Page 3 of Delivery After Dark
“I hope so, too, but if we’re not, I’ll make sure we celebrate right here.”
“I know… I just miss everything.”
“Home stretch, love.”
Abby rested her hands on her massive belly. “Literally.”
Laughing, he kissed her and rested his forehead against hers. “I’m so ridiculously proud of you.”
“I’m ridiculously proud of you, too.”
“What? Why?”
“It’s not easy taking care of a two-year-old completely on your own for weeks on end, while also working.”
“That’s nothing compared to what you’ve been doing.”
“It’s not nothing. Knowing he’s with you makes it possible for me to get through this.”
“How about we be proud of us?”
“Yes, that works. We’re going to have to stick together to get through the next eighteen years.”
“I’m here for it. I’m here for all of it.”
And he would be. She knew that without a shadow of a doubt. A long and difficult journey had led her to this moment with this man, and even as she went nuts from the boredom, she couldn’t wait for their babies to arrive and to watch their five sons grow up with Adam by her side every step of the way.
* * *
Sierra Mancini hated funerals, but of course, everyone did. No one got up in the morning, gave a good stretch and thought, Today would be a great day for a funeral. Since she’d lost her mother and two much-loved grandparents in the span of eight months a few years back, she’d avoided them and the memories of deep grief whenever possible.
Today, however, she’d pulled herself together to support Billy Weyland’s older brother, Morgan, who’d lost the last of his immediate family when Billy died during Hurricane Ethel. Sierra had been friends with Billy and had been part of the island-wide effort to support Morgan in the months since the tragic loss of his brother.
For a time, it’d been assumed that Morgan wasn’t going to have a funeral for Billy, but then he’d decided there needed to be something, hence today’s gathering at the island’s nondenominational church, presided over by Pastor Joshua Banks, who’d also been a source of comfort to Morgan since Billy’s body was found in the Salt Pond.
The whole thing was so dreadfully sad that it would’ve been much easier to sit it out, to schedule appointments at Refresh and Renew, her massage studio, to do anything other than sit in the pew next to her friend Duke Sullivan and his fiancée, McKenzie Martin. The two of them were stupid in love, holding hands even in church. For a time, she’d had “feelings” about the way they’d fallen madly in love over a couple of weeks in the fall.
Duke had been Sierra’s backup plan. She’d thought that if neither of them ended up with anyone by the time they were forty, maybe they’d try to make a go of it. Except Duke had harbored no such thoughts, and when she’d shared her vision of the future with him… Suffice to say the entire exchange with one of her closest friends had been mortifying. Especially since McKenzie had been waiting for Duke in his bed while she talked to him outside.
Ugh. She couldn’t even think about that night without wanting to cringe. Thankfully, neither Duke nor McKenzie had held Sierra’s drunken confession against her, and they’d gone on as friends as if nothing had ever happened.
But for Sierra, that night had served as a wake-up call. For one thing, she’d all but stopped drinking after that, limiting herself to an occasional glass of wine to be sociable, but no more whiskey or vodka, which was what had gotten her into trouble that night. She’d also decided to get real about her love life and stop looking for reasons to avoid men and relationships and everything that went with them.
Over the years, she’d been on a lot of first dates, a few second and third dates and even dated one guy for a month before he got tired of being “stuck on an island” and set out for more exciting parts. That disappointment had been followed by a go-nowhere relationship with Kyle, one of the deckhands on the ferries. Was it any wonder she’d become bitter about all things dating and men and was sick of looking for something she was probably never going to find?
In addition to cutting back on alcohol, she’d been listening to self-help books while she worked, hoping to find the secret to a happy single life in one of them. So far, the answers remained elusive, but she wasn’t giving up. If she was going to be by herself for the rest of her life, she was going to find a way to be content in that life, even as everyone around her was blissfully in love, pregnant and raising kids—or planning to be soon.
Not that she was dying to be married or anything like that. However, it would be nice to have someone to hang out with after work, someone who was hers and hers alone. That wouldn’t suck, as long as it was the right guy and not another in a string of noncommittal idiots who were looking for a mother, not a partner.
Was it too much to ask to find a grown-up man who knew who he was and what he was about and wasn’t looking to her to take care of him or fix all his problems for him? She’d found that, yes, it was too much to ask.
There’d been an outbreak of love in her group of friends, and she’d gotten to see Duke so happy with McKenzie, as well as her friend Jace Carson with his love, Cindy Lawry, and even Dr. Kevin McCarthy and his wife, Chelsea, who were expecting their second child together… Each of them had taken enormous risks with their hearts and well-being and had hit the jackpot with amazing partners.
She wanted what they had and had hoped to find that special connection for herself but wasn’t willing to leave Gansett to make it happen. That was the last thing she wanted to do. She loved her island home and had a nice business running the only massage studio, but the lure of true love had her considering her options as another long, lonely winter loomed before her. Sierra was fine during the madness that invaded the island in the spring and went on until well into October. But it was this time of year, when everything slowed down, that the loneliness set in, and she expected that to be worse this year without Duke to hang out with the way they used to when he was single, too.
Sierra knew a lot of people who’d found their person on Gansett, so that gave her hope that she might find someone right there. But if not, she wasn’t willing to shake up her whole life, even if it meant finding her soul mate. No, if he was out there, he needed to come to her, because she wasn’t going anywhere.
Before she’d had a front-row seat to Duke falling so hard for McKenzie, she would’ve scoffed at the notion of soul mates. Whatever that was. But now she’d seen it and felt the palpable energy between the two of them, and damn it, she wanted some of that for herself, even as she acknowledged the unlikelihood of finding it on a tiny remote island miles off the coast of the smallest state. What were the odds?
