Complicating (Preston's Mill Book 3) Read online

  Still smiling, he texted, Are those gummy bears on the nachos?

  Daisy responded with a smiley face emoji. Yup.

  The nachos look funny. What’s on them?

  Chicken, BBQ sauce, pickles, and the bears. Another smiley face emoji, but this one was also sticking out its tongue.

  Bon appétit! I’ll call you in a few. He put his phone down. Walking into the bathroom, he stripped and turned on the shower. Once the water was hot enough, he stepped in and just enjoyed the hot water beating down on him. It felt great, and he instantly relaxed.

  The text from Daisy stayed on his mind. Lately, strange food cravings were becoming her thing. She had been eating normally for the most part, but in the past week, she told him of all the weird stuff she suddenly couldn’t do without—popcorn with peppermint in it, cheeseburgers with jalapenos when she normally didn’t like anything spicy, tuna melts with pickles, and the nacho trend. Recently, it seemed like Daisy could make anything and put it on top of a bed of tortilla chips and be happy.

  Grabbing the shampoo, he washed his hair and then made fast work of rubbing down his body because he was anxious to talk to her and see how she was feeling. By now he figured she would have devoured her dinner and would be more than ready to talk.

  Ten minutes later, he was putting the finishing touches on his own dinner—leftover chili—and walking over to his kitchen table. Teddy glanced over at him at the scent of food, but Carter was quick to shut him down and point him in the direction of his food bowl.

  The only response was a low and pitiful whine as the dog went back to sleep.

  “Must be nice,” he muttered before taking a spoonful of chili. It was hot and kind of burned his mouth, but he wanted to at least get a few bites in before calling Daisy. The phone beeped again, and it was another text from her with another picture of food.

  Dessert, it said. A jar of Nutella and a package of Twizzlers.

  “Okay, that is definitely beyond strange,” he said and decided the rest of his dinner could wait.

  Mainly because the site of that food combination sort of killed his appetite.

  Hitting Send on her number, he waited for her to pick up.

  “I wasn’t quite done with dessert,” Daisy said with a laugh when she answered.

  “I figured I needed to stop you. That did not look like a good thing for you or the baby,” he replied with his own laugh.

  “You wouldn’t think so, but it’s surprisingly good.”

  “I don’t remember reading about your taste buds completely dying during pregnancy.”

  “Oh stop. It’s all normal. Trust me.”

  “Says the woman who put gummy bears on nachos.”

  “Sweet and salty,” she said with a happy sigh. “And the baby seemed to love it.”

  It was her answer whenever he questioned her… questionable food choices. “And you’re sure the doctor is okay with this?”

  “Carter,” she warned, but there wasn’t much heat behind her words.

  “Okay, okay, I get it. No more judgment.”

  “Right,” she teased. “You know you’re not going to be able to help yourself. By tomorrow when I send you a picture of my lunch, you’re going to have something to say about it.”

  “Depends on what it is. If you send me a picture of a healthy salad with some grilled chicken and tons of vegetables, I won’t say a word.”

  She giggled.

  And he loved the sound of it.

  “What if it’s a picture of a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich with a chocolate-chip cookie and raisins on it?”

  Okay, he was definitely done with dinner.

  “I would say I was glad you were over your morning sickness. And afternoon sickness. And evening sickness,” he went on, trying hard not to laugh. “Because knowing what that meal looked like going down would be beyond awful coming up.”

  “Well damn,” she murmured.

  “What? What’s the matter?”

  “I think you kind of killed my appetite with that image.”

  He could imagine the pout on her face right about now.

  “I’d like to say I’m sorry but…”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she sighed. “So how was your day?”

  For the next hour, they talked—about his day, about hers, about everything and nothing all at the same time. When she yawned loudly, Carter wished her a good night and promised to talk to her tomorrow. He placed his phone on the charger and reheated his chili. When it was ready, he took it out to the living room and turned on the TV.

  Their conversation played over in his mind, and as he ate his dinner, it hit him how miserable he was. This was a crappy way to be living—eating leftovers on the couch while the mother of his child was fifty miles away eating God only knew what.

  They’d reached a point in their relationship where they were definitely comfortable with one another, and he knew they could be in such a better place if they didn’t live so damn far apart and they weren’t living such separate lives.

  He placed the now-empty bowl on the coffee table before leaning back on the sofa cushions. So what did all this mean? Did he need to make more of an effort to go to Preston? Did he need to hire more guys at the shop so he could take some time off?

  They were valid options, and yet they didn’t seem to do anything to put him at ease. He felt anxious and tense and oddly unsettled. And as much as he wanted to think about it some more and come up with a solution, he was just too tired to do it.

  But he knew tomorrow was going to be here soon enough, and he knew exactly who he needed to talk to.

  ***

  “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with chicken on nachos, Carter.”

  Carter rolled his eyes as he handed his father a bottle of water. “The chicken wasn’t the odd part, Dad. It’s the gummy worms that really made it strange.”

  “Oh, well, okay. Sure. I could see where that might make it weird.” Nick Hayes took a long drink before looking at his son. “You’re not seriously this freaked out over candy, are you?”

  Carter shrugged. “It certainly hasn’t helped.” They were seated in Carter’s office at lunchtime. Once a week his father brought them lunch from the local deli, and they’d spend an hour just talking and catching up on each other’s lives. And today’s get-together came at the perfect time.

  Leaning back in his seat, Nick smiled. “You need to have a strong stomach to be a parent, Carter. Trust me. Pregnancy cravings are only the tip of the iceberg.”

  “I realize that, Dad. I do. But this whole situation has me feeling sort of left out.”

  “How? You and Daisy talk all the time. After the two of you cleared the air, I thought things were getting better.”

  Yeah, there pretty much wasn’t anything Carter didn’t share with his father. They were close. Closer than most fathers and sons, probably because for so long, they were all each other had. Even before his brother had started screwing up, Carter and his father had been close. Once his mom left and his brother essentially started rebelling against everything, their bond had only strengthened.

  “It has and I’m grateful for it.”

  “But?”

  With a sigh, Carter gave his father a helpless look. “This isn’t how I imagined things being.”

  “With Daisy or with becoming a father?”

  “Both,” he replied. “I know this wasn’t the way anyone had planned, but it is what it is and… I want it to be different.”

  “It’s a little late to go back and change things, son. The fact is you hooked up with a girl you barely knew and made a baby.”

  “That’s not the part I’m talking about,” Carter argued as he stood up. Looking out a window that offered no view but an alley, he sighed. “I’m talking about the way things are now. I don’t want to simply co-parent with Daisy. I think I want… maybe…” He raked a hand through his hair as he tried to come to grips with what the hell he was trying to say.

  Before he knew it, his father
was beside him. “Being a parent is one of the hardest jobs you’ll ever have,” he began. “So is being married. The two of them together—especially at the same time—is almost impossible to survive unscathed.”

  “Dad, I hate to break it to you, but most married couples have kids.”

  Nick chuckled softly. “I realize that, but I’m referring to your current situation. If you were to marry Daisy…”

  “I didn’t say I wanted to get married,” Carter said quickly. “At least, not exactly.”

  Placing a hand on Carter’s shoulder, his father went on. “I think you’re wanting a closer relationship with Daisy, am I right?”

  Carter nodded.

  “Starting a new relationship on a personal and romantic level and becoming new parents is a lot of pressure to put on two people—and on their relationship. Maybe you need to just focus on the more important aspect right now. Being a dad.”

  For a minute, Carter could only stare at his father.

  “It’s no secret your mother and I had problems long before she left,” Nick started. “We were married young, and even though we had dated in high school for a couple of years and knew each other well, it was still hard.”

  “Dad…”

  But Nick held up a hand to stop him. “We were married for a year when we found out we were pregnant with your brother. We’d been struggling just to get by—I was working a lot and so was your mom, and I knew it was only going to get harder for us with a baby on the way.” He paused and sighed. “But I stepped up and took all the overtime I could and made sure I was able to provide.”

  “And you did a great job with that, Dad.”

  His father smiled. “For a while, I thought so too. Your brother was born, and two years later we had you and it seemed like things were going to be okay. They weren’t ideal, but we were… well… we were paying the bills and had food on the table, and I thought that was how it was supposed to be.” He took another sip of water before continuing. “Then something changed. It seemed like suddenly nothing I did was right—I worked too much or I didn’t make enough for us to buy the things your mom wanted…”

  Part of Carter felt like he should be defending someone, but he wasn’t sure who, so he simply sat back and listened.

  “I don’t know, sometimes it doesn’t matter how much you want something or how much you think you’re doing the right thing.” He gave his son a sad smile. “Sometimes things aren’t meant to be.”

  “That’s not particularly encouraging, Dad. You did do everything right, and you worked hard to make sure we had everything we needed…”

  “I was a good provider for my kids,” Nick said confidently, “but that wasn’t all it took to make my marriage work.”

  “That was all on mom,” Carter said, “not you.”

  But Nick shook his head. “It takes two people to make a relationship work. Maybe if we had talked more—your mother and I—we could have saved our marriage, or at least we could have ended it in a way that wasn’t quite so devastating.”

  “She should have wanted to stay,” Carter said vehemently. “For us. Even if she didn’t want to be married anymore, she still had kids to consider.”

  Nick looked at his son and gave him another sad look. “You can’t change the way your mother left you by forcing a relationship with Daisy and the baby. It can’t be the motivation behind what you’re doing.”

  Carter’s eyes went wide. “That has nothing to do with it at all! I want to be with Daisy and the baby because… because…” Words escaped him. He let out a loud sigh and tried to gather his thoughts.

  “You’ve never been particularly patient, Carter. You get an idea in your head, and you make it happen. Now I’ll be honest and say that you have a really good track record and you’ve primarily been successful in whatever you try.”

  “But?” Carter prompted with a small smile.

  “But this isn’t a business venture or something hands-on. This is about three different lives, and you have to think about each of them and not just yours.”

  “I am thinking about the three of us, Dad. I swear.”

  “Is Daisy pressuring you to marry her? Is that what this is about?”

  “What? Oh God, no!” Carter stepped away. “If anything, she hasn’t asked me for a thing. Not one damn thing! And that’s what’s killing me. I want to be there for her. For the baby. And I don’t know… she just doesn’t seem to see me as someone who fits into her life.”

  There. He’d finally admitted his greatest fear out loud.

  It was like a giant weight had been lifted.

  “Has she said that to you?” his father gently asked.

  “No. Not in so many words, but…”

  “Then it’s probably in your own head. You may look a little rough around the edges, but I’ve never met a man with a bigger heart than you.” He paused. “But I’m going to say something here, and you need to listen to it and think on it rather than immediately respond. Can you do that?”

  He nodded.

  “Your heart is in the right place, Carter. You want to take care of your child and Daisy because you feel responsible for them. And that’s a good thing. Actually, it’s a great thing. But you need to figure out exactly why you want to do it. Is it simply because you know it’s the responsible thing to do, or is it something more?”

  Carter immediately bit back a response because he knew he needed to collect his thoughts.

  “It’s admirable to want to take care of them, and I’m proud of you for it, but you need to examine your feelings for Daisy and see where they stem from. If she weren’t pregnant and there wasn’t a child to consider, what do you think your relationship with her would be like? And would you even have one?”

  For a minute, Carter’s mind flashed back to the day in the stairwell when he’d first gone to see her. He remembered the horrified look on her face when she spotted him and had to wonder if she would have looked like that if she hadn’t already known she was pregnant. If he was just a man coming to see a woman who he wanted to ask out, would she have still looked at him that way?

  He’d never know.

  They would never know.

  Swallowing hard, he looked at his father. “I can’t live my life wondering about the what-ifs. The fact is that Daisy is pregnant, and that’s the woman I’ve gotten to know, and I’m the expectant father she’s gotten to know. We can’t change that.”

  His father nodded. “So what are you thinking? What happens now?”

  He shrugged. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out. I hate how we live so far apart, and I hate how I’m missing out on so much by not being there. Talking on the phone and texting funny pictures is all fine and well but… it’s not enough. Not anymore.”

  A small smile tugged at Nick’s lips. “So what are you going to do about it?”

  Carter raked a hand through his hair again in frustration. “I don’t know. I can’t… I can’t seem to figure that part out.”

  “Okay, okay, okay. How about this? What is it that you want?”

  Turning, Carter said the only thing that came to mind.

  The truth.

  “I want it all.”

  Eleven

  “I don’t think he’s acting sick,” Daisy said a few weeks later, leaning over carefully to examine Teddy’s sprawled body on her kitchen floor. “He just gobbled up three meatballs.”

  Carter was carrying in their dinner dishes from the living room where they’d just eaten spaghetti and garlic bread with an appetizer of nachos. “I didn’t say he was sick.”

  Daisy put on a hand on her back as she straightened up. She was in the last trimester and was bigger now—and she felt kind of like an elephant in her sweats and oversized T-shirt—so doing things like leaning over weren’t as easy as it used to be. “I thought you said you brought him with you because he wasn’t doing well.”

  “He was just acting all depressed. I didn’t want to leave him alone.”

  Daisy peered down at
the massive dog, who appeared completely at ease and at home in her apartment, stretched out on his side and snoring softly. “You sure he wasn’t putting on an act?”

  Carter had put the dishes in the sink, and now he came over to stand beside her. “Maybe he was,” he said with a frown. “And I was worried about that big faker.”

  She giggled and rubbed Carter’s back in an affectionate gesture. “You’ve got too soft a heart. What’s going to happen when this little peanut starts making big sad eyes at you? You’ll go all mushy and do anything she wants?”

  Carter’s blue eyes shifted from Teddy to Daisy’s rounded belly, softening even more as they did. He reached out to curve a hand over her stomach for just a moment, and Daisy just about melted.

  For the past month, things had been good with Carter. Really good. So good she couldn’t help from wondering if her former resolution to keep Carter at arm’s length was really as necessary as she believed.

  The stakes were too high for her to rush into anything, but it felt like a possibility now, when it hadn’t just four weeks ago. Carter never missed a visit or a phone call with her. He seemed to have truly committed.

  If she could trust him to commit to being a father to this baby, then maybe she could trust him with even more.

  Maybe.

  The thought made her too jittery and excited, so she kept pushing it to the back of her mind.

  She wasn’t going to jump into anything. Not again. No matter how much she’d been wanting to lately.

  Clearing her throat, she took a step back from him and looked over to Teddy again. “Although I’m still having trouble imagining that enormous dog strapped to the back of your bike.”

  Carter’s eyes widened. “I didn’t—” He cut himself off as soon as he realized she was teasing him. Then he laughed. “I had to drive my old truck all the way out here so he could sit in the front seat. That’s how worried I was about this big liar of a dog.”

  Daisy laughed too. “You’ll have to put your foot down with him. Show him who’s boss.”

  Carter looked from her to Teddy, his eyes so soft and warm they made her want to melt into a puddle of goo. “I think it’s pretty clear that he’s the boss around here.”