Southern Gentleman (Charleston Heat 3)

“I thought y’all barely talked,” Eva says. “You barely spoke French, and he didn’t know a word of English.”

My smile grows wistful. “It was a magical time.”

Gracie sets an iced coffee in front of me, milk swirling into the dark liquid. It’s my usual order here at Holy City Roasters. I’m a coffee fiend—the kind that goes straight from bed to the coffee pot. I love the smell, the taste. The ritual of sitting down with the day’s first cup.

But looking down at my coffee, fragrant and ice cold, I’m hit by an unpleasant realization. I don’t know what the rules are exactly about drinking coffee when you’re pregnant. But I can’t imagine any doctor would recommend having a fourth cup of the day, especially at 8 P.M.

I feel short of breath. Like my lungs are gripped in an invisible fist. My eyes burn with tears.

Olivia runs a hand across my back. “Aw, sweetie, talk to us.”

“Do you not like the coffee?” Gracie asks, clearly distressed.

I blink, taking a quick breath through my nose, and shake my head. “Coffee looks delicious. I just—” Another breath. Best to just come out with it. “I’m pregnant. Took the tests right before I called you guys.”

Eva gasps. Olivia gapes.

A tear slips down my face, catching on my lips.

“But you told me things were quiet on the dating end lately,” Gracie says. “That you weren’t feeling your regulars.”

I tug a hand through my hair. “That is true. But there’s this guy I haven’t told y’all about.”

“Who?” Eva says. “Why haven’t you told us?”

I wrap my fingers around my coffee, the condensation cool against my palm. Look down at it. My friends would never judge me.

But I still feel a pang of shame. I’ve been fucking my boss. Not only that. Hate fucking my boss, the two of us exchanging bodily fluids but rarely conversation. We meet, we screw, we smoke a cigarette. Then we go our separate ways.

I’m all for a hot, anonymous tryst. I’m a feminist lit professor with a lady boner for romance, for crying out loud. How could I not be into a woman seeking sexual satisfaction, no matter what that satisfaction looks like?

But now that a baby is involved, the scenario feels different. This is the father of my child we’re talking about. Not some smoking hot French guy I fooled around with when I was a nineteen year old foreign exchange student. I feel like I should at least know something, anything, about the guy who knocked me up. Not for lack of trying. Whenever I ask about anything non-work related, Greyson stonewalls me.

He completely shuts me down.

So I know next to nothing about him, aside from his preference for Marlboro Lights and penchant for growly rudeness.

“He and I have a very…casual arrangement. I haven’t mentioned it to you guys because”—I lift the cup, rotate it, drop it back on the table, careful not to spill the coffee—“we work together, and we don’t want anyone to know.”

“Wait.” I feel the heat of Gracie’s stare. “Is this someone you’re working with on Luke’s barn?”

I look up. Meet her eyes. “It is. Greyson Montgomery.”

She gasps again. Louder this time.

No, not louder—it’s just Eva gasping, too.

“What?” I ask, shooting her a worried look.

“Nothing. I just, um. I dated his brother, Ford, when we were younger.”

“The Ford?” I say. “The one you pined after all through your twenties?”

Eva purses her lips and nods. “That’s him. Guy was my first everything. Including my first heartbreak.”

“Ooompf,” Gracie says. “First one stays with you, doesn’t it?”

“That one stayed with me for years,” Eva replies. She turns back to me. “Anyway. I remember Greyson. A little serious, but a nice guy. He’s protective of Ford. Really cute, too.”

I scoff. “Nice guy? Eva, Greyson is a complete asshole.”

Gracie blinks.

“I didn’t know assholes were your kink.”

“Me either. Alphaholes are totally not my trope of choice.”

Gracie grins at the romance reference. Like me, she’s been obsessed with romance lately. Specifically Olivia’s yummy historicals.

“Greyson was always straight edge, but he wasn’t a jerk,” Eva says. “At least from what I can remember. I wonder what happened.”

“No clue.” I shrug. Swallow. “We were so careful.”

Olivia reaches across the table and puts her hand on mine.

“I get that you just found out. But do you have any feelings either way?”

“About keeping it?” I sigh for what feels like the hundredth time. Try to make sense of the swirl of feelings and thoughts inside me. “Honestly, I don’t know. I’m considering all my options.”

“If I were in your shoes, I’d do the same,” Olivia replies. “You remember when I got pregnant my first year in grad school.”

“I didn’t know that,” Gracie says.

“Yup. It was with my boyfriend at the time—my first real boyfriend,” she says, nodding at Eva. “We were young. Broke. I ended up not keeping the baby. We just weren’t ready to be parents, you know? So I’m glad I had the choice.”