Page 20 of Harts & Hurts

I turned to Brooklyn. “Brookie-Brook. What’s going on?”

“Not too much. Felt like entertaining today. You know I like to do my hostess with the mostest from time to time. I told Cameron to invite somebody over to eat all this food.” She giggled lightly before squeezing Melrose to her. “When Cam mentioned . . . everything you’ve been through lately and that you were caring for your niece now, I told him to invite you.” Her eyes bounced to Anistyn. “And your sister-in-law. Thank you for coming.” She nuzzled Melrose, who gave a happy giggle. “And since my babies are at the happiest place on Earth with their grandparents for the next three days, thank you for bringing me somebody to snuggle.”

I noticed that the guy, Will’s, gaze was zeroed in on Anistyn.

“I came to eat because Brooklyn makes good food. I ain’t even know she was invitin’ great company,” he said to her.

Anistyn chuckled lightly before responding to him. “I haven’t even said two words. How do you know I’m great company?”

“It’s in the dimples. Nobody with dimples that deep can be bad company. You have to give people a chance to make you smile so your dimples can come out to play.”

My eyes landed on Anistyn’s face. She was smiling, and dude was right. She did have big, fat dimples sitting on each side of her face. They were obvious, and of course, I’d noticed them, but I never thought to comment on them or compliment them.

Anistyn blushed a deep rose, and her dimples were prominent.

“There they go,” dude said, grinning at my . . . sister-in-law. I could almost see the cartoon hearts in his eyes as he stared at her.

The reaction to dude flirting with her was confusing because, what the fuck? I’d been alone with Anistyn for almost a week straight. I’d stayed at her apartment. She’d stayed in my hotel room. Now we were staying in my guesthouse together. I’d never taken the time to . . . notice her womanhood.

Now dude was flirting with her, and it was making me push all the grief and overwhelmingness to the side and actually take her in. Of course, she was beautiful. The Melrose women had been beautiful since the beginning of time. That was probably why Anna Clara’s family was so pissed that Cecil bailed on her and left her looking like damaged goods. Even my little niece was gorgeous. The Melrose women were also off-limits for Hart men, so it had been years since I’d acknowledged the physical attributes of a Melrose woman.

A platter landed in front of me, causing me to pull my attention away from the flirtatious conversation. Brooklyn had laid out a spread: a tomato bruschetta tart, lobster rolls, corn salad, and crunchy coleslaw. I placed a lobster roll on my plate with the tongs and passed the platter to my right. When it got to dude, he offered to put a lobster roll on Anistyn’s plate before putting one on his own.

Gentlemanly shit. When she wasn’t out in the world, fighting through the grief of losing her sister and being a surrogate mother to our niece, she was the type of woman who inspired men to do gentlemanly shit for her. Noted.

Brooklyn’s voice cut through my thoughts again. “When you have a chance, you have to go on the community center’s website.” Melrose was wide awake, so Brooklyn looked right into her eyes and grinned at her. “Cameron opened the center about . . . how long ago, Cam?”

“I opened it about eleven years ago, but it took a good three years to really get it off the ground.”

“Now, it has all kinds of programming.” Brooklyn picked up again. Her eyes briefly moved to me, then back to Anistyn. “I know Griff’s been present since you guys have had to take . . . all of this on. But I’m also very familiar with the work schedule down there at SESN.”

SESN was the network that both Cameron and I worked for—Southeastern Sports Network.

“It’s very demanding.” Brooklyn continued.

I saw Anistyn’s face register either concern or fear. I wasn’t sure which one or whether it was both. “He told me,” she said to Brooklyn.

“Make sure you register for some classes. When I had Little Cameron, I didn’t know anything about motherhood. Luckily, I had my grandmother. She came and stayed with us for six weeks to get me on my feet. Once she left, and I was on my own, there were too many hours in the day. Cameron was still playing then, so it was just me, Cam-Cam, and the nanny. I thought about the kinds of things I wanted to do with my newborn son and started trying to organize classes. Now we have an entire Mommy & Me curriculum. Mini Movers is good; it focuses on them getting those early motor skills. Bumblebee Beats is for music. The Bright Baby Lab introduces gentle exploration through the five senses.” Brooklyn laughed. “If I sound like a brochure, it’s because I came up with all of these descriptions with the help of my mother and sister-in-law.”

Anistyn nodded. She’d been typing into her phone ever since Brooklyn started rattling off programs.

“Cradle and Calm . . . that’s Mommy and me yoga. And you can’t miss Pages and Pacifiers. It’s a mom group that meets for story time every Thursday, I believe, over at the Jackson Island Public Library. And every Monday, definitely come to Wine Down. It’s a little something that my sister-in-law, Carrington, and I started years ago. It’s a chance for moms to get together, minus the kids, and have time for ourselves. Sometimes, we bring in a fitness professional. Sometimes, we’ll bring in a speaker. We have professionals come in and talk about investing, self-care”—she blushed slightly—“how to keep the bedroom . . . bedrooming, two-day vacation ideas, staycation ideas. Whatever we can imagine, we bring somebody in to talk about it. My best advice is that if you know you’re gonna be here for the foreseeable future, buy into the community. Immerse yourself. Jackson Island is a great place to live and raise kids.”

Anistyn finally looked up from her phone. “Thank you, Brooklyn. This is so helpful. Griffin goes back to work tomorrow, and I’ve been anxious about how I’m supposed to handle Melrose by myself all day.”

“No nanny?”

Anistyn shook her head. “No. The judge didn’t want us to hire a nanny right away. His reasoning is that he doesn’t want us outsourcing the work of raising our niece. Which I get,” she added quickly. “She lost everything familiar to her. The last thing she needs is to be handed off to some stranger every day while Griffin and I go on about living our lives. But the thought of doing it alone is overwhelming.”

“Shit, I still don’t like being all alone with my kids, and they’re big. I’m always like, where is y’all’s mama?” Cameron joked.

We all laughed.

“Shut up!” Brooklyn told him, though she was laughing as well. “Anyway, Anistyn, you’re right. It is overwhelming. Meet me at the community center tomorrow morning around nine o’clock, and I’ll get you and this little cutie enrolled in everything you want to take.”

I saw Anistyn’s posture visibly relax. It was obvious to me that she’d really been stressed about the prospect of being on her own the next day, not that I blamed her. If it was Anistyn returning to work and leaving me to fend with Melrose by myself for the day, I would be shitting bricks too. I was thankful that Brooklyn extended herself.

Later that night, after Gretta had supervised me giving Melrose a bath, helped us get the baby down for bed, and left, I sat on the living room sofa with Anistyn.