Page 15 of The Workaholic Down the Hall

“Probably not,” I agreed in a haughty tone. “Might as well just give up now.”

He laughed and his sadness faded. “So what names are you considering?”

I gave him my list and he added to it, some of his ideas beyond ridiculous and some actually pretty cute. Then, we chatted about what we'd discovered to love in Catalpa Creek and made a plan to explore the town again later that weekend. We chatted for well over two hours and he drove me back to the cabin. I'd left the front porch light on when he'd picked me up and the place looked homey and welcoming in the middle of the dark forest. It might not be my permanent home, but Catalpa Creek was feeling more and more like the right place for me, the place I wanted to be.

***

“Is she asleep?”

“I don't know. I can't even tell if she's breathing.”

I swam up from a deep sleep and opened my eyes. Two glowing orbs met my gaze, the rest of the face illuminated by a flashlight. It took me only seconds to assess the situation, scream at the top of my lungs and try to clamber out of bed.

At least, that's what I would have done if a hand hadn't landed over my mouth and a strong arm hadn't held me in the bed. “It's okay,” a male voice said. “It's George. I need to talk to you for a minute. If I let go of your mouth, will you promise not to scream?”

I shook my head, because was he serious right now? Of course, I'd scream.

“What are you doing, George?” Nora's face popped up next to George's. “It's okay, Aubrey. We aren't going to hurt you. Do you think we could talk in the kitchen?”

I was in crazy town. That or I'd died and gone to hell. I nodded. George released me and helped me out of bed. I followed them toward the kitchen, but stopped when I saw a lump on my couch. A human-shaped lump. “Who's that?”

“That's what we need to talk to you about,” Nora said. “Come on, dear.”

Another man was already in the kitchen, drinking a soda and tapping on his phone. “What's going on?” I asked. “Who's on my couch?”

Nora sighed. “Please sit down, sweetheart. I don't think getting stressed out is good for you or the baby.”

I looked at the clock over the stove. It was two in the morning. “If you didn't want me to get stressed out, maybe you should have left my car here and not kidnapped me. Maybe you shouldn't have woken me from a dead sleep. Maybe I'd be less stressed if there wasn't a body on the couch.”

“He's still alive, right?” the man with the soda looked up from his phone at George.

“Who is he?” I asked Nora.

“He's my brother,” George said. “All you need to know is Noah is pretty drunk. He should be fine, but if he doesn't wake up in six hours, you might want to make sure he's still breathing and hasn't choked on his own vomit.”

My breath stopped for a moment and my chest felt funny. Was I having a heart attack? “The lump on the couch is Noah? Has everyone lost their minds?”

“It's for his own good,” Nora said. “He won't listen to reason and, if the two of you have some time together, you can figure this out.”

“Figure what out?”

Nora waved at my belly. “The baby. Your relationship.”

“You kidnapped Noah so I could tell him about the baby?”

“Kidnapped is a strong word,” George said. “I prefer drunken repositioning.”

“Noah came to visit earlier tonight,” Nora said. “I kept you here to make sure you wouldn't come to the inn and see him before I'd told him…But he didn't want to talk about you, kept asking about me, even though I'd explained it was all a false alarm.” She shook her head, lost in thought.

“What was a false alarm?”

“I convinced him to come see me by telling him I thought I might be dying.”

“Are you serious?” I asked. “Why would you say that?” I pulled in a deep breath. I needed to stay calm and figure this out. “You probably scared him to death.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “I'm his mother and he wouldn't come see me, not for Sunday brunch, not to help with the inn, not when I did everything but beg him to come so I could talk to him. He just said he was too busy, if he even bothered to answer my calls. The only way I could get him here was to tell him I was dying. He deserves any pain or fear he felt.” She spoke boldly, but I could see the guilt on her face. She wouldn't quite meet my eyes and she looked genuinely saddened by Noah's avoidance.

I could empathize with her, even if what she did was wrong. “You're going to keep him here so we can talk about the baby?”

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