Love, Laughter, and Happily Ever Afters Collection (158 page)

“Listen, Claire. This has been fun but—”

“I’m sorry,” she quickly interrupted. “I know that your daughter is off-limits. You made that boundary perfectly clear up front. I shouldn’t have overstepped. But there’s no reason to do anything rash.”

“I’m not being rash.” Eddie had found that, in situations like this, it was best to rip the Band-Aid off in one swift motion. Which usually just meant being bluntly honest. “We both knew this was temporary and it’s run its course.”

Crossing her toned, tan arms in front of her naked chest, she cocked one brow in disbelief. “Are you actually breaking up with me?”

“No.” Eddie again went with honesty. “That would imply this was a relationship. It wasn’t.”

“Get out!” Claire raised her voice in anger, hurt, or embarrassment. Eddie couldn’t be sure.

He didn’t wait around to find out. Grabbing his keys and wallet, he walked out the hotel room door with purposeful strides. No goodbye. No looking back.

He knew that he should feel bad. Eddie honestly never went into these arrangements with the intention to hurt anyone. In fact, he was trying to avoid hurting anyone. Which was exactly what these empty, non-personal encounters were supposed to be about. Which was why he
always
made sure that whoever he was seeing was on the same page that he was. They all started out that way, but somewhere in the midst of these should-be-simple-and-uncomplicated affairs, pages got turned and these women started writing their own books. And their books usually ended with a happily-ever-after, wedding bells, and a white picket fence.

As the glass doors that led to the parking lot slid open, a gust of wind rolled in like a giant wave. The cool air felt refreshing against his stubbled face as he made the short walk across the parking lot. Getting into his truck, he turned the ignition and his eyes glanced down at the LED screen that told him it was only nine fifteen. He hadn’t even spent an hour with Claire.

As he pulled out of the hotel parking lot, he decided that this would be the last night of its kind. No more meaningless hook-ups. Part of Eddie felt relieved at his mental declaration. But that annoying-as-all-hell voice chose this moment to speak up, asking where exactly this newest declaration left him. Since Eddie had absolutely no plans to settle down and now would not be casually dating, where did that leave his sex life?

Looked like he would just have to take matters into his own hands,
literally
, for the foreseeable future. It was the right thing to do. The mature thing to do. The only thing to do.

Damn
.

CHAPTER FOUR

HALEY GINGERLY STEPPED over the gigantic stuffed animals and navigated around the array of Barbies that littered the floor of Emily’s room. She really should have had her clean it up before bed. After Emily had fallen asleep during
Transformers
, Haley had just carried her up to bed. Once she made it past the toy wreckage that was cluttered around the bed, Haley tiptoed out of the room.

Shutting the door as quietly as possible, Haley took a deep breath, her gaze immediately falling on the open door across the hall—the doorway that led to Eddie’s bedroom. She had only been inside it once when she and Emily had been playing hide-and-seek and Em had hidden in his closet.

She’d never set foot in there before or since. There was no reason that she should. Well, other than the fact that she wanted to.
Really
wanted to.

From her memory, she knew that Eddie had a king-sized bed, a sitting chair, nightstands, and a dresser. As tempting as it was to go and take another peek, just to see if anything had changed—or at least that’s what she was telling herself—she headed down the wooden staircase. Stalkerville was not a place Haley felt comfortable visiting.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket, and pulling it out, she saw that it was a text from her sister Krista.

Hey Chicky! Chris has a friend who wants to meet you and he is extremely sexylicous. What time can you meet us for drinks?

Haley knew what she
should
do. She should tell her sister that she would be done here by midnight and could meet them then. She
shouldn’t
blow her sister and a “sexylicious” guy off to spend time with Eddie after he gets home from his “date.” Decisions. Decisions. Decisions.

She could hide behind the fact that she had wanted to speak to Eddie about Emily, but even she knew that was a weak excuse. There was no pressing need to have that conversation tonight. She could talk to him tomorrow. It was his day off and she lived right across the street from him.

She flopped down on the couch, her head swimming with indecision. In one short month, she would be turning twenty-eight. Like a lot of other girls her age, her biological clock was ticking.

Husband. Family. Kids. Haley wanted all of that.

In her life, when she set goals for herself, she would map out a plan and then make the necessary adjustments to said plan when life inevitably threw her curve balls. So in theory, going out with her sister tonight would be the right move in her goals for her personal life. Staying here with Eddie would be a step back.

Haley’s phone buzzed again. Looking down, she saw that it was once again from her sister.

Just showed him your pic. Now he really wants to meet you.

Haley quickly typed back:

Have to work early tomorrow. Can’t come out tonight.

Sent.

Did she have to work tomorrow? Yes. Was it early? Well, that depended on whose definition she was using. To Haley, nine a.m. was early. Was that the reason that she wasn’t going out? No.

As she stared down at her phone, another message came through.

Seriously?! Early shift my ass. Have fun playing house at Eddie’s while he’s out on a date!

Krista’s words should have made Haley second-guess her decision to not go out and meet Mr. Sexylicious, but they didn’t. Maybe one day, very possibly in the near future, she would have to start to move past her feelings for Eddie. To accept the fact that they were never going to be more than just friends. Neighbors.

But today was not that day.

Standing, she began picking up Barbies, coloring crayons, and books. Emily knew how to play and play hard, but Haley made a mental note that she really needed to work on her cleaning up skills.

As the oldest of four girls, Haley was used to cleaning up. It was like second nature to her. She actually enjoyed it. She remembered that, when she was younger, after her sisters would go to bed, she and her mom would stay up and clean. In the summer, they would drink iced tea after, and in the winter, they would have hot tea or sometimes hot chocolate. Those nights held some of her best childhood memories.

One-on-one time with their mom Sandra, had been hard to come by. Not only had she had her hands full with her four little girls, she’d also stepped in and helped out as much as she could with Haley’s cousins Seth, Riley, Jason, Alex, and Bobby in their mom’s absence. Aunt Cheryl had left when the boys were young. She’d been diagnosed as bipolar and spent years in and out of hospitals before finally overdosing and passing away.

Haley remembered being at her aunt’s funeral when she was the same age as Emily was now and feeling terribly guilty over the fact that she had been so grateful it wasn’t her mom lying in the casket. The memory of sitting in the wooden pew beside her mom, directly behind all five of her cousins and Uncle Bob, would forever be etched in her mind’s eye along with the feeling of the wood digging into the backs of her knees as she held her mom’s hand and imagined what it would be like if she weren’t there. With her.

Losing her mom was unfathomable to Haley, and she had no idea how her cousins had dealt with it. But they had.

She shook off the melancholy that overwhelmed her as she pulled the vacuum out of the closet. Luckily, it was a fairly quiet machine and Emily slept like a rock so she didn’t have to worry about waking her up.

Eddie hated it when Haley cleaned on the nights that she was here with Em. He always told her to just relax after Emily was asleep. But Haley liked keeping busy and it made her feel good to help out.

So she pulled out her earbuds, plugged them into her phone, and started her cleaning playlist. Yes, she had a cleaning playlist. She also had several exercise playlists, a getting-ready-to-go-out playlist, and a bow-chicka-bow-wow-getting-busy playlist.

Unfortunately, she hadn’t heard that one in years.

* * * * *

JUST AS EDDIE passed the city limits of Harper’s Crossing, his phone rang loudly. Glancing down, he saw that it was Riley calling. Eddie hadn’t been happy about Riley and Chelle getting together at first. Not. At. All.

He and Riley had been wild. Really wild. Notoriously wild in their teens.

Eddie could have never imagined his best friend settling down, being a good husband and a good father. But he was.

Then again, most people in this town hadn’t thought that Eddie would be a good father. In fact, when Lacey had taken off, he’d heard rumors that there was a pool going around where people were betting on how long it would be before Eddie’s parents would have had to step in and take care of Emily. No one guessed that Eddie would step up like he had.

He’d proven everyone wrong, just like Riley had proven him wrong. Now, he had to admit that there was honestly no one Eddie would rather his little sister be with.

Hitting the speaker button, he heard his niece Mya crying in the background.

“Everything okay?” Eddie asked.

“Yeah, it’s fine. Chelle’s out with Katie and I’m having a tough time getting Mya down. She wants her momma.”

Those words caused a tightening in Eddie’s chest. He wondered how many nights Emily had cried herself to sleep because she’d wanted her mom. They didn’t talk about Lacey much, but Eddie knew that his daughter thought about her a lot. He’d overheard her talking to Haley about it, and sometimes she would draw pictures of her.

Not that she’d ever seen her because Lacey had left when Emily was still an infant. But Eddie had shown her pictures of her mom.

“Man, I don’t know how you do the single dad thing. The Marines were nothing compared to this. I’m exhausted.” Riley’s voice sounded worn out.

Eddie had to smile. His friend was a badass Marine. Riley had served ten years in the military and been Special Ops. But Eddie could definitely relate to the fact that one crying baby could make that seem like a walk in the park.

He could remember countless nights walking the floor with Emily, not having a clue if what he’d been doing was right or wrong. He wasn’t close to his parents so he hadn’t reached out to them, but he’d already been working for Bob, Riley’s dad, at Sloan Construction. And Bob had raised five boys practically alone, so he’d helped a lot.

“I remember something your dad told me that helped. You can’t always fix what’s wrong. Sometimes they just need to cry.”

“Damn, I forget sometimes that my dad did this
five
times.” Riley’s voice quieted as the sounds of the crying faded. “She’s asleep. Finally.”

“You’ll be fine, man. And luckily for you, Chelle doesn’t go out much.”

Eddie’s little sister had always been a homebody. Even before she’d gotten married and had a baby, she’d always preferred a quiet night in to going out and partying. But if there was one person who could entice his sister to leave the house, it would be Katie. Those two had been inseparable from the moment Eddie and Chelle had moved to town when Chelle was in the second grade. They’d always been as close as sisters, and now, because Katie was married to Jason, Riley’s brother, they actually were family.

“Hold on a sec. Just let me put her down.” Eddie heard rustling over the line and then Riley’s voice came back on. “You got plans tomorrow?”

“Nope.” Eddie tried to spend every Sunday doing whatever Emily wanted. It was ‘their’ day. So chances were there would be roller skating and Barbies in his near future.

“I’m grilling around noon. You and Em want to come over around nine?” Riley asked.

Eddie was suspicious. “If you’re not grilling ’til noon, why do we have to be there at nine?”

“So you don’t miss the swing set assembly.”

There it was.

“Don’t you have four brothers who can help you with that?” Eddie was just busting his balls. He didn’t care about helping out.

“Yeah, so you should feel honored that I asked you,” Riley said.

“They’re busy,” Eddie guessed.

“Yep.”

“All right. See you tomorrow.” Eddie smiled as he hung up.

As he palmed the steering wheel while turning onto his street, his heart started pounding harder in his chest. Flexing his fingers open and closed around the plastic wheel, Eddie tried to calm down his body’s reaction to the fact that in about sixty seconds he would be seeing Haley. In that dress. In his house.

He’d made up his mind on the drive home, that he would not be engaging in their normal pattern of heading out to the patio or sitting in front of the fireplace on the couch and talking for hours.

Boundaries. Rules. Discipline.

Those were the things that he needed to enforce when it came to the all-too-tempting Haley Sloan. Otherwise, he didn’t have a chance in hell of keeping his hormones, his hands, and he feared even his heart, to himself.

Turning off the ignition, he got out of his truck and made the short walk to the front door. He wasn’t exactly sure how he was going to avoid their ritual time together. Luckily, he’d never cut a night out short before so he could just say that he was tired. She’d get the hint.

Yep. That was the plan. Tired.

When he walked in through the front door, the first thing he noticed was the fresh smell of lemon that wafted through the air. As he took off his shoes, he noticed that he was standing on newly vacuumed carpets.
Haley
.

He’d tried to tell her
not
to clean up while she was here. She did him a huge favor by staying with Em and she wouldn’t ever take a dime from him, always maintaining that she looked forward to the time she got to spend with Emily. At first he’d felt like he had been taking advantage of her. And it wasn’t like he didn’t have other people to leave his daughter with. He did. But he always just felt better when Emily was with Haley. Not that he wanted to delve into the reasons behind that fact.