it still hurt. Someone had snapped it up, and soon enough that old store would be turned into something else. A Laundromat or a coffee shop. Whatever business ended up there, the Thomas family wouldn’t have the heart to frequent it.
The door was ajar, and Beth gave it a pull. It opened with that familiar jingle of the bell overhead, and she stepped inside. Nothing had changed. The old shelves were still in the same place, except most of the product was gone. There was one shelf that still held various odds and ends that looked fully stocked. She heaved a sigh.
“Hey.”
Beth startled as a man stood up from behind one of those shelves, his hands full of cardboard, and she caught her breath when she recognized him. He was tall and dark, as he always had been, but the last five years had solidified him. He stared at her in equal surprise, and he dropped the cardboard and brushed his hands off, then came around the shelf.
“Danny...” she breathed. “What are you doing here?”
She swallowed hard and tugged at her jacket again, as if by covering her belly she could protect herself from that barrage of emotion.
“What are you doing here?” he countered.
“I was looking for Granny. And I just wanted to stop in and see the old place before it—” She didn’t finish that thought. What was Danny Brockwood doing here? Did he know the new owner or something?
“I haven’t seen her,” he said. “You...um—” His gaze moved down to her belly, then up to her face again. “You look good.”
“Thanks.” She wouldn’t address it. Yes, she was pregnant, but Danny didn’t get explanations. He didn’t deserve them. He could just stand there and wonder.
“How are you doing?” he asked. “I thought you’d have come back to town before this.”
“I was busy.” That’s what people said, wasn’t it? At least people who wanted to save face. “How is your son?”
Danny pulled a hand through his hair, but something in his expression softened in a way she’d never seen before. “He’s eight now. Almost nine. He’s a good kid. Smart as a whip, too.”
Luke was the secret that Danny had kept from Beth until five days before their wedding. Then his ex-girlfriend dropped his toddler son on his doorstep and told him that it was his turn at parenting. That was a big secret to have kept from her. People didn’t have children and then just forget—it had been a willful omission, and if he could hide something that big, what else could he hide? Her faith in her swarthy fiancé’s love had shriveled. This wasn’t about romance anymore; it was about real-life challenges and her ability to take him at his word. But her fears went deeper than that. She’d seen the way he looked at that little boy, and she recognized that they shared a connection she never would. She’d had a stepmother of her own, and she wasn’t keen on taking on that role for herself.
“So, are you married?” Danny asked after a beat of silence.
“No.” She tugged at her coat again. “Single.” She wasn’t going to pretend that things were any different than they were. She was very much on her own in this.
“When are you due?” he asked.
He eyed her in that curious way he used to do when they were younger and dating, and she felt a small part of her resentful heart thaw.
“It’s rude to ask about a pregnancy that hasn’t been confirmed yet, you know,” she said wryly, and Danny cracked a grin.
“Hard to deny that one, Beth.”
“I’m due January fourth,” she said, smoothing a hand over her stomach. “And it’s a girl.”
Danny nodded slowly. “Congratulations. You really do look beautiful.”
Everyone had to say that to a pregnant woman—she knew that. She felt puffy now, and huge.
“So what are you doing here?” Beth asked, glancing around. “I noticed that the store is sold.”
“I bought it.” His gaze didn’t even flicker as he said it. “It was a price I couldn’t refuse.”
Her heart sank. This was adding insult to injury. She’d never fully recovered from calling off their wedding, and now when her family was going through their hardest times since, Danny was the one to swoop in and buy up their heritage?
“You?” She stared at him, aghast. “You bought our store?”
The bell above the door jingled behind her, and Beth turned to see Granny step inside. Her coat was open in the front, and the old lady smiled sweetly when she saw Beth and Danny.
“You two lovebirds,” Granny said with a low laugh. “Don’t block customers now.”
Granny wasn’t completely with them, it would seem. Her mind was firmly fixed in the past. She headed over to the shelf that still held some dusty bags of sunflower seeds and assorted items like windshield scrapers and expired lip balm.
“These prices,” she tutted. “Far too high. Nothing will sell at this price...”
And ironically, Granny might be right. None of that product had ever sold.
* * *
DAN COULDN’T HELP but steal another glance at Beth. She had always been gorgeous, but pregnancy had brought out a glow in her that he’d never seen before. Her golden hair tumbled around her shoulders in glossy curls, and her lips were fuller with the extra weight she carried. Her belly was like a perfect dome out in front of her. She seemed softer, somehow, and more vulnerable. And if the twenty-seven-year-old, trim-waisted Beth had been enough to fire his blood back then, this more mature version of the same woman, rounder and fuller, just about stopped his heart.
Except he knew better than to entertain those thoughts. Beth had dumped him because she couldn’t handle being a stepmother. Obviously, he should have told her about his son sooner, but until Lana had shown up on his doorstep, he hadn’t known that he would ever be allowed into his son’s life. Regardless, Beth had walked out because she didn’t want to be stepmom to his child, which he’d understood back then. He’d lied to her, and if there was one thing Beth could not abide, it was an untruth, and knowing that should have been enough to make him come clean. Except that was a part of his life he hadn’t been proud of—being the deadbeat dad of a kid he’d never met. It wasn’t that he’d been trying to hide anything from her—Lana had made it clear that she wanted nothing to do with him when they broke up before he moved to North Fork. He’d tried to contact Lana a few times afterward, and he’d gotten nothing but silence.
“Someone had to buy the place,” Dan said, and Beth’s attention whipped away from her grandmother and back to him. Her eyes glittered.
“You never liked my dad.” He could hear the accusation in her tone. What did she think, that he’d done this as some sort of revenge plot because Rick Thomas hadn’t thought he was good enough for Beth?
“Your dad never liked me,” he retorted. “And this has nothing to do with old tensions. I think we’re pretty much past all that, don’t you?”
Her dad had been right. Dan hadn’t been good enough for Beth. He’d come
