Hearts and Goals by Carolyn Miller

Author:Carolyn Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Carolyn Miller

Chapter 12

Maggie huddled in her jacket. The rainy weather of the past three days had cleared, but while the sun might be out, it was still cool. At least she’d been able to walk to pick Noah up from school and finally give him the promised ice cream for his attendance. She watched the children depart, chatting with their friends in the way she hoped Noah would be able to do one day soon.

Friends.

The word sat souring in her stomach, just as it had since Sunday evening when Beau had first said it to her.

She’d been so wrong, so foolish to have thought he meant something else. Call her clueless, but when he’d looked at her the way he had, their gazes bound as if by more than the loss of their fathers, she’d really thought it had meant more, that perhaps the trembling hopes she scarcely dared admit to might finally be given oxygen to breathe. Clearly, she’d been wrong.

Then he’d veered the conversation to something that sounded awfully like her looking after his family, and she’d realized the depths of her delusions, his comment about being friends drawing hers about a need to return home and twining the tingly feeling of moments before into a tangled mess. Yes, she liked the man. But she was so out of practice with all this that she wasn’t sure she knew how to simply be friends with a man. And just because he was one of the nicest men she’d ever met didn’t mean she should be looking for things he clearly did not mean to suggest.

Her humiliation had been complete when a look she had dared imagine might be disappointment at her attempt at an abrupt departure turned out to be due to him sighting a teammate. And while she’d suffered through awkward hellos and the knowledge she didn’t belong, she’d wondered why Beau’s demeanor had turned cold. Propelled from her seat, she’d thanked him and left only to find a parking ticket on her windscreen. All in all, a complete winner of an evening.

How did someone simply de-escalate their feelings to mere friendship? She was usually so careful about who she let inside her heart, and she hadn’t realized just how careless she had been. Never mind. It was a good thing she’d never spoken to her mother about Beau Nash and therefore never had to explain just what had happened. Or not happened.

“Noah!”

His round face lit in a broad grin as he rushed to her. She crouched to meet him with open arms.

“Hello, Maman.”

“Hello, my darling boy,” she said, kissing his cheek. “You look happier than yesterday. Was school good?”

He nodded. “And we get ice cream?”

“Oui.”

His beam of delight could power a small planet. “I’m getting ice cream, Xavier.”

Xavier, a little boy of South Asian heritage, looked up at his mother. “Can we get ice cream too?”

She shook her head, glancing at Maggie with an are you serious? expression. “It’s too cold today.”

“But Noah is,” the boy complained.

“Come, Noah,” Maggie said, steering him away from what was sure to be an awkward encounter.

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