The Bookstore on the Beach - Brenda Novak Page 0,132

I don’t know how I’ll survive when I have to leave for Florida.”

He pressed her up against the wall and caught her chin in his hand. “Don’t leave.”

“I have to,” she said. “Caden has water polo. It might be his ticket to college.”

“So? We’ll help him pay for school.”

“That’s an expensive solution,” she said with a chuckle.

“You’re worth it to me. And we have Taylor to think of, too. I believe she’d be better off here.”

“You do,” she said with a laugh.

“I do,” he insisted, “because I’ve found the perfect couple to raise her baby.”

All levity fled her face. “Who?”

He kissed her. “Us.”

31

Autumn hummed the song she’d last heard on the radio as she puttered around the bookstore that afternoon. She still had the same problems she’d had before, but they seemed so much more manageable since she’d gone to visit Quinn. He insisted that they could face anything together, and she was beginning to believe him. Taylor’s pregnancy wasn’t anything she would have wished for. But Quinn’s solution made her feel as though there was a solution—and it was one that wouldn’t tear her heart out. He actually wanted a baby. And she was sort of excited, too, now that she was over the shock of it. Instead of being alone, her husband missing and presumed dead, her children gone to college, she’d be with Quinn, devoting her life to him and her first grandchild, which she knew he would consider his grandchild, as well. She was even open to the possibility of having a baby herself in a couple of years. She and Quinn could raise both children together, at least until Taylor got out of college and was in a position to take over with hers.

“How is it that you’re smiling and singing today?” her mother asked, coming out of the back room where she and Laurie had been paying some bills and doing other business.

Autumn looked up from changing the receipt roll on the register. “I’m starting to view things from a different perspective.”

“Oh, really,” her mother said with a laugh. “Does this new perspective have anything to do with Quinn Vanderbilt?”

That wasn’t a difficult guess. Just after lunch, he’d sent flowers to the store—a huge arrangement of peach roses, carnations and Asiatic lilies. “He wants me to stay here in Sable Beach,” she said.

“How nice, especially because I want you to stay in Sable Beach, too.” She leaned up against the counter. “Is that a possibility?”

Autumn got the roll of paper seated properly and closed the cover of the register. “He says it would probably be better for Taylor not to have to go back and face her old friends, pregnant with an underclassman’s baby. And he has a point. She could homeschool this year and still graduate. When she leaves for college, he and I could care for the baby.”

“He said that?” she asked, straightening in surprise.

Autumn couldn’t have stopped smiling if she’d wanted to. “He did.”

“That’s quite an offer. I’m trying not to get my hopes up too high.”

“You’d love to be around the baby yourself.”

“Of course I would. And I’d make a great babysitter for when you and Quinn wanted to go out. Think of how handy that would be,” she joked. “But—” her smile wilted a bit “—what about Caden?”

“He seems to like it here,” she said, hopeful that he might be open to the idea, after all.

“So you won’t wait for him to graduate?”

“I planned to stay in Tampa when I thought Nick might come back. I didn’t feel I could uproot the family and move, make the kids go to a new high school when they were so close to graduating. But so much has changed.”

“What about Caden’s water polo?” her mother asked.

“There are water polo teams in Virginia. But I hate to make him leave his friends.”

“He seems to have made plenty of new ones here,” her mother pointed out. “Maybe they don’t all live in Sable Beach year-round, but the twins do. So does Sierra. And she would be a great support to Taylor during the pregnancy.”

“I have no doubt. She’s completely devoted.” Other than Caden, it seemed as though it would be better for everyone. Her mother had no other real family; Autumn knew that now. Mary had been through so much, and yet she’d found the strength and resolve to be able to give Autumn a good life. Autumn felt it was time to move back and be there for her for a change. Mary