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

the idea,” Wyatt said. “But I’m not sure he really understands all it involves. He just knows I’m worried all the time, and that worries him.”

“Hey Dad!” Bo ran toward their table with a little girl with blond braids close on his heels. “Anna says we can have ice cream for dessert if you say it’s okay.”

“Hi Scout,” Wyatt said, reaching out and tugging one of the girl’s pigtails. “How was your pizza?”

“She hates pizza,” Bo announced. “She had ’pasketti. And I had some, too.”

From the looks of it, Grace thought, Both Bo and Scout had applied as much spaghetti sauce to their faces as they had to their bellies.

“It was dee-lish!” Scout announced. She was kneeling on the patio, and Sweetie was jumping up to lick her face.

“This is Sweetie,” Bo told his friend. “We get to keep her at our house at night.”

“Cool!” Scout said. “Does she go to your mom’s house, too?”

Bo’s shoulders sagged. “No. You know who is allergic. But I get to keep her at Dad’s, and he’s going to teach her how to fetch and stuff.”

Wyatt took a napkin and wiped the outer layer of sauce from Bo’s face. “Tell Scout’s mom I said it was okay for you to have ice cream.” He reached in his pocket and took out two dollar bills and handed it to the little boy. “That’s to pay for your dessert. Don’t spend it all in one place. Right?”

“Okeydoke.” The two ran back inside.

“He’s the real reason I hesitate to pursue this thing with the state,” Wyatt said, nodding in his son’s direction. “Dad and I will be okay. Theoretically, we’d come out of the deal with a little money. Enough to pay our bills and keep a roof over our heads. But Jungle Jerry’s is Bo’s legacy. He’s grown up with the park. He thinks Cookie is his little sister. How can I sell that out from under my son?”

Grace met his eyes. “You’re asking me?”

He clasped his hand over hers. “I’m asking you.”

“It seems to me that Bo’s legacy is you. And his grandfather. Times change. You know that as well as I do. I think we have to be flexible to survive. Look at me. When my work as an interior designer dried up—I mean, in this economy how many people need a twelve-thousand-dollar hand-knotted silk rug or eighteen thousand dollars’ worth of window treatments? I had to reinvent myself. I had to go back to my roots, making do with what I had, doing most of it myself, with a lot of creativity and not much money. You do what you have to do, right?”

“Yeah.” Wyatt sighed. “I just keep thinking, if I could hold on a little longer…”

He laughed. “Like I did with my marriage. And you see how well that turned out.”

“It was different for me,” Grace admitted. “These months, since I walked out on Ben, I’ve been blaming him for everything. And he’s responsible for a lot of it, truly. But I think in the last few years I changed. My belief system and my values changed. It became more about status, having the best, the most expensive everything. Even though I started out writing DIY on Gracenotes, that changed, too. We monetized, got advertisers, and I needed to make them happy in order to survive. Or so I thought.”

She took a sip of her beer. “I guess I sold out. And it wasn’t entirely Ben’s fault. I liked all that free stuff, giving big parties, living in the big house in the gated subdivision. And I loved having what seemed like unlimited resources available for any project I dreamed up. Ultimately, along the way, that’s when our marriage started to go south.” She gave a wry smile. “Rochelle would tell you I got too big for my britches.”

Wyatt scooted his chair over toward her and leaned down to give her an unconvincing leer. “Your britches look just fine to me.”

“Wyatt?”

He turned around to see Anna Burdette standing there, with Scout and Bo holding on to her hands. Anna gave Grace a friendly, if curious smile. “Hi there.”

Wyatt stood. “Anna Burdette, this is my friend Grace…”

“Davenport,” Grace finished for him, not wanting to be introduced by her married name. She shook Anna’s hand. “I hear Scout’s the Babe Ruth of T-ball.”

Anna’s nose crinkled as she laughed. “To hear Wyatt tell it, you might think so.” She was studying Grace’s face. “I don’t mean to keep staring at you, but I keep thinking I know you from someplace.”

“She’s a famous blogger,” Wyatt said.

Anna snapped her fingers. “Gracenotes, right? Your blog is my guilty pleasure. I read it in the middle of the night when I can’t get to sleep.”

“Thanks,” Grace said. “Actually, I’ve changed the name. My old blog got, er, co-opted by my soon-to-be ex. Check out TrueGrace, if you will.”

“I definitely will,” Anna said. “In the meantime, the kids have been telling me about this spectacular little dog named Sweetie. I hear she’s going to learn all kinds of tricks over there at Jungle Jerry’s.”

“She’s actually Grace’s dog, but she can’t keep her where she’s living right now, so we’re sort of sharing custody. Bo has big plans for her,” Wyatt said.

“Anyway,” Anna said, “the reason I came by … Jack had to go on to work, but I told the kids I’d take them to play putt-putt for an hour or so, if that works for you. I can drop him off back at your place around eight.”

“Please, Dad, please, please, please?” Bo was hopping up and down.

“I guess that would be okay,” Wyatt said. “But not too much later, right, buddy? We’ve got a big game tomorrow, and your granddad is making you pancakes in the morning.”

“Don’t worry, the assistant coach is not gonna risk letting her star catcher suffer from sleep deprivation,” Anna said.

“Let me give you some money to pay for Bo’s golf,” Wyatt said, half standing to get to his wallet.

“Not necessary. I’ve got buy-one, get-one