Page 3 of Not Part of the Plan
“Oh, my God! I got so sucked into this ad revenue report that I lost track of time,” Gia Pierce, Carter’s sister-in-law, gasped, skirting the island and dumping the bag on the floor. Her fingers flew over the confines of the wrap that housed her tiny bundle. I’ve got class at noon and private session after that. You’re still good with her until two, right?” she asked, handing the sleeping baby over to Carter.
“Beckett will be here for his shift to cover for me and Summer as soon as he gets out of his meeting so we can make sure the farm hasn’t burned down and Thrive is still thriving,” Carter recited, expertly tying himself into the wrap.
“There are fourteen diapers in there, and you better pray it’ll be enough.” Gia pointed at the bag. “Hey, Niko,” she said, giving him her sunshine grin and skimming a kiss over his rough cheek. “I didn’t know you were visiting!”
“Hey, Gia,” he said, returning the kiss. “Gorgeous as always.” He’d photographed her for Thrive’s New Year Yoga piece the year before, and they’d hit it off. However, he couldn’t imagine anyone not enjoying Gianna Pierce. She was strong, confident, and ridiculously flexible. She was also a disaster with details and constantly losing everything except her children. She and Carter’s brother Beckett, Blue Moon’s beloved mayor, ran herd on three kids, a dog, and a three-legged cat.
“Catch up later?” she demanded, plucking the glass out of his hand and sniffing.
“Sure. Vodka,” he said, answering her unasked question.
She surprised him by taking a healthy swig and sighing. “That’ll get me through class!
“How about dinner at the brewery tonight?” Carter suggested.
“Not cooking after the week we had? Hell. Yes.” Gia said. Her green eyes widened. “Oh! Speaking of the brewery before I forget again…” she dug through the tote on the floor and pulled out a large manila envelope. “This was accidentally delivered to Thrive’s office. It needs to go to the brewery. Can one of you sexy, strapping men drop it off with my sister? I think Emma’s been waiting for it.”
Gia’s phone chimed interrupting her stream of consciousness. “Shit. That’s my ‘you’re already late’ notice. Dinner tonight!” She swooped in and pressed a quick kiss to her daughter’s forehead. “Mommy loves you, Lydia.”
When the door banged closed behind her, an ear-splitting scream sounded from the great room at the same time that a rank stench rose from the baby strapped to Carter’s chest.
Carter wrinkled his nose. “Jesus, kid, what do they feed you?”
She answered by filling her diaper as if it were an Olympic sport.
“I’ll take the screaming,” Nikolai volunteered. Anything to stay away from that diaper. He knocked back the rest of his vodka, squared his shoulders, and marched into the great room.
“Coward!”
CHAPTER TWO
Nikolai used the temporary lull in screaming children to escape the Pierce house and run the package up to the brewery. Carter made him promise twice that he would give the brewery manager a head’s up on a Pierce family dinner.
“The last time we showed upen masseunannounced, she made us eat in the bottling room,” Carter had explained.
“Don’t you own the place?” Niko had asked.
“We also sign her paychecks. But that doesn’t make her less scary,” Carter had warned him.
Niko took the warning and the envelope and headed out on foot following the dirt path behind the cheery red barn that cut across the property to the brewery. Meatball the beagle jogged along at his heels.
The rich bloom of spring was so different here from New York’s careful, measured resurrection. The city had spent most of the wet winter blanketed in a soupy, gray slush that ruined shoes and kept moods foul. But here, under the upstate sunshine, spring was breathing life back into the fields and hills.
His photographer’s mind captured and catalogued the way the light played over the lush green grasses caressed by the warm breeze. If he were shooting it, he’d have the model face away from him dancing through the field on an endless, sun-drenched adventure.
But he wasn’t shooting.And if he was being honest with himself, this moment was the first he’d felt even remotely interested in picking up his camera in a long time. Boredom and lethargy had crept in behind the lens clouding his eye.
A flock of chickens darted out in front of him, and Meatball gave a half-hearted yip and waddled after them into the field. Niko’s boots scuffed at the dirt, and he turned his face toward the sunshine.
Pierce Acres and the funky little town had a certain novel appeal as did spending some time with Summer. He’d worried at first that she wouldn’t have room in her new life for him. But moving, marrying, and having twins hadn’t dampened Summer’s insistence that they remain friends. Between his sporadic visits to the farm, she made a point to come into the city to catch up with him nearly every month.
Friendship intact, he’d turned to her without thinking, without questioning, in his own time of confusion. Maybe a week or two of Blue Moon fresh air would be enough to snap him out of whatever funk he’d fallen into.
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Emmaline Merill rolled her eyes behind the hostess stand at John Pierce Brews as the supplier on the other end of the phone blatantly lied and then attempted to tap dance her way into the runaround.
“Lynlee, let me stop you right there,” Emma said briskly, flipping through the reservations on her tablet and taking note of the evening’s larger parties. “I ordered your stunning peacock blue table linens not only because they exactly match the groom’s eyes, but they are also a dead ringer for the bridesmaid’s dresses. So no, swapping out peacock blue for the periwinkle ones you tried to sneak past me won’t work. I have every confidence that you’ll do whatever it takes to get me the linens I ordered by tomorrow morning.”
