Ruth Herne - Their Surprise Daddy

She’d call Melanie Carson, a popular local Realtor and her mother’s good friend. If Melanie could put in an offer for part of the parcel, Miss Flora might not feel so bad about the changes. A former schoolteacher herself, she might actually like the idea of their old home becoming a preschool.

Either way, it was worth a shot, because finding commercially zoned available property in Grace Haven was next to impossible.

* * *

Cruz showed up at the White Church just before noon. He’d left his car parked in the Gallagher driveway, and walked the four blocks at a brisk pace. When he arrived at the intersection of Fourth and Maple, he was almost sorry the walk was done.

Canandaigua Lake lay beyond the church, forming a long, slim, water-filled valley between rolling, verdant hills, a picture-perfect pocket of Americana.

He walked a lot in Manhattan. Everyone did.

This was different. It smelled, looked and felt different, and the ever-present city sounds he blocked out so easily had been replaced by birds chirping, kids playing and young mothers chatting as they pushed strollers.

He’d taken a left at Broadway and ended up in the greeting-card setting he’d brushed off for years. Only it was way nicer than he’d remembered, but maybe his memories were tainted by family dynamics. He spotted a hand-printed pre-K sign with an arrow underneath, and followed it to the back entrance of the church. He went through the back door, and down the steps to the church basement.

He didn’t need an arrow to find Rory. Her voice filled the space, laughing and singing with the two kids. He almost wanted to hurry, but that would be silly. He wasn’t here to mess with her time frame, but to apologize for wrecking her AC unit.

“Cousin Cruz!” Lily spotted him from across the room.

Javier turned, grinned and waved. “You can have wunch wif us! We’re having peanut butter and jewwy, and Rory made the jewwy all by herself!”

“It’s really good,” Lily assured him.

Rory frowned at the clock, then him. “What did you do?”

“What makes you think I did something?”

“You have a guilty look about you.”

He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. He’d driven corporate moguls crazy with his unreadable face, but here in Grace Haven, it seemed he was an open book. “I may or may not have killed your air-conditioning unit.”

“Oops.” She grimaced and moved forward. “Are you all right?”

Her question caught him off guard. She didn’t ream him out or make fun of him. She went straight to making sure he was okay. “I’m fine. I just lost my grip on it while I was maneuvering it into place, and it fell.”

“Oh, dear. Not onto a person, did it? Because that would be bad.”

“A fairly old garbage can on the back side of the garage has just become scrap metal.”

She waved that off. “As long as it wasn’t anything living, it’s no biggie. But we need to get you a unit for that apartment. I know how hot it gets up there.”

“I bought one.”

“Really? So quick?” She handed Javier his sandwich, then a second one to Lily.

“At the strip mall near the thruway. That’s all new since I moved away. And the road is four lanes now, not two. And there’s a ton of new development outside the village.”

“And still a crazy amount of traffic to navigate through in the summer,” she noted.

“Is that why the town is thriving?” he asked.

She made a face, considering. “Tourism is at an all-time high. Vacationers, destination weddings, conventions, golf tournaments, holiday functions. With all the event centers overlooking the lakes, it’s pretty busy nine months of the year now. Our sleepy little town has come into its own.”

It was quite a change from what he remembered, but not in a bad way. He wasn’t one of those people who saw progress in a negative light, but he also knew not everyone shared his viewpoint. “Your sister’s place seemed busy, too. And she also seemed very pregnant.”

Rory laughed. “She is that.”

He held his phone up. “I kept this nearby. Just in case.”

“We’re all a little nervous and wonderfully excited,” she admitted. “There hasn’t been a baby in the family for ten years, since my niece Tee Tee was born. But I don’t expect you walked over here to chat about babies.”

“No.” He certainly hadn’t, but he was pretty sure he had raised the subject. “I just wanted you to know about the AC unit before you came walking up the driveway and saw the carnage by the street, waiting for pickup.”

“It will most likely be gone before we get back there,” she assured him.

He frowned.

“Scrap pickers. Dumpster divers. Nothing much gets left for garbage pickup. Someone will grab it to reuse.”

He couldn’t imagine such a thing. “People go around, intentionally picking up garbage?”

“Recyclables. Things with some use. Like in times of war, when everyone saved everything.”

He had no idea what she was talking about.

“Use it up, wear it out,” she told him. Then she folded her arms across her middle, over the tank top that showed off her small waist. “You don’t recycle in Manhattan?”

“Some, sure, but if it’s garbage, it’s garbage. They pick it up and carry it away.”

She sighed, but not one of those weary, long-suffering sighs. This was one of those “you’re exasperating and know nothing, so why don’t you get on your way” sighs. “Things are different here. I expect it will all come back to you once you’ve been here awhile.”

He didn’t plan on staying long, but she could be right. Maybe small-town interaction wouldn’t seem so alien in a few days. “I wasn’t in town much growing up. I went to school, played baseball with Drew and Dave in the summer when we were young, and basketball in the winter through high school, but once I got older, I worked the grape.”

“You worked in the vineyard?”

She looked surprised, as if he was some silver spoon that coasted through life. “Everyone did. The vines were our legacy, the basis for making Casa Blanca great, so yes. I worked. We all worked. And my mother polished her little dynasty like a newly minted coin. As long as everything appeared perfect on the outside, we were doing an okay job.”

Sympathy deepened her gaze, but he wasn’t after sympathy. He’d learned a lot from his mother. How to work long and hard, and take no prisoners.

She’d been ruthless.

So was he.

But he was also fair. Rosa had spent a lot of her life not playing fair with others. She’d alienated workers, suppliers and other event centers with her strong-armed dealings.

“Mimi says I can work the grape when I get bigger,” Lily told him while chewing a bite of sandwich, and he had to admit, the scent of peanut butter with fresh jam enticed him. “If we still have grapes, that is.”

Untended vines stopped producing, which meant Rosa was preparing the children for the vineyard’s demise. “We’ll have to see what happens, okay?”

She met his gaze and nodded, but not because she agreed. Because what choice did she have, a small child, with others planning her destiny?

His throat went thick.

Allergies? Maybe. But he knew better.

It wasn’t allergies causing his discomfort.

It was the reality he saw in Lily’s eyes, the uncertainty gazing back at him.

Their destiny lay in his hands.

He’d negotiated multimillion-dollar acquisitions without arching an eyebrow, overseen hedge fund bundles controlling mega-units of the economy without a twitch, but the thought of determining the outcome of two children struck fear into his heart, because Lily and Javi weren’t faceless documents, ready for signing.