“It’s complicated, okay? And I’m not going to talk about it.”
Stan’s stare was unwavering and made Arnie uncomfortable. He wasn’t in the right mental place to share what he was feeling.
The nachos arrived just before the game started. By the third inning, he was lost inside his thoughts.
Every time he considered taking off to look for Summer, he was overcome with doubt and helplessness. Look where? And what if he found her only to learn she’d moved on and didn’t give a rat’s ass about him?
In the buffet of daily life, he had a ton of shit on his plate. King and Dawn’s relationship was heading to the altar. As a result, Jon was due back in time for their August wedding.
It seemed like his best course of action was to calm down, take care of business at home, and then in the autumn, when things were less hectic, he’d take some time off and go back to Santa Barbara to try to pick up her trail.
Yep. That was what he’d do. He’d get King married off, and then he’d clear the work deck so the only thing he had to do was find Summer.
17
“July twenty-second,” Summer muttered to herself. She scowled at the free wall calendar the people at the clinic gave her. It was supposed to be a happy, happy, joy, joy freebie, but the cheesy stock photos of smiling multi-cultural families rubbed her the wrong way.
“Whoa.” She gasped when a sharp kick next to her belly button gave her a start.
Caressing her big, round tummy, she smiled and took a few deep breaths.
“Easy Tinker Belly.”
Patting the biggest part of her bulging middle, she sent silent coded messages to the baby girl growing inside her.
“Can you hold off on the karate workout until after Mommy eats some breakfast? Thanks, sweetie.”
The sound of toaster ejecting a slice of organic bread signaled food was on the way to her growling stomach.
After slathering homemade honey butter on the warm bread, she sprinkled it with liberal amounts of brown sugar and cinnamon.
Balancing the slice of bread on a paper towel and made her way to the table beside a large window in the living room.
Barefoot and waddling like you’d expect a naturally thin woman sporting a huge pregnant belly to walk, she sighed when her butt hit the chair, and her legs stretched straight. Lately, she’d been concerned about her feet and not just because it got harder and harder to see them.
Waitressing at a small bagel bistro was taking its toll on her feet and lower back. Her six and a half months pregnant belly was huge, and some days, she had zero energy. All the walking, standing, and juggling required to do her job took a lot out of her.
The girls at the clinic were very helpful. They offered loads of practical advice. Exercising in small segments throughout the day and keeping a food journal were easy suggestions designed to help her focus on healthy choices.
Other than the part where she lived in a cash economy, had no credit cards or anything else requiring her to give a social security number, and operated under an assumed name, things were good.
Good, as in safe and okay. What more did she need?
All she had to say was thank god for good people. Cy and Joanne did her a solid by arranging a soft landing in, of all places, the San Fernando Valley. Los Angeles teemed with people. It wasn’t difficult to stay off the radar in a crowd of more than ten million.
Reed, bless his snarky big brother heart, stepped up big time, too. With their dad gone, he felt it was his job to take care of her. The first thing he did reduced Summer to tears. He showed up ten days after she arrived and gave her landlords an envelope with twenty thousand dollars in cash.
Not for rent. Rent was a one-dollar contract because her guest casita was attached to the house of a couple who were old friends of Cy’s.
Native Angelinos Bud and Lynda Gerry were card-carrying baby boomers. Their grown daughter had moved home after college, stayed for eighteen months, and then landed a fantastic career opportunity with a company in Palm Springs. The casita guesthouse addition built for her was empty, so they were more than happy to do a solid for someone in a pickle—especially after Sergeant Major Cyrus Westmoreland vouched for her.
No, the money Reed handed over went straight into Bud’s seven-hundred-pound solid steel safe