Another Chance With Love (Chance Series Book 2)

by Blake Allwood

  “Maybe you need to start him on voice lessons.”

  Trevor laughed. “Let’s get him out of diapers first, then we’ll talk about voice lessons.”

  After Luka finished his bottle, I lifted him to my shoulder and burped him while Trevor climbed into his bed across from us.

  “Bet you never thought afterglow would include burping a baby, did you?”

  I laughed. “Nope, you got me on that one.”

  Trevor’s expression became serious. “Does it bother you?”

  I didn’t want to just blow him off, so I thought for a moment. “No, it certainly doesn’t bother me, but it’s a little disconcerting, though. I’d never considered being a parent until now, but having Luka in my arms after such an amazing experience with you makes me realize there’s something magical about this co-parenting stuff.”

  Trevor sighed. “You know, I wouldn’t blame you if you ran for the hills. I doubt I would have been a good sport if I’d been in your situation. Before Luka, I wasn’t what you’d call good with kids. Luka sort of came at me out of the blue, as you know. But now, I couldn’t...wouldn’t want to imagine my life without him.” Trevor looked at Luka as I held him, and I could see the tears glistening in his eyes. “Luka is everything to me.” He seemed to catch himself then and chuckled self-consciously. “I’m a sap. I think a lot of the stuff blamed on hormones for new moms, is really sleep deprivation.” He chuckled again as he wiped his eyes. “Why don’t you bring him over here and we can cuddle while he falls asleep.”

  I gladly complied, handing Luka to Trevor as I climbed into the big Victorian bed.

  “I can’t believe you have a huge antique like this one in your kid’s bedroom,” I said as I climbed up into the tall bed.

  Trevor smiled. “My grandparents bought the house furnished, so all the beds came with it. The old lady they bought it from had no relatives, so almost all the furniture is original to the house. This was my mom’s bed when she was growing up, and my grandpa thought it was only natural that when I moved in, I should get her room and this bed.”

  I turned toward him in surprise. “I knew the house was furnished to match the period, but I had no idea it was original. Have you ever had the furniture appraised?”

  “Yep, my grandpa did all that. Here’s some interesting trivia. Several of the pieces were ‘too good’ for a growing family, so my grandparents placed them on loan at a historical museum in Macon. In the 90s, when the boyhood home of one of the presidents was rebuilt, a couple pieces were placed there. So although my grandparents emigrated here, they had an investment in the history of Georgia and even the country.”

  I loved architecture and often that included furnishings. However, I wasn’t as obsessed with those as I was the building themselves. “You must be enormously proud of that. Have you visited the museums?” I asked.

  Trevor laughed out loud, which caused Luka to jump. “Oh, sorry, little man,” he said while lifting him up to kiss his forehead.

  “My grandpa marched Aunt Doris and me there every few months. I have both places memorized. He was proud of his investment in America, as he called it.”

  I put my arm around Trevor and pulled him into my side. “That’s really cool. I can’t wait to go visit the museums with you.”

  “You want to do that?” he asked in shock.

  “Um, the chance to get to hang out with two of my newest favorite men and be able to geek out over historical architecture? Yeah, count me in. In fact, can we leave now?”

  Trevor laughed. “Let’s wait a bit. If you still want to, maybe we can make it a fall trip.”

  I snuggled into him again. “That sounds awesome,” I whispered into his hair.

  We cuddled in the large comfortable bed, and at some point, I must have fallen asleep because when I finally woke up, the sun was up. Trevor was snuggled in beside me. The baby was in his crib, so Trevor must have woken up sometime before me and taken him to bed. This shocked me because I was usually a light sleeper. It was unusual for me to sleep through anything.

  I rolled over and spooned Trevor, and he nuzzled back into me. God, this felt good and right. Like I was meant, no, destined to be sleeping with this man in my arms.

  I fell asleep like that and didn’t wake again until I heard Luka stirring in the crib. Trevor snoozed next to me, so I extracted myself from him and got up to take care of the baby before he started crying. I’d changed a lot of my cousin’s diapers, including the youngest, who was only four, so I honestly didn’t think anything of it.

  I wondered if Luka ate this early in the morning and decided it was better to be wrong and feed him early than to wake Trevor up, so I heated the bottle as I rocked the sleepy little one in my arms. I went over to the rocker and was feeding him when I glanced up to see Trevor watching me.

  “Morning sunshine,” I said, smiling at him. “I was trying to be quiet so you could sleep.”

  Trevor just continued to watch me, making me feel nervous. “What, does he not eat this early?” I asked, afraid I’d upset him.

  “I… um… I…” Trevor just stared at me after stammering. “No, no… he eats. I’m just shocked to see you doing it.”

  “Oh, sorry. My aunt used to leave the little ones with me, I used to make a killing off babysitting for her,” I chuckled at the memory. “In our family, if a baby needs something, you don’t wait for others to do it, you take care of it yourself. I apologize if I stepped over a line.”

  “No, you didn’t. I’m just used to doing it all myself.”

  I smiled, careful not to say anything that would make the situation more awkward.

  Trevor

  It was strange when Peter fell asleep in my bed, I just chalked it up to afterglow and exhaustion. I was even more shocked when in the middle of the night, he turned over and spooned me. The feeling was amazingly delicious.

  The fact that Luka barely stirred in the night was a miracle in and of itself. I was used to a two-hour regimen of diaper changes, feeding and rocking, so the fact he slept for longer than five hours was truly miraculous.

  I’d felt Peter stir and assumed he just went to the bathroom, so I let myself drift back to sleep. When he didn’t come back to bed, I opened my eyes to see him sitting in the rocking chair next to Luka’s bed, feeding him. Luka was almost back to sleep. Several emotions washed over me all at once. The first was fear that Luka wasn’t well since he’d slept through the night, and second was relief that I’d had more than a couple hours sleep. The third was confusion. Why was a guy I’d just started seeing sitting in a rocker with my son who seemed extremely comfortable cuddled up in his arms?

  I was so overcome with the emotions that when Peter noticed me, I wasn’t able to talk. I didn’t have a lot of experience with men, or women, for that matter, but it seemed strange to me that any man would be this comfortable around a baby. Was I overreacting? I’m overprotective, I know, but instead of setting off alarms, the sight of Peter and my son sent euphoric love bubbles straight to my heart.

  “I’m calling your mom and asking her how she managed to turn you into a nanny,” I said, making Peter laugh.

  “You do that, and she’ll be on the next plane to Atlanta to plan our wedding.”

  “Warning noted,” I said, knowing that he probably wasn’t exaggerating. Mrs. Reed wasn’t a discrete woman. If she got word of our dating, she’d either hate me or order our wedding cake. I couldn’t imagine what she’d be like if she thought a grandbaby would be included in the package.

  I yawned and got up. “If you’ve got him, I think I’ll take advantage of the moment and get a shower. You okay for a bit?”

  “We’re good,” he said, looking down at Luka.

  Was it weird I felt safe with him? I think I was struggling more with my lack of suspicion than the actual man. I’m suspicious by nature, especially after having parents from hell. I should be weirded out by all this, but instead, I felt ... well, I felt safe. Really, I couldn’t even blame sleep deprivation for this one. I
’d had a full five hours, which was highly unusual since Luka had come into my life.

  I climbed into the shower and immediately regretted that Peter wasn’t going to join me. Another strange thought since I’d never shared a shower with another man before. I once read an Angelique Jurd romance novel, and the guys in the book showered together. While that was happening, the main character was getting fucked from behind. This was evidence I had no business reading romance novels while I was locked up in my metaphorical tower raising a newborn. It put crazy ideas in my head.

  I finished showering and tried pushing away all the thoughts of what Peter’s hands would’ve felt like as they lathered soap over me.

  When I came out, both Peter and Luka were sound asleep in the rocker. Now, that appeared much more natural, I thought to myself. That whole “refreshed comfortable male” was too clean looking and felt a bit too much like magazine cover to be real. A tired guy asleep with a sleeping baby nuzzled in his arms, that felt real and natural in comparison.

  And Peter did look natural with Luka in his arms. Luka, who seemed to wail when anyone he didn’t know held him for more than a few minutes, seemed to possess a great deal of tolerance for the man as well. I wasn’t going to question it for now. I was going to enjoy every damn minute of it.

  I took Luka in my arms to burp him, assuming Peter had forgotten since he still held the empty bottle in his hands. When I picked Luka up, Peter’s arms came around the little one protectively. “Shh, I got him,” I replied.

  Peter let go and opened one eye. “Sorry, I fell asleep, but I put my legs up on your bed so I wouldn’t drop him.”

  “I wasn’t worried,” I said with a wink. “I’m going to burp him if you want to jump in the shower. Feel free.”

  Peter got up and did as I recommended, but I could tell he was still sleepy. Unfortunately, for me, sleeping time was all but over. I needed to keep Luka up for a few hours so he’d sleep this afternoon because I had a shit ton of work I needed to finish. If he slept now, he’d be awake this afternoon, and God help me, afternoon awake Luka was no fun to be around.

  By the time Peter came out, I’d finished changing Luka into clean clothes and was just about to head downstairs. “Come down, and I’ll make us some coffee,” I said when I saw him.

  “I have a better idea. You said mornings are Luka’s favorite time. Why don’t I take the morning off, and we can go to breakfast and have a walk around the park?”

  I thought for a moment. “It’d be nice to get Luka out for a change. He could use the fresh air, and so could I for that matter. You sure you can take the time off?”

  “Oh yeah, I have a lot of comp time built up after working all the extra hours on Leonardo’s project. Speaking of that, are y’all ready for the big party?”

  “That’s coming up in a couple weeks, right? Aunt Doris and Leonardo are constantly talking about it. If he isn’t here or she isn’t with him somewhere, they’re texting one another like teenagers.”

  “They seem to really be getting along, huh?” Peter asked, and when I smiled at him, he chuckled. “Do you think they’re getting serious?”

  “Don’t know and ain’t asking,” I replied. “The one thing I never, ever want to know about is my aunt’s love life! Invite me to the wedding if it goes that far, otherwise, I like to pretend they’re friends and that’s that!”

  Peter laughed out loud. “Yeah, I’m sure they are real good friends!” he said then laughed again when he looked at me and saw my frown.

  “Yuck,” is all I said as I walked out of the bedroom and down the stairs.

  Peter

  Luka seemed to enjoy the morning walk. We put him in his stroller and walked down toward a breakfast bistro that Trevor said the locals tended to use. Had he not taken me there, I doubt I would’ve ever noticed it.

  “How did you find this place?” I asked him.

  “It’s been here longer than I’ve been alive,” he said. “My grandparents used to be friends with the owners, so we ate here a lot when I was growing up.”

  “Why don’t they have signs?” I asked, taking in the nondescript building.

  Trevor chuckled. “Do you think they could handle it if more people knew about it?”

  I noticed the crowd then and saw that every table was occupied. “Is it like this every day?”

  “No, sometimes it’s busy,” Trevor said, smiling.

  “I see, so this is just by word of mouth.”

  “Yep, and we guard it as our neighborhood secret, so consider yourself sworn to secrecy.”

  “Got it,” I said and smiled at him.

  The food was a perfectly cooked southern breakfast, with everything including the biscuits and gravy made from scratch. “This is the first time in a while I’ve actually had homemade biscuits. Nowadays, it seems everything is pre-made.”

  Trevor sighed. “Ma Jackson is getting older. No one knows what’ll happen when she retires, but until then, it’ll be only food made from scratch served here.”

  “Restaurants like this one are becoming more and more rare as time goes on,” I said with a sigh. “I’m glad you brought me here.”

  Trevor smiled and put his hand over mine. “Thanks for suggesting we take a morning out.”

  Everyone seemed to know Trevor, and Luka was a big hit. Trevor told me this was Luka’s first time being here, and everyone kept coming by to make a fuss over the baby. I enjoyed watching Trevor in his element, smiling at a joke, or laughing about the gossip in the neighborhood. It shocked me how well the man seemed to fit in.

  I wondered if maybe fifty years from now, he’d be one of the old men sitting in the crowded corner gossiping with one another. Would I want to be one of them?

  We walked around the neighborhood and ended up at the park bench where I’d found Trevor on the morning he’d seemed not to have a friend in the world. We sat watching the ducks as Luka played with the mobile that hung from the handle of his stroller.

  “It’s beautiful here,” I remarked.

  “Yeah, it’s one of my favorite places,” Trevor answered. “But you already know that, huh?”

  “I know it’s a special place for you. Tell me about your grandpa. He sounded like an amazing man.”

  “He would’ve liked you. He was a short man with a huge personality. When he walked into a room, it lit up like a Christmas tree. He loved to laugh and was full of silly jokes. He had a Croatian accent that he tried to hide but failed. The story goes that when he was young, he’d tell anyone who’d listen that he wanted to be an American. At sixteen, he convinced his sweetheart, my grandmother, to run away with him to the US.”

  I smiled at him. “Did they end up in Atlanta first?”

  “No, my grandmother’s aunt lived in New York, so they lived with her at first. When my grandpa turned eighteen, he got his GED and enlisted in the Army. It was during Vietnam, but they didn’t send him over. Instead, he worked in administration. He didn’t tell us much about what he did, even when we pushed him, but from what we could figure out, it was pretty top secret. When the war ended, one of his buddies talked him and my grandma into coming to Atlanta. He worked for an Italian family that owned a large clothing store. Long story short, the couple he worked for had a son who had no interest in following in the family’s footsteps, so when the owners retired in the 80s, they sold the store to my grandparents. It helped that grandpa could speak Italian fluently. Later, they bought their own place. My mom called it the old haunted house. My grandpa’s parents worked in construction in Croatia. He worked with his father when he wasn’t in school, so he knew how to redo old homes. I sort of worry how we’re going to keep it up now he’s gone. I’m not as handy with a hammer as he was.” Trevor chuckled.

  “Maybe your aunt can handle it,” I replied, only half-joking. I had no doubt Doris could do anything she put her mind to.

  “Aunt Doris is more fashion and less construction, but yeah, she’s not afraid of crawling on a three-story roof. Believe it or not, I’ve seen
her and my grandpa working together on the gutters up there.”

  “Oh, I believe it.”

  “When my grandparents bought the house, the area was fairly run down, and I think they planned to eventually move to a more affluent area, but by the mid-80s, the neighborhood was improving. So, like with most things, my grandpa was in the right place at the right time.”

  Luka began fussing a little, so we decided to walk around the park as we talked.

  “I love older homes, older architecture in general,” I told Trevor. “Inman Park and Virginia Highlands both intrigued me when I first arrived in Atlanta. I was lucky to find a firm located in the area, and I’m hoping I’ll get to do more projects like I did for Leonardo. Redesigning the older designs for modern uses inspires me.”

  “Do you prefer commercial or residential?” Trevor asked.

  “I like them both,” I admitted. “I’d love to work on some of the renovations of the Victorian homes here to modernize them while maintaining their historical charm, not unlike your grandparents did. I like that you moved the kitchen into the old library with the parlor opening onto it, that’s both modern and convenient while preserving the music room in the front as a sitting room. There’s always a way to respect the historical character of these homes while making them relevant for today.”

  Trevor was watching me as I spoke. “I like seeing your passion. You really did go into the right field, didn’t you?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I love it. How about you? Do you love being a PI?”

  Trevor sighed. “I planned to go to law school. I always thought I’d like to be an attorney, but my plans got put on hold because of Luka. To be honest, I do think I love being a PI more than I’d like working in a stuffy law office. My clients are… colorful.” He looked at me and smiled, and we both silently knew he was talking about my mother. “The job is flexible enough I can work during the day when Luka sleeps or at night when he doesn’t.”

  “Do you think you’ll stay with it?”