15. Laid Back Guy
LAID BACK GUY
“ H ave I said how happy I am you decided this is what you wanted for a date today?” Abe asked.
“Only five times,” she said. “Once more and we’ve got half a dozen.”
“I’m so happy you wanted to go hiking today,” he said, nudging her with his elbow. “Now you can retell this to anyone you want and say a half dozen to be specific.”
Daphne turned her head and smirked at him. “You’re pretty cute, you know that?”
“I’ll let my mother know you think that,” he said. “She had something to do with it.”
Her smile dropped as they walked along the trail of the Avery Farm Nature Preserve. “You’re going to tell your mom about me?”
“Not right now,” he said. “Geez. I’ve only kissed you.”
She burst out laughing. “Got it,” she said, turning her fingers on an imaginary key. “Just a kiss.”
“More than one kiss,” he said. “More than a dozen. See, I was counting too.”
She rolled her eyes. “Do you always joke about everything?”
“Not usually,” he said. “I think I’m just a laid-back guy. You’re tense and I don’t want you to be.”
“I’m not anymore. I’ll be less tense if you kiss me.”
She stopped and leaned up on her toes so he planted a loud one on her lips. No way he was going to start making out with her here.
Shit, the last thing he needed was wood visible through his shorts. He’d had a hard enough time keeping his body under control yesterday as it was.
“Happy now?” he asked.
“Very,” she said. “But back to your mother. I guess we haven’t talked about this. It’s our third date.”
“Don’t put that kind of pressure on me,” he said, waving his hand in front of his face. “Three dates and all.”
She gave him a little playful shove this time. “Stop. I’m being serious.”
“Okay,” he said. “I can be too. I’ll stop.”
“Good,” she said. “I mean I like your personality and sense of humor. I get the feeling you’re like this a lot and not trying that hard. Am I right?”
“I am,” he said. “Or many would say that about me. I can be serious and am. I run what I think is a very successful business and none of my clients want me on their property horsing around.”
But he had been someone to goof around a lot in his relationships.
Hadn’t Ella always complained about that too? That everything was a joke to him.
He just wanted to make her laugh.
She didn’t see life the way he had.
Which should have been the first sign they weren’t right for each other.
So many signs that he didn’t see and just wanted to hang onto something he’d wanted so desperately.
“That’s true,” she said. “Since I’m around kids I’ve got to have a fine line between being funny and being serious. I don’t want kids to hate being around me, but don’t want parents to think I can’t be responsible.”
“Something tells me you’ve been responsible for a long time in your life. Maybe starting younger than you should have been.”
She let out an unladylike snort. “Yes. As I said, my parents weren’t around. Aster is a few years older than me. He took care of me more than anything. Then I was on my own.”
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Twenty-eight. Loser status that I was still living at home and barely making ends meet with nothing more than a high school diploma. I had money put away and still do, but it would have been hard.”
“Stop trying to explain or justify things. I don’t care about that,” he said. “I didn’t go to college either.”
“But you have a career. You had a goal and a dream and a future planned. My plans were to get a job and a daycare center was the first full-time one I could get.”
He thought about what she said. He always knew what his future would hold career-wise.
“Knowing what you’re going to do and making it come true isn’t the same thing,” he said. “I never thought I’d be running it as young as I am.”
“How old are you?” she asked.
“Thirty-three,” he said.
“Yikes, you’re old. I had no clue.”
He laughed when she said that. “See, you joke too.”
“I guess I do,” she said. “Maybe you bring it out of me. It’s nice and freeing almost.”
“I’m glad,” he said. “But as I was saying, my father was successful, but times change and I wanted to make the company into so much more. I’m still building it. Some of it was luck though. Getting the job at McGill’s has been huge already.”
“That’s ironic,” she said. “Because getting the job with the McGills has been huge for me too.”
“It only matters what you think,” he said. “Not anyone else. Remember that. I’m sure your brother would say the same.”
“He would,” she said, reaching for his hand. Their fingers threaded together and they walked side by side like that in the silence for a bit.
It didn’t bother him to not be talking.
Not when he was able to touch a part of her body, however innocently that he was.
When the trail narrowed and they couldn’t walk side by side, he released her fingers and moved ahead of her to push any shrubs or bushes out of the way.
“Watch your step here,” he said. “It dips down.”
“Now you’re being serious,” she said when she moved past the branch he was holding out of the way for her. “And gentlemanly.”
“My mother raised me that way,” he said.
“You talk about your mother so fondly. I find it very sweet.”
“That noise you’re hearing, that squeaking sound?”
“What?” she asked, looking around. “I don’t hear anything.”
“It’s my ego. It was riding high and now it’s got a pinhole in it and air is coming out.”
She smiled. “Don’t be that way. I can’t say I’ve got a nice relationship with my parents.
The last conversation I had was a week ago.
Aster got engaged and he texted them. My mother made a few snide remarks I won’t repeat and then turned it around and said that I’ve got to be making so much money now and having no bills and they could use some help.
They are under contract to sell their house and need some things fixed on the inspection or something.
Not positive. I stopped listening after she asked me for money yet again. ”
His jaw dropped. His parents would never ever ask him for money.
His mother didn’t even want him to buy the house and he refused to not do it.
His mother had worked for the business for years and she still did the books at a higher level for him at the end of each month. She got a salary and would always continue to whether she did work or not.
And the day his mother said she didn’t want to do anymore, he wasn’t going to say a word about it, but he’d make sure she was set without her even asking. He’d just send it to her if he had to.
“I can’t imagine how upsetting that is,” he said. “Unless they need it?”
“No,” she said. “They have decent jobs. I told you, they waste their money on partying. They were fine for years without me paying for half the mortgage. Then when I started to, they could have put that money away or put it on the mortgage, but they chose to use it as disposable income. Not my problem.”
“They probably didn’t claim it either.”
She stopped talking and stared at him then grinned. “And that was a serious comment and not a joke, huh?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I run a business. The last thing I ever want is the IRS to come knocking on my door.”
“I’m positive my parents didn’t claim it. They don’t do much by the books,” she said. “Anyway, I think it’s nice you had that great of a relationship with your parents. You don’t have to talk about this, but I bet you still mourn your father terribly.”
“I do,” he said quietly. “It was hard to lose him so suddenly.”
“Can I ask what happened?”
“A brain aneurysm,” he said. “It was quick and sudden. Doctors said he might have had it most of his life. Some people do and nothing ever happens to them. It’s hard to say.”
“That’s a scary thought,” she said.
“It is. My mother made me get a CT scan after. As scared as I was, I couldn’t tell her no. Everything is good up here,” he said, knocking on his head.
“I’m glad,” she said. “But I’m sure on top of it being so hard to lose your father, you then had to run his business and people knew him in this area. They’d make comments and it’d be a chore at times to put a smile on your face for them.”
He reached for her, pulled her into his arms, and just held her in the middle of the trail.
“You don’t know how perfect you are knowing that. Or how it makes me feel that you understand, especially coming from the background you did.”
Her arms held him tight.
“I don’t know about perfect, but it’s nice that you think it.”
He’d work on her confidence some more because, in that moment, he knew he couldn’t let her go.