“LOL! This is new!”
“It’s a sad day,” I said, turning to Max. “A year ago it was all Zuma and Everest. Now she doesn’t care anything about Paw Patrol. She’s too grown-up,” I sighed.
“Yesterday she was bugging me to get her ‘big girl’ sheets for her bed,” he said with a head shake. “Because the Baby Shark sheets are too baby.”
“Baby Shark is so last year,” I said. “So, am I bringing her the wine list?” I teased.
“You have a wine list here?” he said dubiously.
“Nah, but I have a pie list.”
“Bring me that!” Sadie piped up and we laughed.
“You have to eat more than two bites of food first,” Max said.
She drooped a little in her seat.
“Hey, we have chicken strips today,” I told her conspiratorially.
“Can I have barbecue sauce to dip in?”
“May I,” her dad corrected.
“May I?” she said brightly.
“I think I can work that out. You want some garlic toast while you wait on your food?”
“Only if you don’t want her to eat the chicken at all,” he grumbled. “Sorry,” he said, seeming to remember himself. “We’re having the picky eating wars at home. I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”
“It’s fine,” I said, “when I was little, my mom swears I lived on peanut butter and crackers and Rice Krispies treats.”
“At our place it’s Goldfish crackers and gummy fruit snacks,” he said. “Not exactly the entire food pyramid.”
“I understand. Now, Sadie-Lady, are you giving Dad a hard time?”
“No. I just don’t like meat. It’s squishy.”
“What about vegetables?” I pressed.
“They taste like feet.”
“How do you know?” I asked. “Have you tasted feet lately?”
She giggled and I smiled at her. She was a mini version of her dad, for sure, her unruly black hair pulled into a lopsided ponytail that failed to keep it back out of her face.
“Let me see what I can do,” I said. “And for you?”
“I’ll have the fish sandwich and a salad,” Max said and handed me his laminated menu.
When I brought his salad, I brought some carrots and celery cut up and a little side dish of two dressings for her, ranch and French. “I want you to try two bites of each one. Then you can pick the winner. I’ll be back in a minute.”
I cleared a table, picked up my tip, took another couple of orders, and then ran a slice of cherry pie to Laura.
“Took you long enough. If I was a hot single dad, maybe I’d get better service. I only have about a decade's worth of blackmail-worthy pics of you.”
“Do you want me to spit on your pie or what?” I asked. “I have customers.”
“Why don’t you just flirt with the man already? You’ve been looking at him with get-me-naked eyes since he walked in.”
“Untrue. My eyes don’t say things like that. I just have an astigmatism so maybe they look that way to hussies like you,” I teased.
“Hey! You’re a hussy!” she laughed and took a bite. “But you’re a damn fine cook, for a nasty little tramp.”
“Don’t you forget it. My Tinder profile says that. Good cook, nasty tramp. Shame I don’t get more right swipes on that thing.”
“Probably geography. You live in Rockford Falls. It’s not exactly a mecca.”
“Overton has more than one stoplight.”
“And that’s our criteria for a big city. More than one stoplight and a Starbucks. We’re not exactly cosmopolitan.”
“Maybe that’s what I like about it. I know everybody. I make the best pie, I know Trixie does the best flowers, if I need someone to be taken out, I call you or your husband.”
“He’s the sheriff. He’s not a hit man.”
“Whatever, if I offer him chocolate pie, he might pull the trigger for me.”
“Knowing your pie, I wouldn’t bet against it,” she said. “So, who do you want whacked?”
“I didn’t say whacked. I said, ‘taken out’ and no one right now. It’s just good to know I have friends to help me out if there’s a problem.”
“So, you have access to flowers and gunmen? That’s what Rockford Falls has going for it?”
“There are towns that have less to recommend them,” I said, and took her coffee cup. “Want a refill?”
“No, I better go. My mom’s probably hand-feeding Brenna M&M’s and buying her anything she wants off Amazon by now. But you should totally ask Max out.”
“Are you kidding? He’s a single dad. He doesn’t have time for anything like that. Plus, I need to work every shift I can get to save to buy the diner. Nobody has time for your matchmaking, girl.”
“Fine, be alone and miserable. I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” she said.
“Okay, love you,” I said. I hugged her bye and she left.
I got the order for Max and Sadie’s table and delivered it. All the celery was still on her plate except one microscopic bite, but she’d eaten two and a half carrot sticks and the entire cup of ranch.
“So, I got some Vitamin A in the kid, and recruited another lifelong ranch-lover. My work here is done,” I said, setting the fish sandwich in front of Max.
“Are you sure it was regular ranch? I’ve tried that at home.”
“Same as they have at the grocery store.”
“So she only likes it if you serve it to her? That’s not gonna help get vegetables in her at home,” he said.
“Try putting it in a little cup instead of on the plate where it touches her food.”
“Yes, Daddy. It can’t touch my other food!” Sadie said as if vindicated.
“Sorry, did I step into an ongoing argument?”
“Yes. And I got her a divided plate. But I think she wants barbed wire fencing between the food and maybe a moat. It can never touch. If barbecue sauce touches a tater tot, we’re all doomed,” he said. I laughed.
“I—it’s probably not funny to you. It sounded funny,” I said. “Can I get you anything else?”
“A side order of ranch to go. In a little plastic cup please,” he said.
I shrugged and bagged up a couple dressing-on-the-side cups of ranch for him.
“Pie?”
“Yes!”
“How many bites did we say?” he asked Sadie. She frowned.
“Seven. But it isn’t fair because I’m only six.”
“Sadie-Lady,” I said, “not a good strategy. You’re walking right into the obvious, then I guess you only need six bites of pie.”
“I’ll take big bites,” she giggled.
“I know that trick,” Max said. “We’ll share a piece of apple.”
“With ice cream!” she said.
“Maybe next time,” her dad said, and she nodded.
“Ice cream next time,” she assured me.
“I’ll remember,” I said.
When I had waited on a few more tables and filled Damon’s to-go order and heard about Ashton’s ear infection, I took the pie to Max and Sadie with two spoons.
“Thank you,” he said, “for everything.”
“Anytime,” I said, placing their check on the corner of the table. “Next time when you come in and get ice cream with your pie, you can tell me how your bunny is doing.”
“He sleeps all the time. I think it’s because he’s a boy,” she said.
“What makes you say that?”
“My teacher said men are lazy.”
“What?” I asked. “Oh, is this Mrs. Henderson? Yeah, she’s going through a divorce. Maybe don’t pay any attention to what she says about boys right now, okay?” I said with a nervous giggle.
“I think the rabbit sleeps all the time because he’s overfed,” Max said, taking a bite of pie. “So this will make us lazy too, all this food and then good pie on top of it.”
“Are we gonna be lazy bunnies at home?” Sadie giggled.
“Sure, baby. We can
be lazy bunnies and watch some Paw Patrol after you have your bath.”
“Daddy, I’m not a baby. I don’t watch baby stuff.”
“Ouch. Okay, we can watch CSPAN. Find out what’s going on in Congress today,” he said. I snickered.
“Even I’m not that grown-up,” I said.
“Neither am I,” he admitted. “But if she wants to watch a grown-up show, it’s gonna be government operations. That should cure anyone of wanting to be an adult.”
“I think I’d need some serious sugar to keep me awake through CSPAN. How ‘bout one of those boring History Channel shows?”
“Those are excellent. Either you love the History Channel or you’re—”
“Under the age of seventy?” I teased. He laughed. Max had a great laugh, deep and rumbly. I felt my cheeks flush.
“Fine, so maybe I watch TV like I qualify for Medicare. I’m an old dad. I’m required to grill all summer, complain about the weather no matter what it is, and yell at kids to stay off my lawn.”
“Daddy, you watch outside man shows,” Sadie proclaimed.
I looked to Max for clarification. “Survival shows, hunting shows, that kind of stuff.”
I looked at Sadie who shrugged. “He yells at the TV when they chop down trees wrong. When I’m trying to sleep, he’ll go, ’you wasted so much wood.’”
I laughed, “So you heckle Bear Grylls?”
“You can’t watch it without heckling. Trust me,” he said.
“I’ll take your word for it. I don’t get to watch a lot of TV.”
“Masha and the Bear is really, really good,” Sadie said. “And Elena of Avalor —or it would be if we had Disney.”
“Solid burn, kiddo,” he said, clearly amused. “We’re not getting Disney. We already have Netflix, and my goal in life isn’t to get you to watch more TV.”
“Baby Yoda’s on Disney!” she protested.
“You are not watching that show. It isn’t a kid’s show.”
“Maggie’s mom let us watch it,” she said.
“And that’s why you don’t go play at Maggie’s anymore,” he said. “Because her parents have different ideas than I do on what’s okay for you to see.” He didn’t sound annoyed, just tired.
“Sadie, there’s two more bites of pie. Go for it,” I said. “You guys drive safe.”
“Thanks, Miss Rachel,” Sadie chimed in. “Don’t forget to watch Masha and the Bear!”
“Thanks,” he said, watching his daughter scoop a huge bite of pie into her mouth, crust and all.
I didn’t really want to walk away. I wanted to stand there and stall them, get them to linger in the diner and talk to them longer. I wanted to slide into the booth next to Sadie and fix that ponytail. I was careful with that though. I didn’t want her to feel like there was anything wrong with her messy hair, and I didn’t want him to think I was judging his parenting. He was just crap at doing little girl hair. She probably hated having it brushed, I thought. And I felt a little twinge, because it would be so fun to brush out her hair and braid it, paint those little nails, do the girly stuff with her. But it wasn’t my place. I wasn’t a close family friend. Best I could tell, Max didn’t really have any close friends, and Lord knew he didn’t have family here. No wonder he looked tired. He was trying to do it all on his own.
2
Max
Sadie slid between her “too-babyish” sheets in her Elsa pajamas and handed me a book.
“This one, please,” she said, her sunny voice not tired at all. I suppressed a yawn and managed to smile.
“You love this one, don’t you?” I asked, snuggling in beside her.
Sadie nestled into my side and looked up at me. “That’s because it’s the best one, Daddy,” she said.
“Okay, then we’ll read it again,” I said.
I read her the mermaid fairytale. We’d read it every night for nearly a month. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t hope she picked a new favorite book soon. We needed to hit the library, get some fresh books in this place in the next couple of days before I had read that book so many times, I started calling everyone Ariel.
“That was good. I like when you do the lobster voice.”
“Thanks. It’s a crab, not a lobster.”
“He’s red,” she said reasonably as if to prove her point.
“So are crabs. And that’s what he is. I swear.”
Sadie looked at me like she wasn’t so sure, but she let it drop.
“Do I get to sing to you? Or are you too big for that suddenly? Maybe you should start reading to me,” I teased her.
“Daddy, I can only read kindergarten stuff. The dog sits. The cat sits. The dog runs. The cat runs. That’s not much of a story,” she said.
“Okay, I’ll let you off the hook for now, but when you can read a longer book, it’s your turn. We practiced your sight words after school. Should we do them again? So you can learn to read faster and take the load off your old man?”
“No, Daddy. I like when you read to me,” she said, exasperated. “I want a song. But only if it’s Twinkle Twinkle.”
“It’s a deal,” I said, switching off her lamp and singing to her.
It was the same lullaby I’d sung to her when I was suddenly a father with a screaming newborn in my arms, swaying and so scared I’d drop her. Smoothing back her hair, I couldn’t believe how big she had gotten, how smart she was. I swallowed hard, trying to fight getting sentimental. I kissed her on the head and tucked her in.
“I love you, Sadie,” I said. “Sweet dreams.”
“I love you, too, Daddy. Check on me!”
“I will, and you better be in dreamland,” I told her fondly.
I shut the door and then did up the breakfast dishes from the morning, cleaned up around the kitchen, and put in some laundry. I popped a beer from the fridge and turned on the TV to try and stay awake long enough to put the clothes in the dryer. Sadie was about out of clean socks that matched, so I needed to get the load done before bed, or she’d be at school in mismatched socks tomorrow. It shouldn’t be a big deal, but as a single dad, I tried to be extra careful about stuff like that. Make sure she washed behind her ears, a healthy lunch was packed, and I’d checked her school folder to see if I needed to sign anything. I didn’t want people thinking I didn’t try or that she needed a mother. A mother wasn’t something I thought about in connection with my little girl very often. We had each other and that was enough. She filled up my heart—the kid I hadn’t known I wanted until she was here. Nothing could come between us now.
I looked around my living room and felt a surge of pride. I was glad I’d moved to Rockford Falls to bring up my daughter. Our cabin right at the foot of the mountain ridge was close enough to town for her to go to public school but far enough away that it was quiet, peaceful. I’d gotten a hell of a deal on the place and fixed it up. I mostly bought it for the stand of timber in the back, acres of forest that stretched up into the foothills. But our little two-bedroom was snug and as tidy as I could make it with Sadie leaving about four hundred crayons everywhere.
I was happy with my choices in life. If you’d asked me ten years ago what I wanted, I’d have said I wanted to be a partner in the investment firm where I was a rising star, and I wanted to have a vacation home in Italy. But I’d veered off the fast track when Sadie came along and never regretted it once. There was a steep learning curve to making timber successful, but I’d hired a lumberjack from north Georgia to come out and train me for a few weeks, and I’d been fortunate enough to be able to hire help to take care of Sadie while I got on my feet. Now I had a successful business, a healthy, happy daughter, and time on my hands.
What had begun as a way to keep idle hands busy by whittling a small figure or a dollhouse table and chairs had evolved into making full-size accent tables and bookcases, cutting boards, and inlaid charcuterie boards and serving trays. It was a use for scrap wood that prevented it going to waste and it was satisfying to make something unique out of what was le
ft over.
There was no way I could have predicted that this would be the life I wanted. Living on my own land in a cabin in the mountains with my daughter, working with my hands and loving it, feeling more grounded and happier than I could ever remember. I could have just retired on the money I’d already made; bought the brownstone I’d been living in and hired a nanny. I wouldn’t have had to work another day in my life, but I wanted a different kind of upbringing for my daughter. She needed room to play and fresh air and something more wholesome than the rat race and the social climbers that surrounded me in New York. We both deserved better, and I’d made it happen. I had a standing order for timber, and I milled some of my own at the place outside Overton, plus I chopped firewood to sell in town and made furniture and other custom pieces. I liked to keep my hands busy, and more money seemed to follow.
I leaned back and shut my eyes. It had been a good day, but sometimes, just once in a while, the nighttime was lonely. In an ideal world, I would’ve had someone to talk things over with. Someone to show the gleaming river the teal epoxy made down the center of that table just the way I intended, and someone to laugh over the things Sadie said about being so grown up. And somebody to share the fact that I had a pang of sadness over it, too, the idea that she was no bigger than a football the day I met her and now she was full of opinions and definitely didn’t eat enough vegetables. I sighed.
Rachel had an easy way with Sadie. I wondered if she had nieces and nephews, because she was really good with kids. She didn’t act stupid, and baby talk at Sadie, which my daughter hated above all things. I had seen her hand flutter toward the God-awful ponytail and then withdraw. She had restraint and respect for Sadie. She didn’t try to fix what she wasn’t asked to fix or criticize her appearance. I knew that my kid could’ve been dressed like a damn Kardashian offspring if I wanted to do it—carrying some kid-sized Birkin bag and wearing Gucci leggings. But I got her clothes at the Target in Overton when we went to the seafood place there once in a while. She wore lime green leggings and a blue t-shirt with a glittery sloth on it. It’s what she picked out, and as long as she was clean and comfortable, I wasn’t bothered about it.
Falling in Love: A Secret Baby Romance (Rockford Falls Romance) Page 18
