Page 102 of Sloane

“Okay. Last name?”

“Youngman.”

Tammy looked over at me with a relieved smile. I’d wavered whether I should give her Sloane’s last name, and my BFF had been adamant that I not.

“First name?”

“Amelia. A-M-E-L-I-A.”

“But we’re going to call her Millie,” Tam interjected as she made a face at her goddaughter and cooed, “Yes, we are. Our little Millie angel.”

“Do you want to give her a middle name?”

I took a deep breath. I knew this was going to go over with my friend like a lead balloon.

“Sloane. S-L-O-A-N-E.”

“Oh, Ash,” Tammy exclaimed with a frown. “Why?”

“Because at least she’ll have something from him.”

“What she needs from him is monthly child support,” she grumbled.

“I said I was fine doing this on my own, and I meant it.”

“You’re not doing this alone,” my BFF reminded me.

“I know, but you know what I mean.”

“Where’s my grandbaby?” my mom exclaimed as she came through the door. She’d been in the room when Millie was born and had even cut the cord, and now she and Tammy seemed to be fighting over who got to hold the baby when I wasn’t breastfeeding.

Tammy was right—I wasn’t alone. I was lucky with the amount of support I had, but it wasn’t the same as having a partner.

The minute that thought entered my head, a deep voice asked, “Am I interrupting?”

Jeff stood in the doorway holding a bouquet of roses in varying shades of pinks and whites, interspersed with pink Peruvian lilies and white carnations. In his other hand was a pink and grey stuffed elephant.

Whoa—what kind of shenanigans was the Universe up to, now?

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Ashley

It felt serendipitous that starting my new assignment and moving into the beach house coincided with my apartment lease ending.

Moving day came, and Tammy took over directing the movers Travis Sterling had arranged as a “welcome to the team” bonus about which items were going with me and which were going to the storage unit I’d rented.

“And who is this Travis guy, again?” Tam asked as the movers took the last of the boxes out to the truck.

“Travis Sterling—the Sterling in Carson, Burns, Sterling and Cooper law firm. The man whose beach house I’m moving into. He’s the one who’s on the WWP board.”

“Is he single?”

“No. My understanding is the beach house was a push present for his wife when she had baby number two, or maybe it was their third child... Anyway, two of her siblings live in Boston, so she spends her summers in Cape Cod now, and they hadn’t been using the house here.”

“Maybe he has a brother you can date.”

I laughed. “Maybe.”

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