All I Want. Nicole Helm

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      Which was stupid. If he was still thinking about the woman, the least he could do was ask her out. Just because they’d had an awkward, drunken one-night stand didn’t mean it had to stay that way. Maybe, despite all outward appearances, they would be compatible while sober.

      It was possible, and maybe if he at least tried, all the guilt dogging him over that incident would finally go away.

      It had been weeks, though. Over a month. Maybe it wasn’t that out of the ordinary for her. Maybe the guys all blended together for her and she wouldn’t even remember him.

      Of course, then her embarrassment and awkwardness that matched his own didn’t make sense, but he needed to move on. Figure out his life, not where he stood with his one and only ungentlemanly drunken exploit.

      He needed to stop looking down the aisle, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. Except the next time his eyes drifted that way, despite his brain’s express admonitions not to, there she was. Walking toward him.

      He straightened. Maybe she would walk right on by. But before he could duck out of sight, she stopped in front of him, a completely unconvincing smile on her face. “Hi, Charlie.”

      It was the first time she’d said his name, and he definitely had some kind of internal reaction to it.

      “Hi. Meg.” It was a name he’d likely said before in his life. He knew Megans. Yet saying her name felt...weighted.

      Yeah, therapy, that was a thing he really needed to look into.

      “Well, well, well,” Dell said under his breath, and damn Meg’s timing because there were no customers to keep Dell’s attention off whatever reason Meg had for coming over here.

      When Charlie made no effort to introduce anyone, Dell stuck his hand between Charlie and Meg. “I’m Dell,” he offered, the I-know-how-to-piss-off-Charlie grin firmly in place.

      Meg smiled. It occurred to Charlie that she had a unique one. That it always seemed to light her up with a mix of mischief and joy, even when there was sadness behind it. Or nerves, as there seemed to be today.

      “The Naked Farmer. Yes, I know. You’re...” Her brow furrowed as she looked between him and his brother. “Related,” she said, sounding weirdly put off by that.

      “He’ll try to tell you his brother isn’t the Naked Farmer, but he’d be lying,” Dell said. “Hope Springs is yours, right? My wife loves your soaps. Do you do any fun shapes for kids?”

      “Um, well, we have a few animals. Owls, goats.”

      Dell nudged Charlie. “Lainey’d love that. Why don’t you go pick some out for me.”

      The not-so-subtle verbal nudge was no more effective than Dell’s physical one. And Meg’s clear nervousness was off-putting in its own right. Charlie wasn’t sure he wanted to find out the source.

      And are you a timid coward or a grown man? “Sure.” He shoved his hands into his pockets, because for the first time in his life he didn’t have a clue what to do with them. He didn’t know what to say, or how to manage this situation.

      What an incredibly odd feeling for a man who’d prided himself on always being in control, or if not in control, well on his way toward it.

      “So, um, I suppose this is awkward,” Meg began, twisting her hands together as she walked next to him on their way to her booth.

      “I suppose,” he returned, wondering if it would be awkward if she weren’t quite so...vibrating with anxiety. Or maybe drunken sex just always made things awkward afterward.

      He sighed. At himself. At the situation. At life. “You know—”

      “I’m pregnant,” she whispered so quietly he leaned closer, sure he’d misheard or misunderstood.

      “I’m sorry. What?”

      “I know you don’t have any reason to believe me. We don’t know each other well. It never should have happened, but the very fact of the matter is the only person I’ve been in any potential compromising positions with is...you, and my doctor confirmed a positive pregnancy test. So.”

      He leaned back. Away from her and these words that didn’t make sense. He was thirty-five. He was a vice president of... No, not anymore.

      He was an unemployed thirty-five-year-old being told the drunken one-night stand he hadn’t meant to ever let happen had resulted in...

      “I didn’t mean to drop it on you like that.” She skirted the table of her booth in what felt like a purposeful distancing. He was on one side of this frilly, feminine table, and she was on the other.

      Pregnant.

      With his baby.

      “I only meant to set up a time to talk, but it just...” She waved at the air around her, pacing under the tent that shaded her inventory of soaps.

      He couldn’t think of anything to say, or do. He couldn’t wrap his head around this at all.

      Someone cleared their throat—an older woman, looking between the two of them as if she could read between the lines.

      How could she? He couldn’t even read the actual lines here.

      “You have a customer,” he managed, when it was clear Meg hadn’t noticed.

      She jerked, and for the first time in the ticking minutes between her dropped bomb and now, he finally saw something he recognized.

      It was a look that accepted life was not what you wanted to be, and the acceptance you had to move forward anyway.

      He’d seen that look on the face of just about every person he was related to, except maybe Kenzie. God knew he’d never seen that look in the mirror, because when life didn’t give him the things he’d wanted, he’d forced himself to want something else.

      He’d never accepted that things might not go his way. Never rolled with a punch, knowing or accepting he was felled. No, he’d kept punching. Kept fighting. Kept fooling himself into thinking he was exactly where he wanted to be.

      He’d called all that strength. Sense. Determination.

      But it wasn’t. He could see it so clearly as he wordlessly watched Meg help her customer, dull smile firmly in place.

      He didn’t know her. Had very few clues about the life she led day in and day out, aside from milking goats. But he could tell the acceptance—worried and freaked-out as it might be—was far stronger than the fight.

      Far, far stronger than pretending failures didn’t exist, or were only steps leading you where you wanted to be.

      He didn’t want to be here, now, with this information, but nothing could change the fact that he was. He couldn’t keep moping around, acting like some version of a whiny teenager, with or without a child. A child.

      That’d never been him. He met challenges. He crushed them. But this wasn’t one he could carefully maneuver around or through. It involved people. It involved СКАЧАТЬ