Page 52 of Be My Baby

“Good. Another one. Get that oxygen back into your brain.”

Max would’ve laughed if he hadn’t been so shaken. Simon, yapping about oxygen and brains. His brother would have to be the least scientifically inclined of any person he’d ever met.

Max breathed in again, deeper this time. He blinked and focused on Simon’s worried face.

“There you are. Dammit, Max! You scared me for a minute there.” Simon rubbed his arm one last time, then rested his elbow on his thigh. He tilted his head. “You okay? What happened?”

Max looked down at his phone, still clenched tight in his fist. He handed it to Simon. He watched the myriad emotions flicker and pass over Simon’s face as he slowly read the email.

Surprise, fast followed by shock and anger all reflected back at him.

Max scraped a hand over his face and shook his head. “At least I know what I looked like just now.”

His attempt at humour fell flat.

Simon looked up at him from his hand, the phone now held limp in his fingers. “How… Is this even legal?” He looked down again and shook his head slowly. “But you were covered.”

Max rested his weight on his forearms on his knees. His stomach had stopped somersaulting but it had left a queasy, roiling nastiness behind. “I know.” He waved a hand at the phone. “Apparently the reefer wasn’t. Not by this policy. The investigators traced the surge that fried the power point and wires to the trailer.”

An insistent, niggling voice nagged in the back of his mind.

“What am I going to do, Si? If this is right, I’m completely screwed.”

All he’d worked for, all he’d sacrificed. Was it really all for nothing?

Simon shook his head. “You go see Trey straight away. This isn’t right.”

Max nodded and tried to fight the pervading icy numbness that wanted to settle around his bones, his heart. His whole life had been in that pub. Not just things like photos and clothes and such.

His memories.

Most of the significant things that had happened in his life over the last ten years had happened there.

Significant things for his family, too. Gabe had met Emma there that first night. Simon had meet Amy when she’d come in looking for a waitressing job. They’d hit it off straight away and within a month, they’d been dating.

And Millie had asked him to be a father to her child there.

Afather.

He rubbed at his stinging eyes.

Thank goodness she hadn’t fallen pregnant yet. Not with his future now so uncertain. How could he possibly consider helping to bring a child into this world when he didn’t have the resources to help look after it?

Sure, Millie didn’t expect him to, but he sure as hell expected it of himself.

Maybe, after everything had settled down with the Cow, if he was able to rebuild both the business and his life, maybe then they could revisit the idea. At the moment, he had nothing to offer her. Not even the pants on his ass. Those were Simon’s.

She was so accomplished, indispensable to Trey’s business. She’d invested wisely and had bought her home when prices were low, long before the town had exploded into the tourist hotspot it now was. Consequently, she owned her home outright and had a tidy nest egg behind her.

What if youcan’trebuild?

Max shoved the insidious thought away, hard. He couldn’t consider it. Couldn’t even entertain that thought. He’d paid off the business loan only three years ago. He hadn’t had long enough to cope with a financial catastrophe like this was shaping up to be.

Trey. He’d go see him and find out what his options were.

He stood and rubbed his hands over the seat of his pants and turned to look at his brother, still hunkered down in front of the lounge chair Max had been sitting in. Simon pasted a smile on his face, but Max could see straight through it.

Right into the heart of the anxiety that Simon was trying so hard to hide from him.

---