I can’t thank you enough. It’s an amazing opportunity.”
“I have no doubt you’ll nail it.” He smiled at her and for a brief moment, he didn’t seem nearly as stressed and preoccupied as he had been a few minutes earlier. But then it was gone. Amelia let out a squeal of protest in the backseat and he shook his head, snapped back into the moment. “I should get going. I need to figure out…well, I have some things I need to think about.”
And just like that, the stress and worry she’d seen in him earlier returned. Char had to wrap her arms around herself to keep from reaching out and hugging him. He looked like he could use one.
“Thanks again,” she said. “I owe you one, Nick. Really. I know there’s probably nothing I can do with this whole…” She waved her hand around. “But let me know if I can help in any way. I really wish I could do something.”
“Sure.” He chuckled, but there was no humor in it. “Looks like I need a wife. You want to marry me?”
She took a quick step back. “What?”
He roughed up his hair. “I’m kidding. Don’t worry.”
“Kidding about needing a wife? Or kidding about marrying me?”
He looked up and gave her a smile tinged with sadness. “Would it matter?”
She hesitated, unsure what to say.
Amelia shrieked again from her car seat, distracting them, and Nick turned to go. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “It’ll all work out. Thanks, Char. I’ll see you around.”
It’ll all work out.
His words lingered in her head as she watched him drive away. She couldn’t shake the terrible feeling that it wouldn’t all work out.
It was clear by Katie and Damon’s reaction when Nick showed up at their front door later that night with baby Amelia tucked into his arm that he looked every bit as terrible as he felt. Which was pretty bad.
After returning from his grocery trip, Nick had fed the baby and tried to eat something of his own, but he couldn’t focus. His mind wouldn’t stop running through scenarios. Running into Char had been a good distraction, but it had only been that. A distraction. He still didn’t have any answers.
Katie scooped up the baby and ushered the men into the front room of the grand house where Damon kept the whisky. His friend poured him a stiff one and handed it to him in a crystal tumbler before taking the seat across from him.
Nick glanced around for Katie and the baby, but Damon stopped him. “It’s okay. Katie’s got her, and she’s perfectly fine. Katie loves it and no doubt she’ll want to revisit the whole let’s have kids conversation after you leave.”
Damon smiled, but Nick couldn’t return it. Instead, he put the whisky down on the table in front of him and dropped his head into his hands.
Nick didn’t make it a practice to leave Amelia with babysitters, even when they were in the same house. Sure, he let others hold Amelia and bounce her around. But care for her? No. That was his job. Despite his friend Stephanie’s insistence that it would be fine to hire a nanny to help him out, even part-time, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He didn’t want her to be raised by strangers. Besides, he had the luxury of not having to work at the moment. Amelia deserved to be raised by a parent. Or at least a…he couldn’t think about what he was to her. Anyway, he knew he would have to hire a nanny or find some kind of constant babysitter situation going forward, but apparently he had bigger problems. He had to find a wife.
A wife.
The whole thing was ludicrous, and he couldn’t make any sense of it.
“I take it the call with legal didn’t go well.”
In response, Nick lifted his shoulders and dropped them again with a sigh.
“Are you going to run?”
Damon’s question shouldn’t have surprised him, considering he himself had thought about it. But coming from his by-the-book friend, it was startling.
“We’ll back you up, Nick. If you need to—”
“No.” He cut him off before he had the chance to actually convince him it wasn’t a terrible idea. “She doesn’t deserve that kind of life.”
Damon nodded a bit and took a sip of his drink. “Talk to me. What happened?”
Nick didn’t hesitate. The sooner he got it off his chest, the better chance he had to make sense of any of it. “I need a wife.”
Damon raised his