Page 128 of Just Like Home

She pulled the covers up to her neck. “Oh, hey.”

“Hey,” he said. “Can we talk? Downstairs, I mean?”

“How’d you get in here?”

“It’s Harbor Pointe,” he said. “No one locks their doors.”

That was a fact. Charlotte always locked it on her way to bed, but Lucy must not have done the same when she left for work. “Why didn’t you call?”

He watched her for a long moment. “I guess I wanted to see your face.”

“I’m not even out of bed yet,” she said.

He grinned. “Yeah, I timed it perfectly.”

She threw a pillow as he closed the door. “I’ll be downstairs,” he called from the hallway.

She hurried to make herself presentable—brushed her teeth, brushed her hair, put on her bra—then made her way downstairs and found him sitting on the porch.

She braced herself for whatever he was about to say. After all, he could be here to tell her that he and Gemma were going to try again. And she’d have to pretend that it wasn’t breaking her heart.

She pulled open the front door and found a cup of hot coffee from Hazel’s Kitchen waiting for her.

“What, no pity pastries?” she asked as she sat down next to him.

He produced a small white bag. “Give me some credit.”

She smiled, took the bag, opened it, and inhaled the aroma of a fresh cinnamon roll.

“I wanted to apologize in person for leaving so abruptly last night,” he said.

She rolled the top of the bag closed and set it aside. “It’s okay.”

“No,” he said, “it’s not. But I think it was good I talked to Gemma.”

“Yeah?” Charlotte dared a glance in his direction, bracing herself for whatever emotion she might find on his face, but she found this particular look unreadable.

He held his cup of coffee with both hands, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. “I think I actually forgave her.”

Charlotte stilled. “Wow, that’s a big deal.”

“You have no idea,” he said. He took a drink.

She looked away as a car drove by. Down the block, a jogger rounded the corner and disappeared.

“Gemma kind of tricked me into marrying her,” he said.

Charlotte remained still, not wanting to spook him. Was she finally going to get the rest of the story?

“I didn’t know it, but when I started dating her, she and Max had already been an item for several months,” he said. “She found me one night and struck up a conversation with the sole purpose of making Max jealous. He was at the same restaurant with his wife.”

Cole talked and Charlotte listened, knowing without having to ask that Cole didn’t share this story with many people. How lucky was she that he trusted her enough to share it with her? It didn’t surprise her that he’d married Gemma when she turned up pregnant. It did surprise her to learn the baby wasn’t his.

“The baby was Max’s,” he said now. “That’s the bomb Max dropped at the wedding. He stormed in and started an argument with her that turned into a fight. Of course, I got in the middle of it—punched him, in fact—and Max . . .”

His voice trailed off, as if his pain had silenced him.

She reached over and put a hand on his arm, hoping it gave him the courage to continue.

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