Ch16_EAA_EBOOK #2
Ashley sighed and laid her upper body onto the white stone, spreading her arms across the slightly dusty surface. “Tyson tried to convince me to use butcher block for the countertops, but a certain somebody’s donation allowed me to splurge a little.”
I laughed. “You’re certainly welcome. Anything to make this place shine like it should.”
Ashley sat on the edge of the counter and her eyes softened. “How are you feeling?”
I shrugged. “I’m surviving. Every day is different, but I feel worse when I remember what I used to be able to do…like working or tying my shoes.”
I took a sip from my water and glanced down at my slip-on shoes with rubber grips. I had fallen one time and Beau freaked out and bought me ugly nursing home shoes. I never wore anything else.
She gave me a sympathetic smile. “It’s all temporary, babe. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck.”
I nodded. “My pregnancy journal is really helping me cope. Beau’s mom had been right on that one.”
“Speaking of which…” Her green eyes flitted to the doorway. “So…?”
I sighed and leaned on the counter, not caring that I was getting dust on my elbows. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean?” Ashley asked before she dropped her voice. “You’ve lived with him for three months, you’re already having kids with him, you just told me you’re fucking again, and you don’t know if you’re in a relationship with him or not?”
“Because I don’t want to be in a relationship,” I answered. “I never have!”
“Why not?” Ashley started counting out her points on her fingers. “He’s set for life financially, he’s healthy, he’s the father of your kids, he makes you come every time, he isn’t mean to you—”
“Well, no meaner than I am to him.”
“Then make it make sense to me.”
I ran a hand through my hair. “I just…I don’t know if he’s being tolerable because of the babies or if…” I stopped and switched gears, refusing to question if he liked me just in case he overheard. “I don’t even know who he is.”
“What are you talking about? We went to school with him!”
“We knew the stuck-up boy who played football and only talked to the snobs that hung around him because they wanted his money,” I answered.
“I still don’t know who he is as a person.
He’s quiet, Ash, so I barely know what he even likes other than his dog and sports.
He doesn’t…gush about things like I do!”
She shrugged. “He’s a Capricorn. Capricorns don’t gush.”
“Regardless,” I said, ignoring the twins bumping around inside me. “You told me a man changes after he becomes a father. Why would I make any sort of commitment when Beau could just…unmask and become someone completely horrible?”
Ashley swung her legs a little and smiled. “Well, Tyson became an even better man after Kierra was born.” She tossed her head back and smiled. “God, you’re making me want to get pregnant again.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re missing the point.”
“Hell, I’ll ask him to bend me over this counter and—”
“Ashley!”
She rolled her head to look at me. “You’re missing out on being loved and adored and why? Because you’re scared?”
I folded my arms on the counter. “Beau is not loving and adoring—he is controlling and nosy!”
She quirked an eyebrow. “I thought you didn’t know him? Also, aren’t you controlling and nosy?”
I smacked my palms against the cold stone and a vein in my neck began to throb. “My mom was loved and adored by my dad, and he ruined us.”
“Come on, Liv, I have daddy issues too, but—”
“And then Mom was loved and adored by that guy who drank those nasty little bottles of bourbon,” I stressed. “Then the guy who had the apartment that smelled like old cheese. Then the guy she met at the county fair.”
Ashley shuddered. “Oh yeah, I remember the tilt-a-whirl guy…”
“You think I looked up to Miss Kaye as a kid because of her fashion sense?” I gestured to the old parlor where her portrait was hanging. “She didn’t have men cycling in and out of her life to distract her, to steal her ideas, or to weigh her down with domestic duties.”
“Well, she was from a different time and could have just been into women.”
“She was successful because she didn’t rely on anyone,” I said, holding back a grimace as my back muscles spiked with pain after standing for too long.
“Annie and Brady are an unexpected surprise, but I still intend to live my life as I promised myself I would when I was in third grade—unburdened, uncompromised, and unmarried.”
Ashley’s face fell. She opened her mouth to say something, but then the voices of the men echoed through the parlor as they approached.
“So, how’s your mom enjoying retirement?” Beau asked.
“Ah, former educators can never take it easy,” Tyson answered. “She’s been a real blessing, though—keeping the kids so Ashley and I can work. We’re really fortunate to have her.”
Ashley’s voice brightened. “Yeah, we’re really cutting it close to your due date, but we’ll definitely have the house done in time for your baby shower.”
The men walked in and Ashley turned toward the doorway and acted surprised to see them. “You guys having fun?”
Beau gave her a smile that I knew was only polite. “You’ve done a great job with the house. Grandpa always spoke fondly of Miss Kaye, said she would give him candy when he visited the department store with his mom. She adored him.”
I took a sip of water to keep myself from giggling. Miss Kaye didn’t adore Beau’s grandfather, she just had good business sense. Keeping Mrs. Fontaine’s child happy and distracted while shopping was a great way to get her to spend as much money as possible.
Though I could have word-vomited about Miss Kaye’s successful business practices until the sun went down, I needed to give Beau an out. He didn’t have to say anything for me to know he was ready to leave.
“I think we need to go,” I groaned as I leaned back to stretch my spine. “My body has reached its limit.”
As soon as I grabbed my water and stepped away from the counter, my eyes widened as my uterus suddenly tightened like a period cramp. I dropped my hands to my belly—it was hard as a rock.
“I…I think I’m having a contraction,” I said.
Beau pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Get in the truck—I’m calling the hospital.”
Ashley hopped off the counter and waved her hand at Beau. “Calm down, big guy. It’s probably just a Braxton Hicks.”
Beau’s eyebrows furrowed. “How can you be sure?”
“It doesn’t feel…big.” I let out a long breath as the pressure in my abdomen released. Annie and Brady kicked me over and over, probably panicking like they had just experienced an earthquake—the poor dears.
“Yep, that was just a practice contraction.” Ashley said as she patted my belly. “If you can talk through it, it’s not the real deal. We should still pick up the pace with the renovation, though. Just in case.”
After we finished assuring Beau that I was just fine, all four of us walked to the front door. Beau gave Tyson an awkward farewell handshake before helping me down the porch stairs and into the truck.
As soon as we pulled away from the curb, Beau scoffed and muttered “Those damn overalls,” under his breath.
I turned to him. “Why do you hate Tyson so much?”
A muscle feathered in his cheek as he drove. “I don’t hate him.”
“You sure act like you do. What did he ever do to you?”
“Nothing, he just…” He fell into silence for a few moments as we drove through the historic neighborhood. “Tyson is…lucky.”
I scoffed. “You’re lucky. You’re one of the richest men in the state.”
“Yes, but…” He let out a long, slow breath. “You see, my grandpa—”
“The first Beau,” I clarified.
He nodded. “The first Beau. He would always tell me, ‘Boy, you used up a lifetime’s worth of luck just being born with my name.’ I never knew what he meant until I met Tyson.
You would think the man was born on a bed of four-leaf clovers with how good everything went for him.
He had great grades, always had friends who actually liked him, and then at the state championship game… ”
Beau shook his head, but kept his eyes locked on the road. “I fucked up, but the college recruiters who came for me only saw him. He walked on my back straight toward a full scholarship at a major university.”
I shot him a look. “What? You expected him to pass on a great opportunity to spare your pride?”
“No, I—” He ran a hand through his hair.
“Look, I know I sound like a bitter asshole bemoaning a high school football game, but that’s just one example.
The man scored a national championship, he’s famous, people want to sponsor him for everything, he has two kids, a wife who is insane about him, loving parents who are still around—”
“You’re threatened by the man who needs his wife to tell the waitress his steak is underdone?”
“I’m not threatened by him, or anyone,” he said pointedly. “Tyson Copeland is a measuring stick—the more fortune favors him, the more I’m reminded that I never had anything good in my life once I was born. He proves that my Grandpa was right.”
Beau could deny it all he wanted, but he was competing against his old teammate. He was the only one keeping score and he was still losing.
“I lost my…” he swallowed, “…the state championship, then my shot at playing pro—the only chance I had to do anything other than work for my family’s company—, then I lost my spot as top of the class, then I lost all my friends once they inevitably turned out to be greedy little snakes, then I lost the love of my life because she was just as bad as them. ”
I stiffened as he choked on his words. It always came back to Katie, didn’t it?
He took a quick breath and regained his composure. “But I actually get to be a dad now. Maybe this time, fortune will finally favor me.”
I folded my arms on top of my belly and glanced out the window as we headed into the country. “Maybe so.”
But only if Beau could learn to let things go.
“I have my doubts, though.” He let out a shallow laugh.
“You know, back when I was in middle school, Grandpa forced me to volunteer at his family center because he was afraid my dad was raising me to be a spoiled brat. I’ll never forget him thumping the platinum handle of his cane against one of those cardboard Thanksgiving boxes and saying, ‘You’re closer to needing one of these than having anything good ever happen to you again. ’”
My blood suddenly ran cold. The Thanksgiving boxes. “How…how long did you work at the Fontaine Family Center?”
“Until I graduated high school,” Beau answered. “Grandpa had me packing boxes full of food for every holiday drive they did.”
My lip trembled. He put the food in the boxes that I ate. He saw my mom’s name on that highlighter yellow clipboard. Had he also seen me in the car line, ducking my head from shame?
Regardless if he saw me, he knew. He knew the whole time that I had taken his charity, and not once in the years I had known him had he thrown it in my face, even when we had been at each other’s throats.
Hell, I don’t think he had never even mentioned it—to anyone.
I turned to him, hoping he could catch the look I was giving him even though he was driving. “Th-thank you. Thank you for never teasing me about…coming to the holiday drives.”
He turned onto the manor’s driveway. “Why would I? I had no control over the circumstances of my birth and neither did you.” He flashed me a little smile. “If I was going to tease you, it had to be about something you earned.”
I swallowed as we circled around the fountain in the driveway and headed to the garage. I knew Beau was keeping his own secrets, but I never suspected that he was also keeping mine.
I wouldn’t know him completely until after the twins were born, but unlike my dad, or the guy with the smelly apartment, or the guy who laughed at me when I vomited on the carnival ride…
…I at least knew Beau was a good person.