All day, I heard nothing but good things about all of them.
While the diner was usually open for all three meals, Mabel had agreed that the diner would be closed for dinner while she was recovering. After a week, I still didn’t have the hang of it and I had no idea how Mable worked all three meals. When the lunch rush tapered off and I had time to breathe, and tried not to think about how sore my feet were, I decided I’d take the Wilder family some danish and a carafe of coffee.
While I doubted Ellie Wilder was going to get any of it, the two men with her hadn’t gotten their meals this morning. If the rumors were true about the size of the Wilder family, there would probably be a large group in the waiting area.
I also wanted to give them back some of the two hundred dollars they left on the table in their haste. I doubted that large amount had been their intention when they rushed out and I certainly wasn’t keeping that kind of tip. Also, one of the men hadleft their Stetson behind. I knew cowboys, and the hat was like a part of themselves, so once the excitement wore off, he’d be wanting it.
Those three reasons were why I entered the maternity floor’s waiting room with my arms loaded. I also was trying not to think about the cute cowboy. The one who’d winked at me.
I doubtedhe’dcall himself cute. Other options were handsome. Virile. Manly. Rugged.
I’d been at the diner over a week now and I’d had men wink at me. Young and old. It’d been charming or even an unconscious friendly gesture. Maybe even a tic. I hadn’t paid any notice to any of them, but I’d responded to this specific man’s wink. And smile. And face. And dark hair, dark beard. His face was weathered, like he worked outside. He was a cowboy through and through. Snap shirt, jeans. Scuffed leather boots.
I thought about his hands for the thirtieth time. God, if I didn’t want to change my panties again, then I shouldn’t think about how big they were. Sturdy. Worn. Calloused.
Like the guy who’d sat across from him, he was big. Stocky. Muscled.
A guy who probably had a wife, one who was pregnant as the woman at the table had been. I hadnoticed he hadn’t been wearing a ring, but lots of men in Devil’s Ditch didn’t even though they were married. Not to be sneaky, but because they worked farm machinery that would rip a finger right off it a ring was snagged.
If not a wife, then maybe a girlfriend. Women had to fling their panties at him. I wanted to and all I’d done was ask him the kind of toast he wanted.
But I was realistic. He’d winked to be kind, becauseallthe Wilders I’d heard were kind. He’d been raised right with good manners.
My thoughts were fanciful. Ridiculous. Because there was no way he’d be into me. I was in my jeans and t-shirt from the diner, with my puffy coat thrown over, but no one in a five foot radius would miss the scent of grease that coated my skin as much as the flattop griddle at the Sip N’ Serv. My hair was back in a now-sloppy braid. I wore no makeup; five a.m. meant get-up-and-go with just teeth brushing and slapping on some deodorant.
I looked nothing like myself–at least the New York version of me. I wore sneakers, not stilettos. A power suit here was Wranglers and a lariat. I hadn’t even tossed a dress in my bag when I came to Montana. No jewelry. No hair products. I’d been using whatever Aunt Mabel had in her shower.
I’d been a lawyer for my father’s law firm in lower Manhattan. It catered to the megarich and New York City’s less than savory, but equally wealthy, underbelly. I didn’t deal with either–the megarich or unsavory–because I started and ran thepro bonodepartment. I hadcarte blancheto choose underserved clients and charities. My ex, Jackson Prescott III, also worked at Montgomery Law, and was being prepped by my father to be the youngest partner.
Jackson and I dated for three years. He knew how important having a baby was to me. Yet law school was too much work. Studying for the Bar was too stressful. That his new career was too important to be distracted from the corner office by a baby.
Then–then, after all that time, it turned out, he just didn’t want to have a kid with me.
Because two weeks ago, I went to his place after lunch to pick up my yoga bag I’d had with me when I stopped in the night before, then left it behind by mistake.
I walked in on Jackson. With his paralegal. Sheryl, who worked two floors below my office. They’d been fucking, him taking her from behind because she had a fucking baby bump. I knew about the baby. Everyone at the office did. I’d even chipped in for a shower gift.
A shower gift for a baby that my boyfriend was having with someone else we worked with.
I found my yoga bag on the floor where I’d left it, but also his fancy waxed messenger bag which he’d bought last year instead of booking our romantic winter weekend to Mexico. He said a quality bag made him look good at work and was going to bring in a better return on investment than three days in Puerto Vallarta.
He loved that bag, so I took it right off the table where he’d set it before getting busy with Sheryl. I left his apartment, the building and the city. I got a cab to the airport and got a one way ticket to Montana.
Sick of men, I spent my spare time at Aunt Mabel’s checking out sperm banks online. Yeah, a sperm bank. Why?
I wanted a baby and this was the best way to get one. I wanted to be fucked, not fucked over.
Aunt Mabel told me about the surgery she’d been putting off and I committed to sticking around and filling in at the diner for her so she could have it. What else did I have to do?
There was no way in hell I could go back to work. My father didn’t seem to really care that I’d left–becausepro bonoto him was just a public relationsfront–and Jackson and Sheryl were there. I couldn’t show my face in the building, let alone the state.
My parents weren’t excited that hisindiscretionhad been at the office, but they were even less excited that I’d run off to a “stupid small town” and my crazy aunt. I stopped taking their calls and they’d given up, for now.
Jackson hadn’t given up. For some dumb reason, he continued to call and text me. I had no idea why he wanted to talk to me. He got what he wanted–me out of his life and Sheryl in his bed full time.
I went from stilettos to sneakers. Rush hour to the lunch rush. My days now were spent running the Sip N’ Serv, meeting the fine town folk of Devil’s Ditch and scoping out the Montana based sperm banks bookmarked in my browser.
What happened to my life?
