Page 52 of 40 and (No Longer) Fighting It
He shrugged, not that Carter could see it. “What can I say? I’m a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”
His friend laughed. “You usually are.”
That got the smallest smile out of Linc. A start, he guessed. “Tell me what’s going on up there.”
He listened to Carter talk about his son’s latest baseball game. How much he missed Thad right now while he was with his mom for the weekend. Carter and Rachel had divorced last year when she calmly told him she didn’t love him anymore, wanted a divorce, and planned to marry her business partner, whom she’d been having an affair with for months. For a while his friend had walked around numb, just like Linc had been this morning, but he had his son to focus on, and Carter loved that little boy more than his own life.
He was deep into the story of the fiasco blind date his sister—who kept throwing women his way—had set him up on when Linc came through the French doors into the courtyard. A woman walked beside him, one Linc immediately recognized despite only meeting her briefly once before. Taller than her daughter, but as Linc took the time to look, the resemblance was unmistakable. The same curls, the same curves. This woman had more life carved into the lines of her face, but no one would ever doubt that Lanelle Taylor was Claire’s mother.
“Hey, Carter, I need to go.”
“Yeah, of course. I’m sure I’ll have another disaster date to tell you about next time.”
Linc actually chuckled at that. “I’m sure you will. Talk to you later.”
He hung up, pushed his cell into the back pocket of his jeans, then brought his eyes up to meet Lanelle’s. “Mrs. Taylor.”
She stopped at the edge of the courtyard, and Linc moved forward swiftly, extending his hand. He caught her hesitation, but then she was shaking his hand, her grip more fragile than his Claire’s. His woman—and that was the only way he could think about her right now—had a grip strong from hours of kneading dough and squeezing pastry bags. That grip spoke of hard work and relentlessness. It was a grip to be proud of.
God, he missed her.
“Would you care to sit?” He gestured toward the nearby bench and nodded to JD as Lanelle moved in that direction. His friend gave him a salute and turned back to the house. Linc followed Lanelle.
When they were settled, he found himself tongue-tied. Probably a first for him. But as he stared at the woman in front of him, he found himself at a loss. Was she here to rebuke him like she seemed to do with Claire so frequently? Should he rebuke her for her treatment of her daughter? As his thoughts circled, holding him hostage, Lanelle set her purse aside, angled herself toward him, and folded her hands on her lap.
“I was here yesterday,” she said quietly, but not quiet enough that he didn’t catch the sharp edge of criticism. “I wanted to see for myself what she was doing, what was dragging her away from her family. I didn’t expect to find that the man she’s been spending time with was dragging her name into the mud.”
Lanelle saidspending timelike it meant far more than the mere words. Linc straightened his shoulders. He couldn’t deny that things had gone badly, but… “That was not my intention.”
Lanelle’s gaze wandered to the nearby woods. “Intentions rarely mean much.”
Didn’t they? “I thought the same thing when Jared was talking about the baby gift you gave them.”
Brown eyes that were twins to her daughter’s flew back to him, narrowing. “That’s family business.”
“And that’s where you’re wrong,” Linc said firmly. Claire might be taking some time, but she was still his until she told him definitively that she wasn’t. “Claire is my business. I care for her very much, and I’ve seen how much y’all are hurting her.”
Something sad settled on Lanelle’s face. She returned her attention to the woods. “It seems like both of us are doing that.”
“I never intended to hurt Claire, not now and not in the past. She knows that.”
After a long pause, Lanelle sighed. “I don’t know if I can say the same,” she admitted.
Approaching Lanelle like an adversary wasn’t going to get them anywhere, he realized. If he had his way, Claire would be in his life a long time, and that meant he needed to know the woman in front of him. Whether to protect Claire from her or not remained to be seen.
He relaxed back against the bench. “Why are you here, Mrs. Taylor?”
“Call me Lanelle,” she said absently. Another pause, then, “I’m here to tell you a story about Claire.”
This should be interesting.
Linc wasn’t sure what he expected, but it certainly wasn’t, “When Claire was five, she got an Easy-Bake Oven for her birthday.”
He could totally see that. Claire seemed to have pastry chef skills baked into her very bones.
“It wasn’t five minutes after the last child had left the party and she was begging me to get the thing out of the box. Which I did.” A smile flitted across Lanelle’s mouth. “But I told her firmly that I didn’t have time to work it with her—I had a party to clean up after.”
Linc made an encouraging noise in his throat.
