Chapter One
Lorna sat in a corner booth at Scrumptious, trying to console Sunny as she practically threw herself into the banana split that Piper put on the table in front of her.
At five months pregnant, Sunny was barely showing, but the girl sure could eat.
Even before she was pregnant, she could hold her own with the guys when they all went out, sometimes eating a whole pizza by herself.
Now that she was eating for two, Sunny was an unstoppable eating machine.
“He’s gone. Just left town without a word to anyone.
Who the hell does that?” Sunny questioned.
She looked at Lorna as if she knew the answers and shoved another spoonful of ice cream into her mouth.
How she could eat and cry at the same time was magical to watch.
Every time Sunny sobbed, she shoved another spoonful in as if trying to self-soothe.
Lorna wanted to laugh, but knew that Sunny was in no way ready to find any of this comical.
She rubbed Sunny’s back, trying to comfort her but failing miserably.
“I know, Honey. Aaron is a complete jerk,” Lorna said.
“How can you be so cold, Lorna?” Sunny gasped, shoving in another spoonful of ice cream. “He’s the father of my child, even if he doesn’t know it yet.” Lorna rolled her eyes.
“Explain to me again why you didn’t tell him about the baby,” Lorna asked. Sunny stopped eating as if trying to figure out how to answer Lorna’s question.
“He wouldn’t talk to me, and it’s been months since he has said even two words to me.
I don’t know what you think I should have done.
Maybe a billboard or a text message—would that have been appropriate, Lorna?
” Sunny spat. Her anger was almost easier to deal with compared to her sobbing into her ice cream.
Still, Sunny’s mood swings were giving Lorna whiplash.
“I just think that if Aaron knew that you were carrying his baby, he might have stuck around. He didn’t just run off, Sunny.
He took a job in California. Tag said that he’s training firefighters out there for the next few months.
” Lorna took Sunny’s napkin and wiped the chocolate fudge from her chin. The poor girl was a mess.
Sunny nodded her head, “I know that he’s working, but it doesn’t make any of this easier, though.
If he really cared about me, he would be the one wiping chocolate from my chin, not you,” Sunny complained.
Lorna tossed the napkin onto the table, ready to throw in the figurative towel.
Piper pulled up a chair from another table and joined them.
“Don’t you need to run next door and check on Sawyer? He probably needs some help with dinner. Poor guy really did a number on his shoulder,” Piper asked Lorna. She wanted to kiss Piper for tag-teaming in on her conversation with Sunny. Honestly, she was ready for a break.
“Well, if you think you girls will be able to carry on without me, I do need to run a few errands. And yeah, I’ll check on your bodyguard.
” Lorna slid out from the booth and gathered her bags.
She opened the ice cream shop today, just as she did every day since Piper and Tag were married, two months ago.
While they were away on their extended Honeymoon in Europe, Lorna ran the shop.
Now that Piper was back, she cut back her hours to keep up with her volunteer work at the library.
The library laid her off earlier that year because of budget constraints, but she couldn’t just leave them hanging.
Budget cutbacks were a pain, but Lorna didn’t mind volunteering to help out.
Besides Scrumptious, the library was her favorite place in town.
She loved the smell of the old books and the quiet of people getting lost in whatever book they were reading.
Her favorite part of her day was when the little ones ran in, pulling their parents by the pants leg, trying to get the best spot for story-time.
Each morning, she read to a group of preschoolers, which didn’t help with her yearning for a little one.
At her age, that ship probably already sailed.
Lorna lived next door to the ice cream shop.
It was the same house that she and Piper lived in after Piper’s parents died.
Now, she lived there with Jonathan Sawyer.
He was Piper’s sinfully sexy, much too young for her, bodyguard.
After Piper inherited millions from her grandmother, she needed to hire a bodyguard to help her with the nosy reporters in New York.
When Piper moved back to Colorado to marry Tag, she brought her bodyguard with her.
Lorna knew that her niece did it partly to piss her off.
She knew that Lorna found Jon Sawyer sexy as hell, but much too young, so Piper stepped in and brought him back home.
Her thoughtful niece even moved Sawyer into her old house to live with Lorna.
Last week, Sawyer was picking up Tag and Piper from the airport and had a little run-in with a crazy woman and two of her exceptionally large suitcases.
Apparently, said crazy woman took one look at him and tripped over her own feet, landing on poor Sawyer.
As he caught the woman, her suitcase slammed into his shoulder, dislocating it.
Tag insisted on taking him to the hospital for X-rays, and with Piper fussing over him, Sawyer couldn’t refuse.
He had his shoulder reset and needed to keep it immobilized for a week or two while wearing a sling.
He was practically useless and was driving Lorna crazy.
He walked around the house shirtless because, according to him, it was easier than trying to get a shirt on.
She imagined that pulling on a shirt would be painful, but seeing him walk around the house with his chiseled abs and a chest that was screaming for her to run her hands all over it was agony for her.
She stopped at the grocery store to pick up a few things, and then she ran to the library to check out two books that she had reserved.
She decided that if she couldn’t have what she wanted—namely, Sawyer—she would read romance novels with happy endings.
At least she had her books and her fantasies of Sawyer stripping her bare and taking her on the kitchen table to keep her company.
Maybe romance novels weren’t the best choice to read with her overactive libido.
She let herself in the front door, arms loaded with bags from the grocery store, not wanting to wake Sawyer if he was able to get some sleep.
She heard him up late at night roaming the house, and knew he must be in a good deal of pain.
She wanted to go to him and ask him if she could do anything for him, but she was afraid of what his answer might be.
She noticed the way that he watched her, not missing his heated gaze or the way he used every excuse he could to touch her.
She felt like a boxer, dodging and bobbing to miss his grasp.
When he moved to Colorado three months prior, he asked her out a few times.
She always had an excuse ready, not wanting to tell him the real reason she didn’t want to date him.
She ran out of excuses when he asked her to go as his date to Piper’s wedding.
He knew that she was going to be there and that she didn’t have a date, so she broke down and reluctantly accepted.
Her wedding duties as Piper’s surrogate mother kept her busy most of the day, but during the reception, when he asked her to dance, she couldn’t refuse.
He pulled her into his hard body and practically engulfed her.
He stood at about six feet four inches, and she could feel every one of his muscles that pressed up against her, holding her tight against his body.
And his eyes—they were the most soulful brown eyes she had ever seen.
Every time he looked at her, she felt as though he could see right through to her soul.
She played a dangerous game by agreeing to attend Piper’s wedding with Sawyer.
As soon as the bride and groom disappeared into their cabin, Lorna snuck off and ran back into town.
Her plan seemed like a good one until Sawyer showed up thirty minutes later, mad as hell that she ditched him.
She didn’t think through the whole part of them living under the same roof when she ran to her car and hightailed it back down the mountain.
Sawyer demanded a come-to-Jesus conversation that involved her telling him the embarrassing truth that she couldn’t date him because he was just too young for her.
At forty, Lorna didn’t think that she should be dating a man who was just thirty-five.
She raised Piper after her parents died.
At that time, she wasn’t sure that she wanted kids of her own.
The idea of having more kids wasn’t one that she felt was safe to entertain.
She didn’t date a whole lot over the years.
What man would want to take on a woman who was responsible for raising her traumatized niece?
She wouldn’t have traded her time with Piper for anything.
Piper was like her own daughter, not just her niece.
She understood what she was possibly giving up when she agreed to raise Piper, and she would do it all again.
But Sawyer made her want things, and that felt dangerous.
She wasn’t sure she had the right to want a man or a family at her age.
Sawyer assured her that their age difference didn’t matter to him, but he might not feel the same way in a few years when she would be too old to have kids.
If Sawyer ended up regretting his decision in choosing her, she wouldn’t be able to face that.
She would never want to become one of his regrets.
It was easier to nip the whole idea in the bud than to try to figure out the what-ifs.