Page 34 of Floored

She exhaled audibly. "I know what you mean. I'm only twenty-two, Jude. This wasn't in the cards for me for a very long time."

I closed my eyes. Young, especially compared to me, hardly past the cusp of truly feeling like an adult.

"Lia," I said, "we'll figure this out together, yeah?"

Through the speaker, she sniffed quietly. "Yeah."

10

LIA

The things I knew about Jude Michael McAllister could fit on my pinky finger. At least, for the time being.

You're going to be a baby daddy- take two was already off to a better start as I sat across a tiny table in a tiny cafe, watching him wolf down that English breakfast thing I loved.

Add that to the list of things I knew:

-Jude could eat an entire meal in four bites.

-He looked great in a black knit hat.

-He took his tea with one sugar.

And so far on take two, he hadn't accused me of trying to pass off another man's baby as his.

"Are you not hungry?" he asked, eyeing my plate. "Do you feel all right?"

It was a graveyard of the poor croissant that I'd picked at, and the scone that had gotten similar treatment.

Which was a sad thing, because carbs were my jam in pregnancy.

I sat back and gave him an appraising look. "I feel okay. Morning sickness tends to hit me in the afternoon, but it's only happened a couple of times. When it did, I kinda thought maybe I hadn't eaten enough or wasn't drinking enough water."

He nodded.

The owner of the cafe ducked under the counter and swept away some of the trash from our table. "Will you loves be needing anything else?"

"I'm fine, thank you," I said, smiling up at her.

"Thanks, Sheila," Jude told her. "Maybe just a bit of privacy while we chat, if you don't mind."

He slid her some cash, and she patted him gently on the shoulder before dashing off to flip the closed sign on the door. "I'm just going to pop over to the market for a few things. Be back in a tick."

As she slid out of the door and jogged down the steps, I watched her tuck the cash Jude had given her into the cup of a vagrant sleeping curled around his dog at the end of the block.

"She's nice."

Jude nodded. "She gave my brother, Lewis, his first kitchen job years ago."

"Is that your only sibling?" I thought of the picture in the flat, the man who looked so much like Jude.

"It is. The pub where we met, I helped him buy it after I started playing. He wanted a place to call his own."

My eyebrows popped up. "That's a generous gift."

Jude shot me a rueful smile, showing just the slightest hint of a dimple in his scruff-covered jaw. "It was. We grew up on a sheep farm, actually. And neither of us particularly warmed to that life, so I thought I'd help him take a different path." He took a sip of his tea. "What about you? Brothers or sisters?" At my immediate, wide smile, Jude laughed. "Is that a loaded question?"

"No. Well, maybe." I set my chin on my hand and took a deep breath. "Claire is my twin sister. Isabel is two years older than us. Molly is two years older than Isabel. Logan, who is actually my half-brother, is the one who raised us from the time I was ten. And his son Emmett, with his wife Paige, is technically my nephew, but he also feels like my brother, because I'm closer in age to him than I am to Logan."

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