17. If You Don’t, Who Will?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Brooke
If You Don’t, Who Will?
S he heard the women in town talking about Dalton, and everyone knew exactly who they meant when they said things like “That man can rescue me” or “I would like to trace his scars with my tongue.” And that was just at the coffee shop on Monday morning. She’d seen Dalton exiting May’s café to head to the hospital as she parked across the street. Then, as she waited in line for her own coffee, she was forced to listen to several more women talking about him.
“Why are you scowling so early on a Monday morning?” her sister asked from behind the counter.
“Sorry. It’s because—” She stopped herself. “No reason.”
May looked her up and down. “You know you can have whatever you want, right?”
Brooke looked up at the menu as if she had never noticed all the options.
“Oh, I just like regular coffee and my oatmeal.”
“No, I mean, you can have whatever or whoever you want.” May dropped her voice. “There aren’t any rules that say you can’t date again or can’t just have fun just because you’re a mom.”
Brooke sighed. “No rules, sure. But there will be gossip, and everyone in this town already knows enough about my sad, disastrous marriage. I don’t want them talking about me again.”
“Oh, I forgot, because living our one life for other people who don’t even really care is for sure the best approach,” May said with a smug smirk.
“You know what, I’ll just take my coffee and oatmeal, please—hold the life advice.”
May laughed. “Come on, Brooke, you’re too young to not misbehave a little.”
“Oh, amen to that, darling, I’m about to misbehave a little myself this week,” a voice said in a warm Southern drawl just as Dalton’s gran saddled up next to Brooke. “You should start misbehaving with some experienced, ho—”
“Mrs. Barbara Hart, you minx. Telling my sister, a mom, to have fun. How bold,” May teased as she started to pull on the levers at her barista station.
“Well, I’m old enough to know that misbehaving is the most fun a young woman will have in this life.”
Brooke cleared her throat. “What trouble are you planning on getting into, Mrs. Barb?” Brooke asked as her sister slid her coffee cup over to her.
“Well, now that we got my grandson a job, it’s time to put the final nail in his plans to ever think of leaving this town again. He needs to put down some roots.”
Brooke exchanged a glance with May. “Wouldn’t it be best to let Dalton decide where he wants to land?”
Mrs. Barb laughed and shook her head. “Absolutely not, that boy doesn’t know what’s best for him. You’re a mom, Brooke, so I would expect you already figured this out. Children need to be guided toward what’s best for them, and men cannot be told what to do. But if you can get them to think it’s their idea”—she clapped her hands—“then you still get what you want.”
May laughed.
“Mrs. Barb, I just don’t want you to be disappointed when Dalton packs his things and heads back to Virginia,” Brooke said.
“He isn’t going back there, honey. There’s no job, no house, no true love. There’s nothing there for him.”
“True love?” Brooke asked. May set a bag with her oatmeal and fruit in front of her, but Brooke couldn’t walk away. She had to know what Dalton’s gran was plotting.
“Yes. Once Dalton falls in love here in Sandy Point, he’ll never want to leave. He’ll realize everything he was ever out there looking for was here all along.”
Brooke sighed.
“Well then, you just have to get him to fall in love,” May said.
“Exactly! Now I also need a favor from you Garcia girls.”
May set a coffee mug topped with foam in the shape of a crown in front of Mrs. Hart, then leaned forward and rested her chin on her hands. “Yes, ma’am, what can we do for you?”
“I need more volunteers to work the booths at the Summer Solstice. Can I count on you both?”
“No thank you, last time you stuck me in the kissing booth!” Brooke said, grabbing her bag.
“If I promise you won’t have to kiss anyone?” Mrs. Hart said.
Brooke looked at her watch. “Alright, I’ll help. I just need to be done by eight to get Max in bed at a decent time.”
“Deal.” Then she set her eyes on May.
“Of course I’ll be there, and I’m not so picky about the kissing booth.”
“May,” Brooke warned.
“Well, how else am I going to get through all these toads?”
“I’m off to work, have a good one,” Brooke said to Mrs. Hart and May.
“Can you remind my grandson he’ll be working the kissing booth if he doesn’t help me finish a special booth stand this week?” Mrs. Hart asked.
“Oh, um, sure. Bye!”
Brooke caught her sister’s and Mrs. Hart’s matching mischievous smiles in the reflection of a mirror on the wall as she walked away, but she didn’t think she wanted to know what they were conspiring about.
She would have been happy to pass Mrs. Hart’s message on to Dalton, but she was avoiding him. The more she wanted to be near him the harder it was to resist, but she knew it would only end in disaster. And she didn’t need the drama. Tyler had been ordered to pay her back child support based on his earnings, with interest, by the end of the month. But she wasn’t yet sure she wanted to fight for the trust, even if it was Max’s family, his legacy. That kind of money could change a person and the entire trajectory of his life—if the Banks family didn’t find some loophole to cut Max out of the trust. So she’d asked Declan to wait to file the documents.
“Brooke, did you hear me?”
Her head popped up from her desk to find Dalton standing in the doorway with blue scrubs on that made his eyes almost glow.
“No, sorry. What did you say?”
“I said with Dr. Jones being out all week, did you need me to take on any longer shifts? Won’t Tommy and I need to split the days?”
“We’ll do a modified shift with on-call hours for you both. The nurses can usually handle most of the traffic we’ll get in those hours, but it’s always good to have you on standby.”
“Gotcha.” He held up his phone to look at the schedule. “So the stars are the days we’re on call?”
“You got it.” She was sitting behind her desk, but it didn’t seem far enough to not smell his manly, sweet scent.
“I also wanted to mention I’ll be at Max’s practices this week, so if you want, I could just drop him off at home after. It might give you a chance to have some time to yourself. Unless you really enjoy sitting at baseball practice for two hours every night?”
She laughed. “Why are you going to be there so much?”
“The coach found out about my previous stint as the high school baseball starter and asked if I’d help him run some extra drills this week. Sort of a skills camp.”
“That’s really nice of you. Max will be ecstatic.”
“I’d like to say my motives are pure, but the truth is, it’s been really fun to put a glove on again, and Max is a fast study.” He stepped closer and leaned his back against the edge of the doorframe.
“He carries that mitt everywhere he goes in the house. It’s probably got toothpaste and waffles on it.”
“Just let me know if you want me to run him home any night this week after practice,” he said, then started to back out of her office.
“Okay, thanks. I’ll see what Max thinks.”
A smile lit up his eyes. “I figured the hard part would be getting you to agree to take a break.”
His blue eyes danced with humor and his cocky smile made her want to kiss him.
“I’m overdue for several breaks and I rarely leave Max with anyone besides family, but I feel confident I can trust a former SEAL and medical professional to get Max home safe a whole three blocks from the park.” He started to open his mouth but she cut him off. “I appreciate the offer. Let’s see if your biggest fan agrees.”
He nodded then walked away. Had she just willingly taken a step into the lion’s den? It was clear Dalton wanted to spend time with her, and she was getting tired of fighting it. She was under no illusions that Dalton would fall in love during his time home in Sandy Point, or stay—but maybe that made him the perfect person for her to misbehave with, because she knew it would end. She wouldn’t need to worry about getting attached. And that sounded way better than waiting to hear about any other single women in town he hooked up with. The only problem was she had no idea how to make a move. She’d literally dated one man seriously and he’d pursued her, which ended in a messy divorce. If she was going to hook up with Dalton she was probably going to have to make the first move, and she didn’t want anyone in town to know about it.