Rachel: I’m sorry. I’m laughing, but I’m also sorry.
Owen: It’s fine. This too shall pass.
Rachel: The smoker is optional. I could make a lasagna?
He made a face.He appreciated the way Rach and Hudson included him in things like their family dinners, but right now, he wanted to hibernate. But he had a daughter, and she had three half-siblings. Turning, he glanced back across the diner at Adam, now engrossed in a story he was telling Stevie. As much as his brothers had been royal pains in the ass over the years, they had also been his raison d’être. Family was everything, for better or worse.
Owen:Sounds good. Did you ask Becca?
Rachel: Not yet. I’ll text her. I wanted to check with you first.
Owen: K.
Text bubbles appeared,then disappeared. He could imagine Rachel’s words flying across the screen, then being deleted. They’d been total crap as spouses, but especially as Becca had slid into her teen years, they’d become good friends. Friends who knew each other well enough to guess what the other was trying—and failing—to say.
Owen:I appreciate the invite. I like our family dinners, you know?
Rachel: Me too.
He shoved his phone away,then glanced up at the waitress. “Order for Kincaid?”
“Two more minutes,” she said crisply. “Just waiting on fresh fries for you.”
Two minutes. Just enough time to remind his other family member here that he was appreciated. Owen strode back to Adam’s booth.
“What’s up?” his youngest sibling said, glancing up from his food.
“Do you have the day off tomorrow?”
“Yeah, sure do.”
Owen nodded. “Good. Let’s get together with Will and work on the car.”
“Not too early. I’m going out tonight.” Adam fist-bumped with Stevie across the table.
Owen gave him a half-smile. “Not too early.”
Just like that, he had a fully packed social calendar for the rest of the weekend. Family stuff, sure, but that was what he could handle right now. It might not be the social life he’d dreamed of for this year, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
Back at the cash, he paid for his food, carefully wrapped up for him to take home to his daughter. He tipped the waitress, waved goodbye to his brother, then stepped outside.
The first thing he caught sight of was a white parka bounding back across the parking lot. He told himself to take a sharp right turn. And he did—but not until after something in his chest lurched hard. Something a lot likewhat ifandif things were different.
He looped around the perimeter of the parking lot to get to his truck, a list of all the filthy things he might want to do with his daughter’s midwife if they’d met any other way, at any other time, spiralling through his mind.
Chapter Five
On Kerry’sfirst morning as a Pine Harbour resident, she woke up to sunshine streaming through the oversized windows. She went downstairs to the clinic, where Jake Foster had transformed the space into Jenna’s vision—on time and under budget. Kerry’s sole contribution to the decor was the fancy espresso machine, and she was grateful for it this morning. The night before at Mac’s, she’d discovered that Jenna hadn’t been kidding about Pine Harbour being a latte-free zone.
She’d made an outsider rookie mistake by falling for the cute poster above the booth closest to the door asking,How Do You Like Your Coffee?It proclaimed four options. One for black, two and three for gradients of cream, and four for a delicious frothy mug topped with cinnamon.
“Not on the menu,” she’d been told with a hearty laugh.
She could roll with that. Making frothy coffee at home would save her money in the long run, anyway. And nothing would get her down this weekend. It was the start of an exciting new adventure. First she would play barista, then she had big plans to explore her new town.
She filled her travel mug with perfectly brewed espresso and velvety steamed milk before bundling up for the cold weather and heading out on foot.
Pine Harbour was mostly neat blocks of residential neighbourhoods, a mix of post-war cottages, more modern bungalows, and on most corners, an oversized Victorian house like the ones Kerry always dreamed of living in one day when she was a little girl in an apartment in the city.
