Читать книгу All I Want - Nicole Helm - Страница 16

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHARLIE WASN’T HAPPY to be at the market. It wasn’t that he minded helping Dell. Especially after Lainey’s birthday party when things had felt... Well, he’d been a mess, but it had been nice that his family and Dell had voiced some kind of concern over him leaving.

It was a starting point to this new life he had to figure out. He wanted it to be here. Well, not here here. He could take or leave New Benton and Millertown, but St. Louis and the areas better suited to him were only a forty-five-minute drive from home and these people.

So it wasn’t the loading and unloading of vegetables, it wasn’t even the forced smiles, it was that when he stood in a particular spot, he could see Hope Springs Farm’s booth and his gaze seemed to drift that way no matter what.

Which was stupid. If he was still thinking about the woman, the least he could do was ask her out. Just because they’d had an awkward, drunken one-night stand didn’t mean it had to stay that way. Maybe, despite all outward appearances, they would be compatible while sober.

It was possible, and maybe if he at least tried, all the guilt dogging him over that incident would finally go away.

It had been weeks, though. Over a month. Maybe it wasn’t that out of the ordinary for her. Maybe the guys all blended together for her and she wouldn’t even remember him.

Of course, then her embarrassment and awkwardness that matched his own didn’t make sense, but he needed to move on. Figure out his life, not where he stood with his one and only ungentlemanly drunken exploit.

He needed to stop looking down the aisle, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. Except the next time his eyes drifted that way, despite his brain’s express admonitions not to, there she was. Walking toward him.

He straightened. Maybe she would walk right on by. But before he could duck out of sight, she stopped in front of him, a completely unconvincing smile on her face. “Hi, Charlie.”

It was the first time she’d said his name, and he definitely had some kind of internal reaction to it.

“Hi. Meg.” It was a name he’d likely said before in his life. He knew Megans. Yet saying her name felt...weighted.

Yeah, therapy, that was a thing he really needed to look into.

“Well, well, well,” Dell said under his breath, and damn Meg’s timing because there were no customers to keep Dell’s attention off whatever reason Meg had for coming over here.

When Charlie made no effort to introduce anyone, Dell stuck his hand between Charlie and Meg. “I’m Dell,” he offered, the I-know-how-to-piss-off-Charlie grin firmly in place.

Meg smiled. It occurred to Charlie that she had a unique one. That it always seemed to light her up with a mix of mischief and joy, even when there was sadness behind it. Or nerves, as there seemed to be today.

“The Naked Farmer. Yes, I know. You’re...” Her brow furrowed as she looked between him and his brother. “Related,” she said, sounding weirdly put off by that.

“He’ll try to tell you his brother isn’t the Naked Farmer, but he’d be lying,” Dell said. “Hope Springs is yours, right? My wife loves your soaps. Do you do any fun shapes for kids?”

“Um, well, we have a few animals. Owls, goats.”

Dell nudged Charlie. “Lainey’d love that. Why don’t you go pick some out for me.”

The not-so-subtle verbal nudge was no more effective than Dell’s physical one. And Meg’s clear nervousness was off-putting in its own right. Charlie wasn’t sure he wanted to find out the source.

And are you a timid coward or a grown man? “Sure.” He shoved his hands into his pockets, because for the first time in his life he didn’t have a clue what to do with them. He didn’t know what to say, or how to manage this situation.

What an incredibly odd feeling for a man who’d prided himself on always being in control, or if not in control, well on his way toward it.

“So, um, I suppose this is awkward,” Meg began, twisting her hands together as she walked next to him on their way to her booth.

“I suppose,” he returned, wondering if it would be awkward if she weren’t quite so...vibrating with anxiety. Or maybe drunken sex just always made things awkward afterward.

He sighed. At himself. At the situation. At life. “You know—”

“I’m pregnant,” she whispered so quietly he leaned closer, sure he’d misheard or misunderstood.

“I’m sorry. What?”

“I know you don’t have any reason to believe me. We don’t know each other well. It never should have happened, but the very fact of the matter is the only person I’ve been in any potential compromising positions with is...you, and my doctor confirmed a positive pregnancy test. So.”

He leaned back. Away from her and these words that didn’t make sense. He was thirty-five. He was a vice president of... No, not anymore.

He was an unemployed thirty-five-year-old being told the drunken one-night stand he hadn’t meant to ever let happen had resulted in...

“I didn’t mean to drop it on you like that.” She skirted the table of her booth in what felt like a purposeful distancing. He was on one side of this frilly, feminine table, and she was on the other.

Pregnant.

With his baby.

“I only meant to set up a time to talk, but it just...” She waved at the air around her, pacing under the tent that shaded her inventory of soaps.

He couldn’t think of anything to say, or do. He couldn’t wrap his head around this at all.

Someone cleared their throat—an older woman, looking between the two of them as if she could read between the lines.

How could she? He couldn’t even read the actual lines here.

“You have a customer,” he managed, when it was clear Meg hadn’t noticed.

She jerked, and for the first time in the ticking minutes between her dropped bomb and now, he finally saw something he recognized.

It was a look that accepted life was not what you wanted to be, and the acceptance you had to move forward anyway.

He’d seen that look on the face of just about every person he was related to, except maybe Kenzie. God knew he’d never seen that look in the mirror, because when life didn’t give him the things he’d wanted, he’d forced himself to want something else.

He’d never accepted that things might not go his way. Never rolled with a punch, knowing or accepting he was felled. No, he’d kept punching. Kept fighting. Kept fooling himself into thinking he was exactly where he wanted to be.

He’d called all that strength. Sense. Determination.

But it wasn’t. He could see it so clearly as he wordlessly watched Meg help her customer, dull smile firmly in place.

He didn’t know her. Had very few clues about the life she led day in and day out, aside from milking goats. But he could tell the acceptance—worried and freaked-out as it might be—was far stronger than the fight.

Far, far stronger than pretending failures didn’t exist, or were only steps leading you where you wanted to be.

He didn’t want to be here, now, with this information, but nothing could change the fact that he was. He couldn’t keep moping around, acting like some version of a whiny teenager, with or without a child. A child.

That’d never been him. He met challenges. He crushed them. But this wasn’t one he could carefully maneuver around or through. It involved people. It involved a child. His child.

Single. Drunken one-night stand. Tattooed goat farmer. He felt more than a little dizzy over the whole thing, and the next time he glanced at Meg, she was looking at him, big blue eyes solemn, but there was also something in them he didn’t understand.

“I’ve had some time to think about it. You should take some time too.”

“To think about it?”

“Yes. How involved you want to be. If you want to be involved. Like I said, I’ve had time to think about it, crunch the numbers. I can raise a kid.” She said it almost defiantly, chin raised, just daring him to argue with her.

But why would he argue with her? What did he know? Clearly he knew very, very little. Life had decided to finally show him just how little.

“So, if you’re not interested, that’s your choice. But it is your kid, so I wanted to give you a choice.”

“A choice.”

“Yes.”

“In how involved I want to be. With my...” He couldn’t form the word. Not with his mouth, not so it echoed down the aisle of a crowded summer afternoon at the farmers’ market. He didn’t belong here. He took a deep breath. It didn’t matter. Nothing about the self-centered pity party of the past month really mattered, not when he was faced with this.

“It’s a lot to process. Take some time, and when you’re ready...” She offered him a card, which he stared at without taking it. Because she’d handed him her card before. He fished his wallet out of his pocket, flipped it open and thumbed open the crease.

There was the card. He hadn’t been able to throw it away. So it had sat there. In his wallet. Like a very weird omen.

“I’ve got it,” he said, his voice sounding rusty and out of place.

When he looked up from the card to her face, her lips were curved. But she didn’t say anything, just gave a little nod.

“Moonrise,” he blurted, shaking his head at the total lack of finesse he was doing this with. “What time could you meet me at Moonrise Diner?”

She glanced at the delicate watch on her wrist. He’d held that hand, had sex with this woman—made a child, and he only remembered bits and fuzzy pieces. He’d been struggling to accept that before, but now?

“One thirty? But I’ll only have about half an hour before I need to get back to the farm.”

“It’ll be a start.”

It would have to be a start.

* * *

MOONRISE DINER WAS one of Meg’s favorite places in New Benton. While she’d had this picture of idyllic small-town life growing up in well-to-do suburbia, New Benton hadn’t lived up to most of it.

It was old and run-down, and a lot of the people weren’t sweet, quirky characters from a sitcom. They were rough, they were hard and they didn’t much give a damn who you were or where you came from.

But Moonrise was like something out of a movie. A diner still firmly planted in the past that did a bustling business to locals and very little else. The waitresses weren’t overpolite, more harried than charming, but she stepped into the bustle and felt like she’d found something.

Community, in a loose way. The waitresses knew her name. Some of the ladies would ask her about her goats or her soap. If she saw Dan, she always bought him a cup of coffee, and while she didn’t feel that sort of warm bloom of instant belonging she’d hoped for when she set out on this road, she didn’t feel like a stranger either.

So much of her life had been about feeling like a stranger. In her own home, to herself when she was high, to the friends who didn’t want out of that ugly cycle and to the friends who didn’t want to look her in the eye because they might remember and want a hit.

Meg blew out a breath as she slid into an empty booth. Between Grandma and pregnancy, all the old crap was getting stirred up and she needed to get a handle on it.

It hit her then, like a bolt of lightning straight through the diner roof and into her chest. She’d lost Grandma and created a life within the same week.

She placed a hand over her belly, where everything she read told her what was growing inside her was barely larger than a speck.

She’d lost one light and been given another. She had to believe that. It solidified her resolve, the choice she’d made. And if you’re a girl, your name will be May. Which was more than likely getting ahead of herself, all things considered. But it was only right. It had to be right.

She blinked at the tears, hoping to have them under control before Charlie arrived. She was going to have to come to terms with the fact that tears would be part of the next eight months. That was okay, but for the next however long Charlie wanted to talk, she needed to be in control.

She didn’t know Charlie. The kind of man he was. If he’d want a piece of this responsibility. She thought it might be easier if he didn’t, but that was easier for her and she understood that some of the choices she was going to have to make in the next few months were about her child—not her.

She had a responsibility to protect both of them. It had to be the mantra she held on to while she navigated some really tricky and unknown waters. She wouldn’t let that spiral her back to where she’d come from, and she wouldn’t let a few mistakes break her down.

She had to be calm, rational and above all...a mother.

A mother.

Better than my own. I will be better than my own. She would love this child no matter what he or she looked like, or acted like, or wanted out of life. She would always love them so much more than she cared about her reputation or image. Always.

If that was the thing that kept her going, so be it.

She glanced at her watch, trying to calm her nerves and her worries with the prospect of the business at hand. It didn’t surprise her that just as the second hand hit the twelve to make it one thirty exactly, Charlie walked through the front door.

He seemed like that kind of man. Prompt and responsible and dutiful. At least in business. Her father’s ethics and morals had lacked plenty, but he’d never been late to a meeting. Never shirked a business responsibility.

She hoped against hope that Charlie was a better man than her father.

He gave her a slight nod and walked to the booth, all seriousness.

He was handsome. The nice jeans, the preppy fashionable sneakers, the T-shirt he’d probably bought from some high-end department store—none of it detracted from the way his face was put together. Strong jaw, sharp nose.

He didn’t ooze charm like his brother had at the market, but there was something attractive about his self-assurance. The way he moved like he knew exactly where he belonged.

It disappeared the moment he sat down, and she found that endearing too. Because God knew she was working with a big old question mark. The least he could do was feel the same.

“Hi,” she offered.

“Hi. Are you eating?”

She glanced at the counter, where Mallory was chatting with some customers. “Maybe.”

He gave a slight nod.

And then there was nothing but silence.

Meg waited, searching her mind for some way of bringing up the pregnancy in a way that would be fruitful instead of “what the hell are we doing?” and “how did this happen?” Because her brain had done enough of that, and she was ready for the part where they moved forward.

“It’s a lot to take in. If you need more time—”

“What are your plans?” he asked, and she might have gotten offended by the demand in his voice if he hadn’t winced after he said it.

“My plans?” she repeated, because even with the wince she wasn’t quite sure what he was after.

“I mean, insofar as you’ve had more time to think about this than I have, what is your current plan of action?”

Plan of action. She wanted to be calm. She wished she were the type of woman who could hide the look of disgust that passed over her face, but it was a part of the reason she’d never fit in her parents’ world. She didn’t have a poker face. She didn’t have a coat of armor to put on over herself when the vultures were circling. Everything she was or thought was there, and she didn’t know how to hide it.

“So you haven’t thought that far ahead,” he said gently.

A gentleness that made her stomach turn. It reminded her of the teacher in school who assumed she was dumb. You just don’t understand. That’s all right.

No, she understood. She understood this better than him. She had a plan of action, but it was her own and her own way, and hell if she’d let a stranger wreak havoc on the sliver of confidence she’d built for herself.

“The plan of action, Charlie, is to spend the next eight months growing a life inside me. And then push it out my vag—”

He held up a hand, the expression that passed over his face so very much like her father she really thought she might puke.

“That’s not quite what I meant,” he continued in that frustratingly even tone. “I meant—”

“I know what you meant, and what I mean is that this is the plan. To have this baby. That is my action plan. That is the only plan of action. This isn’t some kind of business merger we’re going to bang out the details to in a few calm and prepared meetings.”

Charlie didn’t say anything to that. He sat opposite her in the booth, his expression blank and a little hard.

She didn’t know him. She didn’t know him at all. She’d created a child with him, but she didn’t know him, and that hurt.