I grinned. “Thank you, sweetie,” I told her, carefully taking the drawing and giving her a kiss on the cheek. I looked over at Maisie, and she nodded in answer to my unspoken question. “Why don’t you go draw another picture for Miss Maisie while she and I have some coffee.”
“Okay!” she said, skipping back into the living room.
I followed Maisie into the kitchen. It wasn’t the first time I’d stayed to chat after she’d watched Ava all day—the perks of having a best friend who was also a childcare expert.
“So he just, like, showed up?” Maisie asked as we waited for the coffee to be ready.
“Yeah,” I said, dropping into a chair at the kitchen table. “I literally ran into him as I was crossing the street.”
“Did he say what he’s doing here?” Maisie asked.
“I didn’t really stop to chat,” I admitted. I paused. “But I gave him my number.”
“Oh wow,” she repeated. “What are you going to do? Are you going to see him again? Are you going to tell him about Ava?”
“I don’t know,” I sighed.
“You like him, don’t you?” Maisie asked.
“Yeah, I did anyway.”
“Seems like he must have liked you too. It can’t be a coincidence that he’s here in Boston. He’s not from this area, is he?”
“No, he’s from Kentucky or somewhere,” I said, shaking my head.
“Maybe he wants to start a relationship with you,” Maisie said.
I shook my head. “That just doesn’t seem like his style,” I said. “And anyway, there are complications to that, and you know it.”
“Come on, it would be impossible for him not to like Ava,” Maisie said, putting a steaming mug of coffee in front of me. She sat down across from me, taking a sip of her own coffee. “Even if he had no biological ties to her, she’s adorable, and everyone knows it. She’s a ray of sunshine. And she hardly ever has tantrums. What kind of three-year-old do you know who isn’t a little brat, other than Ava? You’ve raised a great kid.”
“Still have a long way to go on that one,” I muttered, but I couldn’t help smiling. Ava really was great. She was my whole world and had been for the last three years. I’d been a little worried about being a single parent, and especially a working parent, but Ava made it all so easy.
But there was a reason I had never contacted Ace to tell him about her.
“Ace doesn’t want kids,” I told Maisie, shrugging helplessly.
“He told you that?” Maisie said in surprise. “I didn’t realize you guys were so serious that you were talking about kids and all of that. A future together.”
“We weren’t,” I said, shaking my head. “It came up in one of the interviews I did. We were talking about what he planned to do after he got out of the service, if he had any family to come home to and that kind of thing. And he said that he wasn’t the family type of guy. When I asked what that meant, he just got really broody and said that he didn’t see eye to eye on things with his dad and that he didn’t plan on settling down with a wife and kids or any of that. He said he was probably going to be in the service for life.”
“Huh. And you learned all of that before or after you slept with him?”
“Before,” I admitted. “I knew sleeping with him was a mistake. I mean, he was sexy and whatever. I don’t know; I guess maybe I thought that things might change if he met the right person. But then we had sex, and he just disappeared, and I realized I had known that that was coming. He wasn’t looking for a relationship. I was just a quick fuck for him, nothing else.”
“What an ass,” Maisie said succinctly, shaking her head. “But seriously, what’s he doing back here, then?”
“I don’t know,” I said, shrugging. “Must just be coincidence.”
“What are you going to do if he calls you?”
“Well, I’m not just going to walk up to him and be like, ‘hey, meet your kid.’ I don’t think it’ll go over so well.”
“So you’re going to keep Ava a secret from him? Don’t you think he has the right to know about her?”
“I don’t know,” I said, beginning to feel agitated.
“All right, all right,” Maisie said, putting her hands in the air. “Sorry, I’m just curious. That’s all. It’s not every day that a drama like this happens!”