forearms, her fingers shaking as she leaned in and kissed him, a barely open brush of lips and tongues that felt raw and eager and vulnerable.

  Perfect.

  He kissed her back, then hauled her into his lap. She wrapped her arms around him, a lamprey eel again.

  He couldn’t ever forget how much she needed him to be a rock she could cling to. “I’ve got you,” he whispered into her neck. “Forever.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Natasha finally opened her presents from Matt on Christmas morning, while he proved he could make a mean cafe au lait and wicked cinnamon French toast.

  “I could get used to watching you cook,” she said from her perch at his tiny table. “Although the kitchen space leaves something to be desired. Of course, I’m not one to talk.”

  “What do you want to do with your kitchen—eventually?”

  “I’d knock out the wall between the kitchen and the living room, and make it one big eat-in space. The long-term plan would be to turn my side of the house into a bed and breakfast, and I’d live somewhere else. I don’t feel comfortable with Emily coming home alone to a house with short-term tenants, honestly. Is that too paranoid?”

  He shook his head. “Nope.”

  “So by the time she’s old enough to walk home on her own from school, I’d like to have a different house of my own, and be using the current house as a mini-inn. Practice for a full-fledged inn property in the country.”

  “Amazing. So the big eat-in kitchen would be for the two rooms u
pstairs?”

  “And open to the self-contained units, too.”

  “Genius.” He pointed to her presents. “If you don’t open them soon, I’m going to think you don’t want to open them at all.”

  She picked at the paper. “We just got you a used leather passport wallet.”

  “Which I love. And Emily filled it with drawings which will one day be worth millions, so…honestly, my gifts will be dismal disappointments.”

  She laughed.

  “Open them,” he said warmly. “Or there’s no French toast for you.”

  Taking a deep breath, she peeled the paper off the first present, a thin rectangle that weighed more than it looked like it would. Inside she found a plain grey-blue cardboard box. She wiggled the lid off, and inside that found a dark black-brown leather-bound book.

  “What is this?” She asked as she picked it up. It was heavy but slim. Quality paper, excellent construction.

  She opened the cover and gasped at the embossed inscription on the first page.

  Escape Inn Wiarton

  Guest Register

  Proprietor, Natasha Kingsley

  “You…”

  He grinned. “I took a chance that you’d go with your heart’s true desire over what was practical.”

  “I thought you were asleep that night.”

  “I was drifting off. But it stuck with me. It’s a good name.”

  “Wow.” She ran her fingers over the letters. “Well, I guess I can’t sell the place now.”

  “I hope you don’t.”

  Oh, Jeez, there was a big lump in her throat now. She swallowed around it and blinked hard. “I love this.” She set it aside and crossed the tiny kitchen to kiss him. “It’s perfect, thank you.”

  “Merry Christmas,” he murmured. “One more to go.”

  “’Kay.” She topped off her coffee, then reached for the second gift. This one was light as a feather, even though the box was bigger than the first. She ripped the paper away and found a cardboard box, clearly recycled—unless Matt was giving her a box of protein supplements.

  And he wasn’t. Inside that, there was a soft bit of fabric.

  Two bits.

  She burst out laughing as she held them up. Matching underwear, his and hers, pink with avocado dancing across the fabric. “For you and me?”

  He wiggled his eyebrows. “Indeed. You already saw my intended Christmas underpants, so…I ordered these. And they had women’s styles, too. We don’t ever need to tell Emily that the matching apron gift gave me such an inappropriate idea.”

  There wasn’t any part of him that was inappropriate. She stood up, peeled off her panties, and pulled on the new pair.

  She twirled around for him, and when she stopped, he was right in front of her.

  “They’re amazing,” she said softly. “And so are you. Thank you, again, for turning my blue Christmas around.” She laughed as she threw her arms around his neck. “You really are something, you know that?”

  He hugged her back. Simple, loving, kind.

  “I…” She choked up again, because this wasn’t easy. It was nearly impossible. But he was the best thing to happen to her since Emily, and he needed to know that. “I love you, too, you know,” she whispered against his cheek. “And it’s scary for me, just like it’s scary for you.”

  “Maybe it doesn’t need to be scary anymore, if we’re in this together,” he said, his voice warm and sure.

  Wouldn’t that be something?

  After breakfast, they piled back into Matt’s truck and headed south. Away from Pine Harbour, away from his bachelor pad, and back to real life.

  The house was cool but not uncomfortable with the sun streaming in the windows. With steaming take-out coffees in hand, they walked through the rental units as Natasha reviewed her plan and tried to figure out how she could get them up and ready as fast as humanly possible.

  “The thought of buying beds right now makes me want to throw up,” she admitted. “I can’t skimp there, but they’re so expensive. All of the furnishing stuff is going to quickly add up.”

  “Can’t you go minimalist? Only buy half of it at first and sell the places as Spartan?”

  She laughed. As if.

  But wait.

  Half.

  “Oh, Matt, maybe that’s it.” She pressed her lips together, trying to quickly do the math. It was too complicated for her head, so she grabbed her notebook. “If I only finish one of the units…” She scribbled the costs on a new sheet of paper. “Some of the contracting costs will be higher since I’ll have to start the other side as a separate project, but the furnishings are literally half the expenses, so if I can space those out while I get some revenue coming in…”

  He leaned on the other side of the kitchen island, looking at her sheet. “I don’t get it.”

  “Half. I only need to rent out one of these spaces as soon as possible. The other one can wait a bit. So that’s just one bathroom I need to renovate, not two, and there’s the money for a new furnace.” She wrote a big flourishing line under the numbers. “Right there. It affects my income projections for the next…six months? Maybe even a year, but I can break even on one unit and pick up more hours once Emily starts school. Even do some bartending again. Malcolm would have me back. Yes.”

  “This is a good plan?”

  She leaned across the island and kissed him. “This is a great plan. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner, but it doesn’t matter.” She clapped her hands on the butcher-block counter. “Amazing. Of course the answer isn’t all or nothing. The answer is to keep moving forward with something.”

  He rubbed his knuckle against her chin as he gave her a look that warmed her right to her soul. “Smart.”

  “Thank you. I don’t know that I would have figured this out without your support and positivity. I might have collapsed into a weeping, despondent pile.”

  “But you’d have been a cute despondent pile,” he murmured. “And then you’d have picked yourself up and found the solution in the end.”

  His love was such a gift. She smiled at him. “Okay, now I need to find a contractor who can do a simple, single bathroom as soon as humanly possible.” She took a deep breath. “But that can be tomorrow’s problem. Let’s go build a blanket fort in my room so we’re cozy tonight.”

  The day after Christmas, when everyone else was sleeping off turkey or snagging Boxing Day deals, Natasha did the grown-up thing and spent a painful chunk of her savings on a new furnace. It would be installed two days later, and the sun was shining enough to keep the house habitable until then with the occasional anemic push from the failing blower motor.

  This was a decision that was immediately tested when David returned with Emily mid-afternoon.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he said after she’d hugged Emily and their daughter sprinted upstairs to introduce her new stuffies to the rest of the gang.

  Natasha regretted having let him inside, but the last thing she wanted to do was stand around with the door open when her house barely had any heat to hold on to in the first place.

  “Not really necessary,” she said. Maybe snarky. Maybe she didn’t care.

  “Hear me out.”

  She took a deep breath. “What?”

  “Emily could come and stay with us for a few months.”

  “No.”

  “While you fix this place up.”

  “No.”

  “Because—”

  “I said no, and that’s final. This is not a discussion I’m going to have. Not now, not ever.”

  “We had a great visit.”

  She knew their daughter was upstairs and could hear them, so she grabbed his hand and dragged him—possibly with more strength than she’d ever mustered before in her entire life—into the kitchen.

  “There is so much wrong with this idea I don’t even know where to begin,” she whispered in a hiss. “Did you say anything to her? She’s three.”

  “No. I thought we should discu
ss it first.”

  “We are not discussing this. You’re suggesting something I am not okay with, on any level. It doesn’t matter that she’s living in a fixer-upper. It doesn’t matter that my furnace blew up. I provide for my daughter, and you never have, in all the ways that count. You had a nice visit. Get it? Visit. That word is key, and you are fucking insane if you think—”

  “She’s my daughter, too.” And there it was. The glint of danger she’d feared since he’d popped back into their lives.

  The blood in her veins turned icy cold. “What are you suggesting?”

  “I could sue for custody.”

  Five words, and her entire world spun on its axis. Blood pounded in her ears and she actually saw red.

  “Try it.” She’d burn his misguided idea to the ground. “Go ahead and sic your lawyer on me. But by the end of it, the court will make you cover every single last penny of my legal fees, because you have abdicated your responsibility from day one. Day one, David. I wanted you to be her father. I wanted you to be there for all the dirty diapers and middle of the night feedings. I wanted someone—anyone—to hold my hand as I pushed your daughter into this world, but you were nowhere to be found. So fucking try it.”

  He blinked at her.

  Good. She was fucking done with not being crystal clear on this point. “I’m glad you are learning to love Emily, but we both know that you do not want to be a full-time parent to her. I do. I always have. So back off.”

  Another blink.

  She kept going. “You will always be her father, regardless of how much time you spend with her. And you have a choice to make about how you want to live that role. Do you want to be fighting her mother? Do you want her to grow up knowing you judge me and my decision-making skills? Or do you want to be grateful for the time you get with the most beautiful little girl in the entire world, who is that way because of how I raise her?” She paced away, then stalked back. “Well?”

  He cleared his throat. “You make some valid points.”

  Oh for fuck’s sake. “No fucking shit.”