with her therapist. Still, the one person she wanted to talk to was so busy with Katie’s mother that he hadn’t even bothered to text Jasmine to tell her not to come over.
More hot tears stung her eyes. “Maybe I do,” she said.
“I saw some wine in the bags you brought. Would you like a glass?”
“Only if you’ll have one with me.”
“How ‘bout I have one of those beers?”
A couple minutes later, they moved into the home’s cozy sunroom with their drinks. Jasmine settled into the cushions of a wicker loveseat and took a few sips of her wine before she felt composed enough to engage in a conversation.
“This is good beer,” Gareth said when she remained quiet. “Were you celebrating something tonight?”
She shrugged. “Not really. I planned on talking to Will about a couple things.”
“Your relationship?”
“Yes, actually. And I wanted to share the news that I’m going to be opening a dance studio.”
His face broke into a wide smile. “Congratulations. That’s big news indeed.”
His enthusiasm helped ease some of the shadows from her heart. “Thank you. I’m excited about it. Like, really excited. It’s the first thing I’ve been this excited about since deciding to become a dancer when I was a little girl. I thought Will would be interested in hearing about it.”
“‘Course he would. So what happened to interrupt your plans?”
She took another large drink of her wine before replying, “Katie’s mother is next door.”
His bushy eyebrows lifted. “Carol Ann is in town?”
“Is that her name? Will hasn’t ever talked about her.”
The big man shifted, making his wicker chair creak. “You know I work with Katie in a therapeutic capacity,” he said with some apology in his tone, “so there are some things I can’t share with you.”
She nodded.
“That said, there are facts about Katie that are a matter of public record. Carol Ann Wilkins is her mother.”
“But Will has custody of Katie,” she said, remembering reading as much when she first researched him. “Carol Ann has no right to be here.”
He rubbed his beard before saying, “Parenting is a complicated business. There might be ten different reasons she could be there right now.”
The image of Carol Ann standing on the other side of the glass doors ran through her mind. Her lips trembled as more tears threatened.
“She was barefoot and drinking his beer. She said they’re over there getting reacquainted.”
His warm brown eyes seemed to observe what she didn’t say. “I’m sure that was an unpleasant surprise. But considering how you and Will met, I’d think you would understand the importance of not taking things at face value.”
“What do you mean, considering how we met?”
He drank more beer before replying, “I mean the two of you had a rocky start. You both made assumptions about each other during a brief interaction. How did you feel about him then?”
“I thought he was an overprotective ass.”
He smiled. “And how to you feel about him now?”
“I love him.”
The blurted admission, something she hadn’t even acknowledged to herself until that moment, had more tears spilling.
“Sure you do,” he said. “You wouldn’t be sitting here having a good cry right now otherwise. My point is that you should wait until you talk to Will before drawing any conclusions. I’m sure there’s a perfectly logical explanation for all this.”
He was telling her everything she’d already tried to tell herself. Hearing it from him seemed to give it more power.
“I just wish he’d told me she was there,” she said. “I would have appreciated the consideration. It’s hard to think of building a future life with him when I feel so far on the outside of his current one.”
Gareth set his empty bottle on a side table and leaned toward her. “Maybe Will slipped up by not reaching out to you, but I’m sure there’s a good reason. This is just a little hiccup in the scheme of things. Now that you’re working so hard at rebuilding your future, you shouldn’t give up on it any easier than you did dancing.”
She found her first smile since pulling into his garage earlier. All of her uncertainty faded away, replaced by a renewed sense of purpose.
“Thanks, Gareth,” she said. “That’s exactly what I needed to hear.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Will hung up the phone and pressed his thumb and forefinger to his eyes in an effort to relieve the strain there. He’d had less than two hours of sleep over the past two days. He was approaching levels of exhaustion he hadn’t known existed. The last time he’d