“Then let me meet Dean now. Erika hasn’t, so maybe he doesn’t exist.”
She rolled her eyes. “Ruby has met him. Ruby sold him his house over four years ago. He lives not that far from her in Paradise Place in a large, beautiful house. He even has a nanny suite off the back of his garage for Carly.”
“A nanny suite. In the new part of the development there? And he manages a bar? Come on, Molly. Open your eyes. Something isn’t adding up. Does he sell drugs or run money or something under the table. Anything off the books?”
She snarled. “Mom. I’m done with this conversation.”
She hung up because she couldn’t handle another second of the words her mother was saying.
But she had noticed Dean’s place might be a bit higher end than a bartender could afford. Well, he was a manager and the place was popular, so who was she to say?
Or he could have won the lotto at some point in his life.
There were a lot of reasons people had more money than their jobs might dictate.
Maybe he was crazy in debt.
Ugh, she didn’t want to think that.
Nope, not going there.
It’s just things they didn’t talk about.
But Ruby would have said if he had bad credit. If he wouldn’t have been able to afford the house.
It all went quickly, Ruby had said.
Then he built that addition for a nanny.
No, he wasn’t in debt.
But was there something more that she wasn’t seeing?
She picked her phone up to call Dean and tell him she’d just told her mother off. She’d stood up to the woman who’d never backed her in life.
But then she put it back down. In order to do that she’d have to tell Dean the things her mother said about him. The man her mother never met and was judging. There was no reason for it.
She knew what it was like to be put down in life and she wasn’t going to do that to someone else.
But she also had a few doubts put in her head and didn’t want to project them onto him either.
That would teach her to look at her phone before she answered.
28
SHARE IN MY HAPPINESS
“You’re awfully quiet tonight,” Dean said when Jonah was in bed.
“What?”
“I said that you’re quiet and not only that, you’re distracted. Is everything okay?”
He hadn’t wanted to bring it up when Jonah was around. When the two of them were cooking dinner together, playing a board game with his son, then when Molly cleaned everything up while he got Jonah in bed.
But it was obvious that something was going on and he just hoped it wasn’t anything serious.
“Sorry. I talked to my mom earlier and it’s still playing in my head.”
