On Friday, Dan had a vacation day to burn and volunteered to watch Emily, so Meredith and Natasha could see the house in Wiarton.

It was totally perfect.

Damn.

Natasha prowled around the main floor again, looking for any reason to hate it. She couldn’t find any.

Sure, it needed a lot of work. A ridiculous amount of work. The two small studio apartments on the back of the house were complete gut jobs. The photos hadn’t shown any of that, and their realtor—who Meredith had quickly become best friends with—was apologetic about the condition of the space.

Natasha didn’t really care, because the main unit, where she and Emily might live, was in better shape—relatively speaking.

On the main floor, only the living room was habitable. The kitchen needed to be completely gutted. Same with the bathroom on the first level. But upstairs had an old but perfectly functional tub and toilet, so she could move right in and do the renovations herself.

“What do you like?” Meredith asked under her breath as they passed each other on the stairs.

Everything. “Not sure yet.”

“Liar.”

“Shut up.” Natasha shook her head as she climbed the last few stairs. She couldn’t really do this. It was—

She stopped in the front bedroom.

No, she wouldn’t shut herself down like that. Just like she wanted Emily to grow up thinking she could do anything she wanted, she needed to live that for herself.

Because yes, actually, she could do this.

It would be hard.

It would be stressful.

But the old Natasha wouldn’t have shied away from the challenge. She would have grabbed on with two greedy hands and made this house the best little inn Wiarton had ever seen.

You don’t even know what the market is like here for this kind of thing.

It didn’t matter. That was one thing she’d learned over the years. You didn’t try to horn in on an already crowded part of the tourism market. You made your own space and then hustled hard to convince people it was too good to pass up.

You got people to go out of their way for you.

She’d lost sight of that, too. Hell yes. She could do this. She could do this like a freaking boss.

Maybe not this house, though.

But one just like it, and soon.

Apparently her sister didn’t get the maybe one just like it memo, though, because when Natasha got back to the main floor, she found her sister saying the most outrageous thing to the realtor.

“We might make an offer,” her sister said, ignoring the wide-eyed stop it message Natasha was trying to send her. “But we’d have a long list of conditions.”

“The owner isn’t in a position to make changes to the property,” their agent warned them.

Meredith beamed. “Excellent. Then they must be in a position to negotiate the price. Let’s start at twenty percent below asking. What do you think?”

The agent laughed. “I think you’re a force to be reckoned with.”

“You have no idea,” Natasha muttered. Oh. God. She lifted her voice and gave her sister a pointed look. “We aren’t in a position to make an offer today. Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” the agent said. “You’ve got my card, and I’ve got your numbers. I’ll let you know if I hear of any movement on this place.”

“Call me,” Meredith said, waving her hand at Tasha’s protest. “I mean, call both of us. Of course.”

The agent laughed. “Of course. And before you leave town, make sure you check out the new school. It’s an easy walk from here. Everything in town is walkable, really.”

He was right. They set out on foot, and after walking past the recently renovated school, Meredith steered them towards Tim Horton’s.

“You need tea,” she said.

“Tea is not a cure-all!”

Meredith just smiled.

“Fine. And get me a cookie, too.”

As they waited for their order, Natasha fiddled with her phone, but her mind was racing too fast to concentrate.

She took a deep breath, then let it out slowly and scanned the coffee shop and then out the window. An ambulance pulled into the parking lot, and her heart rate sped up. But when the paramedics hopped out, neither of them were Matt.

Her relief felt a lot like disappointment, and she squirmed.

“This is a nice town,” Meredith said once they’d found chairs.

“Yep.”

“How do you feel about moving in this direction?” North. Closer to Pine Harbour. Meredith didn’t need to spell out the rest of her question.

The little hospital here in Wiarton was where she’d been taken by Jake’s girlfriend, now his wife, when Natasha had been in a car accident. Where he’d come running when she called him. Where she’d fought with her inner demons for hoping beyond hope that maybe he was her baby daddy.

This was a place she’d run away from four years ago.

Why had she fallen in love with a house here?

Why indeed.

“It’s fine. That was all a long time ago.” If she kept telling herself this, maybe she’d start to believe it. “Drink your tea.”

The conversation shifted to the pros and cons of a smaller town. Meredith tsked about the school being combined elementary and secondary, but since Emily was only three, that hardly seemed like a driving decision-making factor.

“And really, if I want to buy a house, I need to look outside the bigger towns,” she murmured, trying not to feel weird about what that meant.

She was officially a low-income single parent. That came with limitations that would affect her daughter. But the rundown house in a small town was only phase one in Natasha’s Big Dream Plan. Maybe by the time it mattered what kind of school Emily went to, they’d live somewhere else.

“What are you thinking now?” Meredith asked.

“There’s not enough parking.” Natasha wriggled her nose as she looked at the single car driveway. “Which isn’t a problem in the summer, because street parking is plentiful. But in the winter, when the snowbanks are sky-high and crazy wide…”

“Is that a deal breaker?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. Really, the long-term value in this property would be as a flip.” Which made her stomach do exactly that because the risk was enormous. She pressed her hand to her belly. “Renting out those units to tourists would ease things significantly. At least in the summer.”

Her head was already spinning with numbers—and they didn’t all add up. It would take months to get the units rentable. She wasn’t sure she had enough savings to put a down payment on the house and float the necessary renovations, too. That conclusion didn’t help the stomach gymnastics at all.

“Come on, let’s keep walking and see what you can offer big city folk who are looking for a country getaway.”

They strolled up to the main drag, where they turned toward the centre of town. It took just a few minutes to pass the coffee shop, a grocery store, a gas station, all before hitting the main shopping strip—that was exactly one block long.

But it had everything a tourist might want. An outfitters, a dollar store, a bank, and a couple of restaurants. It even had a thrift store, which made her so happy because the one in Port Elgin had been a lifesaver over the last three years.

And then right when her guard was all the way down, she spotted Matt Foster, hopping out of a bright blue pickup truck in front of said bank. Damn it. She’d used up her Matt-anticipation earlier on the red herring ambulance.

She stumbled to a stop and Meredith turned around. “What’s wrong?”

Which clearly was a clarion call for a first responder, even across a street, because Matt stopped and looked across at them.

Tasha didn’t move.

Neither did he.

Meredith took a slow, curious turn and followed Natasha’s gaze, then twisted back, questions and amusement written all over her face. Tasha glared at her sister, who continued her streak for the day of totally ignoring important, pointed looks. Mer’s eyebrows hit the sky and she pivoted sharply again. Matt grinned and waved before strolling slowly up the stairs of the bank.

“Stop looking at him,” Tasha said, yanking on her sister’s arm. “You’re a married woman.”

“And you are not. Who is that?”

“That’s…Matt.”

“Matt? The guy who was really nice to Emily? Why didn’t you mention he looked like that?”

“It’s complicated.”

Meredith gasped. “He doesn’t look complicated. He looks like a really good idea.”

No kidding. “He’s…”

“He’s what?”

“Jake’s brother.” Natasha lowered her voice and let all the secrets spill out. “His name is Matt Foster, and I slept with his older brother, and then really wanted him to be Emily’s dad. Okay? So it’s complicated. Because he is also, in fact, really nice. Yeah.”

Meredith stared at her. Then she took a deep breath. “Okay, you need time to wrap your head around how to make it work. I get that. That’ll make for awkward family dinners, but I’m thinking he’s worth it.”

Tasha did not like how her sister said that. It was indecent. “Based on what, exactly?”

“Six-foot-three-inches of hold-you-against-the-wall sex.”

“Shut. Up.”

Meredith laughed. “Tell me you’re not imagining that right now.”

“I’m not speaking to you. Let’s head back to the car.”

“He looks like he could toss you over his shoulder and hike up a mountain.” Meredith paused. “Where you’d then find a cabin to have monkey sex in.”

“I think you and Dan need a weekend getaway without the kids. Someplace with walls and maybe a sex swing.”

“We totally do,” Mer sighed. “I miss sex.”

Natasha gave her an alarmed look. “How long has it been?”

Her sister screwed up her face. “I don’t know. Like…three weeks, maybe?”

“Oh, screw right off. It’s been four years for me, so you can take your three weeks and shove them where the sun don’t shine.”

At least her sister had the good grace to blush at that.

Tasha sighed. “How about I take all three kids to a movie on Monday night?”

Meredith’s face lit up. “That would be amazing.”

And now she was a sex agent for her sister, with little chance of that being reciprocated any time in the near future. She was a martyr to the cause. “I really need the realtor to call right now and distract your dirty mind, thank you very much.”

“Come on, I’m having so much fun. We’re sister bonding.”

“You were there when Emily was born. I almost broke your hand. I think we’ve bonded enough for life.”

Meredith slung an arm around her shoulders. “I’m going to miss you so much when we move, you know that?”

Suddenly it was hard for Natasha to swallow. “Yeah.” She stopped her trundle across town and leaned into her big sister. “I’m going to miss you too, you pervert.”

It was dinnertime before they were back in Port Elgin. Meredith didn’t bring up Matt again on the drive, although it was clear she wanted to. They picked up pizza on their way into town and rescued Tasha’s brother-in-law from a three-kid pile-on by walking in the door with everyone’s favourite.

“How did it go?” Dan asked, wrapping his arms around Meredith.

Tasha rocked back on her heels. “Eh. It went. I’ll keep looking a little closer to home.”

“Sorry it wasn’t perfect.” He clapped her on the shoulder.

Oh, but it is perfect. That’s the problem. She wanted things she really shouldn’t have. A perfect house she just couldn’t quite afford. A perfect man she couldn’t quite handle.

None of that mattered, though. She had Emily, who was clinging to her leg. She looked down at her daughter, more perfect than anything else. “Hello, baby.”

Emily climbed up and held out her sweet little arms for a hug. “Miss you, Mommy.”

“Always. Shall we cuddle while we eat pizza? Because Mommy needs to go to work soon.”

“Okay.” So simple. So sweet.

She soaked up the love, and by the time she needed to leave, Emily was ready to go and play with her cousins anyway. Tasha said a small prayer of thanks for the easy goodbye on a day when they hadn’t spent much time together. Then she headed to work, laptop tucked into her bag just in case she had some downtime to search real estate listings.

But it was a busy night, and she didn’t have a chance to check her phone, let alone daydream about house stuff. By the time her first break rolled around, which she took in Malcolm’s office, curled up with a cup of coffee, she couldn’t even look at her notebook.

“Tired?” her boss asked her.

“Mmm.” She closed her eyes. She liked working at Bailey’s. If she found a babysitter who could take Emily overnight, maybe she could keep everything exactly as it was. She could rent an apartment and keep working here, and nothing had to change.

Her phone vibrated, then again a minute later.

Malcolm cleared his throat. “Are you going to check your messages?”

She sighed. “Shh, I’m sleeping.”

“Emily wore you out today, huh?”

“No, my sister and I went on a bit of a road trip.”

“Fun.”

“Yeah.” She opened her eyes and tugged her phone out of her pocket.

Her cheeks immediately heated up. Matt’s name was on the screen.

She glanced up, but Malcolm had gone back to his ordering.

Hiding behind her mug of coffee, she clicked into the messages. There were two of them.

She didn't know how to reply to that. She finally settled on the truth.

That shouldn’t make her feel giddy. Of course, she shouldn’t be texting with him, either.

She watched bubbles appear on her screen as he typed something else. But instead of a text, the next message was a photo: Matt, leaning against a concrete wall, the dark blue collar of his paramedic uniform at the bottom of the frame. He was smiling enough that the corners of his eyes crinkled.

It was an exceptionally good-looking selfie. Of course it was. Of course he had good selfie game.

Meanwhile, she was curled up in a whiny ball in her boss’s messy office.

“I’m just going to step outside for some fresh air before I get back to work,” she muttered, not that Malcolm cared about the excuse. He didn’t even look up as she unkinked her limbs and stood up.

Except outside was dark now, so that wouldn’t be good.

The washroom had terrible lighting, and also, a selfie in the bathroom was painfully cliched.

She turned in a slow circle in the hallway, irrational panic rising inside her.

She wanted to send a picture back, a quick, oh-yeah-this-is-how-I-totally-look-right-now-without-effort kind of selfie, but it had to be a good one.

Finally, she turned her camera on and held up her phone. She felt ridiculous all of a sudden, even though she took selfies all the time, but they were with a three-year-old.

For this, she needed to look hot.

Somehow this picture needed to say, Please come and see me tomorrow night.

It took three tries for her smile to look natural, another two to get one where her eyes were open just the right amount.

Fucking hell, flirting was complicated all of a sudden. When did that happen?

Fingers shaking, she hit send.

His reply was almost instantaneous.

What was she supposed to do with that?

Swoon, clearly.

She couldn’t wait. Any denial about how he made her feel was abandoned now.

The next question was, how could she juggle that with what she’d done in the past?