by L. B. Dunbar
www.lbdunbar.com
Copyright © 2021 Laura Dunbar
L.B. Dunbar Writes, Ltd.
https://www.lbdunbar.com/
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owner.
Cover Design: Shannon Passmore/Shanoff Designs
Cover Photo Credit: Regina Wamba
Editor: Melissa Shank
Editor: Jenny Sims/Editing4Indies
Proofread: Karen Fischer
Table of Contents
Other Books by L.B. Dunbar
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Epilogue
Second Epilogue
More by L.B. Dunbar
Connect with L.B. Dunbar
(L)ittle (B)its of Gratitude
About the Author
Other Books by L.B. Dunbar
Lakeside Cottage
Living at 40
Learning at 40
Loving at 40 (2022)
Letting go at 40 (2022)
Silver Fox Former Rock Stars
After Care
Midlife Crisis
Restored Dreams
Second Chance
Wine&Dine
The Silver Foxes of Blue Ridge
Silver Brewer
Silver Player
Silver Mayor
Silver Biker
Collision novellas
Collide
Smartypants Romance (an imprint of Penny Reid)
Love in Due Time
Love in Deed
Love in a Pickle
The World of True North (an imprint of Sarina Bowen)
Cowboy
Studfinder
Rom-com for the over 40
The Sex Education of M.E.
The Heart Collection
Speak from the Heart
Read with your Heart
Look with your Heart
Fight from the Heart
View with your Heart
A Heart Collection Spin-off
The Heart Remembers
THE EARLY YEARS
The Legendary Rock Star Series
The Legend of Arturo King
The Story of Lansing Lotte
The Quest of Perkins Vale
The Truth of Tristan Lyons
The Trials of Guinevere DeGrance
Paradise Stories
Abel
Cain
The Island Duet
Redemption Island
Return to the Island
Modern Descendants – writing as elda lore
Hades
Solis
Heph
Dedication
For Adeline,
And summertime, strawberry picking, sunsets and strangers.
This book contains reference to a few medical conditions, of which I researched and discussed with others. While there are broadsweeping specifics about diabetes, my understanding is everyone’s experience is individualized. Despite two family members with diabetes, I, myself, do not have personal experience with the condition, and therefore take responsibility for inaccuracies.
1
[Autumn]
“I’d just like to have a baby.”
Thud. The statement falls heavy after my sister-in-law brings up a previous conversation moments before the arrival of guests.
I want to have a baby. It is that simple and that complicated, and I’d been discussing such a thing with Anna since summer began.
My sister-in-law is the sister I never had. As the middle McCaryn child, she defies the stereotypes of siblings and birth order. She’s the one with it most put together out of her clan. The handsome, devoted husband. The stable, loving marriage. The three beautiful, growing children.
On the other hand, I recently had a breakup with my longtime boyfriend, thus leaving me shy of forty years old without what I want most—a baby.
“Doesn’t that typically involve having a husband?” my brother, Ben, asks as the three of us gather around the kitchen island inside his in-laws’ home—the house his wife and her siblings inherited upon their parents’ death. “Or at least a boyfriend?”
“Yes, well, there is all that.” I glare at Anna for bringing up this topic now of all times and wave dismissively from where I stand opposite my brother sitting on a stool. Of course, there are the mechanics of producing a child, and as I’ve been on a dry spell since my breakup with Rick, actually making a baby might be a teeny, tiny issue for me at the moment.
“Is this because of Rick?” Ben asks, concerned for me. Ben Kulis is a great brother, like the best brother ever, and Anna totally lucked out with him. Me? I’ve had a string of losers. It seems to be my forte. Don’t have a job? I’ll pay for everything. Don’t have ambition? No worries, I’ve been told I have enough for two people. Need a place to stay? Come live with me, eat my food, mess up my apartment, and then run off with someone else. All this passivity is left from my teen years, which happened twenty years ago, but whatever. Textbooks have been written about women like me and my issues in triplicate.
Fat girl. Lonely heart. Starved for attention. Ate cookies.
“I would prefer not to give Rick credit for this decision,” I state, glancing at Ben before fiddling with an apple in the large bowl of fruit on the island counter. My brother worries about me. He wants me settled down. He wants someone to love me and take care of me in an emotionally supportive kind of way, and I want those things as well. I just haven’t found anyone who gets me.
“That might be the first sound thing you’ve said,” Anna states with a smile. My sister-in-law is also the best. She’s the best of the best, like Ben, and she’ll be the first to tell you how perfect she is in a teasing sort of way. She’s not a snob. For a woman who was once incredibly shy and lacked confidence, she’s grown bolder as we age, with a self-assurance I wish I had half of.
“Maybe we should discuss this another time,” I suggest as my brother’s three best friends are due to arrive for a two-week stay at the house at any minute. It’s actually a cottage—Lakeside Cottage—but by most people’s standards
, the six-bedroom home on a cliff overlooking Lake Michigan isn’t quite the quaint image that comes to mind when the word cottage is mentioned. On top of the sprawling home and glorious view, a coach house doubles as a three-car garage with a two-bedroom apartment above it. Anna’s father was extremely successful in the sausage industry. This was her mother’s dream home, a second home away from their modest family house just outside Chicago. Eventually, her parents sold the house where she grew up and moved here for their retirement. Unfortunately, they have both passed away.
“So, who all will be here again?” I ask Ben, hoping to redirect the focus from me to him. He’s the one who wanted to gather his friends and for good reason, although that’s another topic we aren’t allowed to discuss.
“Logan, Mason, and Zack, plus kids.”
“Minus wives,” Anna says, wiggling her brows at me. It isn’t that they don’t have them, but Logan is a divorcee. Mason is the perpetual bachelor, and Zack has a wife equivalent to the Grinch. I swear her heart is three sizes too small.
“Jeanine won’t be with Zack?” I ask, looking over at Anna as she hangs a dishtowel on the towel rod.
“She gave some lame excuse about travel overseas and sent Zack with Oliver and Trevor.” Zack’s twin sons are a handful.
As if summoning one of Ben’s friends, the doorbell rings, and Ben claps his hands once. “Here we go.” He sounds like a kid on Christmas morning. His body swings around on the stool, and he pops off it to stalk toward the hall leading to the front door like Santa himself will be standing on the other side.
“He’s so excited.” Sadness fills Anna’s voice, and we both know why.
“It’s going to be great,” I assure her. Wanting to reach out for her arm with comfort, I stop myself, afraid I might cry if I touch her. Instead, I blink rapidly, willing away tears I’m not allowed to shed.
“So, we could always talk to one of the guys,” Anna says, straightening the already artfully arranged fruit in the giant bowl. “Maybe Mason could sleep with you.”
My head shoots up, and Anna’s ulterior motive for bringing up this conversation today becomes more clear. “Gee, thanks. Let’s beg the eternal manwhore to impregnate me.” Mason Becker already had an oops a few years ago. I’d like to say he’s a good dad, but I doubt it. I’d also like to hope I’m not that desperate. While nothing is physically wrong with Mason—he’s cover model-worthy to look at—I just don’t trust him. I’ve never been able to put my finger on it, but there’s just something. Maybe it’s the fact he tried to make me kiss a manhole cover when we were kids after he cheated at ghosts in the graveyard. As Ben and his friends are four years older than me, I was the tagalong little sister, annoying all of them, and Mason picked on me the most.
“I’m not saying you have to marry him. I’m just saying you could pull a Big Chill. Pick three guys, sleep with each, and then voila, baby.”
The Big Chill was a popular movie in the early eighties, released a few years after my sister-in-law was born, but she’s obsessed with all things from that decade even though she was an infant back then.
“I am not picking three random men to sleep with in hopes they give me a baby,” I mutter. However, it wasn’t an entirely awful idea. My baby plans hadn’t been well-thought-out yet. It was just a thought.
I’d like to have a baby.
When Mason walks into the kitchen with his hair artfully styled in an I-just-ran-my-fingers-through-these-acorn-colored-locks way, the Big Chill idea has some merit. Mason also has bright blue eyes, which stand out against his tanned skin. If my child inherited his genes, that would be one beautiful baby, but Mason isn’t the friend of Ben’s who had my interest in the past.
“Speck,” Mason calls out, reminding me of my childhood nickname from him. A speck of dust. Ben would argue it was short for spectacles because I wore thick glasses, but my brother was only being nice. It could have been worse, I suppose. Mason could have called me testicles.
Mason walks to me first, hugging me with a firm back slap like I’m one of the guys. Next, he gives a wrist-flip wave at Anna before slipping his hands into the pockets of his shorts. He never touches her, and I’ve always thought it strange. Anna jokes he only touches women he can grope, and as he considers Anna a sister with his best friend mister, he doesn’t reach for her.
That sensation of something off about Mason ripples over me and reminds me why he should not be a candidate for baby-making. Not that I’m considering baby-making with any of the clowns joining us, but I am growing older, as my mother likes to point out, and the selection of available men in my life is slim.
Mason swipes his fingers through that luscious hair, disturbing the curls along his neck and over his ears. The motion strikes me as anxious, but I can’t imagine what Mason and his playboy good looks would ever be nervous about.
A holler of greeting notifies us another friend has entered the house, and Anna and I look at one another.
“Zack,” we call out together. Zack Weller is not eligible for the three men list Anna suggested as he’s currently married, even though we all hope he divorces. It’s not a nice thought, but his wife really is a bitch. As Zack is an intelligent man, there would be merit to him as a potential sperm donor. He’d offer brains over brawn though he’s equally as attractive as Mason in a more business-suit porn, preppy weekender kind of way.
As I glance up from my spot near the island, I watch as Zack enters the kitchen area with another man to his right.
“I didn’t know Zack was bringing a friend.” As I speak to Anna, my eyes narrow.
“A friend?” Anna chuckles. “That’s Logan.”
Logan Anders?
“What?” I choke. Logan does not look like the man standing beside Zack. For one, this man’s dark hair is professionally cut and almost styled. The Logan I remember, who had a babyish face as a young man, now sports facial hair which is more than scruff but less than a beard shaved to perfection. He smiles over at Ben, and two damn dimples the size of lighthouse beams blind me, and he’s not even looking at me. His body is not what I remember either. He’s filled out differently from the college boy who used to be overweight. He’s solid in places I can see, like his biceps bulging under a tee and thighs in tight jeans, which leads me to imagine he’s thick in other places I cannot see.
Do not consider the potential.
When the boys were in college, Logan was another friend of Ben’s who tortured me for reasons completely opposite Mason. His teasing nature wasn’t from dislike as much as it was a part of his personality, and I had the biggest crush on Logan. The biggest. I wasn’t slim myself as a child, and I considered our similar physiques a good reason for Logan and me to be considered a good match. However, he only saw me as Ben’s little sister and proved it one time to my complete mortification. He wanted beautiful, skinny women and typically got them because of his winning personality. He was funny. He knew how to flirt. He was also incredibly sweet.
When did he get so hot?
“That’s Logan?” My voice rings a little too loud and with too much startled exaggeration.
“Yes,” Anna hisses, turning to me with warning eyes to lower my voice. “He’s worked really hard to lose weight, and I think he looks great.”
Great is an understatement. He’s smokin’. He’s hotter than hot. He’s the sun only rises for me hot. Unfortunately, Logan Anders will never look at me that way. I’ll never be the sun at the center of his universe. I’ll always be Ben’s little sister. Speck.
2
[Logan]
“Who’s the hottie with the body?” I mutter to Zack Weller as we enter the kitchen of Ben’s lakeside cottage and stand side by side. It’s been years since I’ve been in this home, and I already see the improvements Anna and Ben have made to the place. Clean lines in the kitchen. Practical beach house furnishings. Removal of the old drapes to allow in loads of sunshine through the plantation blinds.
Speaking out the side of his mouth, Zack mutters, “That’s
Autumn.”
Autumn? Autumn Kulis? As in Ben’s little sister?
“Speck,” I choke out as I catch her looking at me. My hands slip into the front pockets of my jeans as I try to disguise the instant boner I seem to be sporting from just looking at her.
When the hell did she get so drop-dead gorgeous?
“Logan.” Her clipped voice along with a weak wave isn’t exactly the reception I’d expect to receive from my best friend’s youngest sibling, but then again, it’s been a while since I’ve seen her. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I saw Autumn. It was sometime after all our weddings. Perhaps during someone’s parent’s funeral. When Ben told me his sister would be joining us for these two weeks, I’d pictured Autumn as she was at sixteen—a little fuller, a lot geekier, and a pain in the ass. She was always following us around, and Ben allowed it. He was just too damn nice to say no.
Thankfully, he’s that kind of friend, too.
“Come to the cottage,” he’d said when I took his call a month ago. It wasn’t a strange request but out of the ordinary. We hadn’t vacationed together in years, but this year, we had all turned forty. “It’s been too long.”
When Ben told me he was getting the four of us together, plus kids and wives, I hesitated. I’m a single dad and didn’t know how I’d fit in with the old tribe. Then I remembered Mason is forever single, and Ben wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“What’s up, Mace?” I say, reaching for my former roommate. We hug as men do, clapping one another on the back before pulling apart. Ben comes to me next. He feels thinner than I remember, but it could just be that I’m not as bulky as I once was. It’s been a rough eighteen months, but I’m proud of where my body is at. I’m healthier for it, too.
As Zack and I pulled up to the house at the same time, we’ve already said our hellos in the driveway, but the room is an additional eruption of greetings, hugs, and questions.
