The Dream Guy Next Door: A Guys Who Got Away Novel Read online

  “What’s not to like? They’re soft and fluffy, and they help lubricate the path to sleep.”

  A laugh springs from my chest. “I don’t really think of pillows as lubrication.”

  “Ah, that’s an issue, then. Pillows are absolutely a lubricant. I highly recommend them for easing into a good night’s sleep.”

  “I sleep quite well.”

  “Do you sleep on pillows?”

  “I do sleep on pillows.”

  “Then the lubricant is doing its job, isn’t it?”

  “Fine, fine,” I surrender with a laugh. “You got me there.”

  “You are the girliest tomboy,” he remarks as I grab a sparkly purple one.

  “I am.”

  We go to the couches, and my gears start whirring. I recommend a dark-blue one for him. He approves it instantly. Tables next—I suggest a simple wood one for him, and he says, “I’ll get it.”

  He’s easy, so easy that when we reach the chairs, I can’t resist patting a strange egg-shaped one with a pull-down shade so you can hide inside it. “And this seems like your style. You can use it as a chair fort.”

  His brow lifts. “Just the thing every man needs.”

  “Of course. Didn’t you see GQ’s list of ‘Top Ten Things a Manly Man Needs’? Scotch, an old-fashioned shave kit, and a chair fort.”

  Stroking his chin, he makes a show of thinking it over. “Afraid I missed that one. I trust your judgment, but I’d better try it out to be sure.”

  He crouches and inserts himself into the egg, then tugs the cover down, turning the chair into a kind of capsule.

  Laughter threads through me. “Is it everything you’ve ever wanted in a chair?”

  “My God, this is bloody fantastic. Give me a book, and I’ll never leave.”

  When he slides open the cover, I have my phone ready and snap a pic.

  “I can only presume that you’re going to file that under future blackmail material?”

  “It’s like you know me so well already.”

  We move along, choosing a different chair, a simple one that’s durable too.

  We head to the nearest clerk at the checkout, handing over the tags for the items. “Do you want home delivery for these?” he asks.

  “Absolutely,” Liam says.

  “And would you like assembly?”

  Liam says yes, but I override him. “He doesn’t.”

  He shoots me a look. “I can put a dog’s leg back together, but I can’t assemble a chair from instructions. And see, I’m not afraid to ask for help when I need it.”

  I grin at his honesty, but assure him, “I want to do it. It’s part of the housewarming gift. Just another perk of living next door to a carpenter goddess.”

  “Thank you. That would be amazing,” he says to me, then finishes with the clerk. He also insists on buying my pillows and trash can, and I let him.

  As he grabs the bag of pillows, my stomach rumbles. Liam doesn’t pretend he doesn’t hear, which seems in keeping with his straightforward nature. “You should let me feed you,” he says.

  “I won’t object to that.” We duck into the store café, where I grab a salad, he grabs a sandwich, and we find a table next to a family. The mom is offering a meatball to the little blonde toddler across from her, the girl opening her mouth wide as the mom airplanes the food into it. The dad—or so I assume—plates a scoop of mashed potatoes for the young boy across from him. Like a seagull, the boy dips a fork in, declares yum, and his dad laughs.

  They look tired, but happy.

  Across from me, Liam looks contemplative as he takes a bite of his sandwich, studying me as he chews. “So, at the risk of being blunt—is Wednesday’s father dead? Did he pass away? Is he out of the picture?”

  I put down my fork and wipe the napkin across my mouth. “You are straightforward, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I try to be. Does that bother you?”

  I shake my head. “I like it. Most people aren’t.”

  “Why tiptoe when you can be blunt? As I like to say.”

  “Words to live by,” I agree. I set my hands on the table, thinking about where to begin the story. It’s not one I’m ashamed of. It’s my own, and there’s no reason not to tell him.

  “Wednesday was an oopsie with my college boyfriend on graduation night. Things were sort of petering out with us, but then I found out I was pregnant. And so, we got married, because that’s what you do. We stayed together for a while, but it was mostly out of obligation.”

  I wish things had been different with Vince, but it was never really in the cards. He and I tried; we definitely tried. But there was no spark, no deep, soulful connection. We were partners in parenting, and partners in navigating life. We weren’t partners in love.

  “A few years ago, we made plans to amicably separate. He met someone else almost immediately and moved to Texas to marry her. He’s not terribly involved with Wednesday—just sees her during the summers.” I smile, and it’s genuine. I want my daughter to spend time with her father. “He’s a good man who loves his kid. Just not the right man for me, and I wasn’t right for him.”

  He smiles softly. “It’s kind of amazing that you say that.”

  I snort. “Not really.”

  “Lovely sound of derision, by the way.”

  “Thanks. I’ve been working on it for years, hoping someone would notice.”

  “Achievement unlocked.” Then he returns to his point. “It’s amazing because so many people talk about their ex like they’re the worst person in the universe. ‘He was a total twat.’ ‘He didn’t appreciate me.’ ‘She was borderline insane.’ ‘She clung to me like static to laundry,’” he says, and I laugh at the last one. “But it takes a lot to be honest and admit that you weren’t right for each other.”

  “We weren’t, and trust me, I wish we had been. I wish it had been love, hearts, and lots of banging on the kitchen counter like my friend Alva and her hubs.”

  He laughs deeply and wiggles his brow. “So your friend is a kitchen fucker?”

  It’s my turn to crack up. “Yes. Or at least she likes to tell me about all the places she and Marcos get it on. Like the staircase, or the bathroom sink, or the storage trunk in the attic.”

  He arches one brow. “Storage trunk in the attic?”

  “Yeah, I don’t quite get that one either. I decided not to ask.”

  “Some things you may just not want to know.”

  “They were high school sweethearts, and their first time was in the garage or something, so maybe it was nostalgic.” I smile, happy for my still-very-much-in-love best friend. “But Vince and I didn’t have that long-term bond. When it ended, I think we were both relieved.”

  “So, it’s you and Wednesday against the world over there in Duck Falls?”

  “It is, and I like it that way.”

  He pauses for a sip of his iced tea. “You seem pretty tough. Pretty good at holding your own.”

  “Thanks. I think we are too. It’s freeing now that it’s just us. I can focus on my business, on my kid. I don’t have to worry about a man,” I say, relieved all over again. I’m so glad that my time is mine, my chores are for me. Glad, too, that I learned how to say fuck it to worries that had plagued me for years.

  “The business is growing?”

  “Yes,” I say with a smile. “Just last night, after I delivered the hated vegetables, I finished fixing Betty Juniper’s spice rack. She lives down the street. And I’m hoping to snag a deal to do some work for Nina Clawson at the boba tea shop, but the competition is fierce.”

  “You’re fierce. I wouldn’t want to go up against you,” he says.

  “Thanks.” I appreciate the compliment, though I don’t tell him how long it took me to get my act together work-wise, to figure out what I actually wanted to do for a living. That I’d puttered around as a handywoman for my father’s construction company for years before I figured out that I wanted to run my own business. He’s now retired, having given some of
his company’s assets to me when I started.

  But old habits die hard, and it took me that long to drown out the soundtrack in my head: What if you fail, what if it doesn’t work, what if you suck at it?

  Lowering the volume on that voice took ages and lots of tough love from my best friend, but that’s not what this conversation is about.

  “What about you and your son?” Picking up my fork again, I take a bite of my salad as I shift the conversation back to him and his family.

  “Ah. It’s kind of an interesting story.” He glances at a man pushing a stroller past us, who snags a table a few feet away.

  “Interesting how?”

  “Interesting in the fact that I didn’t even know I had a kid until he was almost seven.”

  He’s right. That’s got to be a helluva story.

  8

  January

  Liam makes that admission in a light tone, with a “told you it was unusual” self-awareness. It must be a complicated situation, though, and I normally like someone who can poke a little fun at himself. But not if it’s a front to hide pain.

  “That definitely sounds like a story you don’t hear every day.” I leave him an opening, and when he doesn’t fill it, I say, “You don’t have to tell me what happened, but I’d like to know.”

  He leans back in the chair, dragging his hand across his chin. He sighs, but it’s not so much that he’s deciding whether to speak but more like where to start. “Ten years ago, I had—and this is not the unusual part of the story—a one-night stand. She was from England, but lived in Florida. She was in town for a conference I was attending too. We connected over a drinks thing and ended up at my place—which she left at two in the morning. Just slipped out of my apartment and out of my life. No ‘look me up if you’re ever in West Palm Beach.’ Didn’t even stay for breakfast. It was seven years before I heard from her again.”

  I fear that the story is heading in an unhappy direction, and my heart sinks as Liam’s expression shifts.

  His lips go straight, his brown eyes brimming with sadness. “She literally showed up on my doorstep. Rang the bell. Told me she had terminal cancer, no family, and a child who was mine.”

  A cold twist of sympathy pulls at me, thinking of all those tragic things falling on someone at once, especially on a child like Liam’s son. “I’m so sorry, Liam. That’s so hard for everyone involved.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate that,” he says. No teasing or sarcasm now. He takes my words as seriously as I mean them, and his thanks is just as earnest. “Yes, it was rough on so many levels. I barely knew her, but my heart would have gone out to a total stranger in her situation. Alone, sick, and with a kid—my kid. We did DNA tests to verify that Ethan was my son, got the legalities settled, and she stayed with a friend in New York for the last few weeks of her life while Ethan came to live with me. I helped out some, and he visited her. Not much longer after that, she passed away. Everything was quite sudden.” He blows out a long stream of air as he brings the story back to the present. “That’s how I suddenly became parent to a seven-year-old I had no idea existed.”

  I shake my head, processing Ethan’s story. Liam’s story. “How did he deal with it, losing his mother and then making such a dramatic change?”

  “He was devastated. He cried himself to sleep almost every night, understandably. And I didn’t know how the hell to help him deal with so many losses—his mother, and his home . . . his whole life.”

  The tightness in his voice gives me a window into how frustrated and helpless Liam must have felt. He doesn’t linger there though. “Fortunately, I’m close with my mum and dad, so Mum came East and spent some time with us. Her sister, my Aunt Jane, lives in New York too. They all helped me figure it out, and I found a great child psychologist who helped Ethan process his grief.”

  Liam flashes a quick, relieved grin. “I’m lucky—he came through the other side and is remarkably well-adjusted. We get on great, and we’re thick as thieves now. But it makes me wonder all the time how life would have been with him at two, three, four . . .” He drifts off, turning wistful, maybe a bit sad, even, longing for the time missed. The years they didn’t have together.

  “You would have loved each other back then like you do now,” I say, not sure if that will make him feel better or miss the time even more. “But I don't think your connection is weakened by not having those years. You were there when it mattered.”

  He shoots me a soft smile. “I’d like to think so. But I’ll never know.” He sighs, as though recalibrating, before moving on. “In any case, here we are now. It’s the strangest thing—three and a half years ago, I didn’t know he existed, but now he’s my whole world in one pint-size person,” he says, wrapping up the story with a happy ending, full of awe and joy.

  “Sounds like parenthood to me,” I say with a smile.

  He deals me one in return. “Yeah, I suppose it is. I don’t have as much experience as you, but I’m learning.”

  “From what I’ve seen, you’re doing a great job,” I say. “I’m glad Ethan’s mom was able to find you, and that you could give him the family that he needed.”

  “Me too. It changed everything. And at first it was such a shock I didn’t know if I could handle it. But now I can’t imagine life without him.”

  “Kids have a way of doing that, don’t they?”

  “That they do,” he says as he surveys the café teeming with shopped-out young families with babies and toddlers and tykes. “That they definitely do.”

  “And now, is it still you and him against the world?”

  “I suppose it is, but I hope not forever,” he says, taking another bite of his sandwich, looking a little lost in thought.

  Those are words that make me think too. Not forever.

  Do they mean what they seem?

  That even though he’s definitely single, he might not be for long.

  “So, you’re looking to settle down?”

  He offers me a sheepish smile. “Yes. I’ve dated, had my fun, and it doesn’t really appeal to me anymore. I’m almost forty, and at this point, yeah, I’d like to find someone to settle down with. Be a family. Have what my parents have. It was lovely to grow up with both my parents, see them support each other, love each other. Even through my dark, rebellious days as a teen, I knew I had them. I’d like Ethan to have that same security.”

  I gulp at his directness, but mostly from the rarity of a man coming right out and saying he wants something that many men won’t admit to wanting.

  “You want more kids, then?” My throat is unexpectedly dry.

  His shrug says he wouldn’t mind more munchkins at all. His gaze travels around the café as if he’s saying, Yes, let’s order the mac and cheese feast like that table over there, or Check out those parents slicing up lingonberry pancakes for their kiddos.

  He returns his eyes to me, startlingly vulnerable when he admits, “If it happened, I wouldn’t object. I’d like more. I like kids.” He takes a beat, then, in the most earnest tone I’ve ever heard, says, “And I’d like to be there every day for my kid.”

  My heart bangs loudly in my chest and, at the same time, tries to flee to a corner to hide. The sentiment is wildly endearing. It would have hooked me like a trout if I were single in my twenties.

  My God, if I’d met him then and he’d said those things—I’d have flung myself at him and begged him to take me to bed and MAKE BABIES WITH ME RIGHT THAT INSTANT.

  Heck, I’d have grabbed him and tugged him into the chair fort to procreate.

  But with a teen who’s entering her sophomore year of high school, with a business I’m finally getting off the ground, with a life I’m finally living on my own terms—one that took more than a decade to realize—I don’t want to start over.

  I don’t want that.

  At all.

  I’m not in the market for more babies, for another pregnancy.

  And for a second—no, for several seconds—my heart is an anchor, weig
hing me down with a heaviness I shouldn’t feel.

  After all, the man lives next door to me. That’s reason enough to shove all these errant tingles into a metaphorical closet and ignore them until they go away.

  Surely they’ll go away soon.

  These tingles come from airborne lust particles. From the yummy, clean, woodsy scent of him. From the empirically handsome face he happens to possess.

  That’s all. He’s easy on the eyes.

  Nothing more.

  I’ll adjust, get used to it, and I won’t think twice about the flip my heart executes when he flashes those big brown eyes at me.

  I fasten on a smile. “Since you want a family, I’d say it’s a good thing we moved you away from the man-cave furniture,” I say, doing my best to keep the mood light. I sweep my arm out to indicate the store and the mission of the day. “You’re getting a whole new look for the settling-down phase of your life.”

  “No more bachelor pad furniture, thanks to your help.” He takes a beat, then with serious eyes, he asks, “What about you? Any settling down in your future? More kids?”

  I gasp, shrinking back. “More kids? No. I’m still working up the nerve to adopt a cat. With my kid a mere three years away from college”—I stop to pat my belly—“I’m good with keeping the shop closed.”

  “Cat, kid . . . What’s the difference, really?” he asks, holding his hands out as if weighing both options. “And when will this cat come into your life?”

  “Ripley?”

  His forehead knits in confusion. “What’s that?”

  “I’m going to name my future cat Ripley.”

  “Not Every Other Week or 1982?”

  I stare sharp knives at him. “Ripley, as in the badass alien hunter from four flicks.”

  “Do you want your future cat to hunt aliens?”

  “Look, if aliens are coming, that’s a damn good time to have an alien-hunting cat.”

  “True. I like a woman who plans ahead,” he says. “When will we meet Ripley?”

  I shrug. Took me long enough to start my business—I bet it takes me longer to commit to a pet. “It could be anywhere from three days to ten years. And what about you? When are you going to start dating?”