Ladies' Night Andrews, Kay (great novels .txt) 📖

strip shopping center looked even gloomier after midnight. Empty beer bottles and discarded fast-food wrappers littered the asphalt pavement. Blue lights flickered from behind the tattoo parlor storefront, and she could see a burly, bare-chested man inside, reading something on a computer screen. There were only three vehicles left in the parking lot, and neither of them was the shiny yellow VW. But one was a pickup truck.

Grace pulled along beside it and rolled her window down. “I thought you had to get home to your little boy.”

“I did,” Wyatt said. “He’s asleep. My dad’s there, so it’s cool.”

“You came back to check on her too, right?”

Wyatt Keeler got out of the truck and walked over. “Paula’s gone,” he said sheepishly. “I looked in the windows of the office, and I could see the sofa, so she’s definitely not there. I checked around back, too, just to make sure her car wasn’t there.”

Grace let out a long breath. “That’s a relief.”

“Yeah,” Wyatt said. He thumped the roof of her car. “Guess I’ll head back home. See ya.”

Grace didn’t start her car just then. “You’re not such a bad guy after all, are you?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Who said I was?”

“I was in the courtroom the day your ex’s lawyer showed that video, remember? You put a fist through that guy’s car window. It looked pretty scary from where I was sitting.”

He sighed. “If I had it to do over again, I’d have turned around and walked away. Next time I will. What if I told you my side of the story?”

“What? Here?” Grace looked at the clock on her dashboard and considered. “Can we go someplace else? This place gives me the creeps. Gus’s is just down the road.”

She followed him in her own car to a brightly lit doughnut shop a few miles away. Seated at the counter, just a few stools away from a couple of goth-looking teenagers, Wyatt ordered coffee and two apple crullers while Grace ordered an iced tea—and a chocolate-iced cake doughnut.

He looked surprised.

“I usually don’t eat a lot of sweets, she explained. “But I’ve been losing weight, since, you know, and anyway, their chocolate doughnuts are the best. Ever.”

“You know this place?” He looked around. The dull green linoleum floor tiles were chipped and cracked, the red leather booths were held together with duct tape, and the white tiled walls were lined with yellowing framed newspaper clippings and faded family photos.

“Yeah, we used to come to Gus’s all the time when I was a kid,” Grace said. “It was a big treat.”

“So, you really grew up here? Living above the Sandbox?”

She nodded. “How about you?”

“Sarasota. Kinda like you. We didn’t exactly live above the company store, but we did have a house right around the corner from Jungle Jerry’s.”

“Right,” Grace said. “I almost forgot.”

The waitress brought their food, and Wyatt took a huge bite of his cruller. “Sorry,” he said, in between chews. “I missed dinner tonight. I’m starved.”

He washed down the first doughnut with coffee. “You’ve lived here, always? Never moved away?”

“I went to college at Florida State, which is where I got my interior design degree, and after college, I moved down to Miami. We moved back here a few years ago.”

“Miami. Is that where you met your husband?”

“Afraid so. What about you? Where did you meet … what’s her name?”

“Callie. We met while I was in grad school at Clemson. But for some reason, I thought it was more important to get married than finish my master’s. I was working for a seed company in South Carolina, and Callie was pregnant with Bo. Jungle Jerry’s was in rough shape, and my dad really wanted to retire, and my mom was begging me to come back down here to run it. She’d been diagnosed with cancer then, but she didn’t want that to influence my decision. Anyway, we came back, Bo was born, and my mom died just a few months later.”

“I’m sorry,” Grace said.

“She got to hold him right after he was born, babysit him a few times, before she got really sick,” Wyatt said. “And we named him after her father, which really tickled her.”

“How old is Bo?”

“Six,” Wyatt said. “Just finished first grade.” He reached for his cell phone, scrolled through his photos, and held it out for her to see.

A sturdy freckle-faced boy with soft brown bangs and his father’s dimples grinned into the camera, showing off two missing front teeth. He wore a baseball cap set back on his head and had an aluminum bat resting on his right shoulder.

Wyatt touched the screen with his fingertip. “Kid lives and breathes baseball. He’s as crazy about it as I was at that age.”

“Very cute,” Grace said, taking the phone to study the little boy better. “What position does he play?”

“He’s a catcher. Like I was. I tried to get him to play shortstop, told him he didn’t want to be crawling in the dirt like I did the whole time I played ball, but he was determined to catch. He’s not bad, either, even if I am his dad. And his coach.”

She handed his phone back.

“So. I know you said you don’t have kids. Ever want them?”

Her face colored, and he instantly knew he’d made a misstep.

“Sorry,” he said. “That’s a pretty personal question. Forget I asked.”

Grace picked at the chocolate frosting with her fingernail. “That’s okay,” she said finally. “I do want kids. Well, I did. I’d started seeing a fertility specialist…” She blushed again. “I guess it’s a good thing it never got that far.” She gave him a sideways glance. “I don’t know that I’m cut out to be a single parent.”

“Sometimes, you don’t have a choice,” Wyatt said grimly. “I never thought I’d be a single dad, that’s for sure. But I’m not sorry we had Bo. He’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

She broke off a piece of the doughnut and chewed. “You asked me if I wanted to hear your side