He was building a life, dammit. Literally. Building them a place to live, a place to call home. One that wasn’t completely overrun with the memory of Kathleen and her abandonment.
She would see. When the barn house was finished, when she settled in here, got going at school, made some friends... Everything would be fine. He would make it fine. The lone alternative was failing the only other person on Earth who had ever depended on him. And as far as he was concerned, that just wasn’t an option.
ALISON WAS HAVING a hard time concentrating on the chatter at their official monthly girls’ night—different from their occasional random get-togethers for dinner simply because it was on the calendar. Which was really crappy of her since Lane had arrived with a shiny new ring on her finger, bursting to tell them about Finn proposing, and she was still thinking about her encounter with Cain Donnelly earlier.
The proposal had been beautiful, romantic and utterly spontaneous. At the lake by Lane’s house, and they’d been naked apparently. Alison wasn’t surprised. Well, the nudity was kind of surprising—she had follow-up questions about where Finn had been keeping the ring—but the proposal had been inevitable as far as she was concerned.
She’d never seen two people who loved each other more. And that had been true long before they’d gone from Just Friends to more. They were meant to be. Even a curmudgeon like Alison could see that.
And the fact it had been such a certainty in her mind was the excuse she was using for zoning out now. And feeling...well, not left out. But something.
Lane and Rebecca were excitedly talking wedding plans, the diamond rings on their fingers casting showers of sparks across the room as they waved their hands in increasingly broad gestures. Cassie was smiling, sitting there with a dreamy expression on her face, clearly caught up in the romance of it all and no doubt remembering her own wedding.
Bah humbug.
Alison wasn’t caught up in any romance. And, she didn’t want to be. And somehow, she was the last remaining single girl in her group of friends when just a year ago Rebecca and Lane had been staunchly anti-love right alongside her.
It was a conspiracy.
Her mind wandered back to earlier that day, when she had met Violet’s father. She hadn’t caught his first name. She knew that Lane would know, but expressing any kind of interest would probably seem suspicious. Then again, maybe not. Seeing as Violet was her employee. And Finn was Lane’s fiancé.
It might, in fact, be germane to the conversation. It could be. It was always possible.
“What are Finn’s brothers’ names again?” she asked, realizing as the words tumbled out of her mouth that it had been a bit of a rough transition.
“Cain, Liam and Alex. Why?” Lane frowned. She tented her fingers, and that diamond ring sparkled all the brighter.
Finn and Lane had been together for only a little over a month. But they had been best friends for more than a decade, and when the two of them had tumbled headfirst into a physical relationship, true love had followed quickly. Though, actually, Alison believed that they’d probably always loved each other, they’d just been hesitant to get involved in romantic relationships for some very compelling reasons.
Alison was glad the two of them had worked it out. She really was.
And she wasn’t jealous. Not of the love.
But they all glowed. All of her friends. Every last one of them. And Alison believed firmly, that it was not with love, but with recently had orgasms. And that, she was a bit jealous of.
“Oh, I met Violet’s father today,” she said, keeping her voice perfectly neutral. “But I forgot to catch his name.”
“Yeah,” Lane said, “that’s Cain.”
“And he’s divorced, right?” she asked, doing her best to sound not the least bit personally interested. Academic. She was aiming to sound academic.
Lane nodded. “Kind of horrifically, if I’ve interpreted the comments he’s made correctly. And I think I have. But as far as I know his wife just kind of disappeared and left both him and Violet.”
Well, that explained a lot about Violet’s attitude. Alison had known that she was coming from something of a difficult home situation, but she hadn’t exactly known the details.
“That’s good to know. I mean, good to know so that I can make sure to relate to Violet in the appropriate way. I’ve helped a lot of women start their lives over, a teenager should be similar. And it sounds to me like she’ll have some of the same issues. Confidence, self-esteem.” Typically, Alison worked with women like herself. Women who had lost themselves somewhere inside an abusive relationship and were working on resurfacing.
But, abandonment, feeling lonely, being afraid that you always would be... That was part of it. Alison was intimately acquainted with some of those fears. And she had come out the other side of them. She had gotten to a place where she actually enjoyed her own company, which she considered something of a triumph. She felt very strongly about wanting to help other people reach that same place. Where they knew that the people who hurt them were the ones who were at fault. Where they knew that it wasn’t something broken in them.
“I think you’re the perfect mentor,” Rebecca said, “because you’re sensitive, but also pretty firm when you have to be.”
“My firmness was hard-won,” Alison responded.
“I know,” Rebecca said, smiling. But not in that way people did when they looked at her and thought only of how broken she was.
That was just one of the many things she appreciated about her friends. They didn’t baby her. They didn’t treat her like a sad little fledgling that needed special care.
“Though I have to say, being a good mentor is kind of a depressing thought since it clearly means I don’t misbehave enough.”
“Are you suggesting we go toilet paper some houses?” Rebecca asked. “Because if so, I’m in.”
“No time for that,” Lane said, “I have to figure out what color bridesmaids dresses to put all of you in.”
Cassie groaned. “I’m pregnant.”
“What?” The question was asked in chorus.
“Yes, pregnant. I was waiting for a chance to bring it up. I didn’t want to run over the wedding stuff. But baby number three is officially on the way and that means I’m going to be wearing taffeta for two at your wedding, Lane.”
“Absolutely not. There will be no taffeta at my wedding. I am a classy lady,” Lane said, reaching into the bowl that contained chip remnants and gathering as much as she could into her hand.
“Good Lord,” Rebecca snorted, “can’t Jake keep it in his pants?”
“I can’t keep it in Jake’s pants,” Cassie said. “My husband is a wicked hot bastard, and I was led into temptation and convinced that it would be okay to do it just once without protection.”
Lane and Rebecca looked somewhat wistful and abashed by that. As if they could relate to wanting to take the risk, or perhaps had. Alison could scarcely remember feeling passion like that. Most certainly not for the man she’d been married to for eight long years. Again, she struggled with a bit of envy. Not so much over the babies. Although, sometimes she wished there were babies. But she was thirty-two, and had absolutely no relationship prospects on the horizon. Maybe she would adopt someday. But she certainly wasn’t going to be having the traditional husband and white picket fence scenario. At least, not in the next five years.
“I’m going