Dirty: The Complete Series (Secret Baby Romance Love Story) (28 page)

“I’d love that,” she told me. “I just... I
don’t want to rush into anything, but I would really love living with you.” I
reached out and gave one of her fingers a little tug.

“I don’t want to rush anything either,” I told
her. “I want us both to be sure. But I know that I want to live with you.”

We kept talking while we ate, discussing what
it would be like, whether we’d live together in either her house or mine or an
entirely new place, what Autumn wanted to give Addie, and it felt so good to me
that I almost couldn’t believe it. I’d given up on the prospect of settling
down with anyone until I’d met Autumn. I’d thought that it just wasn’t in the
cards for me, but the way I felt about her was different to how I’d ever felt
about a woman I’d dated in the past.

I wanted to share my day with her, I wanted to
do the chores together and give Addie the father she deserved to have. I stayed
just shy of saying how much I’d come to care about Adelyn; I thought that for
Autumn it might put her in a weird position to think about another man taking
over fatherly duties for her daughter so soon.

“What do you think about me working for your
Dad again next year?” I picked up my plate and followed Autumn into the guest
house to start on the dishes.

“Now that he’s okay with us dating, I think
I’d like that,” she said, smiling. She took up her position at the sink, and I
brought in the rest of the dishes from dinner, helping to put away leftovers
while she got the water going and started scrubbing.

“That’s assuming Tuck doesn’t keep having
problems with me, I guess,” I said, remembering the altercations between
Autumn’s brother and me.

“He’ll just have to get over it,” she said
with a shrug. I began drying plates and bowls and silverware. Addie was still
on the porch, but we were so far out from anywhere that she would be safe for
the next few minutes while her mother washed up.

“Do you think he will? I’d hate to put a
strain between you and your brother.” She shrugged again, handing me a plate to
dry.

“Either he will or he won’t,” she said. “I’m
not in the business of satisfying Tucker Nelson.”

I chuckled. “Your father seems to be worried
about him.”

Autumn snorted. “Dad’s worried that Tuck’s
going to push things too far and then he’ll
have
to cut him off.” We kept talking for a little while longer about her brother
and how he might make things difficult for us, and then went back out into the
porch. Addie was still occupied with her toys. I wasn’t sure she’d even noticed
us going back inside.

As we talked, though, I noticed that Autumn
seemed distracted. I thought at first that it was because she was trying to
work out how she and her daughter would fit in with a future she wanted with
me, and the relationship she had with her brother, but slowly, I started to
think that it was something else.

I almost thought she looked self-conscious
when we started talking about Addie together, and I had to wonder what was
going on. Maybe she didn’t entirely trust me yet to have a closer relationship
with her daughter? I couldn’t entirely blame her for that. She was a good
mother, and the father of her child had abandoned her. She would
—
should
—
be a little gun shy.

Autumn let out a little startled noise and
then reached around to her back pocket, shaking her head with a wry little
grin. “I forgot that I set my phone to vibrate,” she told me.

“That could come in handy,” I suggested,
grinning back at her. She rolled her eyes and unlocked her screen, glancing at
Addie and then looking down at the text message she’d received. I watched as
her face went bright red, and then pale. “Something wrong?” I’d never seen her
expression change so much in a span of only a few seconds. She looked shocked,
alarmed, angry, sad, panicked, and then the normal calm came back over her
face.

“It’s nothing,” she said, giving me a tight
smile. “Just something I wasn’t anticipating. No big deal, though.” She turned
her phone off and slipped it back into her pocket, and for the rest of the time
I was there, I never saw her look at it again.

Chapter Thirty Seven

Autumn

I tried as best as I could to play off the
text message I’d gotten, but I was sure that Cade knew there was more to it
than some shocking little tidbit of information. I felt like my phone was glowing
in my back pocket, heating up, almost burning me with the incriminating text
message.

Don’t be ridiculous. He knows that Titan texted you before. It’s not
like you’re cheating on him with your ex.

In fact, I had managed to put Titan completely
out of my mind when Cade and I had started to see each other openly. I’d not
heard from him about coming into town and eventually when I did think of him, I
figured that he’d decided not to visit his family after all. I could remember
thinking fleetingly that it was a shame for his parents to miss him, but as far
as I was concerned, if he didn’t have any real desire to meet his daughter, I
didn’t care to see him at all.

But the message that I’d gotten told a very
different story.
Hey! I wanted to let you
know I finally got into town this morning. Got any time for me?

I had shut my phone off completely and put it
away in my pocket for the rest of Cade’s visit, but the words had seared
themselves on my mind. I’d just been thinking of the fact that Titan had almost
completely disappeared out of my life when the message had come in. It wasn’t
fair.

There was a part of me that wanted to message
Titan back and tell him that I’d reconsidered, that I didn’t want him to have any
part of my life or Addie’s, and that if he tried to force some kind of
connection, I’d send my Dad and my brother to talk to him about it. But I knew
that I couldn’t. My parents would stand up for me, but I knew that they would
be disappointed. If Titan wanted to have some part in his daughter’s life, I
shouldn’t be putting up any barriers to it.

I managed to keep it together while Cade was
still at my place. I could tell that he was hoping for an invitation to stay
the night, but I was fairly certain that if I let him stay over, I’d end up
spilling the beans to him. You would think that after the festival and
everything else that had happened, I wouldn’t feel like I needed to hide
Titan’s messages to me from Cade, but I did anyway.

I didn’t want him to think that there was
anything at all between Titan and me, but I also didn’t want to be petty and
deny Titan the possibility of having a relationship with his child for no real
reason other than my own annoyance with him.

Cade helped me get Addie ready for bed, and I
thought to myself that having someone I was in love with and cared about
helping me with my daughter, treating her like his own was exactly what I had
been hungry for ever since Addie had been born. I had no idea if Cade actually
wanted the job of being a father to her, but I could hope that he did. I didn’t
think there was a way for us to have the future we’d talked about that evening
if he wasn’t ready to bring himself up to that.

I didn’t want to make him leave, but I also
couldn’t let him stay. I knew I needed to do the right thing and reply to
Titan, and I couldn’t make myself do that while Cade was watching me.

I didn’t want to lie to him exactly, but I
wasn’t sure that I could deal with telling him everything about the situation.
I wasn’t sure
—
even still
—
how Cade felt about the fact that I felt
obligated to let Titan have a chance to get to know his daughter. I kissed him
for as long as I could, pressing my body tightly against his, wishing that I
could just put everything other than him, my parents, and my daughter a million
miles away from both of us.

Once I was alone
—
Addie in bed, Cade on his way home
—
I poured myself a glass of wine and tried to
psych myself up for replying to Titan’s message. I turned on my phone and
unlocked the screen, taking a sip of my wine. The message came right back up as
soon as I opened the app for it, and I looked at Titan’s comment to me.

I was a little confused at the fact that Titan
had asked if I had time for him, as opposed to wanting to see Adelyn or asking
if I had time to arrange a meeting. But I decided that I was going to be
straightforward.

Hey! Sorry, I had visitors, so couldn’t reply sooner.
I took a deep breath and a sip of my wine.
I think I have time to arrange a meeting for
you and Addie if you’re still interested.
I tapped send and turned on the
TV; somehow it was too quiet in my little house, with my daughter asleep and
the man I loved away. I put on an educational program that I didn’t even really
care about, just to have a little background noise.

About a minute later, my phone vibrated and
flashed that I had a reply.
Sure thing!
When are you free?
I frowned to myself, wondering if he had read my message
fully, but that wasn’t the problem. If he hadn’t, then he hadn’t. I couldn’t
imagine why he would want to meet with me other than to be introduced to his
daughter. He had made it abundantly clear that he wasn’t even remotely
interested in me anymore.

I’ll be available to meet with you next week in the afternoon,
I wrote back after some thought.
You can come by the farm, and I’ll show you
your daughter.
I tapped send and thought for another moment.
I’ll have a better idea of when, exactly,
after the weekend.

I was going to be seeing Cade after church on
Sunday, and I just hoped that I would be able to keep Titan out of my mind
altogether when we saw each other again. I knew that it wasn’t fair to keep him
in the dark, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to loop him into the situation
until I knew the truth about whether or not Titan intended to really be
involved in Addie’s life.

I’m looking forward to it!

After that, I turned my phone off again; the
alarm would go off whether or not I had it turned on, so I could go the rest of
the night without even knowing whether or not Titan had anything else to say to
me.

I felt jumpy, on edge, without being able to
specifically say why. I was doing what I thought was the right thing, but I
knew that Cade might not see it the same way. I hadn’t exactly lied to him, but
I’d told him just enough to get him to back off because I didn’t want to tell
him the full truth.

I finished off my wine and set the baby
monitor in case Addie woke up. I knew I would have to get up early, but as I
changed out of my clothes and into a nightgown and washed the makeup off of my
face, I was sure that I wouldn’t get even a wink of sleep the rest of the
night. I felt terrible about not being upfront with Cade, but I couldn’t see a
way
—
yet
—
to be fully direct with him. It was obvious to me that Cade had
thought that there was still some kind of feeling between Titan and me, and
until I saw how Titan meant to be with Addie I didn’t want to disqualify him
from my life completely.

I thought about talking to Mom about what I
should do, about how I should handle the situation. I knew that she was
conflicted about Titan. After all, he was technically the father of her
grandchild, but he was also the man who’d abandoned me while I was pregnant. I
knew that my parents would probably want me to give Titan at least the chance
to do right by Addie, but I couldn’t help feeling like it was suspicious that
it had taken him over a year to be interested in her
—
or in having anything to do with me through
her.

I turned over in bed and tried to calm myself
down by thinking about what I would need to do the next day; normally it helped
me to make a little list of things, but my brain wasn’t having it. It kept
circling around to the fact that in a few days, a week on the outside, I was going
to be around Titan again and having to deal with the man who had cheated on me
and then abandoned me, who had brushed me off when all I’d wanted to do was
make sure my daughter had some kind of father.

And now that I was letting him back into my
life, even for just a few hours, I was worried that I might be making a bad
choice for good reasons.
Cade will just
have to understand,
I told myself, closing my eyes and trying to feel
positive, or at least cautiously optimistic, about the whole thing.
He’s got to know that you have nothing for
Titan anymore, and that you’re into him. You love him
—
he has to feel that.

I finally managed to slip into that weird
state where my body was asleep, but my brain was still going on. It was
probably the best that I could manage, considering how anxious I felt and how
much I wished that I could both get rest and figure out how I should handle the
situation I was in.

At some point, I must have fallen fully
asleep, but when the sound of Addie’s voice through the baby monitor cut
through the fog in my brain, I didn’t think I had slept particularly well, and
I didn’t think it had been all that long. I sighed and dragged myself out of
bed to get her, hoping against hope that she would be willing for a “cuddle
session” that would let me get maybe another hour of sleep before I needed to
get to work for the day.