Chapter 14 #2
Oh. She was talking about the pregnancy, not…everything else.
“Yeah. I’ll be twenty-nine weeks next week.”
“Oh.” Frankie’s eyes rounded. “I remember twenty-nine weeks.” She tipped her chin in Chandler’s direction. “Chandler remembers those weeks very well,” she added with another wink to me this time.
The hormones. I knew. I didn’t need a wink or a reminder.
I lived with the reminder every day. The way Max’s charm made my breath catch.
How his touch made my skin sing. How just a glance made my stomach flutter.
Being around Max fed my hormones like they’d been starved my entire life.
I tried not to think that maybe they had.
“Everything okay?” Max’s smooth voice rumbled next to me, but it was the brush of his fingers on my lower back that made my breath hitch.
I swore I must be sending some kind of hormonal smoke signal because Max always appeared when he sensed I needed something—even if that something was only his presence.
Turning, I nodded and started to say yes, but the word stuck in my throat, seeing the look in his eyes. It was now a look I recognized. A look that Jamie had for Violet, and Chandler for Frankie, and Wade for Lou, and Kit for Aurora. And then he blinked, and it was gone.
“How is everything going with FMH, Max?” Jamie asked as he packaged the leftover chicken and beef into savers.
FMH was a huge hotel management group based out of Boston.
Their landmark luxury hotel sat on the rim of Copley Square, and the name only stuck out because I remembered how surprised Todd had been when Max got a meeting with the CEO.
It was recent, after Todd had left MaineStems, but before we got engaged.
I sensed Todd took it as some kind of personal failure that Max was still able to get meetings with big companies without him, without the connections of the McCormicks.
God, how many of Todd’s insecurities had I ignored or explained away?
“Great,” Max answered, his hand falling away from my back like he just realized someone else might see.
“They have their annual pancreatic cancer awareness fundraising gala in three weeks, and we’re doing all the flowers.
Erica’s been handling the bulk of the prep work, but I’m going to be in the city for that to make sure everything goes smoothly. ”
In Boston.
“Damn, Harp, this blueberry honey is good,” Nox rumbled, swirling the drink Kit just handed him. It looked to be some whiskey and honey combination.
“Thanks,” Harper beamed.
“Are you going to start selling it soon?” From what I’d gathered, she’d only made a small batch that had been given out to friends, family, and a few local businesses to use.
“It’s going to be one of six special edition flavors that I’m going to reveal next spring.”
“Next spring?” That seemed like forever from now. Maybe because so many things would be different in my life by spring. I’d have a baby. Max wouldn’t be my husband anymore.
“I still have three more flavors to work out.”
“And she’s fighting off a bully.”
“Gigi!” Harper shook her head with a groan, glaring at the bright purple head of hair that bobbled into the dining room. “I’m not. It’s fine. Wade sent him a letter, so I think—I hope—it will stop.”
Right. Lou’s fiancé was a big-shot Boston lawyer. It was hard to remember that when he worked at the inn with Lou, like living in this small town and being by her side was the only thing he’d ever wanted to do.
“That’s good.”
“It is…”
“But?”
“Sometimes, it feels like the damage is already done. The ideas he planted…the things people say online or leave reviews for my products…”
I took her hand and squeezed. I hated the internet bully culture, especially when it was compounded by those who didn’t even bother to take the time to verify the truth.
“Let them,” I said softly. “Let them talk. Let them waste their time. Just keep doing you, Harper.”
“Thanks, Daisy.” She tipped forward and hugged me as best she could.
Over her shoulder, I caught Max’s arched brow.
Without thought, my head jerked to the side as if to tell him I hadn’t said anything to her.
She drew back, and I wasn’t prepared for what came next. “How are you doing? After everything…”
Her voice was quiet, wanting me to know this conversation was only between us. I didn’t begrudge her for asking. I couldn’t. Not when there was only an earnest concern in her tone.
“I’m…” How was I? Alone? Married? Attracted to my temporary husband? “I’m going with the flow.”
“Have you…heard from Todd?”
I shook my head, my hand instinctively reaching for my stomach.
It wasn’t the first time I’d been asked the question in the last few weeks, but it was the first time anyone but Max had asked it.
There was an unspoken agreement between Max and me.
We never asked if the other had heard anything from anyone because we knew the other would share as soon as one of us did.
It spared us a conversation that neither of us wanted to have.
“No, I haven’t,” I said, offering her a brave smile but holding back the part of the answer I hadn’t told anyone—that I didn’t want to.
Todd made his choice, one I should’ve made long ago, and to talk to him now or for him to come back now—it would only complicate the life I had to rebuild for myself and our daughter.
I wouldn’t stop him from seeing the baby.
Underneath all his mistakes, I knew Todd had a good heart.
Time and space made clearer that he didn’t know how to love anyone else because no one had ever made him feel safe enough to love himself.
“Blueberry cookies?” A tray of the most delicious-smelling treats appeared between me and Harper, Gigi’s smiling face on the other side. “A little birdie mentioned the baby likes blueberries.”
“She does,” I said with a smile and went to take one.
“Oh, no. Take the big one,” Gigi insisted, and I happily complied with a small laugh. The cookie was still warm.
“Ailene and I made them earlier with some of Harper’s honey. If you want a little extra blueberry, I have some jam you can slather on top,” she said the last and presented me a jam jar and a conspiratorial glint in her eyes.
“I think this is plenty, thank you.”
“For later, then.” Her grin widened, and she tucked the jar into my bag. “This one is special. Just for you.”
I was too stimulated to think long on what exactly that meant, so I simply thanked her and went on wishing this family were mine. Their warmth. Their laughter. Their support. Their love. My chest pinched.
It wasn’t the first time I’d had the thought in the last four years, nor probably the last. But like my marriage with Max, I would only let it be temporary. He and his family weren’t meant to be mine. Not really.
“Oh, Daisy. You can never have too much of a good thing.”
My hand froze halfway to my open mouth. Was she…
“I see the way my grandson looks at you.”
Oh god—
“Gigi—” Harper hissed in warning.
“Harper Victoria, don’t you shush me. I’m ninety-five. I’ll say whatever I please, and you can blame it on dementia when I walk away,” she chided, and it was a good thing I hadn’t taken a bite of anything or I might’ve spit it out.
I glanced at Harper, who just mouthed sorry as Gigi went on.
“You deserve better,” she said to me and set the tray of cookies on the kitchen island.
“I’m not sorry for saying it now, just like I’m not sorry for saying it twenty-four years ago to my own daughter.
Ailene deserved better than Lou and Frankie’s sperm donor, who only wanted her for the wrong reasons, and you deserve better than that man who never once looked at you like Max does. ”
“And how is that?” I shocked myself by asking. If she was going to be bold, then so was I. I wanted to know what she saw. I wanted to be able to tell myself later that she was mistaken.
I felt the others start to draw toward the kitchen, but I ignored them, only wanting her answer.
“Like you’re his sunlight.”
I exhaled with a whoosh. “We’re just friends.”
“If that’s the only good thing you want…” she said, her grin widening for a second before she walked toward Nox, the young man clearly nervous to be in her sights.
“Don’t mind her. She’s…”
“Got dementia?” I joked with a weak laugh. There was no way Gigi had dementia. In fact, I was pretty sure she was more with it than I was at the moment, the way my pregnancy brain was working.
Harper snorted. “Something like that.”
“Everything okay over here?” Max came over then, standing close enough for his arm to brush my shoulder as he reached for a cookie from the tray. He looked at me then, and I felt warmth. Sunlight.
“Yeah,” Harper chirped.
“Good.” Max cleared his throat, his eyes swinging around the now-crowded kitchen before he spoke over the buzz of everyone else’s conversation. “Because I have an announcement.”
The buzz quickly died, and my heart launched into my throat, pounding for escape.
Oh god. What if he was wrong? The thought spun like a top in my head.
What if he was wrong, and they hated me for this?
All I could see was the great loves his cousins had found—the way they talked about that for him.
And now they were going to learn he hadn’t married for love, but out of charity.
What had I asked him to do?
My tongue pushed against the roof of my mouth. The words were right there…to tell him to stop. To keep me his secret.
“Before any rumors get around, I wanted to tell you all that as of earlier this week, Daisy and I are married.”
For a family who hadn’t been quiet since the moment we walked into the house earlier, their stunned silence hit like a freight train. Harper’s jaw looked like it hit the floor. Jamie and Kit shared a look.
“Married?” George was the first to speak as he looked at his son.
Max met his dad’s pained gaze and nodded slowly. “After what happened a few weeks ago, Todd’s parents have been…threatening toward Daisy, so we decided it was best for her and the baby if we were married until after the baby arrives.”
A collection of gasps and whimpers echoed around the kitchen, but it was hard to tell exactly who they came from.
“Threatening?” Ailene stepped forward, a protective thread of steel stitched to her voice, and my throat tightened. I wasn’t part of her family, yet with a single word, she made me feel like one of her own.
My whirring mind braked hard and reversed back through what Max had said—and what he hadn’t. He hadn’t mentioned anything about needing health insurance. That he’d left what I needed from him out of the equation. That he’d spared me from any negative assumptions that might come my way.
“We have everything under control,” Max assured her with that easy calm of his, but only I could see the crumbs that fell from the cookie onto the counter as he held it a little tighter. “But I wanted to tell you before you heard it from anyone else.”
“When?” George’s salty-gray eyebrows furrowed together.
“At the courthouse on Monday,” Max answered his dad, whose head ducked in response.
He was disappointed, if not angry. I could feel it. The shift in his demeanor was like a chill through the room, and Max felt it too because his hand moved to rest on my back.
“I’m so sorry you’re going through this, Daisy,” Aurora said, tears welling in her eyes as she came over, the first to envelop me in a hug, but not the last.
Over the course of minutes, there was a soft flurry of conversation between Max and his family while Frankie, Lou, Violet, Ailene, and Gigi all came over to hug me in turn.
“I’ll be okay. It’s just for a few months until everything settles down,” I assured them, tugging a quick smile to my cheeks, trying to ignore the growing heat there and the panic in my mind that Max’s dad hated me for this.
“So does this mean you’re moving back out of Dad’s?” Nox chimed in.
Move out of his dad’s? I turned and looked at Max, and he refused to look back at me. What was Nox talking about?
“Nox.” Max’s voice lowered to a tenor I wasn’t quite sure I’d ever heard before. It was hard. Commanding.
Nox just arched his eyebrows, and suddenly it seemed like the entire conversation hinged on the answer to his question.
After a long glare, Max ground out his monosyllabic answer, “No.”
His brother’s mouth wilted, and then with a shake of his head, he muttered something along the lines of, “Good luck with that,” and then headed for the door to the back porch, drink in hand.
“Let him go,” George said in a low voice, echoing the sentiment I’d told Harper earlier.
“What can we do? What can I do?” Wade chimed in, a distraction for everyone except the hamster in my brain that latched onto what just happened with Nox and ran in circles with it.
Does this mean you’re moving back out of Dad’s? Back out. Like he wasn’t living there, but now he is again. And there’s only one most likely reason for that. Me.
“Nothing right now,” Max answered as the pit in my stomach yawned wider. “I’ll let you know if that changes.”
The next twenty minutes passed in a blur of more questions and condolences and tender support.
The untempered beat of my pulse strengthened when Max’s dad came over to him, and they talked in hushed voices that I couldn’t hear, not when Ailene and Gigi were talking next to me.
And then George stepped away from his son and finally moved to talk to me.
When he stopped in front of me, I felt the words I’m sorry collect on my tongue, but before I could work them out, he reached out and hugged me.
“I’m so sorry, Daisy,” he said gently, and I wanted to cry with relief. “If there is anything we can do…”
“Your son has done more than enough—more than I can ever thank him for.” My throat clogged.
George tipped forward then, surprising me by muttering low, “Take care of him, Daisy. Please.”
Take care of Max? Did he not hear any of this conversation? Max was the one taking care of me…