She stared at it as it rang two more times, then she pressed the answer button. “Hello?”
He watched her carefully as she listened and shot him another glance, this one both worried and confused. “I’ll be right there,” she said, and hung up. “She’s at my house again.”
“Do you want me to come with you?” he asked, already climbing to his feet with Calvin.
She shook her head. “No. Let me see what she wants. I’ll call you in a little while.”
For the next fifteen minutes he played with Calvin on the floor and tried not to go out of his mind. What was going on over there? A few times he couldn’t help picking up the toddler and hugging him, a sense of fear deeper than anything he’d ever known gripping him until each time, Calvin patted his cheek or shoulder and said, “Tin-Tin,” which was the closest he’d gotten to Ethan’s name so far.
Finally, a text came in from Tessa.
Everything is fine. Come over and meet my sister.
Ethan walked over with Calvin on his shoulders, the toddler’s favorite way to travel. Normally Ethan loved it too, but now every footstep felt so heavy. What was he walking into? What was he walking Calvin into? Only his faith in Tessa kept him moving forward.
He shifted Calvin into his arms when he reached her door and walked in without knocking the way he had for months now.
Tessa was perched on the sofa arm, waiting for him, and smiled when he walked in. A young woman sitting with a death grip on the armchair fixed Calvin with an apprehensive stare.
“Meet Rachel,” Tessa said. “Rachel, this is Ethan.”
“Hi,” he said. He didn’t really understand the vibe in the room, so he shot Tessa a questioning glance before asking Rachel, “Do you want to hold him?”
“No, I just wanted to see him.”
Calvin didn’t even glance her way, and part of Ethan was secretly pleased that Calvin didn’t seem to recognize her. But the better part of him ached for Rachel in a way he couldn’t explain given how angry he’d been for Calvin when she first left him behind.
“So what’s going on?” He tried for a casual note, but it was a loaded question.
“Rachel . . .” Tessa started, and then her voice grew thick and she quit talking for a moment.
“I asked her to adopt him,” Rachel said. She’d relaxed her grip on the chair and even leaned back a little, keeping her eyes on Calvin the whole time. She was dressed casually in jeans and a blouse, but neatly, her hair well-brushed and her skin clear and healthy-looking. He’d always somehow imagined her as emaciated and drawn.
“Adoption?” His eyes flew to Tessa.
She nodded, still speechless, but a growing smile was taking over her face as she reached for Calvin, who went to her with a cheerful, “Tee-Tee,” and more cheek patting.
“I needed to see him to make sure I was doing the right thing,” Rachel said, reaching for the purse beside her on the floor. She withdrew a folder and set it on the coffee table. “These are the termination papers for my parental rights. They’re already notarized. If you file them with family court, you should have no problems. I did a lot of research to make sure.”
“This is . . .” Ethan trailed off, not sure what to say, but even more sure it wasn’t his place to say anything at all.
“I said yes,” Tessa told him. “I said it really loud. Yes, yes, yes.” She punctuated each one with a kiss on Calvin’s cheek.
Rachel rose. “Thank you. It wasn’t fair for me to drop him on you like that, but I just didn’t know what else to do. If you need me for anything with the paperwork, just call.” She gathered her purse like she was going to leave.
“You don’t have to leave,” Tessa said. “Stay. There’s a lot to talk about.”
Rachel shook her head. “There’s not. Not really. I don’t feel toward him like a mother should. Once I left him, I slowly started to realize I had postpartum depression, and I thought I would feel differently when my hormones got back to normal, that I’d want to come back for him.” She sighed. “My mind is clearer now. I got an antidepressant that helped, and I’m working as a desk clerk at a big hotel in Vegas. I’m even starting the management trainee program next month.” The pride was clear in her voice. “But I’m also positive that I don’t want to be a mother. Seeing him only makes me sure of that. I see you with him, and it seems like this is how it always should have been, Tessa. It’s the only thing that keeps me from hating myself. I don’t know how I can love him so much and still be so sure that this is what I want, but I am. More sure than I’ve ever been of anything. But that doesn’t mean I’m not sad. I think I’d rather go, but I promise, if you call, I’ll answer. I won’t ghost you again.”
She stopped by Calvin and dropped a soft kiss on his head. “Bye, baby. You have the best mama now.” Then she brushed past Ethan, wiping a tear from her eye and slipping out the door without looking back.
Ethan looked back at Tessa, who had her face buried in Calvin’s neck, her arms wrapped around him so tightly that he gave a short squeal and began to squirm.
“Wow,” Ethan said, and Tessa relaxed her grip on the baby and smiled at Ethan.
“I know.”
“You ready for this?”
“Not at all. But maybe nobody is. All I know is that this is the happiest I’ve ever been. And I’m trying not to feel guilty about it because that feels really selfish.”
“There is nothing selfish about adopting a baby,” Ethan said. “Your sister sounds like she’s in a good place to make this decision. You guys will have some details to work out about how much you tell Calvin and when, but she sounds like she’s ready to have those conversations whenever you are.”
His phone buzzed and he pulled it out to glance at the screen, then stared at her, torn between laughing and groaning. “It’s my mom.”
She grinned at him, and said, “ESP” at the same time as he did, which made them both laugh. “Go ahead and tell her,” she said.
“In a minute. I need to grab something. I’ll be right back.” He raced back to his house, made a pit stop at his nightstand, and ran back to Tessa’s place, where he found her dancing around the living room with Calvin singing, “Mommy and Calvin, sitting in a tree, H-U-G-G-I-N-G forever.”
“Is there room for a daddy in that equation?” he asked quietly.
“What?” she said, turning to him with a smile and eyes only for Calvin.
“I asked if there’s room for a daddy in that equation,” he repeated. Her smiled faded and he had her full attention now. He walked over to them and got down on one knee, pulling the ring box he’d been holding onto for the last two months from his pocket. “Tessa and Calvin Fuller, will you marry me?”
Tessa’s mouth dropped open. Calvin clapped. “Tee-Tee, Tin-Tin.”
Tessa gave a slow shake of her head, and Ethan’s heart stuttered. “No, Calvin. Mama.” Then she knelt in front of Ethan and pressed a kiss against his lips. “And Daddy.”
<<<<>>>>
Did you enjoy Ethan and Tessa’s story?
Keep reading for Chapter 1 of the
next novel in the ABC series,
Falling for a Former Flame
Chapter 1
Fletcher Gates left the fire chief’s office and pulled the door closed behind him. He tried not to notice the sigh of relief that escaped him, but to tell the truth, this had been the most intimidating job interview of his career. He looked around, grateful to see that no one had heard him. He knew that in an alpha-male place like a fire station, even a guy’s breathing could be seen as a sign of weakness.
But Fletcher was not weak, and he was no rookie, just out of fire school. He’d been a successful BLM firefighter for five years, working as a smokejumper on some of the most devastating wildfires in the country. And now he’d earned a place on Greensburg’s crew—by his own merit and through his own good work. Even so, coming back to his hometown to join the city station left him feeling more anxious than any burning mountainside.
He didn
’t like to think too deeply about the sources of that anxiety.
He stood in the hallway for a moment, settling into the new reality. He had been offered a new job. A great job. Possibly his dream job. More quickly than he could have imagined, everything clicked together and now this was his life.
Confident that it was precisely what he both wanted and needed, Fletcher wondered at the prickle of unease.
Maybe it was as simple as coming back home.
Or as complicated as finding a place in an established brotherhood like this fire station.
It didn’t help that the chief had been his father’s boss for many years, and almost certainly looked at Fletcher as a kid.
Of course he did. Why wouldn’t he? Fletcher had spent so many hours on the station lawn and in the rec room throwing baseballs and footballs with his dad, he’d practically grown up as the station mascot.
Right. That was it. It must be. He wanted to be seen as a man, not as a kid. And now he would.
Fletcher wandered down the short hallway and back to the small reception desk, a new installment since the days his dad had worked in this station. A pretty, dark-haired woman held a phone to her ear with her shoulder while typing rapidly and, somehow, simultaneously flipping through a stack of papers. She caught his eye and gestured toward a chair.
Before he could sit, though, he saw a giant pile of bags and boxes moving toward the glass front door, completely obscuring all but the legs of the person carrying them. He reached the door and pushed it open at the exact second that the woman holding the huge pile leaned it all against the door to reach for the handle. At his push, the door knocked into the parcels, and everything, including the woman, sailed in a comical arc before it all went crashing to the ground.
Blankets, books, and stuffed animals tumbled out of the tops of bags, covering the now-sitting woman right up to her unmistakable crazy red curls.
Without thinking, Fletcher said, “Hadley?”
He felt every thump of his pulse, the nerves prickling at the backs of his hands and neck, the unique rush of breath in his lungs and blood to his brain that he had always felt in her presence, that always left him deliciously off balance.
The woman on the floor pushed the top of the pile away from her so she could look up.
Fletcher’s breath caught at the sight of her face, that moment between surprise at being knocked to the ground and surprise at seeing him.
Thinking she’d burst out laughing any second, he watched and waited for her to go first, because he certainly wasn’t the kind of guy who would knock a person over and then laugh at her. But for years, he’d laughed with her. He had known her long enough and well enough to know that her instinct was to chuckle at a situation like this, but she didn’t. Looked like in five years, her instincts had changed.
Not only did she not laugh, her smile evaporated as soon as she caught his eye. Watching her face grow from merely annoyed to fully disgusted took only seconds, but in those few seconds Fletcher relived the end of their four-year relationship.
Hadley scowled at him. “Every time I see you, you’re dumping me.”
Fletcher was sure his mouth hung open. There was literally no way to respond to that.
He reached down to help her from the floor. All the packages that had landed on and around her as she fell tumbled across the sidewalk, spilling teddy bears and fuzzy blankets to unlikely distances. This woman did nothing by halves.
Grasping both her arms, he pulled her off the ground. His fingers tightened around her arms, muscle memory igniting. Every reflex told him to keep pulling her all the way into an embrace, but her stiffness made him reconsider. He made do with placing his hand on her back to assure them both that she was stable on her feet. Not because he particularly wanted to remember the feeling of his hand on her back. Politeness, that was all.
Taking a step away from him, she smoothed her sweater and put her fists on her hips. “Huh. So it’s true. You’re back.”
It’s true? She’d heard? If that was the case, she was marginally more prepared for the sight of him than he was for the sight of her. Preparation did not seem to have made this encounter any more pleasant. She could not have sounded less glad to see him. Her glare cut into him. Fletcher had no idea how he was supposed to reply to her comment. How, he wondered, could a woman half his size be so scary?
Years of practice, he reminded himself. Years of practice.
He knew that within a few hours, he’d be feeling as repelled by the thought of her as she was currently at the sight of him. When he took some time to consider their history, he’d remember all the reasons they’d ended. No matter what the surprise of seeing her did to his pulse, they were simply wrong together, whether “together” meant in a relationship or simply in the same room.
So why couldn’t he take his eyes off her?
Maybe it was her hair. He’d always loved her careless, messy red hair, which was currently pulled up in a knot on top of her head that may have taken hours to curate, or no time at all. She had always been a mystery like that.
Or maybe it was the green sweater she had on. The way it brought out the color of her eyes…
What was he thinking? He shook his head. She started haphazardly repacking things into bags and boxes.
He recognized that although she hadn’t directly asked him a question, she had spoken last, and nobody could accuse him of not being a gentleman. “Yeah. I’m back.” He propped the door open with his foot and gathered spilled picture books into a nearby box.
There was more he should say, he knew. Good to see you? She wouldn’t buy it, and he wasn’t sure even he believed it. Have you seen my mom? No. She would have mentioned it. Glad you’re still in town? He wasn’t sure how true that even was. So he left his completely obvious and unnecessary statement hanging there between them.
The dark-haired woman left the reception desk and pushed past Fletcher. She knelt beside Hadley on the sidewalk and helped shove things back into boxes.
The two women shared one of those looks that communicate things men can’t register, and Fletcher picked up some refilled boxes and set them inside the door. Ignoring both the whispers and the sounds of disdain passing between them, he picked up bags and boxes they passed him until everything that had somehow once been in Hadley’s arms was now inside the station.
“Anything else?” Fletcher asked.
Something snapped in Hadley’s eyes, that fire of independence that Fletcher had once loved. “If there was, I could get it,” she said, but then softened her tone. “But this is all of it.”
The dark-haired woman put an arm over Hadley’s shoulders. “This is incredible,” she said. You gathered all of this in a week?”
Hadley shrugged, her head tilting to the side. Every move she made brought years of memories surging into Fletcher’s mind. That particular expression, he knew, meant that she would like to imply that it was nothing, even though she was really proud of what she’d done.
Hadley added a small, dismissive gesture with her hand. “I put up a sign in the shop, and I offered a trade for kids’ books.”
So she’d done it, Fletcher thought. She’d always wanted to work in a bookstore, and it sounded like now she did. He wondered which shop in town had hired her. He was hovering on the balance between hoping he wandered into the right one and hoping he never accidentally entered the right one when the dark-haired woman turned to face him.
“Is there something you need?” The words were benign, but the hostility of her tone was unambiguous.
Professional, Fletcher thought to himself. I’m a professional. “Are you Samantha? I’m supposed to fill out some forms with Samantha.”
She shot him a withering look. “Savanna.”
“Right. Sorry.” He was striking out all over the place.
Giving barely a nod, Savanna said, “You’re hired, huh?”
Fletcher wondered if this was the welcome every new employee could expect. He caught the eyeroll she sent Hadley�
��s way.
Savanna picked up a laptop from the reception desk. “There are three tabs open here. Fill out the information correctly and completely. It’s a hassle to fix it later.” Her unfriendly tone suggested it would be a hassle for her, and if she was some kind of secretary or receptionist or liaison here, he knew it would be a terrible idea to get any further on her bad side.
As she handed him the laptop, she smiled insincerely and said, “Welcome to the team.”
“Right. Thanks.” Hoping to repair a bit of the damage his first impression had caused, he smiled, but both the women already had their backs to him. As he sat on the chair answering security questions and uploading his medical history, Hadley and Savanna knelt a few feet away sorting the items she’d carried in and ignoring him.
Every time Hadley laughed, he fought the urge to cross the room and hug her. After all this time, he still loved her laugh, how it rumbled up from her throat, much lower and deeper than her speaking voice, and combined with that maddening, gorgeous sparkle in her eyes. It had been years since he’d been responsible for making her laugh like that.
Enough, he thought. Employment history. Not romantic history.
Every time she’d turn to face Savanna, he had a perfect view of Hadley’s profile, the sprinkling of freckles across her nose, that dimple, her perfect teeth.
Stop it, he told himself again. Focus on insurance forms.
When the forms asked for family medical history, he could finally give his full attention to the task at hand. He had little choice.
Has any member of your immediate family been diagnosed with or treated for any of the following? There were too many checked boxes for Fletcher’s comfort, when he factored in his father’s cancer, heart disease, and far-too-early death. And then there was his mom’s kidney disease. Just clicking the boxes made him feel tired.
But this was the reason he was here. His mom had handled her widowhood with grace, continuing her work as an assistant in the same orthodontist’s office where Fletcher had gotten braces. But in the past few months, her health had begun to decline. She was far too young to retire from work, but she confessed to Fletcher that the job was simply too hard on her body.
Embracing Her Ever After: A Sweet Romantic Comedy (ABCs of Love Book 5) Page 18