All I Want (A Farmers' Market Story) (7 page)

She looked around the shed where she dried and processed her herbs. It was tiny. A long table and a few benches barely fit into the little square. The weakening sunlight fell in patches across the concrete slab of floor. Plants hung from every available rafter and hook.

She’d found her place. She’d found herself. Unexpected turns in life didn’t take this away. Because this was the anchor.

So she could handle Charlie Wainwright. She could find a way to parent with him. He could come with his perfectly styled jeans and coiffed hair and charming smiles and
action plans
, and it wouldn’t change this thing.

This thing she’d built. This place that had become her heart, her soul, her savior.

If she reminded herself of that every day—every single morning—she couldn’t fail.

CHAPTER NINE

C
HARLIE
TURNED
ONTO
the gravel drive that would lead him off the highway and toward Meg’s little goat compound. He had no other words for the conglomeration of buildings that made up her operation.

He hadn’t given them much of a look last month. He’d been too busy freaking out at his total and utter spiral into irresponsible behavior. As he winced at the gravel pinging against the exterior of his car, he could see that it was, well, as weird as the term
goat compound
.

Her house was small, what he’d probably call a cottage if he was being kind. It was old, a little run-down and yet somehow cheerful. As if a little old lady who would offer you tea and cookies lived there.

Meg was definitely not a little old lady, and any cookies and tea had been figurative.

“Christ,” he muttered, pulling to the end of the gravel drive. There was a little stone fence of sorts at the top, one he could easily step over but he assumed kept people from driving farther.

On each stone there was some iteration of a goat or flower painted in bright colors. Charlie stepped out of his car and merely stared.

The woman he’d accidentally knocked up was really obsessed with goats. The image was everywhere, even inked onto her skin, and in just the few hours he’d spent in her company, he’d drunkenly danced with a goat and soberly watched her milk goats.

She was carrying his child. He’d proposed marriage to her.

Somehow it wasn’t a dream or some hallucination. This, right here, beside a row of rocks painted with goats, was his real life.

He blew out a breath and looked over the well-kept yard between him and the cottage. Flowers and bushes and bright green plants grew in beds along the tree line by one side of the house. Nearby, he could hear the goats bleating.

The door to the barn was open and Meg stepped out. For a brief second the whole goat thing didn’t seem weird. She had her blond hair pulled back into a sloppy ponytail, wispy curls hanging around her face. She was wearing shorts, exposing a twirl of color he couldn’t make out across the yard on the side of her calf.

In the plan of his life, Meg didn’t fit at all. He never would’ve considered a partner with tattoos and a goat farm, and a business that depended on the strength of farmers’ markets and people’s willingness to buy foolish things.

He couldn’t believe she thought she was solvent when this was her life. But she had a smile that made him forget all that, and even a little bit why he was here. She looked purely, 100 percent
content
. Like she knew without any shadow of a doubt where she was, who she was and that it was all meant to be.

Until she lifted her gaze to him. Her mouth remained curved, but her expression tightened. It wasn’t relaxed. She wasn’t content anymore.

He wished he could disappear so she could go back to that, but he couldn’t. So he stepped forward. “If you’re still finishing up work, I can wait.”

She waved him off, pushing the heavy barn door closed before he rushed to help.

She eyed him as he placed a hand directly above hers and pushed it the rest of the way shut.

“You’re going to be weird about me doing work while I’m pregnant, aren’t you?”

He withdrew his hand and shoved it into his pocket. Something about her made him feel more off-kilter than he’d ever felt, even in the fog of being jobless and aimless. Meg was the thing, even prepregnancy bomb, that left him feeling the most uncertain of himself.

“Well, as I hear from my sister-in-law, growing a baby is hard work.”

“Yes, and did she refrain from closing barn doors or whatever it is she does on a daily basis while she was growing a baby?”

Charlie thought back to when Mia had been pregnant with Lainey. Refrained? No, she hadn’t refrained from much, especially in the beginning.

“That’s what I thought,” Meg said before he could form a response. “Let me assure you that growing this baby is very important to me, and I’ll be taking care of both myself and it. And, even if it’s coming from a good place, people telling me what to do has never been something I swallow very easy.”

“All right, that’s fair.”

She nodded, seemingly satisfied with his response as she began walking toward the house, but he wasn’t done.

“But you’ll have to accept that telling people what to do has always been something I’ve done naturally. And I assure you, it does come from a good place. I can’t just turn it off.”

She stopped and turned to face him, that irritated line in her forehead he’d seen a lot during their short meeting at Moonrise.

“I’m used to being in charge. To leading people. My job was completely dedicated to me being able to convince people that my product and my way of getting it to them was the absolute best thing for their company.”

“This baby isn’t a product. And I’m certainly not a
company
. We’re people. All of us.”

He opened his mouth to argue further, but the words didn’t come. It was oddly on point with his ex Emily’s parting words to him when he’d said he wasn’t ready to marry her. It had been four years ago, that last serious relationship, and he’d thought he’d
eventually
marry her, but he’d had things to accomplish first and Emily hadn’t understood that.

I am not a timetable or a sales report.

He remembered that vividly. Because he’d known she didn’t understand and maybe that was for the best, but...had she been right?

Did he treat people like business objects? It would explain why the past few weeks had been so odd and uncomfortable. He should have been able to relax and enjoy some time off while weighing his options, but he just...

“Hit a little close to home?”

He blinked at Meg, who was staring at him. Not quite accusingly, though. There was a certain softness to her expression that he thought might actually be concern.

“Maybe.”

Her mouth curved at that, and it was such an odd feeling to admit a little bit of a failing, or something hitting “close to home,” and having the response be an easy, accepting smile.

“You seem to be the type who needs schedules and plans and all that...”

“And you seem to be the type who doesn’t want that.”

She inclined her head toward the house and started walking again. “Actually a lot of my life is based on a very precise schedule. Goats like routine and consistency, and if I’m going to produce enough soap to be solvent each week, I have to keep a very close eye on what I produce.”

She stepped onto the porch and pushed her door open. He bit back the urge to tell her she should keep it locked while she was in the barn. He’d bring up the subject eventually, but he sensed now was not a good time.

“But this—” she gestured toward her stomach, and then laid her palm there, her eyebrows drawing together “—this is something else entirely.” She stood inside the cottage, him still on the porch on the other side of the threshold.

It felt a little heavy, a little weighty, that separation. Because he might have fathered that child, but he was separate from her. She was not his partner or his spouse. They were not in this together. Not really.

She was standing there, and he was standing here, and all they could do was talk about possibilities. And the ways they were different. All they could do was dance around each other awkwardly.

He could not turn her into a timetable, or a product to sell or buy. He could not package this in a way that would make it more attractive to his life, this woman with a rainbow of swirls on her calf, a sunny day tattooed on her forearm that ended in a goat at the end of her sleeve.

“Come inside, Charlie,” she said gently.

Right. Inside. They had to talk. They had to
plan
, in whatever way they could agree to do that. This wasn’t business, but it was still a challenge to meet.

She wasn’t a timetable. She wasn’t a product. But that didn’t mean there was no end goal. The end goal was family. A child, and the way he wanted to raise that child. That was why he was here. To erase this line between them.

So he needed to stop psychoanalyzing himself, or letting her psychoanalyze him, and focus on that. On what he wanted. Because this wasn’t a job that could be taken from him. This thing, a child, was something he could earn that would always be his.

* * *

C
HARLIE
FINALLY
STEPPED
over the threshold and Meg was surprised that relief swamped her. She couldn’t get over the idea it’d be easier if he just went away, and for a moment she thought maybe he’d been considering it.

But he stepped forward and she gestured to the living room on the other side of the kitchen. He walked into it, too tall, too confident. He’d pulled himself together and cloaked himself with some kind of purpose.

The man on the porch she’d felt sorry for. She’d wanted to soothe him, or maybe share her fears with him. He’d seemed so
human
and lost for a few seconds, and she thought
that
man was a man she’d like to get to know.

Then she’d told him to come inside, and his expression had changed.
Hardened
wasn’t the right word, but something akin to that. His expression had become focused and sure. And that man she didn’t trust at all.

But that was a good thing. She owed it to herself and to her child to protect a certain piece of herself. She owed it to herself not to be so desperate for partnership or friendship or understanding that she fell apart.

On a deep breath she followed him into the living room. Self-preservation did not mean antagonizing. It simply meant being careful. She would be careful and calm.

He glanced around the room, and whatever he saw, whatever judgment he made, was completely hidden behind that focused intent of his expression. It was more like a general taking stock of a battlefield than a parent walking in and finding everything less.

She
really
had to get over her parental issues if she was going to be one.

“Have a seat,” she managed, forcing herself to sit, as well. She wanted to pace. She wanted to wring her hands. She wanted to move and fidget and flail.

The fact she was going to sit on her overstuffed armchair and be completely still reminded her of being a kid. Interminable dinners dressed in too-itchy dresses where people expected her to be a little doll. A perfect Carmichael.

She closed her eyes against the wave of overwhelming fear and sadness. She could make a hundred decisions, but this wasn’t ever going to be easy. Every conversation, every choice, every moment with him would be complicated and hard, and remind her far too much of a childhood that still hurt.

“How are you feeling?”

She blinked over at him. He’d taken a seat on the edge of the worn sofa. It wasn’t the question she’d expected. Charlie was not someone she could seem to get a full grasp on. “I’m feeling fine.”

“No...symptoms?” he asked, a dogged earnestness in his voice and his expression.

No, she couldn’t get a grasp on him at all. “Uh, well, um.” She wasn’t exactly going to tell Charlie her bras already didn’t fit, but that was about the only sign something was up with her body. “Nothing much yet. It’s still just a little—” she held up her thumb and forefinger “—speck.”

And then, completely out of the blue, completely inexplicably in every way, she burst into tears. Just like she’d done when Elsie opened the door earlier in the week.

“Okay,” she squeaked, dropping her hands into her lap. “Maybe I do have a few symptoms, because I don’t usually cry for no reason.”

A warm hand covered one of hers, his thumb gently dragging across her knuckles. If she wasn’t in the middle of sobbing, she might have jolted at such a tender gesture from him. But she was too far gone. The tears kept pouring, this clutching panic in her chest kept swirling.

The baby was only a speck and she didn’t know how to take care of it. She’d had to outline her drug use to the doctor and listen to how it might have affected her, her baby. She was starting behind already.

How would she do when it was an actual baby-size baby? A he or she? A person with a name and needs and...

Charlie took her other hand, so that he was crouching in front of her, both of her hands in his. He trailed his thumbs back and forth against both sets of knuckles, a steady, calming gesture while she tried to calm herself. To breathe.

He held her hands so she couldn’t clean herself up. She could only sit there wet-faced and scared and sad and... Oh, she was going to start crying all over again.

“We don’t know each other very well,” Charlie said in a low, soothing voice. His thumbs never stopped moving over her knuckles, and she started to concentrate on that. How nice it was for someone to offer comfort, even when the reason for needing comfort was irrational and probably hormone related.

He hadn’t asked her a question—how could it be a question when it was the simple truth? But she shook her head anyway. “No, we don’t.”

“So, maybe that’s where we start. It’s a big thing. This. Maybe before we try to navigate
this
.” With his index finger he pointed at her stomach. “We try to navigate each other. Our interpersonal communication is going to be an important part of, well, that.” Again, he pointed.

“Interpersonal—you’re such a
businessman
.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that. I’ve worked hard to be one.”

She didn’t say anything. She hadn’t known very many
businessmen
who didn’t take their careers too seriously, who didn’t turn it into their world, their life. But she also knew only a small sliver of people, all like her parents, and she couldn’t believe that every person in business was like that.

Charlie didn’t come from that world. He might look like he fit in it, but it wasn’t the same. There could be good and bad parts to him. Just like there were good and bad parts to her.

“What if
it
wants to be a businessman?” he asked evenly. “Or businesswoman?”

She didn’t want to broach that topic. She wasn’t even past the
growing a stranger’s child in my womb
topic. “We should call
it
something other than
it
and
that
. I feel like I’m growing a hamster.”