I promise to be the best mommy that I can.”
The baby kicked again, clearly unconvinced.
Julie couldn’t blame her for being skeptical. Truthfully, she had more than a few doubts of her own. She and Elliott had talked about having children and neither wanted to wait too long after the wedding before starting a family, but she hadn’t known she was pregnant when she gave him back his ring and left town.
After a quick visit to the doctor confirmed that she was going to have a baby, she wasn’t even tempted to change her course. Though she’d known Elliott for two years—and had been engaged to him for six months—she’d suddenly realized that she didn’t really know him at all. What she did know was that he wasn’t the kind of a man she wanted to marry, and he certainly wasn’t the kind of man that she wanted as a father for her baby.
Of course, that didn’t change the fact that he was the father of her baby, but she hadn’t been ready to deal with that reality in the moment. Maybe she’d been running away, but over the past few months she’d accepted that she couldn’t run forever. In fact, in her current condition, she couldn’t run at all anymore. The best she could manage was a waddle.
And she was ready to waddle home.
* * *
Lukas Garrett snagged a tiny box of candy from the orange bowl on the front desk—the remnants of the pile of Halloween candy from the day before—and emptied the contents into his mouth.
Karen, the veterinarian clinic receptionist and office manager, shook her head as he chewed the crunchy candy. “Please tell me that’s not your lunch.”
He swallowed before dutifully answering, “That’s not my lunch.”
“Lukas,” she chided.
“Really,” he assured her. “This is just the appetizer. I’ve got a sandwich in the fridge.”
“PB & J?”
“Just PB today.” He reached for another box of candy and had his hand slapped away.
“You need a good woman to take care of you.”
It was a familiar refrain and he responded as he usually did. “You’re a good woman and you take care of me.”
“You need a wife,” she clarified.
“Just say the word.”
Karen, accustomed to his flirtatious teasing, shook her head.
“Go eat your sandwich,” she directed. “As pathetic as it is, I’m sure it has slightly more nutritional value than candy.”
“I’m waiting to have lunch after I finish with the morning appointments.” He glanced at the clock on the wall, frowned. “I thought for sure Mrs. Cammalleri would be here with Snowball by now.”
“She called to reschedule,” Karen told him. “She didn’t want to leave the house in this weather.”
“What weather?” Luke turned to the window, then blinked in surprise at the swirling white flakes that were all that was visible through the glass. “When did it start snowing?”
“About an hour ago,” Karen told him. “While you were ensuring that Raphael would never again be controlled by his most basic animal urges.”
He moved closer to the window. “Did the forecast call for this?”
She nodded. “Twelve to fifteen inches.”
He frowned. “How does global warming result in early season snowstorms?”
“We live in a Snowbelt,” she reminded him. “And the current catchphrase is ‘climate change.’”
“I’d prefer a climate change that included warm sun and sandy beaches.”
“So book a vacation.”
“I’ve been thinking about it,” he admitted. And while an island getaway held a certain appeal, he had no desire to go on a holiday alone. Nor was he interested in venturing out solo with the goal of finding an anonymous female someone to share a few days of sun, sand and sex. That kind of thing had lost its appeal for Luke before he’d graduated college.
“Well, another thing you should think about is closing up early,” Karen suggested. “Mrs. Cammalleri was your last scheduled appointment and the way the snow’s already falling hard and fast, if we don’t get out of here soon, we might not get out of here at all.”
“The clinic’s open until three on Fridays,” he reminded her. “So I’ll stay until then, but you go ahead.”
“Are you sure you don’t mind?”
“Of course not. There’s no need for both of us to stay, and you’ve got a longer drive home than I do.”
Karen was already tidying up her desk, straightening a pile of files, aligning the stapler with the edge of her desk calendar, putting the pens in the cup.
Luke took advantage of her distraction to snag another box of candy. “If this keeps up, the kids will be building snowmen tomorrow.”
“Hard to believe they were trick-or-treating just last night, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” He couldn’t help but smile as he thought about his almost five-year-old nephews, Quinn and Shane, who had dressed up as SpongeBob and Patrick. Their baby sister, Pippa, was too young to go door-to-door, but even she’d been decked out in a pumpkin costume with a smiling jack-o’-lantern face on the front and a hat with stem and leaves.
His eldest niece—his brother Jackson’s twelve-year-old daughter, Ava—had skipped the candy-grabbing ritual in favor of a Halloween party with some friends at the community center. And Jack had chaperoned. Luke wasn’t at all surprised that his brother, who had earned quite the reputation as a heartbreaker in his youth, was a slightly overprotective father. The surprising part had been finding out that he was a father at all—especially to the daughter of the woman who had been Luke’s best friend since fifth grade.
He was still surprised, and a little annoyed, that Kelly Cooper had managed to keep her weekend rendezvous with Jack a secret for more than twelve years. It was only when she’d moved back to Pinehurst with her daughter at the end of the summer that Luke had learned that his brother was Ava’s father and that his designation as “Uncle Luke” was more than an honorary title. He still wasn’t sure that he’d completely forgiven her for keeping that secret for so long, but he was genuinely thrilled that Kelly and Jack were together now and making plans for an early December wedding.
“From carving pumpkins to throwing snowballs in the blink of an eye,” Karen noted as she turned to retrieve her coat and purse from the cabinet behind her desk—then muttered a curse under her breath as she nearly tripped over Einstein, Luke’s seven-month-old beagle puppy.
He’d been one of a litter of eight born to a severely malnourished and exhausted female who had been abandoned on the side of the road. A passerby had found the animal and taken her to the veterinarian clinic. The mother hadn’t survived the birth, and Luke had been determined to ensure that her efforts to give life to her pups weren’t in vain.
Thankfully, Karen had stepped up to help, and between the two of them, they’d made sure that the puppies were fed and nurtured and loved—and then they’d given them to good homes. But Luke had always known that he would keep one, and Einstein was the one he’d chosen. And he loved the crazy animal, even if he wasn’t exactly the genius of his namesake.
When the puppies were first born and required almost constant care, it made sense for them to be at the clinic. Luke also believed it would help with their socialization, getting them accustomed to being around people and other animals, and so he’d continued the practice with Einstein long after his brothers and sisters had gone to other homes. Unfortunately, one of Einstein’s favorite places in the clinic was wherever he could find Karen’s feet.
“I