Loved Either Way, page 9
On the couch, Bexley flipped through channels, unbothered. “If it’s true …”
“Bex.”
Her cousin didn’t act as if Delaney had said a thing.
“What would you tell your kid if they came home one day and said to you,” Gracen asked Delaney, “Mom, so and so said I had a stripper’s name—what then?”
“Who would say that to a kid?” Delaney questioned.
Someone horrible.
“I might,” Bexley chimed in.
Of course.
Delaney side-eyed her cousin who had still yet to turn around on the couch. “I’d tell them their name is as beautiful as the person—or people—who own it. And the only people who have something to say about their name are just jealous that theirs aren’t as interesting or pretty.”
She also wouldn’t name her kid Amber—no offense to any Ambers, but it reminded her of names like Jessica or Tiffany. There were far better names to pick. Delaney didn’t add that bit out loud. Just in case Gracen did like the name.
It was her baby, and she would name it whatever she wanted.
“I like my name,” Bexley said, “it’s not a jealous thing.”
Right.
Delaney went back to her conversation, and what mattered there. Picking one’s battles, especially when it came to family, was a real skill she had needed to master early in life. “For the record, we’ve been doing this for an hour, Gracen, and not once have we got into the boy names.”
“I’m gonna let Malachi name the baby if it’s a boy.”
“Even if he names him something like Henry or—”
“Even then,” Gracen interjected. “Also, I like Henry, so …”
Delaney smiled at her reflection in the mirror. “Who knows? Maybe the baby will be a boy, and all this time we’ve spent going through names will be for nothing.”
“Of course,” Gracen added quieter, “I can’t get him to tell me any of the names he might pick.”
A hard laugh burst from Delaney. “Really?”
“Malachi says it’s too early. He needs time to work on a short list.”
“Like he has a long one to whittle down?”
At ten weeks along?
Delaney doubted that.
“What’s the chance he already has a name picked out if it’s a boy?” Delaney asked.
“Twin minds, you and I,” Gracen murmured. “I’ve considered that might be the case only because he gets this stupid little smile on his face whenever I bring up a boy name I found and liked in this damn book.”
“You have a book of baby names?”
Delaney thought Gracen was just trolling the internet or listing names off the top of her head like she had been, but apparently not.
“I might have picked one up a few days ago,” Gracen offered as if it wasn’t important.
“Have you considered ordering more?”
Her friend had little self-control when it came to shopping online and having things mailed directly to her door. Delaney remembered good and well what it was like to walk out of her apartment to find Gracen’s latest order had been delivered in a giant pile on their stoop.
“Maybe,” Gracen whispered, “but we don’t have to get into all of that.”
“Uh-huh,” Delaney replied.
She had caught onto Gracen’s tricks a long damn time ago.
“There could be a chance he thinks I might try to convince him to change the name if he tells me now. I mean, we do have another seven months to go, you know?”
“Would you?” she asked Gracen.
“Not on purpose.”
Delaney snorted. “I bet he’s just as invested in naming this kid as you.”
She only knew about the baby for a day—Malachi had undoubtedly known since day one.
“Oh, he’s invested,” Gracen agreed with a low laugh, “in keeping me distracted with all sorts of girl names.”
Huh. Did that mean … “Someone believes you’re having a boy.”
Delaney meant for the comment to be a joke, but Gracen’s answering silence confirmed that it might hold a bit of truth.
“Is that what you think, too?” she asked her friend.
Gracen let out a happy sigh. “I think …”
“Keep going.”
A chirp of a laugh answered back. “I think I’m gonna put Amber Rose on the list, too.”
“Yes!” came the holler from the couch. Bexley even fist pumped the air. “Stripper names for the win.”
Not too seriously, but throwing an old eyeliner stick at the back of Bexley’s head all at the same time, Delaney told her cousin, “Stop calling it that.”
She didn’t miss.
*
“Any reason you didn’t mention to Gracen that you had a date tonight?” Bexley asked as she leaned in the doorway of Delaney’s bedroom.
“Uh, no?”
“Why was that a question?”
“Because I didn’t really think to mention it,” Delaney said, her tone posing it like a question even though it wasn’t one.
It was the truth.
Delaney, standing slightly off kilter with one foot in suede ankle boots with a thick two-inch heel and another in a slightly shorter heeled boot that went up over her knees, eyed her reflection in the leaning mirror against the wall. Facing the foot of her bed, it cast rainbows in her room whenever the light filtered through the window and caught the reflective pane.
“You didn’t think to mention that you were going on your first date in over a year?” Bexley’s voice pitched higher at the end, like she couldn’t mentally grasp the concept.
“I have more interesting things to talk about with Gracen,” Delaney replied, turning on her taller heel to face her cousin. “Which is better—bootie or boot?”
“There’s three feet of snow outside. The boots.”
Delaney toyed with the hem of the short skirt where the dress fell to just below her mid-thigh. A sliver of skin showed when she moved and walked. Bending over would take careful mindfulness. “Yeah, but does the thigh-showing thing scream try to find out what’s under this skirt or should I do a thick hose with the bootie instead?”
She wanted her look to set the tone for her date with Lucas. Something she would do for any man she agreed to go to dinner with—he wasn’t a special case. The last impression Delaney intended to make was that she would be the all-you-can-eat buffet.
That was not the case.
There would be no menu including her.
“Who cares if he’s thinking about what is—or isn’t; are you wearing panties?—under your dress, Delaney? Weren’t you the one who spent the last half hour ranting at me about saying a name could be a stripper name? What was that patriarchal, feminist crap you spewed at me again? I forgot, sorry.”
Dammit.
“First of all, yes, I am wearing panties.”
“Thank God,” Bexley muttered.
“And I never said someone else couldn’t look like they wanted a man’s hands up their dress the first night he takes her out … just that I don’t, thank you.”
Not offering another detail more, Delaney spun back around to take in her dress and boot options once more. She waffled yet again. “Maybe the booties—”
“No, the boots, Delaney. The boots,” her cousin stressed. “Because it looks sexy as hell with that loose sweater dress look, you know? Yeah, a peek of your thighs will show—good. That’s the point. Skin doesn’t mean touch me. Also, you rock those boots.”
Bexley made good points.
“Good for you,” Delaney muttered.
“What?”
She smiled, turning around to face Bexley before bending down to remove the suede ankle boot. “You actually said hell—I mean it’s not Jesus, but …”
Bexley rolled her eyes. “Just because I’m taking a healthy break from my faith doesn’t mean I think we should do things vainly.”
“Mmhmm.”
At least, one of them had given that part of their life some thought. Lucas’ unwanted Bible remained untouched on the corner of her workstation, tucked behind the jar of Barbicide, at the salon. And of course, her cross necklace remained around her throat, but she didn’t give God much more thought. For the moment, she couldn’t emotionally or mentally afford to.
One thing at a time …
“So, what time is the date again?” Bexley asked.
Delaney fell to the end of her platform, queen size bed. The pale pink duvet fluffed up around her at the bottoms. As she worked her size seven foot into the leather boot, she told her cousin, “I’ve got half an hour before he’s supposed to show up outside.”
Which meant she managed to finish her makeup and get her hair curled into soft waves before having just enough time to pick an outfit. With that done, Delaney could breathe for a bit before her evening really got started. Just because she wouldn’t put out for a man on a first date had no bearing on the fact that she wanted to—in fact, the man hadn’t left her mind.
“A half an hour? That so?” Bexley asked.
“Yep, why?”
“And his name is …?”
Delaney gave her cousin a knock it off look. “Lucas. Lucas Dalton. Mind your business. Otherwise, if I don’t call or text at least once an hour, call the po-po and pass the name along. You can even write down the plate number for good measure. Okay?”
She was joking. Mostly. It wasn’t Delaney’s first date.
Bexley rolled her eyes at the extremes, but she snickered as she exited the room as fast as she came, muttering, “The po-po … Something is wrong with you.”
Nope.
Delaney was just fine—most of the time. It was everybody else that didn’t get things right.
Chapter 10
The noisy ringtone cut through the music on the radio, dragging Lucas’ attention away from the road for a mere moment. Long enough to see who was calling, and to roll his eyes at the name on the dashboard.
J. Dalton, it read.
No surprise there.
His gaze went back to the road while he picked up the call from his younger brother using the button on his steering wheel. Without a proper hello. “Didn’t I tell you that I was meeting up with—”
“Delaney, yeah. At six. That’s why I’m calling,” Jacob interrupted like it should have been obvious to his brother. “To make sure everything was good, you know?”
“Mmhmm.” Lucas didn’t believe that for a second. “Not to see if you could pry more details out of me?”
About the date.
Delaney.
Anything at all.
Jacob tried for every bit of it only to get Lucas’s somber stonewalling in response. There wasn’t much to tell—yet. Maybe he would when—or if—that changed. Lucas couldn’t say. He had an entire evening to get through with Delaney yet.
His brother’s chuckles echoed over the rental car’s speakers. “My bad for being interested in your life when you finally have something interesting going on, bro.”
He did have a point there.
Lucas still refused to concede. “Was it just your interest when you tried to get her last name out of me?”
“Nah, that was for research purposes. The online kind. The type you can’t do because you won’t get out of the stone ages and make a fucking social media profile. Even the brewery has its own pages, man.”
Lucas didn’t dignify the comment with a response because there wouldn’t be one worth his breath. A waste of his time.
Nothing about mindlessly scrolling a glowing feed on the screen of his phone or laptop to watch the online lives of acquaintances and strangers play out appealed to him, and he wouldn’t apologize for not pretending that it did to please his brother.
Besides, he doubted there was much about Delaney Reed—online or otherwise—for Jacob to find that Lucas hadn’t already learned about the young woman. A social media profile felt like a resume in the way it laid out a person’s age, interests, and surface history attached to a smiling photo or candid shot with friends.
He knew those things already.
Because she told him.
At least Jacob didn’t hide his intentions. Lucas had to give his brother that, if nothing else.
“Plus, the crazy ones are good at hiding it sometimes,” Jacob added. “Maybe I could have saved you a shitty evening, but now we’ll have to wait and see how it plays out, huh? I will say, this way is better for me if we end up getting a good story out of it.”
“Knock it off.”
“I’m just saying—keep it mind.” Jacob barked a laugh before saying, “Oh, yeah!”
His sudden declaration made Lucas sigh.
“What?”
“She’ll have access to sharp blades tonight, too.”
Jacob’s cackles created static in the speakers, and he sounded far too pleased with himself and his teasing. Nothing stopped him from having a good laugh at his brother’s expense. Lucas really shouldn’t have told his brother about his plans for the date.
“Play your cards wrong,” Jacob said, “and this night could go way left, bro.”
“Go to hell, Jacob,” Lucas returned, jokingly.
As much as he could manage, anyway. The minutes of levity gave him the chance to focus on something other than the nerves churning in his stomach, and the navigational screen focusing on his current address of destination.
She was a street away.
He tried not to think about it.
“All bullshit aside,” Jacob said, pulling Lucas out of his nervous thoughts, “I hope you have a great night.”
Lucas grinned, checking the rearview mirror as he pulled up to a red light. “Me, too.”
In the background, a quiet robotic voice repeated that he should make a left turn and a right in thirty meters to reach the block of quaint apartments he could already see from his position.
“And you’re staying out of trouble, too, right?” Lucas asked, choosing his words carefully so it didn’t seem like he was prying too hard.
Jacob never responded well to that sort of thing, but Lucas felt like he had to keep checking in on his brother lately. Not for any particular reason—and every time he asked, Jacob assured that he was fine—but he couldn’t escape the dread that had been following him whenever he let his mind focus on his brother. Like something bad was right around the corner.
“Of course, bro. Why wouldn’t I be? Did you find flowers?” Jacob asked.
Apparently, Lucas should give his kid brother more credit. He remembered the one thing Lucas hadn’t given much thought about regarding this evening—everything else was planned down to a T. Or so Lucas thought until Jacob pointed out something he lacked during their conversation earlier in the day. One might think a person could find a bushel of roses easily the day after Valentine’s, but he had not been that lucky.
Lucas wasn’t a flowers and dinner sort of man. Not that he couldn’t—or didn’t like to—wine and dine a woman, but his day-to-day schedule rarely allowed for a lot of personal time between his work and family obligations. His last date, a blind setup by a mutual friend, went nowhere fast. That had been more than a year ago. It wasn’t a surprise that his brother had to remind him to bring something pretty and aromatic—flowers—for his date.
“I did find some,” Lucas confirmed. “Well, I picked up a pot of Chrysanthemums. It works.”
“Mums? She doesn’t have cats, right?”
How would Lucas know?
“What does that matter?” he asked.
Jacob made a noise of indifference. “I think they’re toxic to cats. And she’s in an apartment. So it’s not like she’s going to have them outside.”
“Great. Note to self—ask about a cat.”
His brother laughed louder.
The prick.
On the other hand, his voice assistant, a program on his phone, heard the command, and replied robotically: Note added to your task list, Mr. Dalton.
Fuck his whole life.
Then, another thought poked Lucas.
“How did you know she lives in an apartment?” he demanded as the light turned green.
There was really only one way when Lucas put the information in a single spot.
Even if Jacob hesitated to answer. “I mean …”
“Did you log into my email to check my calendar?”
“You gave me nothing, bro,” Jacob returned, his tone suggesting that his brother should have expected this end result. “Nothing—what did you think I would do? It doesn’t matter. I also found nothing.”
“Jacob, stay out of my email,” Lucas snapped. “For one. Two, mind your damn business.”
“Yeah, yeah. Call me tomorrow?”
“Screw you.”
Lucas hung up the call like he did when he picked it up.
No hello.
No goodbyes.
Jacob was lucky that Lucas loved the shit—for all his antics and the heartache his kid brother had caused him over the years, he was most grateful to be beyond those harder times. Sure, Jacob had his demons, and he struggled with boundaries sometimes, but Lucas gave him grace.
Or, he tried.
His brother’s laughter was still ringing in his ear even after he’d pulled into the shared open lot for a square block of apartment buildings that all looked the same. Painted a quaint white with lace-like detailing at the apexes of the eaves, the buildings reached tall for the dark sky. He found the one building toward the back of the lot with the trio of letters over the entrance and parked in one of three visitor spots under a towering spruce tree. In the passenger seat, next to the black pot of maroon mums, sat his phone.
It blinked with a new text.
He picked it up to see the apology, well wishes, and a call me tomorrow from his brother, but he swiped it away with a shake of his head. He would call his brother in the morning, and they’d definitely revisit the hacking conversation, but there was no love lost there.
Jacob couldn’t help himself.
Not when it came to Lucas.
He shot off a text to the number directly below his brother’s in the recent contact list. Not that there was a lot to see in that conversation thread. His texts with Delaney had been mostly confirmatory of their date, times and so forth. His most recent message, just sent, said simply: I’m outside whenever you’re ready.
