“You love it,” Deacon said.
“I do,” she sighed.
There was something so magical about how tiny she was and that she was the little one of my best friend. I could see tiny features in her face that reminded me of him, features I knew would just grow more and more like him as she aged.
“I’m going to teach her to cook my dish now,” I said. “Everybody else out of the kitchen.”
Rebecca laughed. “Not with knives you aren’t.”
“Alright, fine, but as soon as I’m done chopping everything up, she’s going to help me cook.”
“Maybe she can wait until she’s a little older for that,” Deacon said, chuckling.
“Alright, fine. You two go sit down and watch a TV show or something. I’ve got this,” I said.
They shared a glance and Rebecca smiled before turning back to me.
“Thank you, Everett,” she said.
“You’re very welcome. Now go, sit, cuddle with your baby,” I said.
Deacon was alternating playing with and cuddling Eloise on the couch while Rebecca lounged in the big recliner. It was cute, seeing tiny little Rebecca in the colossal chair Deacon bought for himself when we first moved in. She had plenty of room for the baby in that chair, which I assumed was the point for her. She probably sat there often, and now Deacon was getting his turn, laid out on the couch with her on his stomach.
I never thought much about my future until recently but seeing Deacon and Rebecca with Eloise was starting to make me do so. They looked so happy, so content. Like their lives had been fulfilled in a way that nothing else could have ever done. As much as Deacon seemed lost, just like me, after we left the desert, he seemed to have found himself again. Carter had done the same with his baby Carson and Lauren.
Would that ever happen for me?
I couldn’t answer that question.
We sat down for dinner and had a wonderful night, relaxing and laughing and telling old stories for the thousandth time. I missed my buddy, but I was so happy for him. If anything, I was jealous that he found himself living the kind of life that I was only now realizing I wanted. Maybe all this time, my love of babies and enjoyment of being around kids and their wild, hope-filled energy meant more than I realized. Maybe I did want to find a partner like he had.
I didn’t have time to think about that now. It did no good. No one was available, and I had the work of two people to do at the office, or else our company that we worked so hard to build would fall apart. I needed to stay focused on that.
There was no way I could be as lucky as Carter or Deacon. That just wasn’t the life I was meant to live.
8
HELEN
As much as I might have wanted to at first, I decided against moving back to Chicago and running away from my problems in Ashford. For one, I couldn’t do it to my parents. For another, I couldn’t let one interaction with the hot lumberjack throw me off so badly. I didn’t even know his name, and yet I kept finding myself thinking about him and spacing out.
It was getting on my nerves.
I couldn’t seem to control my own brain anymore. The combination of the sudden and extreme change of scenery, the colossal job ahead of me in fixing the diner, and this distracting man in flannel was apparently more stressful and confusing than my eighteen-hour days at the busiest restaurants in Chicago. It was maddening. I should be able to do this in my sleep, yet it was all I could do to stay awake when I got back home anymore.
Home. Not really my home. My parents’ home where I was living. Because I had given up everything to come back to my hometown and help them out. I had to keep thinking about it that way. If I kept thinking about it as temporary, even if it was a couple of years, I could get through it. I had a set of goals to accomplish and then I could explore the idea of having someone else run the diner in my absence and return to Chicago.
At least the new hires were working out. The new waitress was funny and worked hard, though she was in school and could only work part time. Finn was excellent in the kitchen and had merged quite well with the staff I already had. Tony, the Italian boy with the lasagna recipe, was already talking about how he considered himself Finn’s protégé. Finn was trying to talk him into going to culinary school once things calmed down. I had a feeling he would take that advice.
Having both of them in the kitchen meant I didn’t do a lot of cooking, and that kind of bothered me. I was used to cooking every day, and with two cooks in the small kitchen, I simply wasn’t needed much. I had a bunch of administrative work to do and other things to fix from Carrie’s time there anyway, so I went at it and threw myself into work.