Chapter Twenty-Three

Rose threw herself into helping with Gen’s wedding. That was something she could do to get her mind off of her own problems and onto something constructive. There was so much to do, it was easy to lose herself in the tasks, the details, the putting out of small fires.

She knew that she’d be keeping the baby, but she didn’t know what she was going to do beyond that. She didn’t know what she would do about Will, or about her mother, or how she would raise a baby on her own. But she wasn’t ready to think about those things, and thinking about tulle and taffeta, flowers and place markers, seemed so much easier.

“What’s the next job? I need a job,” Rose told Gen at the gallery when she stopped in during her lunch break a couple of weeks before the wedding.

“Are you sure?” Gen looked skeptical. “You’ve got a lot on your plate right now, and I—”

“I’m sure! All of that stuff ‘on my plate’ ”—she made air quotes with her fingers—“is the reason I need something to do! I can’t think about it right now. So I need something else to think about.”

“Well, okay.” Gen went to the laptop on her desk, called up a file, printed it, then handed the sheet of paper to Rose. “Here’s the list of the inconsiderate idiots who haven’t RSVP’d yet. Could you call them and find out who’s coming?”

Rose lifted an eyebrow. “Inconsiderate idiots?”

“It seems that wedding prep is making me cranky,” Gen observed.

“All right. I’m on it. If you want, I can tell them that they’re being idiots.”

Gen smiled, a dreamy look on her face that suggested she was happily imagining just that. “Better not,” she said finally. “Some of them are Ryan’s relatives, and I’m still trying to make a good impression.”

“Okay. Only two weeks left. How are you holding up?”

“I’m good,” Gen said. “It’s good. I’m excited, and stressed out, and I can’t wait, but I also can’t wait for it to be over.”

“That sounds about right.”

“How about you? Have you told Will—”

Rose plugged her ears with her fingers and started singing. “La la la la la! I can’t hear a thing! My ears are plugged, and I’m singing! La la la!”

Gen crossed her arms over her chest and rolled her eyes as Rose walked out the door.

 

Rose knew she couldn’t avoid the issue forever, but she figured she could avoid it for now. So she went back to De-Vine after her lunch break and started on the phone calls. The shop was empty. She’d already done the ordering, restocked the shelves, cleaned the place, and brought the bookkeeping up to date. It seemed that hiding an unplanned pregnancy gave her stores of energy she wouldn’t have thought possible.

She was three names down the list when a text message came in from Will.

Dinner tonight?

Rose stared at the message. Though it was a simple question, not fraught with drama or emotional baggage, she felt an ache in her chest just seeing his name. She hesitated, then answered.

I can’t. Busy helping Gen with the wedding.

It was a lie. She’d be done with the phone calls this afternoon, and then she wouldn’t have anything else to do until she got another assignment from Gen. And of course, she’d have to eat dinner. It wasn’t like she was going to hunger strike until the wedding was over. Still. She wasn’t ready to see him.

I can help. I can make little bags of Jordan almonds. : )

The emoticon, coming from a grown man, was unbearably cute.

A sweet, sexy man cared about her. Why did it hurt like this? Why did it make this ache, this lump of sorrow in the middle of her belly? Part of her knew that pushing him away was childish, but another part—a bigger part—felt like her very survival depended on it.

That’s sweet. Thanks. But we’re good on the Jordan almonds.

A moment later he responded.

Tomorrow, then? I miss you.

Oh, God. She missed him too. So much. But the knowledge of the baby growing inside her was all she could possibly handle. She couldn’t handle him, too. Now—especially now—was a time when she had to protect herself. Pregnancy made her vulnerable and raw, and this was not the time to open herself up to anything as messy and unpredictable as love.

Customers in the store, she wrote back. Then she put her phone down and looked out into the empty expanse of the shop.

She sighed.

This—all of this—was why she should have been finished with men.

 

When Rose got off work that evening, she went to her car and found Will leaning against the hood holding a bag from Neptune.

Her heart did an annoying little flip-flop when she saw him.

“What are you doing here?”

He pushed off the car and stood up straight as she approached. “You’re busy right now, but you’ve got to eat. So, I figured I’d bring you something.” He gestured toward the bag. “There’s enough here for two. We can go down to the beach and sit at a picnic table and eat it together, or if you really can’t spare the time, I’ll just leave it with you and go get a burger.”

He grinned his disarming, sweet, good-guy grin. It almost made Rose’s knees weak.

“I guess … I suppose I can spare a few minutes to eat. But then I have to get home and work on some stuff for Gen.” She wondered what was in the bag, and hoped it involved Jackson’s seafood bisque.

“Okay, fair enough. Your car or mine?”

 

The evening was mild as they set up the food on a picnic table at Leffingwell Landing, just north of Moonstone Beach. Will had planned ahead, and he’d brought a tablecloth to spread over the worn wooden table.

Gulls wheeled overhead, and a light breeze blew off the ocean. A handful of people were at the park, including a woman who’d set up an easel for watercolor painting, and a guy playing Frisbee with his kids.

Will spread the food out on the table, and it did, in fact, include Jackson’s seafood bisque.

“God, I’m starving,” Rose said. Though she was very early in her pregnancy, one thing about her body that had changed already was that it had an insatiable desire for food. And this hunger wasn’t like any previous hunger she’d felt. This was a soul-consuming, knee-shaking, animal desire to devour anything edible that came into her path.

Will had brought the bisque, some pieces of fresh-baked baguette, a green salad, and pasta with a spicy chicken and sausage ragù. As he opened the containers, the mouthwatering smells almost made Rose swoon.

They didn’t bother with plates or bowls, and instead just dug into the takeout containers with their plastic forks and spoons.

Rose wanted to be tough and protect herself and her baby from any possible dangers, and those dangers included Will, since she couldn’t be sure about him and what he would do once he learned about his impending fatherhood. Her heart was at risk, and she needed to surround it with an impenetrable fortress of strength.

But it was pretty goddamned hard to be a fortress when he brought her seafood bisque.

She was too hungry, and too tired from a day spent on her feet, to worry about that now. Right now, there was the velvety texture of warm bread and the bite of the spicy sausage, and the aroma of seafood and tangy tomato sauce. Right now, there were the seagulls and the crash of the waves, and the scent of the ocean.

“I haven’t seen you much lately,” Will said mildly.

Rose shrugged in a way that was supposed to be casual. “Ah. Well, you know, I’ve been pretty busy. Work, and my mother wanting to take up all of my time, and … and Gen’s wedding.” It sounded false and stilted, and she knew it. It sounded like an excuse.

“Sure.” He nodded. “I’ve been busy too. I’m finally making progress on my dissertation.”

“Really? That’s great, Will. I know you were worried about it.”

“I was, but recently things have, let’s say, clarified for me. I can’t screw around anymore. I have to get this done and get my career going. I can’t be a caretaker forever.” The breeze was ruffling his sandy-colored hair, and he lifted a hand to brush it out of his face.

Rose wondered what, exactly, had happened to clarify things for him, and where he’d found the sudden motivation to get his metaphorical house in order. Was it possible he knew about the baby? But then she thought, no. The only people who knew were her friends. Well, and the tourist who’d bought the pregnancy test for her. Her friends would not betray her confidence, and the tourist didn’t even know Will.

She shook off the thought. It was something on his end, then. With a sudden jolt of horror, she thought about his bitchy ex, the one who wouldn’t let go.

“Have you heard from Melinda lately?” Rose inquired, trying to sound like she was just making conversation.

“Ah … Yes. Yes, I have.”

“And?”

He gave her a kind of sideways look that she found impossibly endearing. “Are you sure you want to hear about this?”

“I’m sure. Spill it, Science Boy.”

He pulled his phone out of his back pocket, fiddled with it a little bit, then passed it across the table to her. Up on the screen was the latest text exchange between the two of them, dated two days before.

Melinda: Will, you’re going to have to acknowledge me at some point.

Will: I don’t see why. We broke up.

Melinda: What’s done can be undone. People break up and get back together all the time.

Will: I’m with Rose now. Please stop, Melinda. You’re with Chris. Just be with Chris.

Melinda: You asshole. If you think you can get away with just ignoring me, you’re sadly mistaken.

No response from Will. Then Melinda texted again ten minutes later:

If you keep treating me like this, I’ll tell Chris that you kissed me. You’ll lose your job. You’ll be out on the street, you tiny-dicked bastard.

That last bit made Rose grin, despite how horrible it all was. She could attest to the falsity of the tiny-dicked comment.

He took the phone from Rose and placed it back into his pocket.

“Did you know she was this crazy when you were dating her?”

“No.” He looked thoughtful. “Well, maybe a little. She did get kind of obsessive about things sometimes. But I didn’t know she was at this level of crazy.”

The fact that Melinda was pursuing Will made Rose feel anxious and angry. But what he’d told Melinda—I’m with Rose now—filled her with a kind of giddy pride. The overall result was a seesaw of emotions she didn’t quite know how to handle. But, hell. Being flummoxed by her emotions was pretty much the status quo these days.

“What are you going to do about her?” Rose toyed with a piece of a baguette. She kept her voice calm and conversational—just two pals chatting about a crazy ex—but every instinct told her to track down Melinda and pull her hair out by the roots.

“I don’t know.” He shrugged and looked out at the water, to where the sun was slowly inching toward the horizon. “Nothing, I guess.”

“What do you mean, ‘nothing’? You have to do something. She’s stalking you, for God’s sake.” To Rose’s mind, taking out a restraining order would not have been out of line. Rose had read online about companies that would send boxes of dog shit to your enemies. Right about now, that seemed like a pretty useful service.

Will returned his gaze to Rose. “I figure if I ignore her, she’ll go away. She’s not going to tell Chris that I kissed her, because then I’ll tell him the truth: that she was the one who made a move on me. No. She’s not going to jeopardize her relationship with someone as high-powered as he is. I mean, he’s what she always wanted in the first place: a rich guy who looks good in a suit. I really don’t even get why she’s doing this.”

“Competition,” Rose said, sipping from the tall paper cup of iced tea Will had brought for her. “All of this started when she met me, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, there you go. It was fine that you two were broken up when she thought you were lonely and sad, regretting the day that you let her walk out of your life. But then she sees you with me, and I’m much hotter than she is.” She grinned at him, and shot him a wink. “In her shallow, two-dimensional way, she probably saw the hair and the tats and thought that I’m way more sexually adventurous than she could ever be. Cue the insane stalking.”

“You are more sexually adventurous,” Will observed.

“Of course. She was probably a missionary position, only-on-Saturday-nights girl. But don’t tell me about it.” She put up a hand, palm out, to stop him. “I don’t want to know.”

Being here with him, even if they were spending the time trashing his ex, felt so good that Rose had to remind herself that she wasn’t going to do this; she wasn’t going to go all gooey over him and give him her heart. She needed her heart to be safe and intact for her child. But he looked so sweet with the early evening sun on his face, his hair mussed by the breeze, that when he came to her side of the picnic table and sat next to her, so close that she could feel the warmth of his thigh against hers, she didn’t even think to move away.

“I don’t regret the day I let her walk out of my life,” he said. “Just for the record. She wasn’t right for me. She wasn’t who I wanted. You are.”

For a moment, her rational brain kicked in. “Look, Will. We shouldn’t—”

He shut down her protest with a kiss.

And damned if it didn’t work. When his lips touched hers, she went all stupid, and she forgot what she’d wanted to say. What was it about a kiss that could do this to a person? That could empty your brain and make your insides go soft? Whatever it was, Rose lost herself in it. The taste of his mouth and the warmth of his tongue, the feel of his breath on her, made her want to forget everything else and live right here, forever. Somehow, against her own volition, she stopped being the girl with the heart that needed protecting, and instead rose from her seat on the bench and settled herself in his lap.

His arms went around her and gathered her in, and she felt right. She felt at peace.

Damn it.

When the two of them came up for air, he smoothed her hair back from her face with his warm hand.

“Rose. I’m not in this for a good time. I’m in this. Completely. I just wanted you to know.”

And oh, God, she wanted to believe it. Wanted to believe in this, in him. She rested her forehead against his.

“Can I come to your place tonight?” She could feel his breath as he spoke just inches from her skin. “Please?”

It was the please that did it. She was powerless to say no.

And anyway, she could be strong again tomorrow.