The job or a boyfriend?He lifted his brows in question.
“So, yes. I can find a teaching job for the off nights, still volunteer here, and…start a new life.”
“Lofty goal for a part-time babysitting gig.”
“What good’s a goal that’s not lofty?” she replied. “But he will be here with me every Saturday evening, just so you know.”
He glanced around. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
She laughed. “You’re gonna have a lot of crocheted caps.”
“Thank you,” he said on a sigh. “For today. For Atlas. For the hat. For”—he gestured at the activity room, the waltz still faintly playing from the speaker—“all of this. Since I don’t have to work tonight, can I take you to dinner?”
The question was out before he could stop himself.
“To thank you,” he added when her expression didn’t exactly say yes.
“Better not mix work with…that,” she said vaguely. “But you go home and celebrate, Jonah. Atlas is very proud of you.”
He nodded, refusing to let the rejection hurt. She was right—she’d technically work for him, and she probably knew that taking this favor she’d done for him and turning it into something more might be pushing it with “the old guy.”
After schmoozing with the sweet residents, watching a few perform the dances they’d learned, and letting Margaret do the honors of giving Atlas a bottle when he woke up, Jonah drove home with a smile.
Atlas slept under his blue knit cap, so Jonah put the windows down and let the salt air rush through the car. In that moment, he felt something he hadn’t felt in so long that he almost didn’t recognize it.
Not just hope. Not just relief.
The bone-deep, unshakable certainty that the pieces were finally falling into place. Not perfectly—nothing in Jonah Lawson’s life had ever been perfect—but solidly.
You’ve got this, Jonah.
“Oh, thank goodness you’re back!” Meredith looked up from her desk to see her father finally walk into the office early Monday evening.
“I had to?—”
“Dad, are you okay?” She stood and rounded her desk, filled with concern. He looked like he’d aged a few years, with the light gone from his eyes. “Where have you been for five days?”
“Atlanta. I told you in my texts.”
“All weekend?”
He just sighed and set a soft-sided briefcase on his desk, dragging his free hand through his hair. “Yeah.”
She glanced at Connor, who was observing the exchange. They had planned to drop the Vance bomb over the weekend, and her frustration had grown with Dad’s absence and curt replies.
She did not want to go through their findings by phone, but he didn’t look like he’d relish the conversation right now.
His shirt was wrinkled from the long drive, his jaw was shadowed from whiskers that hadn’t seen a razor in days, and his eyes—usually the warmest thing about him—were flat with exhaustion.
And the fact was, back at the Summer House? Kate hadn’t looked much better.
Telling him what they’d discovered about Pippin Development’s arrogant liaison? That wasn’t going to improve his mood. But she had no choice.
“Listen, we have to talk to you about?—”
“The emergency meeting?” he interjected. “I just got the call a few minutes ago.”
She drew back, frowning. Emergency? “Do you mean the quarterly meeting on Wednesday with Greg Hollister?”
