A Dance with His Angel (Their Angels)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Eden

“Are you sure you don’t want me to take Ivy home with me?

” Mom asks as she pulls her gray minivan to the front door of the Italian restaurant downtown, where Shayla and James are holding their rehearsal dinner the night before their wedding.

“I don’t mind watching her if you’d like to have a few hours to relax with your new friends. ”

I lean across the plastic center console to hug her.

“Thank you, but no.” I twist to look in the little mirror attached to the headrest in the middle row of the van.

In its reflection is my two-month-old daughter’s adorably chubby cheeks and tiny nose, bundled up in her rear-facing car seat.

After graduating from high school and starting work at an upscale, specialty beauty store at the mall a few weeks ago, I see less of Ivy than I’d like.

“Shayla said she’s bringing Lainey, and I want the girls to spend as much time with each other before they move to Lubbock. ”

Shayla Fischer and I had the misfortune to share the same deadbeat baby daddy, Tyler.

I fell pregnant with Ivy shortly after Shayla gave birth to Lainey.

Neither of us knew of the other since we went to different high schools.

Neither did we know how scummy Tyler would turn out to be, having poked holes in his condoms to intentionally get us pregnant.

Or rather, that’s our running theory, even though he had no intention to be in either of his kids’ lives.

At least I took him to court for child support, my mom having spearheaded that campaign, just like she did with my dad.

When Tyler and his parents stupidly tried to insist that Ivy wasn’t his, a court-ordered paternity test swiftly took care of that.

The upside to all this is that Shayla and I have found a genuine, lifelong, best friend in each other, and our girls, who are half-sisters and only a year apart, will hopefully become as close as Shayla and I are now.

So close, in fact, that Shayla chose me to be her Maid of Honor.

I cried buckets when she asked me. If I ever find a man as wonderful as her fiancé, James Bartlett, she’ll be mine as well.

And as her Maid of Honor, I need to get going.

I climb out of the minivan and smooth down my pale green, floral sundress, slide open the back passenger door, shrug on the backpack I use as a diaper bag, and unbuckle Ivy from her car seat.

Never have I been so happy than when my daughter was placed on my chest seconds after I gave birth to her, finding that she had a headful of brown hair to match mine and the same maple brown eyes.

She doesn’t look anything like Tyler. She’s all mine.

“Text me to let me know what time I should pick you up,” Mom says after rolling down the front passenger window and combing her short, graying brown hair behind her ear.

“Will do. Love you,” I say with a wave.

Hopefully, it won’t be too much longer until I’ve saved up enough to buy my own car.

Once I do, I won’t have to keep asking Mom to drive me around.

It will give her a much-needed break, since she’s as tired as I am.

Working third shift as a hospice nurse and taking on as much overtime as she can to make ends meet, plus coming home to help with Ivy while I’m at work, is hard on her.

I feel all the guiltier for how much I’ve added to her already full plate.

I thank the hostess who holds open the restaurant’s heavy wooden door for me.

The initial blast of A/C makes the little hairs on my arms stand up, only for me to start sweating as soon as I enter the quickly warming dining room.

The hostess leads me toward a private room reserved for the party, the scent of fresh bread and garlic making my stomach rumble.

I shyly step into the packed room, where the back wall is lined with floor-to-ceiling racks of wine bottles.

Shayla is the first to greet me, standing from her seat at the head of the long table.

She’s holding her soon-to-be adopted ten-month-old son, Grayson, as she approaches with a wide smile.

James took guardianship of Grayson when his mother—James’s older sister—passed.

If one looked past James’s shaggy black hair and Shayla’s nearly white-blonde hair, they’d never guess that the baby with dark brown, wispy hair isn’t James and Shayla’s biological child, given how much they love and care for him.

It’s the same story for James with Lainey.

He loves that little girl with all his heart and plans to adopt her too, once he marries Shayla.

I’m extremely happy Shayla found such a wonderful man.

They give me hope that one day, preferably sooner rather than later, I will find the same.

Mom says there’s plenty of time for that, and I shouldn’t be so impatient.

I know she’s right. It’s not something I should even be thinking about, given how young Ivy and I are.

But seeing how in love James and Shayla are, I can’t imagine anyone could look at the two of them and not want the same kind of love for themselves.

Shayla steps around her parents to give me a side-hug since we both have a baby in our arms. “I’m so glad you could make it,” she says, leading me toward the empty seat she saved for me, catty-corner to her, where I drop off my backpack.

Afterward, she makes introductions to one of James’s best friends, whom I hadn’t met yet. “Eden, meet Isaiah Owens.”

Isaiah is a towering man with dark brown skin, standing at least a foot taller than my five-foot-four height.

Square-rimmed black glasses take up a good third of his handsome, smooth-shaven face, and from what I’ve heard, he’s as big a nerd as James.

Though Shayla and James have invited me to a number of their RPG game nights when it’s their turn to host, I have yet to take them up on the offer.

Isaiah shakes my hand with a friendly smile. “Nice to finally meet you, Eden.” He bends to tickle Ivy’s cheek, but he’s looking at me when he says, “What a cutie.”

My face flames at the compliment, but it’s short-lived when Shayla’s younger sister, Bailey, who’s hovering close by, huffs and sticks her tongue out at me. She pulls it back to paste on a smile a split-second before Isaiah turns to look at her with exceedingly uncomfortable appraisal.

I slide a look at Shayla, then to Shayla’s dad, Sherman, who grabs Bailey’s shoulders from behind and steers her away after he grumbles to her, “Give it a rest.”

“She’ll grow out of it soon,” Shayla assures Isaiah with a laugh.

I assume she’s referring to Bailey’s highly inappropriate crush on the man I know to be fifteen years older than her—the same age as James—when she’s only thirteen years old.

I get it. I had a crush on my very grown neighbor when I was younger, though it fizzled out less than six months later after I saw him wearing jean dad shorts with tube socks pulled halfway to his knees.

“God, I hope so,” Isaiah says with a bob of his head, going green in the face while Bailey stares daggers at me. To put more distance between him and Bailey, he veers behind James, who’s holding and cooing at Lainey.

Lainey squeals and pumps her legs when she sees Ivy, making grabby hands until I bring Ivy close enough for Lainey to blow a wet raspberry in greeting.

I can’t wait for the girls to grow older and play together, and I love that Shayla refers to me as Lainey’s aunt, though we’re not directly related.

Shayla waves to someone behind me, inviting them to join our group. “This is James’s other best friend, Martin McDonagh. Martin, meet Eden Copeland and her daughter, Ivy.”

I turn to face the newcomer, a pale man with an explosion of freckles that start darker on his nose and grow lighter toward the edges of his face.

He stumbles over his Converse and clutches the back of a chair to keep from crashing to the floor.

His mouth falls open, a puff of air fluttering his long, beautiful ginger curls—a match for his beard—as he stares at me, his eyes a kaleidoscope of green and gold.

After regaining his balance, he stands perhaps only an inch or so taller than me in my flat sandals.

“You ok there, Martin?” James asks, giving his friend a mixed look of mirth and concern.

Martin coughs and says in a wholly unexpected voice, the deepest and sexiest I’ve ever heard, “Fine. I’m fine.

” My brows shoot up when he shakily lifts my free hand and bows forward, reminding me of a medieval knight, though he’s dressed in a nice shirt and pressed trousers like everyone else, not armor.

“Pleased to meet you, Lady Eden and Ivy.”

“Oh.” I suck in a breath when Martin immediately drops my hand, and I press my tingling fingertips to my lips.

He darts a frightened look around, his face going bright red above his beard, and he tugs his collar away from his neck.

His eyes instantly snap back to my face when I say playfully with growing affection, “I’m so pleased to meet you too, Lord Martin.

” I even pinch my dress and give him a little curtsy, having seen other ladies do so at the Texas Renaissance Festival.

James and Isaiah guffaw, and Martin spins on a heel, all but running out of the private party room.

I couldn’t be more embarrassed if I tried when Martin returns after we’ve all taken our seats to enjoy our appetizers, and he’s forced to sit at the last open chair beside me.

I’m so grateful to have Ivy to focus on, bouncing my knee anxiously as I feed her a bottle of expressed breast milk.

I’m not nearly as comfortable as Shayla is breastfeeding in public.

Midway through our main courses, I finally manage the courage to tell Martin quietly from the side of my mouth, “I’m sorry if I made it weird by calling you ‘Lord Martin’.”

He swiftly turns in his seat and cups my elbow, and I look up from staring at a hole in the bright white tablecloth. “No, please, it is I who ‘made it weird’. What you said…it was lovely.”

“Then why did you run out of here?”

“Phone call,” he blurts with a questioning lift at the end, rubbing his thumb across my bare skin, still clutching my elbow. “I mean, car alarm?” He swallows hard, perhaps thinking up excuses on the spot, and I realize he’s nervous. That’s why he left.

I make him nervous.

I duck my head and smile inwardly as I arrange a cloth napkin on my shoulder to burp Ivy when she finishes her bottle. My cheeks warm as butterflies take flight in my stomach throughout the rest of the evening with Martin sitting quietly by my side.

“Who was that?” Mom asks when she pulls away from the restaurant after picking Ivy and me up, darting a look in her rearview mirror.

“James’s friend, Martin. He’s one of the groomsmen.” I watch as his strong, stout figure grows smaller in the side mirror while he lingers at the front of the restaurant long after he walked me outside to wait with me.

At the first stoplight, Mom says, “He seemed keen on you.”

I can’t stop smiling. “I think so.”

She says slowly, “Maybe a little old for you, though.”

“He’s twenty-six,” I say with a shrug, heat rising up my neck.

Two years younger than James, Shayla told me.

After the initial shock when James and Shayla revealed their relationship, everyone seemed to move past the ten-year age difference between them, and Shayla’s parents eventually welcomed him with open arms.

“Like I said.” Mom reaches across to pat my knee. “A little too old.”

Or maybe he’s just right.