“You said you wanted pizza,” Jo reminded her, clearly unwilling to hand over her newly discovered grandbaby just yet.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve had your pizza,” Erin said. “But Kyle’s obviously anxious to sort out his fungi problem and he’s our ride.”
“If you want to stay for lunch, I can swing by to pick you up later,” he said, no doubt so that his mom could enjoy some more time with her grandson—and score bonus points for him.
“I would love to,” Erin agreed. “I’ve been craving a slice with sausage and roasted red peppers since we walked through the door.”
“If it doesn’t take too long to sort out the mushroom issue, I’ll come back and share your pizza.”
“I’m really hungry,” she warned. “Maybe I won’t want to share.”
“Order a large,” he suggested. “If I don’t make it back, you’ll have leftovers for lunch tomorrow.”
“I guess I’m ordering a large,” Erin said to Jo.
“I’ll get Frank right on that,” Jo promised, already heading to the kitchen.
With the baby still in her arms.
“She’s never going to give him back, is she?” Erin asked.
Kyle chuckled. “She won’t have any choice when he gets hungry—or when her customers do.”
When he’d gone, Jo returned with the baby and a big glass of water for Erin. “I know you like Coke, but all the chemicals in that stuff can’t be good for a baby.”
“I gave up soda—and coffee—when I found out I was pregnant.”
Jo nodded briskly. “Good girl.”
“Tired girl,” Erin said. “You wouldn’t believe how much I miss my morning hit of caffeine.”
“I would believe it,” Jo assured her. “I gave it up, too, when I was expecting both Kyle and Lucy, substituting peppermint tea instead.”
“That’s been my go-to,” she said, as Frank came out of the kitchen with a stack of plates and napkins in his hands.
“I get paid to cook, not serve.” Despite his grumbling tone, he winked at Erin as he set the items on the table.
“I wouldn’t pay you to serve,” Jo told him. “Your pizza crust might be legendary, but your customer service sucks.”
“Pizza smells great, Frank,” Erin told him.
“You can tell me it tastes great in another two minutes.”
“I will,” she promised.
“Good to see you around here again.”
She smiled. “It’s good to be here again.”
He inclined his head toward the baby on Jo’s lap. “Cute kid. Yours?”
She nodded.
“Feel free to bring him around here anytime.”
“I didn’t know you liked babies,” Jo said to her cook.
“I like this one,” he said. “Because he keeps you out of my kitchen.”
And with that, he retreated to it again.
Jo shook her head. “I swear that man gets more ornery every day.”
“But his pizza crust is legendary,” Erin reminded her.
“Without sauce, pizza crust is nothing more than flatbread,” Jo said pointedly, when Frank returned with a tray of pizza.
“Without crust, pizza sauce is just sad,” he retorted.
Erin couldn’t help but smile as she listened to their exchange. “I think I missed listening to the two of you bicker as much as I missed Jo’s pizza.”
“Didn’t Lucy send pizza to you when you were in Arkansas?” Jo asked, as Erin transferred a slice from the pan to her plate.
“Not enough,” she said. “Especially considering that my family made me share.”
Jo chuckled at that, and Joel tipped his head back to look at her.
“None for you just yet,” she said to the infant. “But I promise, when you’ve got the teeth to chew it, Grandma Jo will give you all the pizza you want.”
“And who knows?” Erin said. “Maybe he’ll be such a big fan that he wants to work with his grandma at Jo’s Pizza someday.”
“Or he might follow in his dad’s footsteps,” Jo said. “Or his mom’s.”
“Whatever he wants to do or be when he grows up, he’ll be loved and supported,” Erin promised.
“I haven’t been very supportive of Kyle, have I?” Though Jo was obviously talking to Erin now, she kept her attention on the baby.
“I wasn’t trying to make a statement about your relationship with your son,” she assured her baby’s grandmother.
“You don’t need to,” Jo said. “I’m all too aware of the distance in my relationship with Kyle. A distance that I allowed to grow.”
“I’m hardly an expert on parent-child relationships,” Erin said. “But, brother-in-law, who is a civil engineer, is fond of saying that there’s no distance so great that it cannot be spanned by a bridge, provided the foundation is solid enough.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Jo promised.
Chapter Twelve
The day after the outing to Jo’s Pizza, Erin sat with her phone in hand, desperately wanting to reach out to Lucy. Her friend’s contact information was displayed on the screen—she just needed to gather the courage to connect the call—but she wasn’t sure what to say after keeping a secret so big for so long.
Before she could figure out the answer to that question, a knock sounded, and opening the door, she found herself face-to-face with her best friend.
“Ohmygod—look at you,” Erin said, her eyes filling with tears as she greeted her very pregnant friend. “You are totally glowing.”
“I’m sweating,” Lucy corrected. “Because growing a baby has thrown my internal thermostat out of whack. But I don’t care that I’m sweating, I’m going to hug you anyway because I’ve missed you like crazy.”
Erin laughed as she returned her friend’s embrace. “I’ve missed you, too. And your whacked-out thermostat notwithstanding, you look absolutely fabulous.”
“I feel pretty good—other than the occasional flare-up of sciatica when the baby puts pressure on the nerve.” Her expression turned serious as she took Erin’s hands. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t be with you for your dad’s funeral.”
“It’s okay,” Erin said. “You had the very best reason not to be there. Although, a heads-up that your brother was coming might have been good.”
“I didn’t think you’d be surprised to see him.” She met her friend’s gaze squarely. “Of course, I didn’t know you’d had his child, either, so obviously we need to work on our communication skills.”
“It’s been an eventful eleven-and-a-half months,” Erin told her, hedging.
“We’ve got a lot to catch up on,” Lucy agreed. “But first, I want to meet my nephew.”
“Apparently he wants to meet you, too,” she said, as a soft cooing emanated from the baby monitor on the counter.
“Oh.” Lucy pressed a hand to her heart. “Those cute little baby sounds just make me go all soft and gooey inside.”
“He makes other sounds, too, that aren’t nearly as cute,” Erin told her, leading the way to the baby’s room. “Especially at three o’clock in the morning.”
“I don’t believe it,” her friend said, reaching into the crib to pick up the baby. “Hey, there, sweetie. It’s your Auntie Lucy. I’m so happy to finally meet you.”
Joel, always happy to be the center of attention, responded with a happy smile.
“Oh.” Lucy’s eyes got misty. “Look at that—is he really smiling at me?”
“He’s really smiling at you,” Erin confirmed.
“You have no idea how much I wanted to camp out on your doorstep, waiting for you to come home, so I could meet him. The only thing that held me back was knowing that my mother would never forgive me if I got to see him first.”
“I guess she told you that we were at the pizzeria yesterday?” Erin said.
“I almost forgot that the Haven rumor mill is a well-oiled piece of machinery,” Erin said. “And still, I missed this town and everyone in it.”
“Which is why you’re never allowed to leave Haven for anything more than a long weekend again.”
Erin laughed, even as her eyes filled with tears. “Of course, I missed you most of all.”
“Don’t think that’s going to let you off the hook for never telling me that you were pregnant,” Lucy said, sounding hurt. “I thought I was your best friend.”
“You are,” Erin assured her. “You have no idea how much I wanted to tell you, how hard it was to not to say something every time we talked on the phone. How hard it was not to call you when I had my first ultrasound, when I felt the first flutter of movement and when my water broke—at midnight.”
“So why didn’t you?” Lucy wanted to know.
“Because how could I admit that I’d gotten pregnant after one night when you and Claudio had been trying for so long to have a child?”
“When you put it that way, I guess I can understand why you held back,” her friend acknowledged.
“Plus, you would have had all kinds of questions about the father.”
“I still do,” her friend said. “I mean, I know it’s Kyle—but knowing that...thinking about you and my brother...together...it makes my head spin and raises a million more questions.”
“It wasn’t something either of us planned,” Erin told her.
“I don’t need the details,” Lucy assured her. “But I wish you’d told me. And yeah, maybe it would have taken me some time to be okay with the fact that you were having a baby before me—when I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to get pregnant—but I would have been there for you.”
“I know, there was just so much happening all at once.”
“I can’t imagine how hard it must have been to go through everything on your own. And at the same time that you were dealing with your dad’s illness.”
“I wasn’t really on my own,” Erin said.
“Do you have another best friend in Silver Hook that you haven’t told me about?”
“Of course not. I was actually referring to my sister.”
“Anna?”
She nodded. “Yeah, it was a surprise to me, too. But she was incredible. Maybe it was because she got pregnant first, so she got to play big sister for a change, but she was helpful and supportive.”
“I’m glad,” Lucy said sincerely. “But I’m even more glad that you’re home now, where you belong.”
* * *
While Erin was visiting with Lucy, Kyle was in his tiny office at The Home Station, putting the finishing touches on the “Daily Specials” menu insert for the day. He’d just clicked Print when a knock sounded on the open door.
He glanced up to see his boss standing there.
“Are we all booked up for tonight?” Liam Gilmore asked.
“It’s Saturday,” Kyle told him, as if the answer should be just as obvious.
“Any chance you can squeeze in another table for two at eight o’clock?”
Of course, Kyle knew that when Liam asked if there was any chance, he was really telling the chef to make it happen.
“Special occasion?”
His boss nodded. “There’s a young couple staying in The Wild Bill Suite this weekend. He was planning to propose over a candlelight dinner, but he forgot to book the dining room when he booked the suite.”
Kyle looked at the reservation book. “It will be really tight,” he warned. “A preferable option might be room service. We can set up a table in the alcove by the window. Linen tablecloth and napkins, flowers and candles.”
“That sounds like an even better idea,” Liam agreed. “With the added bonus of privacy to celebrate their engagement after he puts the ring on her finger.”
“Or a lack of witnesses to his humiliation if she turns him down,” Kyle countered.
“Who would have guessed that a man who puts so much of his heart and soul into his cooking would have a cynical streak?” his boss mused.
“It’s not cynicism, it’s realism. When a man asks the ultimate yes-or-no question, he should be prepared for the possibility that he could hear either answer.”
“Let me guess—Erin turned you down?”
Because, of course, his boss knew, along with everyone else in town, that Erin’s baby was his baby, too. Less than forty-eight hours after her return, the local gossip proved once again to be even hotter than the coffee at The Daily Grind.
“I haven’t asked her to marry me,” he said, demonstrating that his boss didn’t know everything.
“Why not?” Liam asked.
“Because I didn’t imagine myself ever going down that path,” Kyle confided.
“You care about Erin, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
“And she cares about you?”
“Yes.”
“And you want to be there for your son?” his boss pressed.
“More than anything,” he admitted.
“Then you should want to marry his mom,” Liam said.
Kyle was afraid it might be as simple—and as complicated—as that.
* * *
The last few diners were lingering over dessert and coffee when word came down to the kitchen from The Wild Bill Suite that the yes-or-no question had been answered with an enthusiastic “yes,” putting the staff in a celebratory mood as they cleaned up.
“Customers aren’t allowed in the kitchen,” Kyle admonished, when Lucy walked in.
“I’m not a customer, I’m your sister.”
“You still shouldn’t be back here. And what are you doing here so late, anyway?” he asked, more curious than concerned.
“I wanted cheesecake,” she admitted.
“You know you can get cheesecake from Sweet Caroline’s, which is, in fact, where we get our desserts,” he reminded her.
“Okay, I wanted cheesecake and I wanted to talk to you.”
“So talk,” he told her.
“I’m waiting for my cheesecake.”
He sighed. “Chocolate sauce or fresh strawberry topping?”
“Mmm...both?”
“That’s not actually an option,” he told her.
She smiled sweetly.
“Except for my sister, apparently.”
He gestured to Rizwan, who, despite his lack of knowledge of fungi, had a nice touch with desserts. “I need a slice of cheesecake with chocolate sauce and strawberry topping.”
“Yes, chef,” the line cook said, and hurried away to prep the dish.
Lucy smiled warmly at the man when he returned with a square plate elaborately decorated with swirls of chocolate and strawberry coulis on top of which sat a thick wedge of cheesecake covered in strawberries and chocolate sauce and mounds of whipped cream. “Thank you, Rizwan.”
The line cook nodded and ducked away again.
“Can you talk now?” Kyle asked.
“It would be easier for me to eat this if I was sitting down,” Lucy said.
He gestured to his office.
Of course, the visitor’s chair was covered in catalogues and samples, so Lucy took the chair behind his desk.
His chair.
He folded his arms over his chest and leaned back against the filing cabinet, giving his sister the look that would have sent any of his kitchen staff scrambling.
Lucy ignored him.
“I saw Erin today—and finally met my nephew,” she said, as she dipped her fork into the cake. “You made a cute kid, big brother.”
“Yeah, he’s pretty great.”
“And you and Er
in?” she prompted. “How are you guys?”
“We’ve got some things to figure out.”
She nodded. “That’s understandable.”
“I’m still mad at her,” Kyle admitted. “Or I want to be. Then I remember how it felt the very first time I held the baby—my son—in my arms, and suddenly the hurt and anger aren’t nearly as strong as all these other emotions.”
“I love to hear you say ‘my son,’” Lucy marveled, a smile curving her lips. “I still can hardly believe that my big brother’s a daddy.”
“Yeah.” He scrubbed his hands over his face. “I can hardly believe it some days, too.”
“Although, it was almost a bigger surprise for me to find out that you’d hooked up with Erin. I’m still trying wrap my head around the idea of the two of you together—I don’t mean that I’m thinking of you together together, because...no. Not going there. But you and Erin... I think I’m okay with that. In fact, I love the idea of my best friend being my sister-in-law—”
“Whoa!” He held up a hand. “I think you’re jumping the gun a little bit there.”
She frowned as she lifted another forkful of cheesecake to her lips. “Are you telling me that you haven’t already proposed to her?”
“I only found out about the baby last week,” he reminded her.
“And as soon as you realized that her baby was your baby, you should have asked her to marry you.”
“It’s the twenty-first century. Aren’t we past the point where a man and woman have to get married because they have a child together?”
“Sure,” she agreed. “If the mother of your child was some anonymous woman that you only spent one night with, I wouldn’t be suggesting that you put a ring on her finger. But this is Erin.”
“With whom I only spent one night.”
“Oh, I see,” she said, a definite edge in her tone. “You got what you wanted and that was the end of it?”
“It was what we both wanted.”
“But that wasn’t the end of it, was it? Because you have real feelings for Erin. That’s why you were out of sorts the whole time that she was away.”
“I wasn’t out of sorts,” he denied. “I was worried about her, because I know how close she was to her dad and how devastated she was by his diagnosis.”
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