by R. R. Banks
Ten minutes later I was walking through the doors of Bubba Ray’s again. He grinned at me from behind the bar.
“Well, if it isn’t my new friend,” he said.
The way that he looked at me told me that he had heard a certain bit of gossip in the last few hours and was eager to talk to me about it. I settled onto one of the stools in front of him.
“How are you doing tonight, Bubba Ray?” I asked.
“Doing just fine. And how are you, papa?”
My shoulders dropped.
“You heard?”
“There were some rumors,” he said.
“Rumors?”
“Well, sort of rumors. We’ve all been trying to figure out who Bitsy’s baby daddy was since she showed up here and started showing. She wouldn’t tell anybody, and of course we all had too much class to demand she tell us, but it’s a curious situation, you know?”
Super classy.
“Sure,” I said. “And she never mentioned me?”
“Not exactly,” he said.
“What do you mean ‘not exactly’?”
“No. She never mentioned you.”
“Great.”
“But as soon as we saw you, there were some mutterings. I mean, you have to admit that little baby looks like you.”
“Yeah,” I said, letting out a breath. “She looks just like my family.”
“So where have you been?”
There was a sudden edge of aggression in his voice and I snapped my eyes to his.
“What do you mean where have I been? I didn’t know about that baby. She didn’t even tell me she was pregnant.”
Bubba Ray looked at me for a few seconds and then nodded.
“That sounds like Bitsy.”
“Can you tell me about her?”
He let out a sigh.
“I don’t really know what to tell you. The Galloways are one of the oldest families in the Hollow. Their farm was actually here long before the official starting of the Hollow. There’s some dark stuff going on around that farm. Dark stuff.”
“Like what?”
“I really shouldn’t be the one to tell you, but trust me when I saw that you aren’t the only one who’s gone after a member of the Galloway’s and not been able to get through to them. Bitsy was different. She always seemed brighter, more optimistic, even after everything that she had been through. Then Gregory Finglass happened.”
Gregory. I had heard that name. Oh, shit. The Halloween party the night I met her.
“What happened with him?”
“Nobody really knows, to be honest. They dated for a long time. He wasn’t from around here, but they had met up at school. When he was getting close to graduation, they had a falling out and he left. That’s when she left the Hollow.”
“To go after him.”
Bubba Ray shrugged and grabbed a rag, wiping the bar almost absently like he needed to do something with his hands.
“She never said. She just up and went. We never heard from Gregory again, and when she would come to visit, Bitsy never mentioned him. Then about a year and a half ago, she just showed back up and moved back in with her Granddaddy. A few months later it was obvious why.”
I nodded.
“I didn’t know,” I reiterated. “She didn’t tell me.”
She didn’t even tell me her name.
I pulled a menu toward me and ordered dinner. I might as well settle in. It seemed I was going to be here for a while. I couldn’t just walk away, from the baby or from Bitsy. Even if it seemed like that was exactly what she wanted me to do.
Chapter Thirteen
Bitsy
I was trying to focus on my chores around the farm the next day, but I couldn’t get Roman out of my head. His sudden appearance had completely thrown me off and I felt like I couldn’t focus. It was like all of my fantasies about him over the last year might have somehow drawn Roman to me like the sirens on the island. Except all they did was kill the men. None of them were like – Surprise! You’re a father.
I knew that no matter how gorgeous he was, no matter how much I had realized that he was even sexier and more desirable than I had remembered, and no matter how strong the chemistry was between us, he wasn’t what was good for me. I couldn’t just think about myself anymore. I had to think about Lorelei, and my baby deserved more in a father than a man like Roman. I would rather us be alone and raise her by myself as a single mother than to be distracted from her by a man who would never fit in with his family or their home, and would probably end up hurting them anyway.
I was walking through one of the front pumpkin patches when I heard the rumble of a car coming toward me. I looked to the drive and saw an unfamiliar black car that I knew immediately must be Roman. Turning away from him, I started back toward the house.
“Bitsy.”
I glanced over and saw that he was driving slowly along beside me, his window down so he could lean out and call out to me.
“I’m busy,” I called back.
“Bitsy, please talk to me.”
“I have work to do.”
I put my back to the drive and headed deeper into the pumpkin patch. The sound of a door closing behind me made me quicken my steps and I heard him running up behind me.
“Bitsy.”
I turned around, staring at Roman as he chased me. The sound of my name on his lips was strange. I enjoyed it, but I couldn’t let myself. I couldn’t be Bitsy to him. He wasn’t a part of this world and he never would be.
“Look, Roman, I’m flattered that you came out here to find me. Really, I am, but I’m sure it’s clear now why it would be best for you to just go back.”
“No, that’s not clear. You had my child. That, more than anything, means that I should be here.”
“I don’t need anything from you. I don’t need your help taking care of the baby. She’s mine, and that’s enough.”
“It doesn’t matter if you think you need anything from me. I want to be a part of Lorelei’s life. I didn’t even know that she existed until now.”
“I did that on purpose,” I told him. It came out more sternly than I intended, but I felt like I couldn’t hold back. I had to be direct with him. “It was my choice to have her. She is my responsibility.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me about her?”
“I didn’t even know your name. You didn’t know mine, either. I was a quick fuck to you, nothing more. Your little Halloween treat. A one-night stand. Two nights if we both showed up at the party the next year. How was I supposed to find you, even if I wanted to? Was I supposed to go to Nia’s party with a new baby on my hip and just be like ‘guess what’?”
“It would have been better than running away.”
“I didn’t run away,” I said firmly. “Getting pregnant wasn’t something that I expected. It wasn’t something that I planned for. But when I got back here to my grandfather, I realized that raising her here was the right thing to do. I don’t know why you came here, or what you expect, but I think it would be best if you just left. Go home and pretend that you never came and never found out about the baby. Just pretend that you never met me.”
****
Roman
I felt myself trembling with a blend of emotions that I couldn’t decipher. I was upset that this was the way that Bitsy – really? Was that what people actually called her? – thought about my role as Lorelei’s father. I realized that we didn’t know each other and that I had already missed all of the baby’s life up until now, but that doesn’t change that I didn’t want to be like my own father.
“You can’t just push me away,” I told her. “I refuse to be like my father and let my child grow up with the same questions and pain that I went through every day. It would be so much worse for Lorelei if I just turned around and walked away right now.”
“What do you mean?” Bitsy asked.
“At least I know who my father is and occasionally saw him. If I leave now, this baby would grow up never knowing w
ho I am and would never see me. That would mean that she would never really know who she is. I might have grown up with a father who was rarely around and who made me feel like I was a burden who had ruined his life, but Lorelei would wonder why she was so unimportant that her father never even bothered to see her.”
I hadn’t meant to pour myself out like that, but I couldn’t bear the thought of my child never knowing who she was and thinking that I didn’t care about her.
“I am all that my baby needs,” Bitsy said. “She will know who she is because she will know me and she will know my grandfather. I would make sure that she never wondered about her father.”
“That’s not something that you can do. No matter how well you raise her or how much you love her, Lorelei will notice one day that she doesn’t have a father in her life and will want to know where she came from. It’s only natural. And what will you say to her then? That you told her father that she didn’t need him? That you turned him away because you felt like it? It isn’t fair to Lorelei for you to force me out of her life, and it isn’t fair to me.” Bitsy sagged slightly, looking as though the emotion of everything was dragging down on her, and I took a step toward her, softening my voice. “I understand that this isn’t easy for you. Me suddenly showing up here wasn’t something that you expected and I’m sorry if I startled or upset you, but I’m glad that I did, because I found out about the baby. I want the chance to get to know her, and I want the chance to get to know you. It’s not the way that I thought that we’d be getting to know each other, but that is going to have to be enough. I’m willing to stay here just to be Lorelei’s father and to figure out the life that we’re going to have moving forward.”
Bitsy no longer looked as small and fragile as she had before. She suddenly looked fierce, her eyes fiery as she stared at me. Finally, I saw her give an almost imperceptible nod.
“Fine,” she said.
I let out a breath and smiled.
“Good,” I said.
Some of the anger drained out of her as Bitsy seemed to relent to my continued presence.
“Come over for dinner tonight,” she said. “You can spend some time with the baby and we can try to get to know each other a little.”
I nodded.
“Sounds great.”
She nodded and headed further into the pumpkin patch. I didn’t follow her. Instead, I went back to the car and headed to the motel. There were arrangements that I needed to make if I was planning on spending more time in the Hollow. My life was generally devoted to work and I put a tremendous amount of energy and focus into being a part of every detail of my business, so it felt strange and foreign to think that I was putting that all aside for an indeterminate amount of time. Before when I would take time away from work, it was planned and I designed the breaks to allow me to still be a part of my empire every day. Now I was suddenly stepping back and having to trust that it could go on without me. But I was willing to do it in order to focus on Lorelei and Bitsy.
Even before coming to the Hollow I knew that I wanted to pursue my mystery woman. I knew that there was something more there than just the intense attraction that we already had for each other. But now that I had seen her again and had discovered that she had my child, I knew for certain that no matter how outrageous it seemed, no matter how far out of my comfort zone it was pushing me, I needed to explore these feelings more and try to convince Bitsy that we should be doing this together.
Chapter Fourteen
Bitsy
Is this really a good idea?
The invitation for Roman to come to dinner at the house that night had just kind of come out without my mouth consulting my brain first, and now I was questioning whether it was really the right choice. I admired him for wanting to be a part of Lorelei’s life, or at least for saying that he did and making the effort to come and talk to me about it, but I still didn’t think that he was a good choice for either of us. Beyond that, I couldn’t imagine that he would ever be able to be comfortable in the Hollow, and at that point, I knew that I wasn’t going to be leaving again. This was my home, and my daughter’s home, and I wouldn’t compromise that for a man. I couldn’t.
I took a breath, resolved that I would use our dinner together that night to bring this situation to a close. We could have the meal together and give him that chance to get to know us a little, and then I would try again to convince him that I was absolutely fine raising the baby without him. That I didn’t need him to go out of his way to change the situation as we were already in it. Or at least I would give him an easy way out so that he could just go back to his life and pretend that he never did the big romantic gesture of coming all the way out here to the Hollow to find me.
My mind suddenly flashed to my mother’s house at the back of the property again and I felt a surge of protectiveness toward Lorelei. As much as I could commiserate with what Roman had to say about not wanting his daughter to grow up without a father around and that he wouldn’t want her to feel the pain that he did, or for her to not know who she is, I could also remember how much it hurt both me and my mother when my father left and I didn’t want to put either of us in the position of ever experiencing that because of Roman. My grandfather was the only man I could ever imagine really trusting, especially after Gregory, and even that trust was feeling shaky now that he seemed to be going behind my back to plan the sale of the farm even though he told me that he would delay the decision until after this season. My heart simply wasn’t in a place where I could even consider letting someone else close to it.
The butterflies in my stomach seemed to be in full Spring Awakening mode when the doorbell rang, announcing Roman’s arrival for dinner. I straightened the dress I had chosen for the night, glanced over at the baby to make sure that she was still presentable, and headed to answer the door. I took a breath before opening it, involuntarily letting it stream out when I saw Roman standing on the porch. The slacks and summer weight sweater he wore perfectly accentuated his body and my mouth watered as my mind traveled back to the night that we spent together. I knew exactly what was under those clothes and my fingertips tingled to discover it again. I had gotten only a taste of him, but that taste had started cravings within me that I hadn’t been able to get out of my mind, even as the months slipped by.
I forced the thoughts out of my mind. I couldn’t think of him that way. That part of my life was on indefinite pause, pushed resolutely to the back burner while I focused all of my energy and attention on Lorelei and convincing Granddaddy to save the farm. I managed what I hoped was a civil, but not excessively friendly, smile.
“Come in,” I said, pushing open the storm door to allow him to enter the house.
“Thank you.”
Roman stepped into the house and offered me a small cluster of flowers he held in one hand.
“Thank you,” I said. “These are beautiful.”
“You’re welcome. Where is the baby?”
“She’s in the living room.”
I pointed toward the room and he followed my gesture. As I saw him turn the corner into the living room I noticed a flash of color in his hand and realized that he had brought Lorelei flowers also. I felt a flutter in my heart and turned away to close the door. When I got into the living room I saw Roman crouching down by the playpen, looking in at Lorelei as she held the flowers and ran her tiny fingers along the petals.
“You probably shouldn’t let her hang on to those,” Granddaddy said. “They’ll go right into her mouth.”
“I’m sure she’s fine,” I said. “It’s time for dinner, though, so can you go ahead and get her and put her in her high chair.”
Roman started to reach for her, but seemed to notice Granddaddy approach out of the corner of his eye and stepped back. He watched as my grandfather scooped the baby out of the playpen and took the flowers from her hand, seamlessly replacing them with a tiny stuffed bunny. We went into the dining room and settled at the table. The salad was making its way around when I notice
d Granddaddy staring at Roman.
“You know, Ladybug, when I told you to help this gentleman, I didn’t really think that you were going to keep him until you found what he was looking for.”
I laughed and filled my plate with salad, settling the bowl back to the table.
I guess this is the best time to jump right into this.
“Actually,” I said. “I was what he was looking for.”
Granddaddy’s eyes slid over to me.
“You were?” he asked. “Why is that exactly?”
I felt myself bristle slightly.
“What’s with the tone?” I asked.
“I’m just trying to understand why a middle-aged man would be coming out here to find my twenty-year-old granddaughter.”
“Twenty-two,” I corrected. “And honestly it isn’t any of your business.”
“None of my business, is it?” He snapped. “You come running home to me because you’re pregnant and spend a year and a half living with me, but you can say that bringing a man into my home isn’t any of my business.”
“This man’s name is Roman and he’s Lorelei’s father.”
Well, I probably could have handled that better.
Granddaddy’s eyes burned into me and then moved over to Roman.
“He’s what?”
“He’s Lorelei’s father.”
“This is the man who fathered my great-granddaughter and then hasn’t been around for either of you since?”
I could hear the fury growing in Granddaddy’s voice and I tried to defuse it.
“You can’t blame him. He didn’t know.”
“I assure you he knew exactly what he was doing.”
“He didn’t know about the baby. I never told him. And it only took him this long to find me because I never told him where I was.”