It still made Owen laugh.
He didn’t miss the look Will shot him across the room, as if saying,see? She’s fine.But his brother didn’t know the rest of it.
“What’s wrong with plaid shirts and boots?” Will asked.
She gave him an innocent shrug. “Nothing.”
“She was just starting shit,” Owen rumbled.
Becca glanced sideways at Will. “Why do you ask? Is there anyone you’re trying to impress with your sartorial choices?”
His brother stared straight ahead. “No.”
“There is.” She bounced up and down. “Uncle Will has a crush on someone!”
The hair on the back of Owen’s neck stood up, like the wordcrushmight shine a spotlight on him. Not that he had a crush on anyone.She has a name. He had grown-up, complicated fantasies, and that was completely different.
“Leave him alone,” he said gruffly. “Go back to picking on Adam.”
She twirled toward her other uncle, but then pulled her phone from her back pocket.
“Saved by the silent text message,” Adam teased. “Who’s that? Hayden? Haven’t heard much about your hockey player lately.”
Owen thought about throwing his full mug of coffee right across the room, anything to save Becca from having to answer that question, but his daughter just shrugged and smiled, seemingly unperturbed by the reference to the shithead who wasn’t returning her messages. Unless there was an update Owen was unaware of. Concern roared to life inside him, shoving away his selfish thoughts about his own non-problems.
That night he asked Rachel about it when they had a moment alone before dinner.
“He’s in the middle of the hockey season,” she said. “I’m not excusing him for that, but Becca might be. I’ll talk to her about him.”
“Tell her—” Owen cut himself off, then groaned. He was about to do to Rachel what Becca did to him, try to stage manage a conversation. “All right. Thanks.”
Rachel gave him a serious look. “You need to prepare yourself for her giving him a lot of slack here. She’s his biggest fan.”
He was painfully aware of that fact. “Yeah.”
Chapter Six
The last weeksof winter sped by in a blur of meeting new neighbours, learning more about Pine Harbour, and spreading the word about their new clinic to get more clients.
All in all, Kerry was loving her new town. But every so often, she'd bump into Owen Kincaid, who she’d renamed from Mr. Alpha, which was way too generic, to Mr. Broody. The intense brooding presence he’d projected during Becca’s first appointment continued. He was cold and awkward each time she ran into him, and Becca’s mother Rachel came to her next two appointments. For the first one they drove to Walkerton but then Becca surprised her and announced she was fine with the Pine Harbour clinic. Kerry was happy to see her young client get more comfortable with being pregnant in her own community. That would ease the transition to being a new mom.
At each appointment, they didn’t just talk about the physiological changes of pregnancy, but the emotional impact as well. Becca had supportive parents, but her ex-boyfriend wasn’t in the picture.
“He’s a hockey player and it’s the end of their season,” Becca said. “Maybe once he’s through playoffs…But if he doesn’t want to be involved, that’s his choice.”
“There are resources for single parents. We can talk more about that as you get closer to delivery.” It was a topic close to Kerry’s heart, and not just out of professional interest.
Every month, as she hit the middle of her menstrual cycle, she found herself googling sperm donation and egg freezing. She wasn’t ready to make the leap yet, but her biological clock ticked a little louder each month. It didn’t help that she was surrounded by babies and pregnant bellies all day, every day. Would she want to do that on her own? Her answer depended significantly on how annoying she found the partners who came in with her clients on a given day.
No partner was certainly better than a toxic one.
But then she would go out for a trail run, or to the Hedgehog, and she would think…this would be over. Done with. Maybe once in a blue moon she might stalk in for a grumpy beer, like Becca’s father had that first night she’d seen him—but he hadn’t been back. Being a single parent would mean no more extracurricular fun.
And Kerry liked her extracurricular fun. It had been a surprise to her when her biological clock had started ticking, ever so quietly, a year ago. All the way through school and as she started her career, she had thought that maybe babies were only professionally interesting to her—and then something started to change.
She still didn’t understand it, but she was going with the flow for now. Dreaming and researching, considering all of her options.
“You’re lost in your thoughts,” Jenna said over lunch one day. “Is everything okay?”
