That was going to start with a permanent home.
“I’ll take it,” she said. “But my offer will have to be contingent upon selling the house I own in Idaho.”
“What?” The sour expression that crossed the Realtor’s face revealed how unwelcome she found this news, but Lucky couldn’t do anything without selling the Victorian first. The beach house was going to cost everything she could conceivably get from the sale of the property she’d inherited. Small in L.A. certainly didn’t mean cheap. Without her monthly check from the trust Lucky couldn’t even make a rental deposit. She had barely a hundred bucks left in her bank account. She’d been holding out as long as possible, trying to put a buffer between her and Mike before she had to deal with him again.
But time had just run out.
“You didn’t tell me you had to sell your own house first,” Priscilla Hathaway said.
“It won’t be a problem,” Lucky assured her. “I have an eager buyer who definitely has the money. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of weeks to close escrow.”
Her face instantly brightened. “Oh, well…Let’s go ahead and write up the paperwork, then.”
Lucky took a deep breath and nodded. This was the right thing to do. She’d get a job, work, somehow become the kind of mother she’d never had.
But she didn’t have the nerve to call Mike. She couldn’t bear to hear his voice. So she called Josh instead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“MIKE, I FINALLY heard from her.”
Mike jumped as Josh flung open the door to his office and let it crash against the inside wall. But what his brother was saying made an even greater impact. Mike knew Josh was talking about Lucky even though he hadn’t said her name.
“When?”
“Just now.”
Mike stood and glanced anxiously down at the buttons on his phone. Two of them were lit. “Which line?”
The question seemed to cast a pall over Josh’s excitement. “Um…she’s not on the phone anymore.”
“Why not?” Mike asked. “I told you I wanted to talk to her. Did you get her number? Somewhere I can get hold of her?”
“I have a fax number.” Josh shrugged helplessly. “That was all she’d give me.”
“A fax number?”
“She asked for an offer on the house. I told her I had to talk to you about it. She said to fax it to her when we were ready and hung up.”
“That’s it?” Mike tried not to feel stung that she hadn’t called him, that she wouldn’t even speak to him.
“Just about, other than the fact that she asked me to act quickly.”
Mike sank back in his seat. “Why the rush?” he asked, his initial excitement turning into a variety of other emotions.
“She didn’t explain. I think she needs the money.”
Of course she did. She should’ve called long before now. “Did you tell her Senator Holbrook is trying to reach her?”
“No. She was all business, quick and to the point, and I was too busy trying to get her to slow down so you’d be able to talk to her.” He hesitated. “What does Holbrook want with her, anyway? You never did tell me.”
“I can’t say.”
Mike thought Josh might push him, but he didn’t. “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Are we going to fax her an offer?”
Lucky…What did she want? he wondered. Was she happier without him? Was that the message she was trying to send?
He hoped not.
“Yeah, we’ll fax her an offer,” Mike said at last.
“How much?”
Considering what was at stake, he had to go for broke. “Whatever it takes.”
LUCKY SAT primly in the Beach Front Realty office, awaiting Josh’s fax. She’d asked him to respond right away and felt quite confident that he would. The Hill brothers had waited too long to get their hands on Morris’s house to be unresponsive now.
Priscilla, the Realtor she’d been working with, caught her eye while talking animatedly on the phone and smiled. Lucky knew it was simply a professional courtesy, an automatic reflex, which was too bad. She felt she could use a real friend at this moment. Her palms were sweating, and she was finding it difficult to breathe. She was letting go at last, taking a stand for her future, moving on with her life. She was saying goodbye to Dundee and Mike Hill—forever.
Hoping to calm the butterflies in her stomach, she willed away the sense of loss and regret “goodbye” engendered, along with the terrible questions that had haunted her since she’d found out about the baby. Should she tell Mike? If so, when? How?
She pictured his friends and family, the town. Everyone admired him. Surely, if he knew about the baby, he’d feel even more split between her and the rest of his life.
She wouldn’t tell him now, she decided. Maybe not ever. He had everything he needed, everything he wanted. She had only this.
As the fax machine in the corner began to spew out paper, apprehension tightened every nerve. When Josh had asked her how much she’d like for the Victorian, she’d given him the minimum amount she absolutely had to have in order to buy the beach house. She wasn’t after Mike’s money. She wanted as little of it as possible. But she owed it to her baby to make sure they had a good start, and that meant she needed a decent roof over their heads. Besides, she’d set the price low enough that she felt fairly confident she could get that amount from someone else. She just didn’t have time to go through the motions of marketing a piece of real estate.
Lucky watched the fax machine until the light turned off and the humming stopped. She was tempted to get up and retrieve the fax herself. But this was a busy real estate office, and several faxes had come in over the past thirty minutes. There was no guarantee this one was hers.
She waited instead for Priscilla to get off the phone and do the honors, but with every second her anxiety grew. Although Mike and his family had wanted the house for years, she suddenly feared that they wouldn’t come through in her hour of need.
Finally, Priscilla finished her conversation and hung up.
“I think my fax arrived,” Lucky said.
“Something’s here.” Priscilla crossed the room and shuffled through whatever it was that had come in. But a deep frown creased her forehead as she walked slowly back to Lucky.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure what this is….”