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How was she supposed to face him, just over a week since he’d taken back his proposal? Had he figured out the message behind her acceptance of his offer in the first place? She’d said she would never marry without love, and she’d been true to her word. Maybe she’d found her courage after Genevieve had said her son might have feelings for her, but she’d said yes for one reason alone: she was in love with him. Completely. Hopelessly.
She’d taken a leap, blindfolded, into an empty pool. Had she ever considered what she would do if she’d gambled wrong? Had she believed her love would be enough for them both?
She opened the door that separated her work from her home life and descended the stairs. She didn’t miss that he’d gone to the Tender Years entrance instead of climbing the exterior stairs to her apartment. Images of what had happened the night he’d visited her there were still alive in her memory. They were sharp in both the imprints they’d left on all her senses and their ability to slice her heart.
Was she ready for this? Her life would be easier if she didn’t have to see him every day, if only from her office window as he carried Harper up the walk, but did she want to lose even that lingering contact?
She entered the center through the kitchen and closed the door behind her. Flipping on light switches as she went, she continued up the hall to the front of the house. The facility looked as if she was working evening hours by the time that she opened the front door.
“Hello, Willow.”
She cleared her throat. “Hi.”
Her chest squeezed at the sight of him under the glow of the porch light, dressed in his uniform of jeans and a dark T-shirt, yet somehow looking different. It was more than that he’d used gel to control his hair. She refused to think about that other night when he’d stood on the landing outside her apartment. She’d let him into her home, bed and heart, not close to being in that order.
“You were expecting me, right?”
She nodded.
His lips lifted slightly. “Then may I come in?”
For a few seconds, she hesitated. Would she force him to complete their final business transactions on the porch? Couldn’t she be an adult about this?
“Sure. Come in.”
She pulled the door wide for him to enter and closed it behind him, but she immediately entered her office. “I have the paperwork on my desk.”
Lingering longer than was necessary so that she could take a few deep breaths, she collected the forms and returned to where he stood in the entry.
“I feel like I just filled those out.” He pointed to the sheets in her hands.
“Because you did.” It didn’t seem possible that only three weeks had passed since she’d received that call from the hospital. So much had changed. She had changed.
“You don’t have to withdraw Harper yet from the center if you don’t want to.”
The surprise in his eyes had to have been mirrored in hers as the words seemed to have come all on their own. She shifted from one foot to the other. “I mean, she’s so happy here.”
“It seemed like what you wanted.”
She shrugged and licked her lips. “It’s just that you’ve already said what a difficult time you had finding good childcare.”
“I’ll just have to search harder and offer a higher salary.”
“Than the amount you were already paying? You can’t just create qualified candidates out of thin air. Do you know how hard I had to search for mine?”
He shrugged. “I’ll figure something out.”
“And she and Luna are both scooting. They’ll be crawling soon. Can you imagine how much fun the two of them would have together?”
Why was she giving him excuses not to leave? Did she want to see him every day? Was she trying to make this harder on herself? Or him?
“Yeah, that would have been fun,” he said.
“Luna will miss her. So will I.” She cleared her throat. “I know it will be...awkward, but this is about Harper. Not us. She deserves quality care, and you know she can have it here, where there are people who already love her.”
He coughed several times into his T-shirt sleeve. “You don’t happen to have anything to drink do you? Water? Coffee? Anything?”
“I have some lemonade.”
