She studied him for a moment before saying, “My day just turned around.”
Fuck.
He stuffed his hands in his pockets and attempted to gather his thoughts. “T-that’s good.”
“Yeah, I’ve been meaning to—”
A cell phone rang from the depths of one of Retta’s bags. She smiled as she waited for it to go to voice mail.
“Sorry,” she said, clearing her throat. “Actually, do you want anything? Water, coffee, orange juice?”
“No, I’m good.”
“Okay, great. Um. What I was saying before was, these last few—”
The ringing started up again.
Retta smiled through a wince. “Give me a second.” She shoved her hand into her purse and rummaged through it.
“We can talk later,” he said over the phone’s noise.
Now that he was thinking clearly again, he knew he couldn’t do this off the cuff. If he was competing with another man, he had one shot to make her believe that he was the better choice.
“No,” she said, her voice echoing in the empty bakery. “I mean if you don’t have to be somewhere right now, I’d like for you to stay.”
She dropped her bags on the floor and got low to search them.
“Hello?” Retta said as she finally found her phone and answered it. “Wait, right now?”
Her suddenly shrill voice made Duncan freeze where he stood and study her.
“Oh, God. Okay, I’m coming. Just remember to breathe.” Once she hung up, she looked at him and said, “I have to go.”
“Retta, is everything okay?”
She spun in circles. “Where are my keys? Where are my keys?”
He spotted them on the ground nearby and picked them up for her.
“Thank you,” she said as she retrieved her belongings from the floor. “My friend’s in labor. Her partner is stuck in traffic on the other side of town, and I just need to get to her.”
“Let me help you,” he said, reaching for her bags.
They left the bakery together and jogged to where she’d parked her vehicle. However, looking up and down the length of the street, he couldn’t spot her tiny gray car. She pressed the alarm on her keys several times but there was no responding siren.
“Oh my God,” she whispered as her chin trembled. “It finally happened. They towed my car.”
“Everything’s going to be okay,” Duncan said, already on the move toward the gym. “Head over to my truck. I’m gonna grab my keys.”
Duncan returned before Retta had a chance to do more than pace and open up the notes on her phone from the one birthing class she’d attended with Kym.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said again as he backed out of the parking lot and followed her directions to Kym’s house.
He said it so confidently that she chose to believe him. They arrived at their destination in less than ten minutes.
Charging through the front door Kym had left unlocked, Retta shouted her friend’s name. She found her doubled over her dining room table, groaning into the crook of her arm.
“Oh, thank God,” Kym said as she looked up. “I thought I’d have toLittle House on the Prairiethis shit.”
