“Bite your tongue.” Addison glanced around and then lowered her voice. “Nothing is better than your mom’s baking.”
Charlotte smiled. “She’ll be glad to know you’re still her number one fan. Although I should warn you, you have some competition.”
Addison sat up straighter and reached for another cookie. “Jack? I’m not worried. I could take him on.”
Charlotte took a cookie and broke it into two. “Speaking of guys, how is Mason’s new client going?”
“She’s very demanding,” Addison admitted with a frown. “Honestly, if she didn’t come so highly recommended, I’d have told Mason to ditch her, but we need the money, you know. Also, I feel bad that Mason’s career went off the rails while I was sick.”
Charlotte reached across the table to take her hand. “You know it isn’t your fault, right? Besides, Mason is a good man. He wanted to be there.”
Even if his business had to shoulder the cost.
Knowing how hard the two of them worked, they were both going to be back on track in no time.
Addison squeezed Charlotte’s hand and cleared her throat. “Yeah, I guess. Anyway, what about you? How’s work? How’s Patrick?”
“Work is fine. There’s this promotion coming up, vice principal. Everyone’s talking about it. It’s good pay and good benefits.”
Addison picked up her drink and took a long sip. “I didn’t know you were interested in being a vice principal.”
Charlotte shrugged. “I’m not. It’s just gossip. And Patrick is fine. We’re doing this joint project, or at least we’re trying to think of one.”
Addison’s lips lifted into a grin. “So, this is how your romance blossoms finally.”
Charlotte rolled her eyes. “There’s nothing between Patrick and I, and you know that. We’re just friends.”
She had to keep telling herself and everyone else that so she didn’t kick herself for missing her chance.
Addison waggled her eyebrow. “But you want to be more.”
Charlotte blushed. “It’s better if it stays this way; otherwise, things will get too complicated. Besides, I don’t want it to get weird at work and have to leave if things don’t work out. I like the administration, and I love my students.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I do,” Charlotte maintained with a shake of her head. “There’s this one student, I think I told you about her from last year, Annie Mathews, the bright foster kid?”
Addison paused and scrunched up her face. “I think you did mention her.”
“Her foster mom is great. We’ve become friends, sort of, and she’s been really helpful with…things, and I’m trying to help her keep an eye on Annie because she’s worried that her daughter has fallen in with the wrong crowd or something.”
Addison smiled. “That’s a nice thing to do, but you won’t get in trouble at work?”
“I’m not spying on her or anything like that. Just keeping an eye out for any unusual activity,” Charlotte replied, pausing to run her fingers along the outer rim of the mug. “Anyway, Libby—that’s Annie’s mom—she works at the fertility clinic on Deer Pond Road.”
“We’ve been there. It’s very nice.” Addison nodded and licked her spoon clean. “It’s actually one of the nicer clinics we’ve been to.”
Charlotte’s stomach clenched. “Yeah, I’ve been there too. I mean, I have nothing to compare it to, but it seemed nice to me.”
Addison stopped licking her spoon, sat up straighter, and frowned. “Why were you at the fertility clinic? Is everything okay?”
Charlotte clenched her mug tighter and inhaled sharply.
While she counted backward from ten, she thought of everything that could go wrong, from Addison refusing to getting overly attached to the baby. Then she thought of all the ways her body was going to change and how worried she was that it would end up driving a wedge between her and Addison.
Was she really going through with this?
Once she told Addison, she couldn’t take it back.
