Worth the Wait: A Second Chance Small Town Romance (Love at First Sight Book 4) Read online

  WORTH THE WAIT

  LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT

  BOOK FOUR

  KARLA SORENSEN

  WWW.SMARTYPANTSROMANCE.COM

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Epilogue

  Second Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other books by Karla Sorensen

  Also by Smartypants Romance

  COPYRIGHT

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, rants, facts, contrivances, and incidents are either the product of the author’s questionable imagination or are used factitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead or undead, events, locales is entirely coincidental if not somewhat disturbing/concerning.

  Copyright © 2022 by Smartypants Romance; All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, photographed, instagrammed, tweeted, twittered, twatted, tumbled, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without explicit written permission from the author.

  Made in the United States of America

  eBook Edition

  ISBN: 978-1-959097-00-6

  CHAPTER 1

  IRIS

  Before she died, my grandma taught me a lot of valuable lessons. The first and foremost was that even the shittiest day could be improved by a hot cup of coffeeBandit Lakehing sweet on the side.

  I was testing the limits of that lesson, and had been for about the last six months.

  Walking into Donner Bakery, a few steps behind my much younger, much more energetic brother, I thanked my lucky stars that no one ever seemed to pay us much mind. Because the day had started shitty, moved to shittier when he spilled his bowl of cereal down the front of my shirt, and I realized just a touch too far down the road that I'd forgotten to so much as run a brush through my hair before we left.

  At age ten, with the kind of restless energy that reminded me of a corked-up champagne bottle shaken a bit too hard, Theo couldn't hide a single thought or feeling once it took root. And judging by the look on his face at the current moment, he was very impatiently waiting for his exhausted sister to catch up to him.

  His eyes—blue to my hazel green—took an unimpressed look from the top of my messy ponytail down to my paint-splattered sneakers. "You sure you wanna go in there like … that?"

  At the rate we’re going and had been going for a while, we just might prove Grandma's lesson wrong yet.

  "Yes," I told him. "I'm working after this, and there's no one I need to get dolled up for while you go to school."

  "Summer school is bullshit," he said.

  As the curse echoed across the sidewalk, an older woman sitting at one of the tables gave us a dirty look. I stifled an eye roll. The least of my worries in the past year was his minor language infractions. Many, many more of my sleepless nights came from the fact that he'd just flunked fourth grade, and if he didn't want to be held back, the boy currently waiting for his chocolate hazelnut croissant needed to work his energetic ass off for the next couple of months.

  I yanked the door open and gestured for him to go in. "Well, let's remember that the next time you decide to hand in a blank test."

  "Testing is even bigger bullshit," he stated. "And making me sit down with a stranger to do homework and talk about my feelings is the biggest bullshit of all. Don't they tell us not to talk to strangers anyway?"

  If anyone in this town had watched me closely in the two years since Theo and I moved back, they would've seen a remarkable increase in the bags under my eyes and the number of weary sighs that came out of my mouth. In truth, they'd started accumulating two years earlier than that, when my half-brother was dropped off on my doorstep by an unsmiling case worker because our mother had landed herself in jail.

  Again.

  But I'd take every wrinkle, every inch of exhaustion, every gray hair he'd eventually cause me to have the swearing little hellion under my roof. Moving back to Green Valley, putting down our roots in a place where we actually had a small support system in Grandma and her friends still felt like a brand-new transition most days.

  It was why I could walk into a place like Donner Bakery, looking a bit more homeless chic than I typically preferred, and no one paid us much mind.

  "He's not a stranger," I told Theo. "He works for the school. Or the county. Or whoever is starting this program for stubborn, argumentative geniuses like yourself who've decided that standardized testing is bullshit," I hissed down by his ear.

  He laughed.

  We stood in line, and because I couldn't help myself, I swept my hand over the dark mop of his hair, pushing it off his face. As I expected, Theo rolled his eyes and knocked my hand away.

  "You need a haircut."

  He shoved the hair back the way he wanted it. "I like it long."

  Shaking my head, I studied the curve of his downy soft cheeks, the way my touch had him blushing a little. Simple affection was something that had taken him time to feel comfortable with. And even with four years together under our belts, I typically waited for him to initiate affection outside of small touches like that.

  It was another way Theo and I were alike. If I thought about it too long, it might just break my heart into a million little pieces, scattered in a messy heap, where no amount of hot coffee and banana cake could fix it. When your earliest years are spent dealing with the fallout of someone selfish, someone who could never inhabit any role except the victim in the situations of their own making, it didn't make for a warm, fuzzy upbringing.

  Hugs were hardly the norm. Kisses on the forehead or someone rubbing your back when you didn't feel good—neither Theo nor I experienced much of that in our earliest years.

  I'd needed someone to show me what normal, safe love felt like too. But luckily for Theo, he was learning it from me much earlier than I'd ever experienced it.

  The line shuffled forward. "I mean it, kiddo," I told him. "It's a big deal they're giving you this opportunity. You have to promise me you're gonna try. Don't shut down just because you don't want to be there."

  He groaned dramatically. "Can we talk about this after I get my croissant?"

  "No, because once you get your croissant, you'll tell me you don't want to talk about it because it'll ruin your eating experience." I gave him a pointed look. "Like you did yesterday when I tried to bring this up."

  "We could've talked about it last night, but it's not my fault you dump me on Maxine and work all the time."

  His sullen tone and pouty lip had me emitting a dramatic groan to match his. Because what a steaming pile of horseshit he was feeding me. Theo loved when Maxine babysat because he got to play basketball with the boy who lived across the street, and she gave him free rein of his handheld video games, something I did not allow when we had evenings together.

/>   Gently, I set my hand on his back and curled my palm around his skinny shoulder. "I know you're kidding, but working like this at night won't always happen," I said. "This is…" I shook my head while I chose my words carefully. "It'll be different when the store opens."

  "You don't even have your building yet."

  My eyebrow quirked. "Minor details. You know what I mean."

  A quick glance at my face, and Theo nodded. "Set hours."

  "Only open past five two nights a week, and hiring employees for those nights is my first order of business. It won't stay like this."

  His eyes were serious, so big and trusting when he repeated the phrase that had become our mantra the last four years.

  "Swear it?"

  I held my hand over my heart. "On the only thing it would hurt to lose." I leaned down and dropped a kiss on the top of his too-long dark hair. "You and coffee, kiddo. Nothing else is worth swearing on."

  He grinned, crooked and sweet, and I still marveled at how quickly I'd take a bullet for someone I'd only known for a handful of years. When the women in front of us took their coffees and small paper bags of pastries, we shuffled to the glass display case.

  The girl who always helped us, with her wide happy smile and curly brown hair, started reaching for the chocolate hazelnut croissant before Theo could say what he wanted.

  "Morning!" Joy said. She set the croissant into a bag and looked at me with wide, expectant eyes. "For you this morning?"

  I hummed, scanning the immaculately filled case.

  The morning had improved just by walking through the bakery doors, and I had to smile because I wished Grandma was still around. If she was, we'd go to her house with an extra cup of coffee, the blueberry muffin she loved, and we'd talk about those two things. The smell and the taste and the anticipation of both made the whole day look brighter.

  "I think I'll have the blueberry today," I told Joy.

  "Your grandma loved those." She sighed.

  "Wouldn't it have been cheaper to like, bake them herself?" Theo asked.

  Joy laughed, a delightful chiming sound that brought a smile to my face.

  "We're doing our civic duty by coming here," I told him. "Supporting the local economy."

  He snorted, shoving half the croissant into his mouth in one bite.

  "How about another one of those too, Joy."

  She slid one in with my muffin, turning to fill a to-go cup with the French vanilla I favored. I paid while she fixed the lid on the top.

  "I heard you say something about summer school?" she asked, handing me the curled-up paper bag.

  "It's bullshit," Theo proclaimed.

  The woman behind us in line sighed heavily.

  Joy smiled. "School was the best," she said. "I remember wishing I could go all year round because I just loved learning."

  Somehow I managed to smother my smile at Theo's pained facial expression.

  "Is it one of the Green Valley teachers helping out?" she asked.

  I shook my head. "A new program they're starting. I think the county department of education is behind it. They've got enough kids dealing with back-sliding in the summer, they want to see if this can help mitigate the fallout when they return to school."

  And ... kids acting out because they feel their safe, secure world is on the cusp of exploding later in the year, but ... that wasn't something I was getting into with Joy from Donner Bakery. My brother and I were dealing with similar feelings as we crept steadily closer to when Nellie hit her release. The difference was that I'd learned how to cope with those massive, overwhelming feelings.

  Thank you, therapy.

  But Theo, even if I'd managed to get him to agree to therapy, refused to talk to anyone.

  Instead, the feelings built like a pressure cooker, and considering his body was the thing holding all that pressure, it was no surprise to me that he'd allowed school to become his release valve.

  "I think that sounds great," Joy said. "Do you know who your summer school teacher is?"

  Theo shrugged lightly. "Never met him. My teacher from last year called him Mr. B. Said he's real smart or something. Used to be a teacher."

  I let out a slow sigh. "Speaking of, I should get you over to the school. He's probably already inside waiting for you."

  Theo shook his head, flaky pastry crumbs sticking to his lips. "We don't start the one-on-one until lunchtime. We have stupid reading groups first, then some science crap outside."

  Joy coughed politely, a smile stretching her cheeks. "Sounds fun!"

  Her voice was so bright and as sweet as any of the confections she was packaging up in pretty little bags and boxes. For a moment, I wondered if she'd want to work at the store once I opened, if I could lure her away from sugar-topped muffins and cakes and cream puffs. She knew everyone. Everyone knew her.

  And I was still a bit of a question mark in town—which was lucky for me—only a select handful of people had made the connection to the skinnier, sulkier teenage version of myself that lived with my grandma for my high school years.

  And even fewer than that knew why I'd been there in the first place.

  It was best to keep it that way, and best that the people who did know, well ... they probably didn't want much to do with me. Given I was the reason their son hightailed it out of town and rarely came back.

  But those were memories that needed about a dozen donuts and a few extra croissants for good measure.

  We said our goodbyes to Joy, and Theo was quiet as we walked to the car. Quiet on the short drive to his school.

  A handful of cars were in the parking lot, and I glanced worriedly at the time.

  "Need me to walk you in?" I asked. "I'll leave it up to you."

  He stared at the school, and I held my breath that he'd ask me to. I was working on it, leaving him choices that would make him feel in control in situations that stressed him out.

  His face firmed up in resolve, and I caught him letting out a slow, measured breath, something else we were working on. "No, thanks."

  I nodded, fixing my face with an encouraging smile. "You've got this, T."

  Again, the crooked grin had my heart swelling. "Will you come in when you pick me up?"

  Don't cry. Don't cry. Don't cry.

  "Absolutely." I managed it without so much as a single waver to my voice, and for that, I was pretty damn proud. "I should probably like, meet the guy who's gonna save your ass from repeating fourth grade anyway."

  He rolled his eyes before he got out of the car, and I was still smiling when he disappeared into the front doors of the school. With a deep breath, I laid my head down onto my hands where they gripped the top of the steering wheel.

  Maybe it was the muffin or the coffee, maybe it was because my sainted grandma—may she rest in peace—was looking down on what I was trying to do with Theo, how I was trying to build a life for us in a place that held my only happy memories. For that one moment in time, I was able to lift my head with a bone-deep certainty that I could do this.

  I had to do this.

  Blank Page

  CHAPTER 2

  HUNTER

  The halls of Green Valley Elementary school hadn't changed much since my own time there. They felt smaller, of course, because of how much I'd grown. But even with fresh coats of paint, new lockers and desks and tables, the smell was the same. It reminded me of a time in my life that was so much simpler, something I couldn't recognize because I wasn't sure anyone could at that age.

  Back then, I never had to think about anything that weighed on my head now.

  Now, I wondered how I'd ended up back there. In the place that I'd left more than ten years ago, the place I'd avoided because it hurt too much to be.

  Now I had an ex-wife who showed as little reaction to our divorce as she had to our wedding, and to the slow acceptance of reality that she'd married a man whose heart would always be with someone else.

  I had a former job that I loved while I was in it, that I'd walked away
from because the halls of that school held all the memories I'd made with the person I’d married.

  Even though these halls were deeply embedded in the memories of my youth, they were free of any true heartbreak. And that's just about the only reason I agreed to the job. They were empty and quiet because it was the beginning of summer, and only the small handful of people involved in the new summer program was required to be in.

  When I closed my eyes, the squeak of my shoes on the gleaming floor reminded me so much of my old school in Seattle that I had to fight a wave of trepidation at the massive changes in my life in just a few short weeks.

  As I turned a corner toward the upper elementary wing, my eyes scanned the nameplates outside of the small offices, and I slowed my steps when I reached the correct one. The door was cracked, and I tapped a knuckle against it.

  "Come in," a voice called.