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The other woman smiled. “Free is for me.”
“Perfect.” I moved the chair out of the way and jumped up on the railing.
“Jeez. Be careful.” Esther rushed forward to hold my leg.
“This is nothing. Should have seen the trees I climbed as a kid.” I hissed as my forearm hit the awning. A quick flash of a memory hit me out of the blue. Hitting my arm on my mom’s curling iron. I hadn’t thought of her in a million years. I didn’t have many memories of her since she’d left when I was a baby.
Evidently, a burn was a core memory.
I eased back a little and found the culprit for the jam. I pulled a tree branch out of the folds of the canvas and suddenly, the mechanical arm hummed to life. I hopped down and pulled the chairs back for the women, waving the older one over. Then I helped her into her seat.
“Why thank you, young man.”
“My pleasure.” I glanced up at Esther as I fixed the table then held the chair for Connie as well. She blushed prettily and fussed with her napkin. “Esther will get you those drinks.”
I’d learned long ago a little kindness and extra manners went a long way to keep customers happy.
Now if I could just get thirty minutes of peace, I could get these interviews done.
TWO
I was goingto float away if I had one more glass of water. I’d already escaped to the bathroom twice while the hot restaurant dude rushed around. Then again, if I breathed wrong, I needed to pee these days.
I rubbed the side of my belly where my little future ladies’ soccer player was kicking me with a vengeance. Interviewing while I was heading for nine months pregnant had not been on my bingo card for this year. If my parents and siblings had had their way, I’d have been ensconced in my old childhood home.
My mother had already made over one of the bedrooms into a nursery.
They’d just assumed I would move home when I’d dropped the bomb of my pregnancy at my brother Clint’s Pre-Thanksgiving dinner. But the idea of going back to Clintondale with my out-of-wedlock baby had been a hard no.
The little town I came from—and my family was named after—was progressive in some ways. My father, Mayor Clintondale Hauser, liked to believe he was open-minded. But traditional family values were still a staple in the town of three-thousand constituents.
And the Mayor’s unwed, twenty-two-year-old daughter wasn’t exactly the best look.
Not that my parents made me feel like that, but I’d seen how people looked at Jenny Stuttgart when I was in high school. She’d gotten knocked up the summer after she graduated and ended up staying in town instead of going off to college. Of course the boy couldn’t stay—he had a full ride to Syracuse University for basketball. Did he get whispered about?
Nope.
But boy, Jenny did, and the whispers came with plenty of pitying looks.
No, thanks.
I’d rather work two jobs while pregnant. Oh, wait. That was exactly what I’d been doing.
They’d been mostly work from home-style jobs, but I was going stir-crazy being cooped up in my apartment. I needed adult conversation that didn’t revolve around me pushing a baby out of my vagina. I was already freaking out about it, I really didn’t want to talk about it twenty-four-seven with my mother, sisters, and my overprotective older brother.
Luckily, Clint was an overworked veterinarian in Kensington Square. Just far enough away from me that I could avoid long drawn-out conversations by giving him a twice daily check-in text.
Which reminded me to do my morning text. It wasn’t exactly morning anymore. Then again, I hadn’t expected my interview to last two hours without any of us actually talking to Mason Brooks for more than three minutes.
I reached down for my purse and the twinge in my lower back ricocheted around my belly. I gave a quick squeak that I hopefully muffled.
The prim and proper Carol, who sat rigidly straight on the stool beside me, gave me a bit of side-eye. Her gaze dipped down under the lip of the bar and then her eyes widened comically.
She quickly averted her gaze back to her glass and twisted it earnestly in the small pool of condensation it had left. Mostly because Carol hadn’t taken more than a sip from her sweaty glass. I was tempted to grab it and guzzle it down myself.
I wondered if they would mind if I went around to the back of the bar to refill my glass again.
Would they even notice?
