Vote Then Read: Volume I

by Carly Phillips

  I knew Larry was concerned because of her profession… and my problem… but Danny was great; she never even ordered wine when we went out to dinner, playing it off as it was her job to drink all day, and no one liked to work after hours.

  But the best part was that things were casual between us - and that’s what I needed. We’d only gone out a handful of times, and neither of us was looking for anything more right now. I needed a foundation for my life before I could think about housing someone else on it with me.

  “She’s not the one for you. That means I call her ‘that girl.’”

  Even he recoiled at the hard edge in his voice. This was happening more frequently, the sharp contrasts between good and bad moods… good and bad days. I’d have to give Eli a call; he would know what was going on.

  “Larry—”

  “Have a good night,” he ordered, and then turned and walked to his old Nissan pick-up to head home.

  That was another thing on the list.

  As soon as we were done with my restaurant, I needed to wrangle Eli and the crew over to Larry’s house which was almost in as bad a shape as mine had been, only he didn’t do anything about it. It was a shame, too, since his house had to be worth tens of millions for the property it sat on, peaked along the jagged coastline with a view even God, looking down from the heavens, would be jealous of.

  I sighed and made for my own beater. An ’82 Ford truck. Donation courtesy of Elijah Downing.

  Yeah, I’d found more than just my future here. I’d found the friends to support it.

  2

  Ash

  The best thing about my work-in-progress restaurant was the view. Hands-down. Without a doubt. I swore I’d stumbled into a corner of heaven when I’d first stepped on the property.

  The building sat on a secluded bluff along the Big Sur cliff-covered coast. Set several hundred feet down a gravel driveway off the main road, the views of the ocean and the cliffs, no matter the time of day, were an ever-changing canvas of the most vibrant colors.

  The second-best thing about this property: it came with a guest house. Although guest house was a generous term. The rundown, two-room-plus-bathroom shack sat just off the top of the drive with trees and foliage partially obstructing the ocean view. Having it meant I’d been able to move off Larry’s couch the day the papers were signed.

  Quietly, I slipped out of bed, not wanting to wake Danny after last night. Glancing over, I saw her naked form sprawled in my sheets, sleeping soundly. We’d had a good night… satisfying night… and part of me wished she didn’t turn the bed into a midnight mash pit while she slept. I’d always imagined ending up with a woman who’d wake up in my arms. Then again, she’d never been the woman in those fantasies.

  Instead, images of uneven short hair, brilliant green eyes, and a body so compact I could cage it with mine - and never let it go - came to mind.

  Tugging on my sweats, I tucked my morning wood up against my stomach and padded down the small drop step into the kitchen-slash-living-room-slash-dining room. Basically, the place where coffee and food came from, complete with a small sofa that Larry had given me, TV, and a foldout table and chairs.

  I’d used the word ‘cozy’ to describe it to Danny which was guy speak for a room with a bed and a coffeepot.

  It was only seven, but I couldn’t stay in bed any longer. Something felt off this morning. Glancing out the window, I noticed the candy red sky along the horizon.

  Red sky in the morning is a sailor’s warning.

  And that was how I felt – a sugar-coated sense of foreboding.

  Figuring it was just the amount of shit I had to get done, I brushed it off and flipped on the coffee grinder.

  Larry’s Life Lesson Number One: Always use fresh-ground beans.

  My attention snapped to the small kitchen window, thinking for a second I’d heard something outside on the gravel driveway.

  Note to self, check on when the drive was supposed to be paved.

  Probably just the grinder, I figured.

  The rich aroma easily filled the small space as I poured two mugs full of Roaster’s Morning Brew; it was enough to wake you up without a single sip. I’d barely taken two steps back toward the bedroom, mugs in hand, when there was a soft knock at the door.

  I had heard something.

  My brow furrowed. But who the hell was showing up at my hovel at seven in the morning?

  My brain quickly sped through the list of possibilities. Larry would be at Roasters. Miles and Mick were working in Monterey. Eli was out of town. And Danny was in the other room.

  My heart jumped into my throat, immediately worried it was some local official coming to tell me I hadn’t signed, dotted, danced and licked all the right lines of the numerous permits and licenses I’d needed; this was California, after all.

  God, if something happened to push back my timeline, I had no idea what the fuck I was going to do.

  Forgetting the coffee, forgetting my houseguest, and forgetting I was shirtless, I stalked over to the door, heart pounding, and yanked open the latch handle with the mugs in one hand expecting anything. Or everything.

  Everything but emerald.

  “Taylor?”

  I gaped and stared at the angel from my past, her jewel-cut eyes crystallizing around my gaze.

  Taylor.

  Here.

  I would’ve been less surprised to see the Pope, dressed as Santa, here to wish me Happy Hanukkah than to find Taylor Hastings at my door.

  Like everyone else from my past life, I hadn’t seen her in five months. But unlike everyone else, Taylor was the only one with the perspicacity to see my demons and know they’d driven me here.

  My heart continued to race for a whole slew of reasons I couldn’t give name to, and my body felt like it was waking up for the first time in months. All because of her.

  I couldn’t believe she was here… and it looked like neither could she.

  “Ash… Hi…” Her brilliant smile flashed for a split-second.

  She stammered like she’d expected someone else to answer the door to a rundown shack on the other side of the country.

  She licked her lips and I felt a shock of desire straight to my groin. The alcohol might have elevated - and exacerbated - most of my other emotions, but the desire drunk-Ash had felt for Taylor was nothing compared to the Earth-shaking need sober-Ash suffered right now.

  Months, miles, and sobriety hadn’t dulled the way I wanted her.

  But I’d wanted her for decades… I doubted even death could stop it now.

  I shook my head. “Sorry. I just can’t believe you’re on my doorstep. What… what are you doing here? Is everything okay? Is my sister okay?”

  She nodded frantically. “Yes, I’m sorry. Blake is fine. Everyone is fine. Well, everyone but me.” At that moment, her eyes ducked down and, for better or for worse, my gaze roamed down the length of the small frame that managed to create a Goliath-sized amount of lust in me.

  As always, the gentle slope of her neck was cut off by a collared shirt, layered over with a royal-purple sweater. NorCal was chilly this time of year, so I couldn’t hold that against her, but it only hinted at the slopes of her tits, and that I would always protest. But there, instead of the fabric falling back in over her stomach, it pushed out.

  Jesus Christ.

  Was I… Was I seeing this right?

  My mouth went dry and my heart ran like the fucking cops were chasing it.

  Was Taylor pregnant?

  My gaze whipped to hers. “Taylor…”

  Where the hell did I even begin?

  ‘Are you pregnant?’

  No, definitely not. I knew better than to ask that to any woman. Fuck.

  There were a million questions, so many things I needed to know, and every second that went by felt like my body and my brain were stretched farther on the rack - tortured with wondering.

  “Can we talk?” My eyes jerked back up to her face hearing her soft, strained voice. “
Can… Can I come in?”

  Yes. Talk. Explain.

  What. The. Fuck. Was. Happening.

  I was unable to process that the most innocent and chaste girl I’d ever met - the girl who’d never had a boyfriend to my knowledge - was standing at my door with a bump in her sweater that was never there before. And I would know because I was always fucking looking at her.

  “Shit. Sorry.” I nodded, biting my cheek. “Of course, you can. I wasn’t expecting… you,” I finished dumbly. “You surprised me.”

  I wasn’t an idiot. At least, for the past four-ish months I hadn’t been an idiot. But five seconds in her presence turned me into a goddamn fool - forgetting every fucking thing around me.

  “Ash,” Danny’s voice coming up behind me was like a bucket of ice water over my head. “Who is it…” She trailed off in surprise like any normal woman would, walking up behind the guy she was casually seeing to find him standing at his door, talking to a woman who was obviously knocked up.

  I knew what Danny was thinking, but she was wrong.

  Alcohol may have damaged many of my brain cells, but I still knew the difference between fantasies and fucking – and fantasies, no matter how realistic or how frequently I’d had them about Taylor, couldn’t get her pregnant.

  So, there was no way in hell that I was the father.

  3

  Taylor

  Lord, give me strength.

  The silent, succinct prayer seemed like a single drop in a sea of insecurities.

  “Can we talk?” I choked out. “Can… Can I come in?”

  For weeks… months… I’d imagined this moment, gone through it in my mind, trying to prepare myself. But it had been like practicing to skydive.

  I could strap on a backpack and jump from my couch onto the floor all I wanted, but it would never prepare me to leap from a plane, thousands of feet off the ground.

  Nothing could prepare me for the weightless freefall of my heart crashing back down to Earth at the sight of the man I’d always wanted – the man who was the father of my child.

  Ash.

  “Shit. Sorry.” His eyes fell as he stepped to the side. “Of course, you can. I wasn’t expecting you,” he offered in explanation. “You surprised me.”

  My heart beat wildly in my chest with the kind of exuberance and anxiousness you feel coming home after a long time, happy to be there but afraid of what has changed.

  My eyes drank him in. Greedily. Desperately. They traced over the image of the man that had begun to fade from my mind for how many times I’d closed my eyes and sought his face.

  That was the bittersweet reality of memories: the more you visited them, the foggier they became.

  The unruly waves of Ash’s hair fell like spun gold over his forehead. And his eyes… so blue they looked like miniature oceans caged by his lashes. They were so clear and vibrant now, not the stormy gray I’d last seen in Tennessee before he left.

  Was it possible he looked even more gorgeous? Or maybe more golden? This was California, after all. Or maybe it was that he looked more… like himself.

  Or maybe this was all just because of my hormones.

  Yes. Hormones. That was a good reason.

  If my mouth hadn’t already dried out of anxiety, it did at the sight of his naked chest, cut sharply into various lean muscles I’d dreamt about frequently since that night in Denver. The way they vibrated under my touch and tensed with each ragged breath he took. Their heat and hardness against my own breasts as we…

  I cleared my throat and dipped my chin for a moment, unused to the crush of feelings inside my chest. Unused to being around him.

  In my parents’ house, there was an eleventh commandment - and it was one that through sheer determination, and the threat of eternal damnation, I’d tried to train myself to stop looking. To stop feeling.

  But it never worked for Ash.

  My eyes always made their way back to him like the sun returns to the horizon. No matter how far away I got, how high I climbed, I always fell back down to him.

  “Thank yo—” I began with such a quiet, strained voice it took no effort for it to be drowned out by another.

  “Ash, who is… it?” I watched in abject horror as an almost equally naked woman appeared beside him.

  Wait.

  What… Oh, no.

  I swayed as blood rushed to my head.

  Don’t faint.

  Don’t fall.

  Don’t puke.

  “Hey, I’m Danny.” My attention fractured as the beautiful brunette introduced herself with a curious but kind smile.

  Morning sickness had nothing on this moment, and embarrassment didn’t even begin to cover the range of vomit-inducing emotions that washed over me.

  What had I been thinking? It was a Wednesday morning, why wouldn’t I find him alone? No. Wrong.

  So. Very. Wrong.

  Of all the ways I’d imagined this scenario going over, him answering the door with his girlfriend still in bed wasn’t even on the radar.

  Like the iceberg that destroyed the Titanic, I hadn’t seen the warning sign: the two mugs he held in his hand. So, my eyes sunk with watery miscalculation and anchored on the steam rising from both mugs and wishing it could make me disappear.

  “Sorry. Danny, this is Taylor,” his calm, smooth-as-silk voice introduced me, extending a mug filled hand as I stepped to the side to include her in the conversation. “Taylor is my sister’s best friend and PR manager.”

  Yes. Of course. That’s me. The family friend.

  I never should’ve come.

  But the second my hand rose to my stomach to steady my breathing I remembered that I’d had to.

  “Hi. I’m so sorry for interrupting…” A blush rose to my cheeks, feeling like the biggest intruder on the planet. “I wasn’t thinking. I just got off the plane and came right here and… It’s very nice to meet you, Danny.”

  I released the sweaty death-grip on my beige, let’s-just-blend-in suitcase, extended it to Ash’s girlfriend who was, I just noticed, wearing one of his t-shirts. It was a fact almost as distressing as Ash’s face, flashing with shock as he, apparently, just noticed the suitcase sitting behind me.

  His knuckles turned white around the handles of the mugs as he met my gaze.

  “Is everything okay?” Ash cut in to ask again. “Is everyone—”

  “Yes. Everything and everyone is fine. I’m here… Well, it’s not an emergency why I’m here,” I reassured him lamely. In my defense, I had tried to call once I landed, but it had gone straight to voicemail – consistent with the absence of cell service once I stepped onto his driveway.

  “This was a mistake. I can come back.” My tongue felt like it was coated in peanut butter. Embarrassment was just as sticky but harder to dissolve. “I’m so sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

  I wasn’t thinking, and I was now wishing that I was anywhere else but here.

  “You’re not going anywhere.” Demanding, firm words pulled goosebumps over my body like a blanket. “Not until you tell me why you’re here. And… well… yeah. That.”

  I heard what he meant. And… well… why you are pregnant.

  It was his house, I knew, - at least according to the old man at the coffee shop - still, I looked to Danny like I needed her permission.

  “Yeah.” Danny nodded nonchalantly, her expression concealing her concern about the knocked-up woman on her boyfriend’s doorstep. “I need to get going anyway. We’ve got a bunch of big tours coming through so I should head out.”

  As she turned, I caught her ‘we-need-to-talk’ look she sent Ash as she took her cup of coffee from him and walked back where she came from - and where I hoped she’d find her pants.

  “Come in,” Ash instructed, his eyes never having left me even while Danny was there.

  I stepped over the threshold, the subconscious barrier in the doorframe said there was no going back now. My suitcase caught on the uneven lip and, swearing under his breath, Ash pulled the handle f
rom my grasp.

  “Let me get that,” he said gruffly while I tried to recover from the split second where an inch of his hand touched an inch of mine.

  If possible, the… cabin… was even smaller inside than it looked on the outside.

  Was this one of those tiny homes Blake was always going on about? I knew I should’ve paid attention when she was telling me about that show.

  “Sit. Give me a minute,” he ordered, stalking from the room before I could even turn around.

  Not like I had anywhere else to go at the moment.

  I reached for my water bottle, my throat still parched, and gulped down what was left.

  The couch I sat on was a worn, light blue denim. It sat on the same wall as the front door and faced the entry to the bedroom where Ash and Danny had disappeared to.

  On the wall in front of me was a small cabinet with a modest TV sitting on top, and to say the décor was sparse aside from those things was generous. There were no pictures, no art, no nothing that made the space personal to Ash. There was only a stand lamp to my left and a deep green ottoman in front of me which clashed with the couch.

  How long had he lived here?

  And none of the furniture matched the faded floral wallpaper that I could see bubbling in some spots near the old, worn molding.

  Was this his house?

  To my right was the kitchen and dining room. The appliances plastic and pastel, suggesting their old age. And the dining table looked like something you’d find at Ikea. Long and skinny, it was shoved up against the wall almost like a counter with two chairs in front of it; I could see the layers of wood stacked together where it could unfold into something a little larger if necessary.

  I glanced down at my stomach. It was going to be necessary.

  Who was I kidding? I groaned to myself. There was hardly enough room for two people in the shack, let alone a baby.

  I tried to lick my lips, but my mouth still felt dry. Hesitantly, I stood and walked the few steps to the kitchen sink to refill my water bottle.