Decidedly with Luck (By The Bay Book 6)

by Stina Lindenblatt

  She grinned at me. “That’s okay. One of my friends lives in the neighborhood. I texted her, and she’s expecting me.” Kiera kept on grinning, but it was as though the smile had been glued on. Even her dimples weren’t interested in being on display.

  “Give me a second, and I’ll drive you.”

  She shook her head, the smile exactly as it was before, something still off about it. “It’s not that far. And I could use the exercise. It’s good for Love Bug.”

  “I’ll walk you there.”

  “No, no. That’s not necessary.” For a heartbeat, she looked as though she was deliberating something. “Logan, there’s something I need to tell you. I was going to tell you yesterday, but then—”

  My phone rang from the kitchen table. “Give me a second. That’s Stacy.”

  I hurried to the kitchen and grabbed my phone. “Hey, Stace. I’ll be there in an hour.”

  “Can you pick up eggs on your way? And red pepper.”

  I laughed. “Is that the real reason you invited me for lunch, so I can pick up your groceries on the way over?” I vaguely heard the apartment door click shut.

  As I strode to it, Stacy was listing several other items she needed from the store. I opened the door and raced down the hallway…in time to see the elevator shut.

  “Logan, are you still there? Logan?” Stacy asked.

  “Yes, I’m here.” For a second, I thought of chasing after Kiera, but she would be gone by the time I made it to the main floor.

  I returned to my condo. After Stacy repeated the grocery list so I could jot it down, I sent Kiera a text.

  Me: Did you make it to your friend’s okay?

  “So, what’s going on between you and Livi’s teacher?” Stacy asked the moment I walked into the kitchen. Livi was sitting at the table, drawing a picture. Tony was busy chopping vegetables on the counter.

  “Oh, boy,” he muttered and flashed me a have-fun-with-that smile.

  I set the grocery bags on the counter next to the sink. “Is there something specific you want to know?” I asked her.

  “I’m just curious because you gave her and her friends tickets to Friday night’s game, kissed her in front of your daughter after the game, and then she was with you and Livi at the beach yesterday.”

  “Was I not supposed to do any of those things?” Was there some rule I didn’t know about?

  “I just don’t want you getting in over your head, Logan.”

  “What do you mean ‘getting in over my head’? I’m a big boy, Stace. I think I know what I’m doing.”

  She flashed me a look I had no idea how to interpret.

  The next one, though, I didn’t need a translator to figure out.

  She thought I was a clueless dumbass.

  Why I was a clueless dumbass was beyond me—which was precisely why, in her opinion, I fell into that category.

  “She’s pregnant and single and no doubt looking for a father for her baby,” Stacy said. “And I’m worried she might see you as the one to fit the shoes, especially since she’s carrying your best friend’s child. I mean, in her eyes, it’s probably the perfect solution.”

  I inwardly cringed at how much her assessment of the situation mirrored what I had believed a short time ago, while Kiera was still in my bed. “She doesn’t think that.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  Livi had stopped coloring and was watching us with rapt interest.

  “Hey, baby girl, what are you drawing?” I walked to the table and peered over her shoulder.

  Livi had drawn a picture of her holding two babies, one on each palm. Her arms were stretched to the side as if she were a balance scale.

  One baby had on a light-blue outfit; the other was dressed in pale pink.

  My gaze shot up to Stacy. “You’re having twins?”

  She laughed. “The last I heard, no.”

  “Why did you draw two babies?” I asked Livi, happy for the distraction from Stacy’s interrogation.

  “Mommy doesn’t know if she’s having a girl or a boy, so I’m covering my bases and drawing both.” She went back to coloring the picture.

  “Okay, that makes sense.” I guess.

  I kissed the top of her head. She grinned briefly at me.

  “Don’t think you’re getting out of the conversation that easily, young man,” Stacy said, her hands fisted on her hips.

  Tony burst out laughing.

  “Did you really just ‘young man’ me?” The last person who did that was my eighty-two-year-old grandmother. “Are you going to send me to my room without any supper?”

  That only made Tony laugh harder.

  Livi peered at us, bemused.

  “You don’t have to worry that Kiera is expecting anything beyond friendship.” As long as you didn’t count the part where I was helping her with her pregnancy-enhanced sex drive.

  And who knew how long that would last?

  “How can you be so sure?” Stacy wore an expression I was only too familiar with. She wasn’t dropping this until she was satisfied with the answer.

  “Because she told me she’s got a lot going on, and the last thing she needs to worry about is finding the right father for her son.”

  “When did she tell you this?”

  “This morning in…” I pulled the brakes on my words. Livi didn’t need to hear the next part.

  Stacy folded her arms across her chest, waiting for me to continue.

  “Hey, Livi,” Tony said, resting the knife on the plastic cutting board. “Why don’t we go in the backyard and check how the seeds are doing?”

  “Okay.” She pushed her chair away from the table, and the two of them headed outside. Livi’s merry chatter followed them out the kitchen door.

  “Are you sleeping with Livi’s teacher?” Stacy asked as soon as the door clicked shut. If her words could have crossed their arms in front of themselves and glared at me, they would have.

  “I’m not sure how that’s any of your business, Stace.”

  “She’s our daughter’s teacher.”

  “What difference does that make?”

  “It just does. That’s all.”

  “You forget Kiera was my friend long before she was Livi’s teacher.”

  “So, you took that as an invitation to have sex with her?”

  I snorted a laugh. “I think you’re blowing things out of proportion. Yes, I’m having sex with her, but that has nothing to do with our daughter.”

  Although if it weren’t for Kiera being Livi’s teacher, Kiera and I wouldn’t be having sex. Not unless I had decided to contact her now that I was living in San Francisco.

  “So what else did she say after you two had sex this morning?”

  “I didn’t say we had sex this morning.”

  Stacy’s mouth curled to one side. “You didn’t need to. It’s practically written on your face with colored markers. So what else did she tell you that makes you so sure she’s not interested in you taking over the role of being her baby’s daddy?”

  “She told me if I didn’t want to have sex anymore, I just have to tell her.”

  Stacy pondered this for a moment and grimaced. “She told you this after you had sex this morning?”

  “We didn’t have sex this morning.”

  “Okay, so you had it last night. Don’t even try to deny it, Logan. So do you no longer want to have sex with her?” She removed the carton of eggs from the bag on the counter.

  Was this a trick question?

  Answer it wrong, and purgatory would start to sound like a day at the spa?

  “Do you really want to discuss my sex life?” Because hell if I wanted to hear about her sex life with Tony.

  “Well, not in any particular detail. Thank you. But we’re friends, and this is the kind of thing friends talk about.”

  I grabbed the two Spanish onions from the other bag and started juggling them. “Are we painting each other’s toenails, too?”

  The smirk was back on her face. �
��If you would like to. I’m sure I can find you something pretty that will go with your hockey gear. So, do you still want to have sex with her?”

  “Yes, as long as she’s still interested.”

  “She didn’t say anything else? Possibly give you some reason why she believed you’re no longer interested in having sex with her?”

  “Nope. Nothing. She just acted a little strange when she brought it up.”

  “Were you two naked?”

  “Seriously, Stacy?” I groaned, close to dropping the onions. “Most ex-wives don’t want to talk about these things with their ex-husbands.”

  “Right, but we’re not your typical exes. We’re still close friends. So spill it. I want to understand better what went down this morning.”

  “Yes, we were naked when the conversation started. She was getting changed when she told me to let her know if I didn’t want to have sex with her anymore.”

  “And did you tell her you’re still interested?”

  “Stace—”

  “Just stick with the facts.” From her tone, I almost expected her to slam a gavel on the kitchen counter. I barely held back from sliding the carton of eggs away from her just in case.

  “I didn’t have a chance. She started saying something else but changed her mind. I pushed to find out what she was going to say—”

  “Which was what?”

  “I have no idea. She told me it was nothing, not to worry, and that she totally understood.”

  “And then what happened?”

  I put the onions on the counter. “You want to remind me why you never went to law school?”

  Stacy chuckled. “I know. I totally missed my calling. So what happened next?”

  “She wouldn’t answer my questions, and when I went to drive her home, she told me one of her friends lives in the neighborhood, and she was going to visit her.”

  Stacy dropped her face in her hands. “Logan, Logan, Logan.” She shook her head, face still covered, as she repeated my name. “Why do men have to be such idiots?”

  “And yet you still marry us,” I said dryly.

  She removed her hands from her face. “I guess that makes me an idiot, too.…Kiera’s pregnant and probably a little insecure about her body because she has no husband telling her how sexy she looks.”

  I started to argue that she was wrong, but Stacy cut me off. “Maybe Kiera is telling herself that she’d rather not go through the pain of losing someone else she loves, and that it’s easier being a single parent than risking her heart again. But her hormones are all over the place, and she may feel differently once the baby is born. But you won’t. You’re not interested in settling down with another woman until you’ve retired from hockey.”

  I grunted. “What are you saying? Just spit it out.”

  “You’ll end up hurting her, Logan. You two want different things—even if Kiera doesn’t realize it yet. And in the end, she’ll be the one who gets hurt.”

  “So, what am I supposed to do?”

  “You need to end whatever is going on between you two before it’s too late. I care about you, Logan. You know I do. But I don’t want to see Kiera get hurt either. She has more at stake in this than you do.”

  Have you ever been hit in the gut by a speeding truck?

  I haven’t either, but Stacy’s words were that vehicle, their impact felt clear to my bones.

  “Are you saying she and I can’t be friends anymore?”

  “If you can be strictly friends with no mixed signals, sure, why not? But I’ve seen how you look at her.”

  “I look at her like she’s my friend.”

  I didn’t think I’d ever seen Stacy as smug as she was at that moment. “Hate to burst your bubble, but I’ve never seen you look at any of your teammates that way. Are you certain you don’t want something more with her than just sex or friendship?”

  “Positive.”

  “Then it’s time you end the friendship before it’s too late.”

  That speeding truck?

  It just got upgraded to a speeding train—even if she was right.

  33

  Kiera

  I spread out the assortment of stationery on the coffee table, and dropped onto the couch, doing my best not to dwell on the conversation I’d had with Logan that morning.

  The conversation where I’d almost told him that Stephen wasn’t Love Bug’s father.

  But then Stacy had called, and I’d had second thoughts. I’d been hurt by what he had said and couldn’t bring myself to tell him the truth.

  After much deliberation about that and everything else, I’d come to the conclusion that while it was preferable to tell Judith and Joe about Love Bug’s father to their faces, I couldn’t wait that long.

  But how did you tell someone on the other side of the country that they weren’t really your baby’s biological grandparents?

  Phoning them didn’t seem right.

  Texting was definitely out.

  So was sending them an email.

  Messenger pigeon was always a possibility.

  Except I didn’t know any.

  No, it was better that I wrote them a letter.

  Yes, you heard me correctly.

  Wrote.

  Not typed.

  Hence the stationery paper I’d bought earlier.

  But I’d purchased the collection of paper from a store near where I worked, and their selection was impressive, which made deciding what to buy next-to-impossible.

  So I bought way more paper than I could possibly need in a lifetime.

  There was the plain linen design that was elegant and simple.

  There was the light-blue paper with a baby theme.

  Hmm. In retrospect, that probably wasn’t the best choice for my news.

  There was some pretty pink floral paper.

  And there was one with a comical cartoon kitten on the bottom.

  It was adorable, and I couldn’t resist it when I saw it. But again, probably not the best choice. Or maybe it was the perfect choice. The cute kitten might soften the news.

  I had also purchased a few other options, just in case.

  I removed a sheet of linen paper from the pile and picked up my pen.

  Then stared at the blank page.

  Which pretty much summed up my thoughts on what to write.

  As I continued staring at the paper, the sound of a clucking chicken played in my head.

  It was the sound Stephen used to teasingly make whenever he attempted to convince me to try something new.

  My gaze shifted to the ceiling. “Hey, you’re not helping me here. I know I’m being a chicken by not calling your parents. But I think I’ll do a much better job telling them in a letter. I mean, look what happened the first time I tried to tell my parents about my baby.

  “Knowing my luck, if I try telling your parents on the phone or in person, I’ll probably just blurt something idiotic…like I’m having twins.”

  I could almost imagine Stephen in heaven, laughing his head off at that.

  “I don’t suppose you could help me out here. At least give me a hint on how to start this.”

  I sighed when the request was met by silence.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  With another sigh, I began writing.

  Dear Judith and Joe,

  It is with great regret

  Not exactly the best way to start. Too formal, and it sounded like I was about to tell them their application to be grandparents had been denied.

  I scrunched up the page, tossed it onto the coffee table, and picked up another piece of paper.

  Dear Judith and Joe,

  It pains me to tell you that you aren’t going to be grandparents.

  I cringed at how bad that sounded.

  Which was no better than how the next letter started:

  While it is true that Stephen and I had been trying to get pregnant, we’d never actually visited a fertility clinic.

  And while “I hope you
are doing well” sounded like a great way to start my next sorrowful attempt at writing the letter, it seemed too upbeat for what I was about to tell them.

  That piece of paper joined the rest of the crumpled pages that were forming quite the impressive pile on the coffee table.

  Maybe I would do a better job telling them the news via a poem.

  Or a sonnet.

  Or an ode.

  Or possibly even a riddle.

  Except, Shakespeare made writing sonnets sound a lot easier than was the case in reality.

  And I wasn’t very good at solving riddles, never mind writing them.

  An hour and a half later, the only thing I’d accomplished was creating the Great Wall of China from the pile of scrunched up rubbish on the table, depleting my supply of stationery paper, and the lack of a letter to send Judith and Joe.

  Well, that was it. I just had to buy more paper.

  34

  Kiera

  May

  The timer on the microwave dinged. I pulled on the oven mitts and removed the mozzarella sticks from the oven, the cheese oozing from cracks in the golden crust.

  In the background, a hockey commentator was discussing what the Rock needed to do to win the series.

  If San Francisco won the game, they would win the Campbell Bowl and progress to the Stanley Cup finals.

  If they lost? It meant the end of the series and the end of hockey season for the team.

  Cassie toddled over to me, a blue and yellow daisy painted on her cheeks. Like Ava, Chloe, and me, she was wearing a Rock jersey.

  Liam and Landon were away on a mission, so it was just the four of us watching the game.

  The game wasn’t even in San Francisco. The Calgary Flames were hosting it. All the girlfriends and wives and family members were there, ready to (hopefully) celebrate the conference win with the team.

  And since I fell into none of those categories, I got to watch Logan in action from the comforts of Ava’s couch.

  Which—when you considered the past month—pretty much summed up how often I’d seen him. If the Rock game was on TV, I got to see Logan.

  And nothing beyond that.