by Taryn Quinn
“Always.”
“Oh, brother.” I turned to the counter lined with red vinyl stools and collapsed into one to take stock of my situation.
Most of the coffee had hit the floor and my shoes, so I guess that was something at least. I stalked down the aisle and inwardly groaned at the squeak of my rubber soles. I hustled to the carpet in front of the door and scuffed my feet. I could actually feel the coffee squishing inside my shoes.
Ugh.
My life—up to my ankles in crap coffee. Of course.
I went around behind the counter to take care of the pile of towels Sage had left. “What’s up, Seth? You don’t usually come in this late.”
“I actually have some papers for you.”
My gaze swung back to him. He nodded to the back of the diner where he always sat. “Can you take a few minutes?”
It was only then that I noticed the folder in his hand. The white Hamilton Realty logo scrawled across the dense green glossy folder. My stomach twisted for a whole different reason this time.
Mom’s house.
My house.
What could have been my house if it wasn’t full of shitty memories and the stench of too much antiseptic. I closed my eyes as a wave of exhaustion chased the sad. It had been three months since my mom had finally passed away after a soul-crushing bout with cancer. She’d always been fragile, but the last five years had about killed me too.
By the end, all I wanted was peace for her.
And maybe a little for myself. I only let that part out in the deepest, darkest parts of the night where sleep and waking overlapped. When the quiet was finally comforting and the hiss of the oxygen compressor wasn’t my constant companion for the first time in too many years to remember.
But then the alarm pushed me out of the quiet and into my current reality. Bills, life, the diner, plans…all jumbled together in my little planner. And the little secret pocket where I’d stashed the page of classes I wanted to take. I had sent off for a few brochures from schools in New York City, and I looked at them now and then.
It had been so long since I could think about what I wanted that I honestly wasn’t quite sure what to do. But it didn’t stop me from poring over my brochures and the college catalog online.
Too bad dreams didn’t pay the bills.
I pressed a shaking hand over my belly. “Yeah. Let me make sure I can take my fifteen.”
I hurried over to the sink. My rings clicked together as I soaped up my hands to get the coffee smell off them. “Mitch, I’m going to take my break.”
He only grunted. Typical.
“Sage, you okay?”
She waved me off. “Sure. Take it now before the biddies come in for the early bird special.”
“Truth.” I smoothed my hand over my apron and stuck my order pad in the front pocket. I double checked that I had three pens like I always did. Patrons were notorious thieves. Not sure why they wanted my cheapie Bic pens, but they were forever walking off with them.
Stop stalling.
I was tempted to roll my eyes at myself, but that took too much energy and I didn’t have much to spare. I grabbed a fruit plate and a scoop of cottage cheese to get me through the rest of the evening. Sage and I might have time for a bite after the dinner rush, but more often than not, it just rolled into dessert business and the endless coffee mug crowd.
I snagged a menu on my way down the aisle to him. Seth was sprawled in his favorite booth, his long legs encroaching on my side. I kicked his boot as I sat down and dropped the menu in front of him. “How you don’t have that memorized is beyond me.”
He straightened and placed his phone face down on the table, then propped the menu against the wall. “Just coffee this time.”
“Oh. Have an appointment?” I ate a forkful of my cottage cheese.
He sneered at my plate. “So gross.”
I forked up some more and held it in front of him. “So good.”
“Gross.”
I snagged a piece of pineapple to go with my forkful and chewed with a smile. “How would you know? You still won’t try the wonders of my fruit plate.”
“It’s a texture thing.”
“And yet you’ll eat grits.”
“Only Angelo’s grits. Which reminds me.” He flipped over his menu. “I have been dreaming about his kitchen sink omelet.”
“Kinda lame dreams.”
He glanced over the menu. “I can’t have dreams about you naked all the time.”
“Har-har.”
He winked at me and I tamped down the hormones prepared to leap across the table.
Sage came over with a grilled cheese sandwich and slid it in front of me. In her other hand was a pot of coffee. “What are you having, Seth?”
I frowned. “I didn’t order this.”
Sage put her hand on her hip. “That fruit thing isn’t going to hold you over for the rest of the day.”
“Thanks. My ass won’t thank you, but I do.”
“Your ass is just fine.”
“Sure is,” Seth agreed.
What the hell was up with the comments? He didn’t notice my ass.
Did he?
I shook my head and peeled the triangles apart as the lava-like mixture of cheddar and gouda that spilled onto the plate made me moan. Cheese was my downfall. I could pretty much give up anything except that.
Noticing Seth’s smirk, I dragged my fingertip through the cheese and brought it to my mouth. “What?”
“Should we leave you alone?”
“Fine by me. We’ll live happily ever after, won’t we, you gooey piece of perfection?”
Seth shook his head. He flipped his mug right side up on the saucer. “I’ll just have coffee.”
“You sure?” Sage asked as she poured.
“Yeah. I really want that omelet, but it’ll have to wait until next time.”
Sage nodded. “You got it.” She glanced at me. “I got Mrs. Diggs.”
“Oh, crap. I forgot.” I swiveled to give the older woman a smile.
“No worries.”
“She wasn’t mad?”
Sage shook her head. “Too busy staring at this one’s ass.” She nodded at Seth.
He waggled his eyebrows.
Sage rolled her eyes. “I’ll leave you guys to it.”
As soon as she walked away, Seth folded his hands on the folder. “So, about the house.”
I looked down at my sandwich and picked up half. “Want?”
He smiled. “I wouldn’t want to come between you two.”
I shrugged. Fine by me. I sucked at sharing anyway. If he wanted to keep it about business, I could do that. “How’d we do?”
He blew out a breath. “I’d prefer to leave it on the market so we—”
“Nope. Can’t. John Chandler gave me three months to sell and here we are a week past that.”
His eyebrows snapped down and his jaw muscle flexed. I’d bet twenty bucks he was grinding his molars. But it was my decision, not his.
“I told you I could—”
“Nope.” I yanked a napkin out of the dispenser to degrease my fingertips before I covered his clenched hands. “You know I can’t.” He’d been trying to throw money at all my problems for years, but my answer was always the same. Even if he had more money than most of the Crescent Cove population combined, I couldn’t take money from a friend.
Especially not Seth.
God, not him.
“Let me talk to John. We throw him a hell of a lot of business. I can pull a favor.”
“No.”
I had a feeling the three months I’d been granted was already one of those favors. No matter how much history I had in this town, a banker wasn’t going to let me slide when it came to prime land, even if it was on the fringes of lakefront property. Add in the mortgage I could barely scrape together now that my mother’s social security was gone and the only math that made sense was selling the house.
John Chandler over at Crescent Cove Cre
dit Union might be a sweet man who coached Little League on the weekends, but he was still a businessman. And there were rules.
Rules I was intimately aware of. My mother’s modest life insurance policy did little more than cover her burial and a small memorial service.
“I’ve got a guy who’s buying up some of the older…” He trailed off.
I squeezed him one last time before sliding my hands back across the table and picking up my sandwich again. “Shacks? You can say it. I know my house wasn’t much.”
He swiped his hand along the back of his neck. “Dammit, Al.”
“It is what it is. She wanted a house on the lake, and it was all I could afford on my meager salary and what she had in the bank. It was enough for us.” My bedroom had been little more than a closet, but my mom had been happy her last few years and that had been all that mattered.
“A new company is looking to build family houses on the lake to beef up the rentals for the season.”
“The Kennedys kind or…?”
He nodded. “The middle income kind of families. I’m not completely against what they’re doing.”
I broke off a corner of my toasted cheese and popped it in my mouth. “That’s great. You know this town relies on seasonal visitors. Though I’m glad they’re not just making mansions.”
His eyes glittered. “No.”
I knew Seth and his brother had been working hard to keep Crescent Cove from turning into the Hamptons part two. They were probably the only reason half the coast hadn’t been razed and turned into huge houses and overpriced hotels.
But the Cove was a mix of wealthy and working class. Just the way I loved it. Though I wouldn’t mind being one of the wealthy someday.
And maybe if I could get the house sold and get back to even I’d have at least a chance at some kind of future besides drowning in debt.
“What’s the offer?”
I listened to him drone on about the sale and the banks. I swallowed when he opened the folder and slid a printed page my way. The sale price wasn’t as good as I’d hoped, but it would cover what I needed it to.
It would leave me with a big fat zero in my bank, but at least it wasn’t a minus sign.
Right now that was glorious and I was calling it a win. I folded the paper in half. “Thank you, Seth.”
“Don’t thank me. I’d rather you walked away or haggled for more.”
I lifted my chin and pushed my plate away. “Do you think I’d actually get it?” He opened his mouth. “Without doing upgrades and all the things you wanted me to do to the house?” He shut it. “I thought so.”
“Fuck.” He slumped in seat a little. “I don’t like any of this.”
“You don’t have to like it. Just make sure I don’t get too screwed and be my friend. Simple things. It’s all I really need.” I put my leg out and twisted my ankle to show off my splattered shoes. “And a new pair of sneakers. Which I need to work to pay for. Just let me know when and where to be to sign the papers.” I started to slide out of the booth.
“Your fifteen isn’t over yet.”
I paused.
“Almost. Fifteen minutes goes quick. You know that.”
He pressed his lips together and his eyes flared with something. I didn’t even want to think about what they flared with. It didn’t happen often, but there were moments when I wondered if he thought about other, less platonic things when it came to me.
But it was much easier to file those moments away as aberrations and fantasies.
“Just one more thing.”
“It’s never just one more thing with you.”
“You’re killing me, Al.”
“Right back atcha, buddy.” Exasperation was the word of the day. When he leaned forward, his dark eyes were a little too serious. I straightened and pulled my hands away from my plate to land in my lap. I twirled my thumb ring as a sudden chill climbed up my hairline.
He leaned forward, suddenly earnest. Too earnest. When Seth Hamilton acted solemn, he was up to something, and chances were high I wouldn’t like it.
“Will you have my baby?”
2
Seth
Silence was not the response I expected.
I wasn’t sure what I did expect. The request wasn’t a usual one, not even between longtime friends. Tenth grade was more than a decade in the rearview mirror, and here we were.
Still friends. Best friends, even. Our friendship had survived my marriage and divorce, among other things. If this crazy request of mine didn’t kill her affection for me.
Anyone’s bet at this point.
“Have your baby…what? What does that mean, exactly?” When I didn’t immediately reply, she fanned herself with the laminated menu she’d given me. “Okay, wait, baby means Laurie. Of course it does. She’s your only baby. Right? Right. So you must want me to babysit her or something? I can do that. Sure. Let me consult my planner for dates.”
I stopped her from flying out of the booth. “Laurie isn’t a baby. She’s almost four. As she likes to tell me, that’s almost halfway to ten, and ten is more than halfway to a big person.”
As always, when talk of my daughter entered the conversation, Ally softened. I might have known that and used it to my advantage, if I hadn’t been so addicted to how her cheeks turned pink and her smile warmed at my little girl’s name. God knows Laurie’s own mother hadn’t been similarly affected.
Ally’s love of children, and my child in particular, had weighed in heavily to my choice to ask her this very important question. And if I’d watched her with my daughter a bit too much lately, studying the exact curl of Ally’s hair against her neck, or the way her dangling earrings made shadows, or how her mouth curved and teased out a dimple—well, I was a red-blooded man.
One who could only ignore the beauty in front of him so long without it slamming him in the forehead, apparently.
“She is a big girl. Growing bigger every day.” The wistfulness in Ally’s voice made me lean forward.
“So now that we’ve ascertained I wasn’t talking about you babysitting my child, something you do on occasion anyway, let’s go back to the point of this conversation. You. Having my baby.”
Golden brown eyes settled on mine as a smile toyed with her mouth. “You missed April Fools day by a mile, dude.”
“This isn’t a joke. There’s no hidden camera. This is just me, your best friend coming to you with a simple request.”
Her dark brows knitted. “A simple request to borrow my eggs? And what would you need with another baby anyway? You already have one. You work all the time, and if you had two kids, you’d have twice the work.”
“I’d have another child to love and my little girl would have a sibling, something she wants more than anything else in this world.” I toyed with the handle of my coffee cup. “Even more than she wants a mother, and that’s the one thing I can never give her. Fucked that one up royally.”
Ally sighed and tweaked my pinky, curled around the cooling mug. I’d barely touched my coffee. My throat was too tight.
“That wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know Marj was only it for the dough. How could you?”
“Oh, I don’t know, that she was always more concerned about fur coats and jewels than baby formula and lullabies? If I’d been paying attention, that is. But as you said, I’m always working.” I heard the bitterness in my tone and couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it, though I knew I was screwing this up more with every passing moment.
I didn’t want Ally feeling sorry for me or guilted into this situation. I wanted her to make the choice because it would be good for her and good for me and Laurie. A positive thing all around.
“She didn’t breastfeed?”
“Is that relevant?”
“No, not really, just that it’s such a healthy, nurturing experience. It’s not an imperative, of course. A baby can be perfectly happy and cared for without it.”
“I’d be fine with you breastfeeding our child.” Just
saying those words had my stomach tightening in weird and unexpected ways.
“Stop it.” She hissed out a breath. “We don’t have a child. Nor will we. I don’t know why you’re pursuing this, really, but it’s not very funny. Now I should get back to—”
I reached out and snagged her wrist. “Let me spell this out for you before you run from me and concoct all kinds of crazy scenarios in your head. I want another child. I do not want another relationship, potentially with a woman who would harm our baby and not be viable long-term. I just want a healthy child. To that end, I am prepared to compensate you for your significant time investment. Four years at the college of your choosing, tuition free. If you desire to go to grad school, that will be covered as well.”
She yanked back her hand and let it drop limply into her lap. “You’ve gone stark raving mad.”
“Actually, I feel saner than I ever have. Instead of lamenting I can’t have what I want, what my daughter wants, I can make it happen with a woman I trust. The only woman I trust.” Swallowing hard, I gripped the handle of my mug and fought not to reach for Ally again. “I’m not exaggerating. It’s you or no one. I can’t risk it with anyone else.”
Her lower lip wobbled and I clutched the handle until my damn knuckles went white. If she cried, I’d be done for.
“Not fair,” she whispered. “So not fair.”
“No, what’s not fair is that you work your fingers to the bone in this place and you have dreams you can’t see your way to because of all the bills.”
She clenched her jaw. “As soon as I sell Mama’s house—”
“What, you’ll barely be out of the hole? I am rich. I have more money than I know what to do with. I can make a good life for my kids. Both of them, including the one I’d have with you. And you’d be free, Ally. You could go to school like you want. I know you probably wouldn’t want to quit here, and that’s fine. But school would be taken care of, and then your dreams could be yours. Anything you want.”
She turned her head away and stared hard out the window at some place I couldn’t see. But she damn well wasn’t seeing the tidy, well-kept Main Street of our small town, I was certain. Her gaze was farther off, on a future I couldn’t imagine.