She surprised him then by taking his hand. “I won’t lie, when I first heard about you and the baby, I cursed your name. I really did. Being a single mum was the last thing we wanted for our girl, especially on the other side of the world. But you’ve been wonderful, standing by Lola. And now, all of this... I want you to know that Dennis and I will always remember the kindness you’ve shown us.”
“You won’t have to remember. Daisy and I are going to be bugging you for a while yet,” Seth said. “You’ll be sick of the sight of us one day, I promise.”
“That sounds just fine to me,” she said.
Seth waited until they’d disappeared into the foyer before climbing into the car. Jodie was looking after Daisy for him and he headed home, aware she had her own life to get to.
It had been a tough few weeks, and more often than not he’d felt as though he was staggering from one near mistake to the next. All the decisions with Daisy, trying to do the right thing by the Browns, the constant siren’s song of his desire for Vivian...
He was exhausted. The thought of crawling into his bed and pulling the duvet over his head had never been more appealing. Or maybe crawling into the bottom of a bottle of something twenty-proof and wicked, something that would help him forget for a few precious hours.
Neither option was really viable, however, so he put on a brave face for Jodie and took what solace he could from holding Daisy and breathing in her special smell, absorbing her warmth.
Jodie left and he found himself picking up his phone and scrolling through his contact list until he found Vivian’s number. The need to call her, to hear her voice, to talk to her, was so powerful it scared him a little. He didn’t know why or how, but his gut told him that she could make things better. Or, more accurately, that she could make him better.
He’d known her for ten years, and he’d wanted her, more or less, for that entire time. He’d never really seen her, though. Not the real her. He’d been too busy being the cool guy, Mr. No Strings. Too busy chasing dreams and avoiding growing up.
He’d seen her now, though, and he understood that she was far, far more than a sassy mouth and a sexy body. She was warm, smart, loving. She was generous. She was sweet.
And she was impossible, because his life had imploded and because he liked her too much to inflict himself and his shitty romantic track record on her. Vivian deserved more than a guy struggling to keep his head above water while he attempted to join the adult world.
He stared at her number for a long time, his thumb hovering over the call button. He didn’t trust himself to speak to her and not ask her to come over or if he could come to her. And if he did that, he didn’t trust himself not to reach out for something that he knew he shouldn’t even try to take.
He settled for sending a simple text:
She’s gone.
What Vivian chose to do with it was up to her.
* * *
VIVIAN HAD JUST stepped out of the shower after her first Pilates class in months when her phone chimed receipt of a text. She blotted her face and hair dry, then picked up her phone to make sure that it wasn’t one of her designers with an emergency.
Seth’s message sat on the screen, stark and small:
She’s gone.
For a moment Vivian couldn’t breathe, and she sank onto the closed lid of the toilet and hugged her damp towel to herself, overwhelmed with grief for a young woman she’d never had the privilege of meeting. There were so many layers of sadness to this small, very human tragedy. Daisy losing her mother. Dennis and Melissa losing their daughter. Seth losing the helpmate who had made plans for their child.
Water trickled down her back, and she shook off her introspection and pushed to her feet. Moving with brisk efficiency, she finished drying before running a comb through her hair and walking into her bedroom. Five minutes later she was dressed and on her way out the door.
She stopped at the same liquor shop as the last time and bought the biggest bottle of tequila she could find, then did a run through the nearby supermarket to grab fresh limes and some groceries.
Barely forty minutes after Seth’s text had arrived, she was on his doorstep, pressing the doorbell. The moment she saw his face she knew she’d been right to come. His eyes were flat, devoid of their usual spark, and twin lines bracketed his mouth.
“I have tequila,” she said, brushing past him. “Hope you’ve got your drinking pants on.”
She made it all the way to the kitchen and was unpacking groceries before he appeared.
“I’m not sure babies and hangovers are the best combination,” he said.
“So we drink until we have to stop. I’m sure we can both live with that. I’m making you dinner, too, by the way. Fajitas, Vivian-style. Wait till you try my pineapple-and-lime salsa.” She chatted as she unloaded the bags and searched for a cutting board and sharp knife.
“In the drawer,” Seth said, joining her behind the counter and sliding open the drawer in question. He passed her a cutting board, but when she tried to take it, retained his grip.
“You didn’t need to come over,” he said, his voice low and gravelly.
Only then did she understand that he’d wanted her to, but had been afraid—or unwilling—to ask.
“Yes, I did.” She pulled the board free and began slicing the chicken breast into thin strips. “You can dice the pineapple for me. I need it really small.”
She glanced at him, and found him watching her, a pensive expression on his face. Unable to stop herself, she set down the knife and slipped her arm around his waist, resting her cheek against his shoulder as she gave him a quick squeeze.
“It’s going to be all right, Seth.”
She felt his belly muscles tense beneath her hand at the same time that she registered her own reaction to his closeness, and slipped her arm free again.
“You want me to cut up the whole pineapple?” he asked, grabbing another cutting board.
“Half should do. Then you can have a go at this onion.” She passed him one of the purple Spanish variety.
“I don’t know how, but I forgot how bossy you can be,” he said conversationally, slicing the skin off the pineapple.
“I’ll do my best to give you a refresher course.”
The repartee continued as they worked, the conversation moving from Daisy’s health to the security changes Seth was making at the bar. Neither of them mentioned Lola, but they didn’t need to.
Soon the kitchen was full of the smell of spices as the chicken cooked. She added the finishing touches to her salsa before shredding lettuce and dicing the flesh of an avocado. The baby monitor came to life as she was ready to serve, and he gave her a rueful look.
“She has a food proximity detector. The moment it looks as though I might get a hot meal, she creates a distraction.”
“Let’s see if we can outsmart her. This can wait while you take care of her,” Vivian said easily.
He disappeared and returned with a red-faced little girl, her gummy mouth stretched wide as she cried.
“Listen to those lungs,” Vivian said with a grin.
Seth smiled for the first time since she’d arrived. “She can pump out the decibels, that’s for sure.”
He paced, jiggling Daisy, murmuring to her under his breath to try to soothe her. Slowly Daisy calmed, and Seth brought in her carrier and nestled her into it while Vivian set the food on the table.
“This is great,” Seth said after swallowing the first bite of the tortilla he’d assembled.
“That salsa is totally the business, right?”
“The mint works really well with the pineapple.”
“I know. I’m a genius.”
Seth’s eyes were laughing at her as he took another bite, and something inside her relaxed. He was okay. Sad, exhausted and momentarily depleted, but okay.
Daisy let it be known that she wanted to be fed as they finished eating, and Vivian cleaned up while Seth made a bottle with endearing caution, double-checking h
is measures and the temperature of the liquid before offering it to his daughter. Daisy was drowsy and content by the time he took her to her room to change her nappy, then put her in the crib.
“She should stay down for a few hours now,” he said. “At least, that’s the routine she’s been lulling me into. No doubt she’s still got a few tricks up her sleeve.”
He had a mark on his jeans, and his shirt was half tucked in, half out, and his hair mussed, yet Vivian was almost certain he’d never been sexier or more approachable. The pull she felt toward him was so powerful she gripped the edge of the counter to remind herself of why she was here.
For Seth and Daisy, not for herself.
“How’s your liver?” she asked as she reached for the tequila bottle.
“I own a bar, remember?” There was a good measure of his old cockiness in his response.
“Big talk, Anderson. Let’s see you put your money where your mouth is.”
“That doesn’t even make sense. You bought the tequila, remember?”
“You know what I mean.”
She used a cutting board as a tray, taking the limes, a small paring knife, the salt shaker and a couple of shot glasses she’d found to the table. She then grabbed the tequila and poured them healthy shots.
Licking the skin between her thumb and forefinger, she sprinkled salt on the damp spot and placed a lime wedge at the ready. She waited until Seth had done the same before she lifted her shot glass.
“To Lola,” she said solemnly.
Grief raced across Seth’s face like a cloud across the sun. Then he raised his own glass. “To Lola.”
They both licked their hands before knocking back the tequila and sucking on their lime wedges. Vivian inhaled sharply as the alcohol seared its way down her throat to her belly.
“Oh, man, I hate tequila,” Seth said.
“I know. You could so strip marine varnish with this stuff. Brutal.” She poured them a second shot as she spoke, and Seth reached for the salt.
“Gives the worst hangovers, too,” he said.
“No way. Nothing is worse than a champagne hangover.”
“Talk to me tomorrow,” he said knowingly.
They both threw back their second shots, Seth wincing as though he’d swallowed acid.
“Feeling alive yet?” she asked him.
He nodded, reaching for his lime wedge to suck more juice into his mouth. “Getting there.”
She poured them a third shot but didn’t immediately pass it to him. “Tell me about Lola.”
He gave her a look. “You really want to do this?”
“That’s why I’m here.” She could already feel the warm alcohol glow snaking through her body, making her limbs that little bit heavier.
He shifted the salt shaker between his hands a few times. “What do you want to know?”
“Anything and everything you want to tell me. The floor is yours.” She made a dramatic gesture.
“Someone’s a cheap drunk.”
“I’m a fast starter, but I’m good for the long haul,” she assured him.
Seth drank the third shot without salt and lime. He hissed the moment he’d swallowed, shaking his head from side to side as though he was in pain. Then he took a deep breath.
“Okay. Lola.”
He told her about the night they’d met, how she’d come into the bar with friends from work and spent the night flirting with him. He’d written her off as just another pretty girl out for a fun night, but then she’d turned up the following night, and the night after that.
“Finally she asked me when I was going to take the hint,” he said. “And I asked her how old she was. She winked at me and said she was old enough to know better but young enough to learn, and then she laughed....”
“And you were gone,” Vivian finished for him.
She’d seen pictures of Lola in the town house the night she and Seth had gone looking for the Browns’ contact details. Lola had been blonde and fair-skinned, with big, laughing eyes and the kind of well-rounded body that filled men’s magazines. A pretty difficult proposition for most red-blooded men to turn down.
“She was fun. That was the thing about Lola. She knew how to have a good time. Knew how to make the most of situations and always find the good no matter how difficult it might be. Funny how I forgot all of that as her due date got closer and closer.” Seth’s mouth flattened into a straight line.
“Having a baby is stressful stuff, even when you’re married and theoretically on the same page,” she said.
“We weren’t even in the same book. She wanted to do a water birth at home, even though all the research was against first-time mothers not having access to medical intervention if needed. We argued about it for months, and then the baby was a breech birth so all of that went out the window. Even then she was convinced that the baby would sort itself out.” He stared off into the distance. “A few days before the accident, she missed a doctor’s appointment and we fought about that, too. She thought I didn’t respect her, and in a way, she was right. I worried about what would happen when the baby came along, how two people with not much in common would come together enough to get it right.”
He said it like a confession, laying his guilt at her feet. She poured another round.
“Being worried about the future didn’t make the accident happen, Seth.”
“I know that.” His response was knee-jerk fast.
“Sure you do.” She knocked back her shot, aware that the world was becoming pleasantly fuzzy at the edges. They’d have to stop drinking soon because of Daisy, but for the moment Vivian felt no pain.
“It was an accident. The last thing I’d ever wish on anyone,” he said.
“I know.”
“I’d rather have her here, fighting with me every day than for things to be the way they are.”
“I believe you, Seth. Do you?”
He stared at her, his mouth half-open in automatic denial. Then his shoulders slumped and he lifted a hand to his eyes.
“There were times when I wished this whole thing would go away—Lola, the baby, all of it. I wanted my life the way it was before it got complicated.” He let his hand fall and looked at her, clearly waiting for her condemnation.
“Congratulations, you’re officially human. And tempting as it is to believe in magical thinking, as far I know, your secret thoughts do not rule the world. If so, there’d be a hell of a lot more women walking around in bikinis and miniskirts.”
His mouth crept up on one side, reluctantly amused by her words. “Sorry, I forgot who I was talking to for a minute there.”
“A dangerous mistake.”
“Tell me about it.”
She eased off her shoes and lifted one leg up, propping her heel on the edge of the chair and wrapping her arms around her knee. “Have you spoken to the Browns about Daisy yet?”
He nodded.
“How did they take it?”
“About as well as you’d expect. Although Melissa said she knew I’d never say yes. Wish she would have told me that—would have saved me a trip to your place the other night.”
She gave his forearm a little shake. “Genuinely thinking about what they were asking is proof that you’re a good person, Seth. An asshole wouldn’t have even considered their offer, but you did because you want what’s best for Daisy.”
“There was a fair dose of what’s best for Seth in that decision, too,” he said, his tone self-deprecating. “Let’s not make me a saint just yet.”
“Not exactly a high risk, but thanks for the warning.”
His gaze went to his arm and she realized she was still touching him. She snatched her hand away. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I like it when you touch me.” He paused. “Sorry. Guess us and tequila isn’t the safest mix in the world.”
“No.”
And yet she couldn’t have stayed away tonight if her life depended on it. It would have hurt something inside her to think of him rattling around
this house on his own, just Daisy and his grief for company.
“Maybe I should make some coffee,” he said.
“Probably a good idea.”
“Tell me about your day. Especially if it didn’t involve hospitals and deathbeds.”
“You’re in luck. We did a lingerie shoot for a boutique brand that’s launching a national campaign.”
She’d downloaded a few shots onto her iPad and she showed him what she and Robin had come up with—a circus theme, complete with trapeze swings and a mistress of ceremonies with a bullwhip and wicked six-inch stiletto heels. They drank their coffee, then Daisy stirred and Seth went to see to her. He returned with a wide-awake baby in his arms.
“She’s not going to just nod off again,” he said.
“Does that mean I get to have a cuddle?”
He handed Daisy over and they went into the living room, each of them laying claim to a couch and stretching out along its length. Vivian tucked Daisy into the crook of her elbow and listened to Seth talk about his expansion plans for the bar while she soothed a hand over Daisy’s head and marveled at how soft her skin was.
Vivian wasn’t sure when she dozed off or how long she was asleep, but she woke with a start, jerking against the cushions when she realized Seth was leaning over her.
“I’m going to feed Daisy,” he said quietly. “Don’t get up.”
He lifted Daisy and Vivian blinked dazedly. The lights were dim, and she couldn’t remember them being that way earlier. Seth must have turned them down after she’d fallen asleep, which suggested she’d been out for a while.
Awesome company she was, flaking out at the first opportunity. She sat up, glancing at the other couch where Seth was coaxing Daisy to take the bottle.
“She’s always slow with nighttime feeds,” he said when he noticed her watching.
“Sorry I fell asleep. I guess I’m more of a lightweight than I thought I was.”
“I conked out, too. Best hour’s sleep of my life.” He smiled slightly, and there was something so warm, so small and intimate about the moment, that her chest became oddly tight, as though someone held her too firmly.
Her Kind of Trouble (Harlequin Superromance) Page 18
