“Yeah, I was just hoping to talk to you.”
He looked over his shoulder. Gracie was already at the arena in front of the house, sharing her ice cream cone with Sparkles.
“Okay.” He led Charlotte to the porch, and he sat next to her. “What’s on your mind?”
“Um, a lot. But it’s all jumbled and I wanted to talk to you and I don’t know where to start or even what to say.”
Tripp’s blood pressure kicked up a notch. This was either going to be bad news or good news. There was no in between, and he felt it.
Charlotte blew out a breath and looked at him. “I like you,” she said.
He smiled. “I like you, too.”
“No, I mean, I really like you.”
His smile got bigger. He was liking the sound of this, but he forced himself to stay quiet so she could finish what she was trying to say.
“I got a job offer, a great job offer, back in L.A.”
His face fell and his temples started pounding. There was a shift in the air that made his gut instantly ache. This was good-bye. He’d felt it before. And Charlotte was going to sit there and try to justify it to him. “I see,” he said, hearing the ice in his words.
Her eyes went wide. “No, I mean, it’s great for my career and it’s exactly what I’ve been wanting, but—”
“Daddy…” Gracie cal
led in a weird voice. “Daddy, something’s wrong…”
Tripp shot up and rushed to where Gracie was climbing the steps. “What’s wrong, baby girl?” he asked, but instantly saw what it was. Her bottom lip was swollen to twice its size.
“Jesus,” he said, looking her over. “Can you breathe? Is your tongue swelling?”
“No,” Gracie said. “I can breathe a lot.”
But Tripp was too panicked to wrap his brain around the last five minutes. He looked at her ice cream cone. “What is this?”
“Bubble gum,” Gracie said.
“What did you eat today?” he demanded.
“Just my lunch you made,” she said.
“What’s going on?” Charlotte asked from behind Tripp.
“Her lip is swelling. It’s an allergic reaction, but she’s only allergic to certain nuts.”
He looked Gracie over, and while her lip was swollen, her breath and tongue were okay. Still, he wanted to take her to the ER to be sure. He heard horror stories all the time about “if parents would have just taken their kid to the doctor…”
“Come on, baby, we’re going to the ER.”
“Wait. Oh my God…” Charlotte said. “Tripp, I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”
He looked at her. “What?”
“The ice cream shop. We had samples. One was chestnut. No, not chestnut. Pralines and cream.”
His blood ran cold. The one time he let a woman take his daughter, this happened.
He scooped up Gracie and put her in his truck at the speed of light. How could he have been so stupid? To think this would ever work? To think Charlotte would ever stick around? She’d been on the brink of telling him she was leaving back to the city and now he had to take his daughter to the emergency room.