Chapter 7
Seven
“Mike. Whitney’s dad’s name is Mike, and all I know, all I can really say about him is that he simply disappeared.” Laila shrugged as if that empty account of things didn’t hurt. Truth was, she really did have no other explanation.
Adrian’s twisted and confused features had her fusing her attention away from him, back to the playground where Whitney still played. “Whitney was a surprise and the result of a completely unplanned pregnancy. Mike and I, we’d been together for two years, which I guess is forever when you’re young and in a town like Harlow. Yah know, by most people’s standards here, we should’ve been married with three kids already—”
She gave a sarcastic laugh, and he shuffled beside her, sipping at his coffee cup and resuming his air of being unstirred. “If you’d been together two years, the math on three kids doesn’t quite add up on that one.”
She gave a light huff and added, “Not if I managed to squeeze in a set of twins, but either way, welcome to small town life. As you can imagine, we were both shocked when we found out about Whitney, but we seemed to adjust well enough early on—right down to the quickie wedding and a pinky promise that we would get through this together. But things changed just after Whitney was born, and Mike got laid off from his job as a factory hand at a food processing warehouse one town over.
“She couldn’t have been much more than three months old before we were at the edge of bankruptcy, with no way to pay the rent and bills. That’s when Mike started referring to Whit and me as ‘dead weight,’ that we were holding him back, and he didn’t have time to deal with us while trying to find a job.”
“He sounds like a real charmer.” Adrian shook his head and turned to face her. “Did this guy ever have any redeeming qualities?”
“Only if you’re a na?ve young woman with not much life experience. A woman who hasn’t learned how to ask for any of her needs to be met.” She sighed, and decided to go ahead with her story, despite this not being her ideal topic. “Like I said, Mike changed a lot. Like the life had been sucked right out of him or something. Nothing made much sense, except that Whitney was relying on me. So, less than a few months after giving birth to her, I took things into my own hands and asked for my old job back at the twenty-four-hour grocery store. Deep down I didn’t trust Mike to take care of Whit on his own, so I arranged for my parents to look after her while I worked. For better or worse, Mike hung on for a couple more months before up and leaving. No goodbye. No letter. No explanation. Just me returning from work one day to an empty home.”
“That’s not exactly a scene anyone wants to walk into.”
A lump took up space in her throat, and she peered down and nodded at the coffee cup in her hand. “No shit. At first, I feared the worst and was frantic trying to find him. Had he died? Harlow being so remote, maybe his car ran off some road somewhere and no one would ever find his body. Except, five days in, a stack of money disappeared from our joint bank account, and he blocked me from all his social media profiles. And just like that, a few weeks passed before the divorce papers came from some out-of-town lawyer.”
Another laugh pushed past her lips at just how ridiculous the story sounded out loud. Growing up, she’d had the perfect family. The perfect life. But she and the relationship with Mike had been central to all that was wrong with her life now. An unplanned pregnancy. Young love gone wrong. A runaway ex...
“Mike refused to speak with me. I didn’t have the head space or the money to drag things out, and to this day, he still fails to make payments on Whit’s child support. So, I take care of everything. And still, I question whether our troubles were all Mike, or all me. I still don’t know what I did to make him hate me so much.”
She’d had dreams. Always assumed she’d have years to find her way and get settled in life before slowing down to have a child. She’d always assumed she’d be financially secure first, that there’d be room for her to stay at home at least for those early years.
But babies needed to eat first and foremost. They needed shelter and warmth. So those basic needs came before any of her dreams, in the hopes that the rest would come when she’d paid her penance for those past mistakes.
“Here I am, four years on.” She pressed her lips together and gave Ramos an Oh, well sort of shrug. “Still working in that grocery store and hoping my degree will dig us out of that pit.”
Adrian’s face held a tight kind of stillness and he side-eyed her. “Did you ever find out where Mike went?”
She dropped her gaze to his hands clenched around his coffee cup, the white strain over his knuckles giving her the laughable thought that he might sucker punch Mike if he just happened to be around right now.
“Beyond some initial searching”—she shook her head—“save for the hassle of not getting child support, I’m glad to have him gone. Given the way he was, I’m going to go right ahead and assume he’s still miserable, unemployed, and probably forever single or hopping from one bad relationship to the next. If there’s one thing I want Whit to understand about love, it’s that she should never have to convince anyone to stick around or pull their weight. Her dad included.”
Adrian’s stare shifted ahead, his brow flexed in a hard line, a strong current of emotion evident in his eyes. So much so, she took a deep breath and sought to ease the tension. “Look, I’m sorry, I gave you a hard time over getting me to agree to this date. At least maybe now you understand why.”
“Right. And what I’m up against should I choose to proceed?” His stare narrowed some more, before he angled his attention back to her and the strain across his face released into a sly smile. “It’s okay, I enjoy a challenge.”
“Well, good luck with that.” She barked out a sarcastic laugh. “Though I guess it probably is time I learned to let my guard down more.”
He made a clicking sound with one corner of his mouth and shook his head. “Nah, that’s not it. I’ve worked enough investigation jobs to have seen a thing or two. Cheating husbands and much worse. Too many women are raised to be welcoming at all costs, but if I had a daughter, you better believe my advice would be that any guards she might have up are built on experience and intuition. That any defensive urges are most often right, and it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission, so you might as well put your needs and safety first. At least in the beginning, anyway.”
She raised a brow and put on a flat tone, even though his words melted a certain kind of hardness she hadn’t before noticed around her heart. “So, I shouldn’t be on this date with you?”
“Sure, you should, but I get that you have no reason to trust me. Just like you said, you shouldn’t have to persuade someone to love you. The same could apply to trust. Doubly so when you’ve got a kid to protect.” He jutted his chin to Whitney but held a clear levity in his expression. “The way I see it, trust comes from consistent good behavior. That means from both parties. I’m still sussing you out too, you know. Though count this conversation as your reminder to stop straight-up assuming it’s always you who’s the problem.”
He pressed his lips into a matter-of-fact line and shrugged, her pulse shifting from a thundering beat to a slow plod, her mouth parting while she worked through this man’s astute theories on relationships and women. Given that she was a woman he wanted to pursue, his honest opinion over manipulation was especially unexpected.
Don’t get ahead of yourself. This might all be part of his plan…
Still stunned, she grasped for something to say, or even just a firmer hold over her thoughts on this man, only for salvation to come in the form of Maureen Cooper charging across the gardens toward her.
“Maureen?” Laila’s question lashed free of her, though not wholly unjustified given Maureen’s flushed face. “Everything alright?”
“Yes, yes everything’s fine.” Maureen came to a stop, her breaths a fast pant and her gaze bouncing between Laila and Ramos, before her small scowl eased into a light smile. Already this woman reached her own conclusions about why these two stood here sipping coffee together. “I just came from a meeting with the out-of-town lawyer who stops by to offer legal advice at the council from time to time.”
Not wanting to think the worst, Laila suppressed a frown. “Lawyer?”
“Yah bet.” Maureen’s eyes lit with a thankfully excited gleam, which probably meant she wasn’t looking to divorce Frank or sue someone. “The General Store received a buy-out offer, so I’m doing some due-diligence before we make any decisions.”
“Wait! What?” Laila pressed a hand to her chest, her attention for some reason flicking to Ramos in search of support, before even that disconcerting action had her turning back to Maureen. “Buy-out? Maureen, you’re thinking of selling?”
Harlow’s one and only General Store had been a core part of this community since long before Laila’s birth, and right now, she couldn’t begin to imagine the place belonging to anyone other than the Coopers.
“Oh, I don’t know.” Maureen swatted a hand in a gesture both dramatic and dismissive. “We had no plans on selling, but then the amount of money on offer… Let’s just say, we’d be featherbrained not to at least entertain the idea.”
“Hang on a minute.” Adrian narrowed his stare on Maureen, the action slow like a prowling cat homing in on prey. “Is the offer from someone local?”
Maureen shrugged and shook her head. “People ‘round here don’t tend to have that sort of money. All I know is it’s from an LLC called Forrex Co. My guess is it’s no local. Even the lawyer just now seemed unable to offer much help on identifying our buyer.”
“Do me a favor”—Adrian held a momentary pause, which only highlighted the gentle warning in his lowered tone—“Don’t make any decisions until I look into this for you. It won’t take long. Can you do that for me?”
Maureen shrugged again, her face soon lighting up. “Sure thing, that’d be much appreciated. Yah know, despite the money, Frank and I don’t want to sell to just anyone.”
Though Maureen’s promise offered some relief, Laila’s stomach still churned.The general store sustained so many people in this town and anyone buying the place would hold the power to affect a lot of lives.
That said, Adrian’s questions concerned Laila too. Those questions came as a reminder of why he was in town. To protect everyone. To put himself between this town and the syndicate. And as much as being around him already offered her warm and easy feelings, this reminder woke her to the fact that not all was easy with this man.
He had a past, and his present was also seeped in danger. Then again, so was hers. Which only deepened the unsettling feeling that she would have to trust this man—this relative stranger—in more ways than she’d ever wanted to trust a man again.