Starting Over (Paradise Place Book 3)

by Natalie Ann

  He always knew Blair was whimsical and almost a free spirit at times but nothing like this. Nothing like her getting so upset over dreams. Things that didn’t even come true.

  He wondered why she let it bother her so much. Was it some deep-rooted problem from her childhood? The loss of her mother? Being raised by two fathers?

  And then to pull what she did this morning? Wanting him to keep Livi home because of a dream. No. Totally absurd. He dreamt things all the time and some came true, but the majority were nothing more than a restless sleep. Just waiting for the truth to come to him in a dream was nothing but putting his life on hold.

  When the microwave dinged, he opened it up, stirred his food around and then started it again. Talk about crazy thoughts running through his head. He doubted it was anything even close to that.

  With his warmed-up lunch, he made his way back to his office and sat down to eat. He was just finishing when his phone rang. He looked down to see the school district calling and wondered why his heart started to race.

  Nothing to be worried about, he told himself. He always felt like this when the school called. Every single time. Today wouldn’t be any different than any other call.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Mr. Aire, this is Maureen Collins, school nurse calling. Livi took a fall on the playground and the ambulance is on the way. If you could meet us at Albany Med.”

  “What?” he asked, standing up and grabbing his keys. “What happened? Where is she hurt? How bad is it?”

  “She’s awake though she was knocked unconscious for a minute. Unfortunately we are pretty sure she might have broken her leg when she fell off the slide.”

  “How did she fall off the slide?” he asked. He put his hand over the phone, “Donna, I need to go. Livi got hurt.” Then he walked out to his car.

  “Two boys were pushing each other and one got pushed into Livi and it knocked her down. She fell about ten feet. I’m sure she’s going to be just fine,” the nurse said calmly. She was probably used to trying to reassure worked-up parents.

  “I’m on my way,” he said and hung up the phone.

  He got to Albany Med, trying to figure out where to park for the emergency room. The place was huge and he had no idea where he was going. An employee stopped him as he tried to drive around again.

  He rolled his window down. “Can you tell me where to park?”

  “We have valet parking at the ER. If you’d like I’ll take care of it.”

  “Please,” Philip said and pulled his SUV over to where the employee pointed, got out, got his ticket, and then rushed through the doors, looking for his daughter.

  Blair ran across the yard the minute Philip pulled into the driveway. It’d been over four hours since he’d sent her a text to say Livi was hurt and they were at the hospital.

  She’d called immediately to see what had happened and how bad Livi was hurt, but they only talked for a few minutes and she didn’t get much more than Livi had taken a tumble and broken her leg.

  The minute she was in the back door, she dashed through the kitchen to the living room to see Livi on the couch with Philip putting a pillow under her leg. There was a bright green cast on the bottom half of Livi’s leg.

  “Oh you poor baby,” Blair said. “Are you okay?”

  Livi giggled. “Jared and Sean were pushing each other and Jared fell into me and knocked me off the slide. I fell and hit my head. Do you like my cast? Daddy said it looks like slime.”

  “It sure does look like slime. I bet you glow in the dark with the lights off,” Blair said, causing another giggle to escape.

  “We’ll find out tonight,” Philip said. “Thanks for coming over.”

  “Of course. I would have gone to the hospital if you’d let me.”

  She’d wanted to go right over when she got the call, but Philip told her to stay back and that they both didn’t need to be standing around waiting, that Livi was going to be just fine.

  “That place is a zoo. You didn’t need to add that to your day.”

  “How does your head feel?” Blair asked Livi.

  “It’s okay. They said I was knocked out, but then said it was probably the wind being knocked out of me. I didn’t know that could happen. But when I woke up it hurt and I started to cry.”

  “I’d cry too if I broke my leg,” Blair said. She looked at Philip, but he only looked away.

  “That’s what I told her,” Philip said. “Do you mind sitting with her while I figure out dinner?”

  “You know I will,” Blair said.

  “I want pizza,” Livi said. “Can we get pizza?”

  “I think pizza is the perfect dinner tonight,” Philip said and walked into the other room to make the call.

  Blair ran her hand over Livi’s head. The little girl looked fine to her, but that didn’t stop the tears from forming in Blair’s eyes.

  She’d come to love Livi like her own child in the short few months they’d known each other. The thought of her in pain was more than she could stand.

  “Are you sure you feel okay? I ran over here so quickly I forgot my little gift for you. When your father comes back in I’ll go get it.”

  “What did you get me?” Livi asked, all excited. That was the little girl she wanted to see again.

  “I know how much you love some of my lotions so of course you can pick out whatever ones you want. But I got you a bracelet-making kit. You’ll need something to do while you are on the couch. Daddy said you need to rest for the remainder of the week, so you’ll be home from school.”

  “Yeah. I have to learn to use my crutches too. Daddy carried me in.”

  “Daddies are good that way.”

  “Did your dad or Pops ever carry you?”

  “Of course they did,” she said. “Lots of times.”

  “It’s nice, isn’t it?” Livi asked. “I like when Daddy carries me. It makes me feel safe.”

  “That’s what daddies do best,” Blair said and looked over to see Philip standing there. “They look out for you and do what is right.”

  Philip narrowed his eyes at her, but she ignored it. Now wasn’t the time to get into it with him, but she sure the hell planned on it.

  When dinner was eaten and Livi carried upstairs and put to bed, Blair knew it was time to have that talk with Philip.

  “I figured you’d still be here,” he said when he came back.

  “Did you want me to leave?” she asked trying not to be hurt over that.

  “No. I just can tell you’ve got something you want to say to me and we should take this to my office at the other end of the house so Livi can’t hear us.”

  She followed him to his office and the minute the door was closed she said, “You should have listened to me. You should have kept her home from school.”

  “Blair,” he said. “There is no way you would have known this could have happened. This was an accident and they happen around kids.”

  “But I told you what I saw.”

  “You saw her crying on the playground. It could have been any number of things. She could have had her feelings hurt and I can’t go around making judgment calls on dreams,” he said, running his hands through his hair.

  “I told you she was hurt.”

  “You’ve told me a lot of dreams and they don’t all come true and you know it.”

  She had in the past few months made comments about silly things and he was right, they laughed it off and nothing came about them. But the few times she’d pushed what she felt was significant…well, he brushed them off too.

  “That’s not the point,” she argued.

  “So what is the point? Trying to make me feel like shit that you told me to keep my daughter home and I didn’t? That she has a broken leg and I have to live with this? That I’ve got to doubt everything now and wonder what I need to do to keep her safe? That her mother was shot at work one day and it was beyond my control and now the fear of losing my daughter is there even more? Is that the point you are t
rying to make?”

  He was pacing back and forth around the office and she was too stunned to even comment. Why hadn’t she thought of any of this when she called him this morning? Why did it never occur to her that he had a ton of grief and fears he still lived with from losing his wife?

  Because maybe she was being selfish. Maybe she was so worried about things like her grandmother accused her of that she didn’t think of anyone but herself.

  Before she found out that Livi had gotten hurt, her plan was to come here and apologize. But what did she do? She jumped down this throat instead.

  She did the only thing she could do before she put her foot in her mouth again.

  She walked out the door with her tail between her legs.

  23

  Let Herself Fall

  By the end of the weekend Blair was in her shop filling orders and praying she could get through another sleepless night.

  She hadn’t spoken to Philip since she walked out of his house on unsteady legs and he let her go.

  They’d said they loved each other, but why had it been so long since they’d talked? If they really loved each other, wouldn’t he have reached out to her at some point? She wondered why she let herself fall so quickly with Philip when they couldn’t even talk through their first argument.

  She turned when she heard a knock at the door to see her father and Pops standing there. “What are you guys doing here?”

  “We came to see how you were doing,” Pops said.

  “I’m fine,” she said and went back to filling orders.

  “You wouldn’t be out here working on your only day off if you were fine,” her father said, pulling an order from the pile and getting to work. Pops sighed and did the same thing. She fought back the grin that wanted to form. She could always count on her dads.

  “Just keeping busy,” she said back.

  “Have you talked to Philip?” Pops asked. Of course her dads knew what was going on in her life. She told them everything.

  “No. He’s probably busy taking care of Livi.” She hoped the bitterness was kept from her voice as she said that too.

  “So you haven’t seen Livi either,” her father asked. “That’s not very nice. I thought you’d gotten extremely close to her.”

  She didn’t need to be shamed right now but she sure the hell felt it. “I have. I am. I just don’t know what to say. He doesn’t want to talk to me. If he did he would have called me by now. Or come over to see me.”

  “You walked out on him,” Pops reminded her. “What have we always told you about relationships?”

  “Communication,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “I tried to communicate with him. He didn’t want to listen to me.”

  “Talking about dreams doesn’t count and you know it,” her father said. “We humored you over it because I truly believe that at times you dream things and they come true. We all do, Blair.”

  “You’ve never said that before.” She stopped working to look at them. “I mean I know a lot of people do.”

  “I think most people do at some point in their life, but they can’t live like they know everything that is going to happen. Even you know that. What’s this really about?”

  “He didn’t believe me,” she said and started to cry.

  “That doesn’t mean he doesn’t believe in you,” Pops said. “Isn’t that more important?”

  Why did she never see these things? “Yes.”

  “So tell us what you really want out of a guy,” her father said. “What is the most important thing you want? You’ve said different things to us over the years, but I want you to tell me now. You’re thirty years old, you’ve got to know what you want at this point.”

  She took a deep breath. “I want someone who accepts me for who I am and where I come from. Who understands my business and the time I put into it. Who likes my family and doesn’t have a problem with it. Who loves and cares for me.”

  “You’ve got all of that with Philip. So the question is why are you so miserable? Because you said something he didn’t listen to and then you threw it in his face?” Pops asked. “No relationship is ever going to work if you do that. How often do you think your father and I don’t listen to the other person?”

  “A lot,” his father said. “But I never make him feel bad about his decisions and he never makes me feel bad about mine.”

  “As if Philip’s words didn’t make me feel horrible yours are just compounding it.”

  “That should let you know how much you love him then,” her father said.

  “Can I ask you two something?”

  “Of course,” her father said.

  “Why did you wait so long to get married after it was legal to do so?”

  Pops laughed. “Just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it’s the right time. Getting married to make a statement isn’t what love is about. We waited until it was right for us, not society.”

  She looked at her father. “You feel that way too?”

  “It wasn’t just Jake’s decision. It was one together. We both felt that way. We listened to our hearts. Some people know in weeks, some in months, other it’s years. But that doesn’t mean you ever give up.”

  “Thank you both,” she said going to give them each a hug and a kiss.

  “If we did what we came here to do, can we go now?” Pops asked. “You know I hate working on Sundays.”

  She laughed. “I love you guys so much. Don’t ever change.”

  When there was a knock at the shop door over an hour later, she turned but didn’t see anyone, so she walked closer and pulled it open to see Livi standing there balancing on her crutches with a huge smile on her face.

  “Sweetie, what are you doing? Does your father know you are here?” she asked, looking around the yard trying to see if she was alone.

  “I’ve come to see if I can help you today. I’m bored and I miss you and Daddy fell asleep on the couch and I didn’t want to wake him.”

  “We should go back over and let him know you are here. If he wakes up and you are gone he is going to worry. You don’t want him to get upset, do you?”

  “No, but I think he already is,” Livi said.

  “Why do you say that?” Blair asked and walked out of the shop. She was going to ask Livi if she needed help, but the little girl was off and going just fine on her crutches.

  “Because Daddy has been moody. I think he misses you. How come you haven’t come to see him?”

  Oh man, how should she answer this? “I know he’s busy taking care of you,” she said.

  “But you can help him. I mean he says he never needs help, but I like it when you are around. And you said you were boyfriend and girlfriend, so I just thought that meant you’d be there to help him with me.”

  Could she get any more guilt on her shoulders for her behavior?

  “You’re absolutely right. That was wrong of me. I’ll tell your father that too.”

  “Good. Then can we have dinner together tonight again?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Your father and I need to talk. Let’s see if he is awake and then maybe you can make me a bracelet or something while we do that?”

  “Sure. Daddy, Blair is here,” she yelled.

  That was sure to wake up Philip and it did when she saw him jumping from the couch as she stood in the doorway. She wanted to giggle but stopped herself.

  Just looking at him though made her heart swell.

  His hair was slightly messy, his eyes were dark and heavy, circles under them. He looked beat and she’d bet he was worried silly over Livi and there she was at her house in the backyard thinking he was ignoring her because of their fight.

  She had so much to apologize for.

  “Hello, Philip,” she said, hoping she kept the hurt from her voice. The hurt she felt that maybe she compounded his stress and worry.

  He gave her a tentative smile and then said, “Livi, can you go play while Blair and I talk?”

  Livi giggled and said
, “Blair asked me to make her a bracelet. I’m going to do that right now.”

  Philip had spent days trying to figure out what to say to Blair. To go see her and talk to her. To work up the courage. But every time he thought he could, he’d changed his mind. Part of him wondered what he was going to say. He didn’t think he was wrong.

  And she was the one who walked out on their conversation. He’d never done that to anyone before and never would.

  But if he went over there to talk to her, would she think he just wanted to start a fight?

  Now that she was here, he was hoping she was willing to talk reasonably about things.

  “Why are you here?” he asked.

  “Livi came over to see me,” she said.

  “What? She went to your house? When?” So he guessed Blair didn’t want to apologize to him.

  “A few minutes ago. She knocked on the door and scared me. I asked if you knew if she was there and she said you were sleeping. I wanted to make sure you knew where she was and that she came over.”

  “Well, you did that.”

  Her eyes started to fill and though he knew his words were harsh he wasn’t sure he would take them back either.

  “I did. I also know we need to talk and clear the air.”

  “We do,” he said.

  “I’ve been waiting for you to come see me and then I realized that you’ve probably been waiting for the same thing.”

  “I have. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “You didn’t,” she said and though he thought he’d be shocked she admitted that, he really wasn’t. The other part of him was happy that she saw it too. That maybe they could work this out.

  “This was our first fight,” he said. “Is this how you always deal with them? Is that why you struggle to be in a relationship?”

  He wondered if it was that more than a man not accepting her. Maybe her own behavior played a part in it.

  “I don’t normally walk away from a fight. Not like I did with you. The only excuse I have is that I was so sure something was going to happen to Livi and when it did it tore me apart. I just felt if you’d listened to me you could have prevented it.”