Page 71 of Love and Other Lost Things

TWENTY-SEVEN

Nik lifted the half-empty bowl of mashed potatoes and followed his mother into the kitchen. Everyone around the table had offered to help clean up, but Helen wouldn’t hear of it. They were guests, she’d insisted. “Sit and enjoy your coffee.”

As soon as he set the bowl on the counter, though, Nik began to suspect why his mother wanted him to be the only one to come back to the kitchen with her.

“It’s wonderful that Jane could come,” she said, getting right to the point.

Nik squinted at his mother across the butcherblock counter. She knew how much it had hurt him when Jane took off a decade ago, and he suspected she was trying to feel out how Jane’s sudden presence in Linden Falls was affecting him after all this time. Still, she wasn’t usually one to meddle in his personal life.

“Sure.” He raked a hand through his hair. His emotions had been on a spin cycle since he’d realized Jane had a kid… And she’d left Scarlett’s father… And this magnetic pull between them had never gone away.

And hell, it probably never would.

“And Scarlett,” his mom continued, filling a pot in the sink with water. “What a lovely little girl.”

Nik gave a curt nod. “She’s a good kid.”

“You two seem like fast friends.”

He hadn’t missed his mom poking her head in the guest room when he’d gone to deliver some more Legos from his childhood bedroom to the girls and got roped into helping them build a car for Barbie and Ken. “I was her doctor. We met the other day.”

His mother turned away from the sink and picked up a dish towel. “It’s more than that. You have a lot of patients, but you and Scarlett seem to have a… special bond.”

Nik watched his mom twist the cloth in her hands. After everything he and Jane had been through, was his mom playing matchmaker, trying to get them together again? And using Scarlett to make it happen? “What is it you’re trying to do here?”

“Nik.” She sighed, tossing the dishcloth on the counter in frustration. “Has it really not occurred to you?”

He stared at her. “What?”

“Scarlett.”

“What about…” But he knew. It had occurred to him.

“She’s nine, Nik.” His mom crossed her arms. “Jane left here ten years ago and has a nine-year-old daughter. Now, I know I’m making assumptions about what you two were up to back then. But I’d be surprised if I was wrong.”

Nik sighed. If he didn’t want to talk about his personal life with his mother, he really didn’t want to talk about his sex life. But she’d obviously gotten herself worked up about this. And he couldn’t completely blame her. “You’re not wrong. Jane and I did…” He waved a hand. “Anyway, you get the point.”

“So, Scarlett could be yours, Nik.”

“She’s not.”

“If there’s any chance she is, you’ve got to find out. You have to stop Jane from going back to LA.”

Nik sighed. “Scarlett’s father is a nightclub manager named Matteo.”

His mom blinked. “Did Jane tell you that?”

Nik pictured Matteo’s smiling face on his phone. Peeking in Scarlett’s medical records and googling the guy probably wasn’t the most ethical thing he’d ever done. But it wasn’t like he could have asked Jane. “I saw her medical forms. I was her doctor, remember?” Telling his mom Scarlett’s personal information probably wasn’t the most ethical thing he’d ever done, either. But she wasn’t going to let this go if he didn’t. “Matteo was listed as her father. And Scarlett’s birthdate was on the forms. She turned nine this past summer.”

Helen cocked her head, trying to work out the math.

“Jane left Linden Falls in the summer. Scarlett was born in August, over a year after Jane took off. I’m not an obstetrician but I’m pretty sure that if I were Scarlett’s father, Jane would have had the longest pregnancy in the history of pregnancies.”

“Oh.” His mom’s shoulders slumped. “Oh,” she repeated. “Well, I guess that answers that.”

He studied her across the counter. “Are you disappointed?”

“Are you?” Her face softened. “If you went looking, you must have had some… feelings about it.”

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