He grins. “Find one, start one, I don’t know. Not for me, for you. What doyouwant, Natalie?”
What does she want? “I’d love another baby too.” She didn’t know this was true until she says it.
His smile is so big then. “You would?”
She nods. “I would. And I think I could be happy with a private life too. Jordan has some ideas for us on repositioning and rebranding, like, me becoming a publicly messy mom instead of a tradwife, and when she brought that up I thought I wanted to do that. But now I don’t think that’s right.”
“You don’t?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t want to do it in public, but I do want to figure out the next steps for us and our family.” She wants to put some muscle into working it out.
“And the cows.”
“Definitely the cows.”
He takes her hand and faces it palm up, traces little circles on it with three of his fingers. It feels so good, comforting and sexy all at once. She closes her fingers over his and there they sit, watching the rain come down.
“I didn’t like that reporter either,” admits Natalie. “Did you see the boots she showed up in?”
“Ridiculous,” agrees Austin. “Those boots were the worst.”
Saturday
Interstitial
“They’re predicting a fourteen-foot storm surge at high tide,” says Mae on Saturday morning. The rain came down all night for the second night in a row, and it’s raining still. Mae took one for the team, walking both dogs while everyone else stayed warm and dry. She played the martyr, but secretly she wanted to do it; she wanted to know if she was up for the challenge of walking them together. She wouldn’t even have attempted this a few days ago, but Leo’s leash skills have improved remarkably, and the dogs are now BFFs. Well, Fs, anyway.
In the water, she’d seen three intrepid surfers—there are always a few, no matter the weather—but there was nobody on the beach. The wind was picking up, whipping the water into a frenzy, blowing Mae’s hair back. The waves were ferocious, and she watched one surfer wipe out and then give up, lugging his surfboard up onto the beach. She kept the dogs on their leashes the whole time, even reliable Cinnamon, because she feared they’d run into the water and get swept away.
Now the family is gathered in the kitchen, where something really exciting is going on. In the garage storeroom the day before, Jordan found an old stainless-steel espresso maker, the kind you use on the stovetop, and she’s cleaned it and brought it back to life. Coupled with a battery-powered frothing wand Natalie discovered in the kitchen drawer with the measuring cups, they’ve got a real coffee bar going.
“Fourteen-foot?” says Calvin. “Are you sure it doesn’t sayfour-foot?”
“I’m positive,” says Mae. “I learned my numbers a long time ago.”
“Dad?” asks Natalie, who’s loading Caspian into his portable booster. “What time is high tide?”
“Do I look like the tide clock?” asks Calvin, a little grumpy because he doesn’t want espresso, and he’s trying to decide whether to make a full pot of the regular stuff, but there are so many people in the kitchen that he can’t get to the coffeemaker. Austin is tall and broad-shouldered, with big hands and big feet; his arrival, welcome as it is, makes it seem like the number of people in the house has suddenly doubled.
“I got you, Dad,” says Jordan. “I’ll make a regular pot.”
“Austin will drink regular too,” says Natalie. “He hates fancy coffee.”
“Hate it,” Austin agrees pleasantly. He’s in an excellent mood because this is the latest he’s slept since he and Natalie bought Hillside Haven.
“Good man,” says Calvin.
Jordan fills up the old Hamilton Beach with water and measures the coffee. Jordan is rolling her eyes at her father, but only a little, and you have to look closely to see. Has this week softened Jordan? Mae wonders.
“You do look like the tide clock, a little bit, around the eyes,” says Mae to her father, and Calvin chuckles. “No, but, for real,” she adds. “What time is high tide?” She tried to dry the dogs off but drying two dogs is harder than walking two dogs, and Cinnamon’s fur holds a copious amount of water. When Cinnamon shakes, Caspian, who’s lower to the ground than anyone else in his booster, gets a full shower. Which he likes.
“I’ll look it up,” says Natalie. She taps on her phone screen. “Just before one thirty,” she reports. “A little over three hours from now. Jordan, can I have a double cappuccino? With an extra shot?”
“So, a triple?”
“Sure. Yes.”
“You can just order it that way.”
