Dance Away with Me - Susan Elizabeth Phillips Page 0,25
unfasten the sling. “Hold her while I look at the furnace.”
He stepped back. “I already looked at it. That’s why I’m late. You need a new one.”
“Want some coffee?” Phish said from the kitchen.
North eyed the pastry bag. “No, thanks.”
Tess withdrew her hands from the sling’s straps and lowered her voice to a hiss. “What do you mean I need a new furnace?”
“The one you have is older than you are. Apparently you didn’t get my message.”
“What message?”
“The message I left on your cell telling you I was tracking down somebody to replace your furnace.”
She’d forgotten that she’d muted her phone to keep from waking Wren, but considering his general attitude, how was she supposed to know he hadn’t run out on them?
“I ordered a new one for you,” he said. “Bad news is, the model you need is hard to get, and it’ll take time.”
“How long?”
“A few weeks.”
“Weeks? I can’t keep a newborn here with no heat!”
“Right. You’ll have to stay at the schoolhouse.”
She grappled with two thoughts at once. The expense of a new furnace and the idea of staying at the schoolhouse. Somehow she’d deal with the first, but as for the schoolhouse— Not with the memories it held. “That’s the last place I’ll ever go.”
“There’s no decent alternative. I’ll move whatever you need to take up there, and then I’m leaving for the city. You’ll have the place to yourself.”
“The city? Are you out of your mind? Do you really think I’m going to let you run off to Manhattan and leave me alone with your child?”
Phish, still standing by the coffeepot, watched their exchange with interest. Phish was unpredictable. He might keep their argument to himself, or he might blab it to every customer who came into the Broken Chimney.
“That is not going to work,” she said.
“It has to.” North seemed to decide the coffee shop owner had heard enough because he dropped the subject and picked up the doughnut bag. “Mind if I have one of these?”
“Don’t ask me,” Phish said.
“They’re mine,” she retorted.
“I got more in the car.” Phish turned to North. “They’re a dollar each. She’s an employee is the only reason she gets ’em free.”
North gazed at her. “He doesn’t like me much, does he?”
She gritted her teeth. “Nobody does. They think you’re arrogant.”
He nodded. “Fair enough.”
Phish suddenly looked embarrassed. “I forgot about your loss. I never met her, but I’m sure she was a good person.” He hurried toward the front door. “I’ve got more in the car. They’re on the house.”
Not long after retrieving a bag of day-old doughnuts, Phish took off. The small reprieve had given Tess a chance to get her mental house in order, and as soon as Phish was out the door, she rounded on North. “You’re not running out on your daughter. She’s your responsibility. You even think about abandoning her, and—”
“I’m not abandoning her. You’ll have whatever you need.”
“It’s not what I need that counts. It’s what she needs.”
His stony expression told her everything.
She retrieved the baby from the sling. “Never mind. I quit.”
She’d finally rattled him. “You can’t do that.”
She reached for a baby blanket with her free hand. “Take her. I won’t be any part of this.”
He stepped back. “All right! You win. What do you want?”
She wanted him to be a father to this tiny speck of a human, but that would take a while. “Don’t leave her.”
“You want me to stay at the schoolhouse?”
The last thing she wanted. She wrapped up the baby. “If that’s where she is, that’s where you are.”
And where Tess would have to be, too. Tess had been so fixated on the importance of keeping father and daughter together that she hadn’t thought about the misery of sharing space with him, but she couldn’t see an alternative. “You even think about leaving her, and you’re on your own. Am I clear enough?”
His lips barely moved. “More than clear.”
Wren had begun to stir again. “I need to change clothes, and you can’t put it off forever. Sooner or later you’ll have to hold her.”
“Later. I have a cold, remember.”
“You seem to be over it.” She stopped herself before she said more. If she had to coexist with him, she needed to broker some kind of peace. She knew how many disguises grief could wear, and she had to do what she’d sworn she wouldn’t do when she came to Tempest. She kept her voice steady. Her eyes dry. “I understand mourning better than you might think.