Page 38 of The Seal's Promise

Mrs. Barb laughed and shook her head. “Absolutely not, that boy doesn’t know what’s best for him. You’re a mom, Brooke, so I would expect you already figured this out. Children need to be guided toward what’s best for them, and men cannot be told what to do. But if you can get them to think it’s their idea”—she clapped her hands—“then you still get what you want.”

May laughed.

“Mrs. Barb, I just don’t want you to be disappointed when Dalton packs his things and heads back to Virginia,” Brooke said.

“He isn’t going back there, honey. There’s no job, no house, no true love. There’s nothing there for him.”

“True love?” Brooke asked. May set a bag with her oatmeal and fruit in front of her, but Brooke couldn’t walk away. She had to know what Dalton’s gran was plotting.

“Yes. Once Dalton falls in love here in Sandy Point, he’ll never want to leave. He’ll realize everything he was ever out there looking for was here all along.”

Brooke sighed.

“Well then, you just have to get him to fall in love,” May said.

“Exactly! Now I also need a favor from you Garcia girls.”

May set a coffee mug topped with foam in the shape of a crown in front of Mrs. Hart, then leaned forward and rested her chin on her hands. “Yes, ma’am, what can we do for you?”

“I need more volunteers to work the booths at the Summer Solstice. Can I count on you both?”

“No thank you, last time you stuck me in the kissing booth!” Brooke said, grabbing her bag.

“If I promise you won’t have to kiss anyone?” Mrs. Hart said.

Brooke looked at her watch. “Alright, I’ll help. I just need to be done by eight to get Max in bed at a decent time.”

“Deal.” Then she set her eyes on May.

“Of course I’ll be there, and I’m not so picky about the kissing booth.”

“May,” Brooke warned.

“Well, how else am I going to get through all these toads?”

“I’m off to work, have a good one,” Brooke said to Mrs. Hart and May.

“Can you remind my grandson he’ll be working the kissing booth if he doesn’t help me finish a special booth stand this week?” Mrs. Hart asked.

“Oh, um, sure. Bye!”

Brooke caught her sister’s and Mrs. Hart’s matching mischievous smiles in the reflection of a mirror on the wall as she walked away, but she didn’t think she wanted to know what they were conspiring about.

She would have been happy to pass Mrs. Hart’s message on to Dalton, but she was avoiding him. The more she wanted to be near him the harder it was to resist, but she knew it would only end in disaster. And she didn’t need the drama. Tyler had been ordered to pay her back child support based on his earnings, with interest, by the end of the month. But she wasn’t yet sure she wanted to fight for the trust, even if it was Max’s family, his legacy. That kind of money could change a person and the entire trajectory of his life—if the Banks family didn’t find some loophole to cut Max out of the trust. So she’d asked Declan to wait to file the documents.

“Brooke, did you hear me?”

Her head popped up from her desk to find Dalton standing in the doorway with blue scrubs on that made his eyes almost glow.

“No, sorry. What did you say?”

“I said with Dr. Jones being out all week, did you need me to take on any longer shifts? Won’t Tommy and I need to split the days?”

“We’ll do a modified shift with on-call hours for you both. The nurses can usually handle most of the traffic we’ll get in those hours, but it’s always good to have you on standby.”

“Gotcha.” He held up his phone to look at the schedule. “So the stars are the days we’re on call?”

“You got it.” She was sitting behind her desk, but it didn’t seem far enough to not smell his manly, sweet scent.

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