“I’d love to help her—and you,” she said. “I mean, would we have to qualify or do some kind of home visit?”
“Not if it’s only for a month,” he said, his voice rising just enough to tell her he was considering this crazy idea. “We’d just be, well, babysitters. No legal binding or issues.”
“Then let’s take her.”
“Tessa.” He breathed her name.
“What?”
He got up and sat on the side of her chaise, reaching for her hand. “You’re amazing, that’s what.”
“And I didn’t even wear my short shorts,” she joked, as she always did when the attention was too much to bear.
“I mean it,” he said, leaning closer. “You are…wow. What a good, good heart you have.”
“Tell anyone and my reputation is ruined.” She’d made that joke a few times in her life, too.
Why did she put such a protective wall around herself? She didn’t know and right then…she was starting to feel like it should really come down.
She put her hand on Dusty’s cheek, grazing her thumb over his close-cropped beard.
“I don’t know howgoodmy heart is,” she said, “but it is tender. And I can’t stand for this poor Morgan to have so much pain and grief and a two-year-old to worry about. Let her get help. Little Olive—how I love that name—can stay upstairs in my apartment with me. I’ll meet Morgan and if she’s one hundred percent comfortable, I’ll take her. We can share parenting duties and get our taste of something we never had.”
He took a slow, deep breath. “Okay.”
“Okay?” She sat up, a smile pulling as she realized just how much she wanted this. “Really?”
“Of course.” He reached for her. “You’re making it very difficult, you know.”
“Making what difficult?”
“Not to…fall.”
She smiled, knowing what he meant. “All part of my evil plan.”
He just shook his head and pressed a kiss on her hair. “Nothing—not one cell in your body—is evil,” he said. “You are good and beautiful and funny and I…”
She held her breath.
“I can’t wait to co-parent with you.”
And let it out with a soft laugh. “It’ll be our next great adventure.”
He pulled her close, and kissed her—slow, grateful, full of promise.
And for the first time in a long while, the future felt wide open.
Maggie Lawson woke at dawn to the sound of someone in the kitchenette clanging a spoon against a mug so loud it could have been a shovel and a metal trash can.
Really, Jo?
Maggie lay still, listening. The two-bedroom apartment above the Summer House’s garage had its own rhythms—soft ones and…the sound of Jo Ellen making tea. At first, it was annoying. But now? It was a reminder to Maggie that she wasn’t alone, and she liked that.
She liked everything about waking up in this apartment, to be honest.
The gulls outside her window were white against the blue morning sky, squawking a greeting. The distant sound of a car driving down Gulf Shore Boulevard gave her a weird sense of being somewhere that wasn’t suburbia. Even the ticking of that living room clock Jo Ellen called “quaint” and Maggie called “deafening” was…home.
The idea still startled her, especially since she’d only been here about a month. How could this small apartment on a beach in Florida behome? Maggie, born and raised in Atlanta, had never lived anywhere but Georgia. She enjoyed a spacious suiteand all the amenities—including her flawless rose garden—as a permanent resident in her daughter’s sprawling brick Colonial.
