Page 15 of A Dream for Daphne

Here she went again. “It’s not easy,” he said. “Not everyone is as wonderful or as accepting as my mother.”

“You’re damn straight,” his mother said. “But when you find that woman, don’t you dare let her go.”

Like he’d had any choice with Ella.

He’d tried.

He looked like a fool in the end.

He still felt like one that he got all messed up in the head when he saw her in the store with her new man looking happy without a care in the world.

The smile that lit up her eyes when she used to look at him was now directed at someone the complete opposite of who he could be.

He wasn’t sure if that was a slap in the face or should make him feel better.

“Good advice to have,” he said. “If I find someone.”

“Whenyou do,” his mother said. “Stop saying if.”

“Got it,” he said. “And I need to get to work.”

“Bye, Abe. I’ll talk to you soon.”

He hung up, found the music he wanted to listen to, then slid his phone back in his pocket to start the tractor back up and drove off.

The wind hit his face like a heavy dewy damp cloth. The humidity was a bitch and it was part of the reason he wanted to do this. Any breeze was better than the stale air sitting in the sky waiting for the much-needed rain to fall.

But anyone who worked outside would tell you they’d prefer the rain at night or on the weekends.

He finished the top of the property, then got closer to the house and around back where he saw the nanny outside with Reese’s daughter again.

They were in a big sandbox building what looked to be some castles while a stroller was in the shade.

Holly, that was Reese’s daughter’s name. Named after Poppy’s mother who the three girls lost when they were young.

The toddler got up and ran out of the sandbox and toward the fence to wave at him as he came closer by.

He smiled and gave her a little wave back.

The nanny was smiling and his jaw dropped. She didn’t appear to recognize him and he imagined the hat pulled down on his head with his sunglasses on were shielding most of his face.

Motherfucker.

It was Daphne.

The woman who slipped out of his bed.

How do you track someone down with only their first name?

It was almost impossible without a lot of money and it’d made no sense for him to try to find her.

But it seemed like he did and she had no clue.

She turned quickly to go to the stroller and he spun around in the tractor laughing and formulating his next plan of action.

6

SWEET BONDING CONNECTION

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