Eliza Bancroft knew something was up the minute she walked into her duplex on a Tuesday afternoon in August. It was written all over her roommate’s face.
“What’s wrong?” Eliza asked, eyes narrowed, pulse ramping up as she set her shoulder bag and her fiddle on the bench by the back door.
“Who says something’s wrong?” Grace threw back, trying for a nonchalant tone.
Eliza could see right through it. “You. Your eyes. You’re watching me like you expect me to flip my shit.”
Grace pushed the half-full dishwasher trays in and closed the door of the appliance, then, after too much of a pause, she swiveled to face Eliza. “You’re going to flip your shit.”
“Is Calvin—”
“He’s fine. Still napping with Blitz. Preschool wore him out but good.” Grace took two long-legged strides to the kitchen table, picked up a magazine, flipped through the pages as though on a mission. “Here.” She set the magazine on the table and tapped it. “Familiar?”
Eliza moved closer, eyes on the full-color, full-page photo, and half a heartbeat later, she sucked in her breath. “Oh, my God.” She pressed a fist to her chest to try to stop herself from stroking out.
“His name is Mason North,” Grace told her in a quiet, matter-of-fact voice. “Your baby daddy is the CEO of North Brothers Sports.”
With her breath stopped cold in her lungs, Eliza snatched up the magazine and avidly dug in to the article. “Most eligible bachelor of Nashville?” she let out, her voice climbing higher. “I thought he was from out of town.”
“Sit down, sugar.” Grace pulled out one of the kitchen chairs, but Eliza barely registered it until her roommate eased her down with a gentle hand on her shoulder. “You’re pale. I’ll get you some tea.”
Eliza continued reading as she sat, inhaling the words with her eyes, soaking up every morsel of info on the man she’d spent a grand total of six, maybe seven hours with. Unfortunately, it seemed the Nashville Heat hadn’t actually interviewed Mason North for the piece, had simply put together whatever info was public—his job running North Brothers Sports, his family’s nonprofit foundation, his immediate family, including a younger brother, Drake, who had made the publication’s Most Eligible Bachelor list a few years back.
Add to that information what Eliza knew—he loved the St. Louis Cardinals and expensive whiskey, was irresistible in a suit, and appreciated the hell out of the tattoo of stars and music notes and ribbons that curved over her hip at her bikini line—and she still knew more, at least twice as much, about the musicians she’d played with in the studio today.
“He’s been here all along.” She grasped the tall, cold glass of tea Grace set in front of her, mainly for something to hold on to, as she let that nugget sink in. “I feel so dumb.”
Grace plopped down in the chair next to hers and took her hand. “We’ve been over this a thousand times, Eliza. You’re not dumb. You got caught up in a little magic with a scrumptious man and let yourself go for it. Part of the reason it was so magical is that you didn’t ask for each other’s life story or pertinent information. If you hadn’t ended up pregnant, you wouldn’t have thought anything of it.”
Oh, she would’ve thought about it. She had thought about it, about him, the man who had rocked her world for a few hours before she’d crept out of his hotel room. Mason-with-no-last-name had been a once-in-a-lifetime event. A few spectacular hours she could hold in her memory forever—the kind that had likely ruined all other men for her for the rest of her life.
Luckily for her, she hadn’t had room in her life for men in the four and a half years since. All of her energy and time went to her son and her career. Everything she did was to try to give her boy the best life possible.
“What am I supposed do with this information?” Eliza said, still staring at the magazine photo, which had him in a tux at some formal evening event, looking admittedly gorgeous.
She couldn’t help comparing this man’s classy, sedate life to hers, filled with little-boy noise, music, chaos, an energetic dog, and eternal scrambling. Scrambling was her middle name—scrambling to pay the bills, scrambling to pick up more work, scrambling to make sure her boy had consistent care when she did work.
“Well, it seems to me you have two options,” Grace said, leaning forward to try to force eye contact with her piercing blue eyes, her long blond waves falling over her shoulders. “You can track him down and tell him he’s a father, or you can not and keep on keeping on the way you have been.”
“Both make me want to throw up.”
“Understandable. Here’s the thing,” Grace said. “You don’t have to figure it out today. You’ve got time to think it over.”
Eliza tried to breathe, nodding, knowing her roommate had a point despite the choking panic that had gripped Eliza from the moment she’d seen Mason’s face in the photo.
Mason North. Calvin’s father.
Tears burned in her eyes out of nowhere, because how many nights had she lain awake wishing for the one thing her boy couldn’t have? A two-parent family. A daddy who loved him, who could teach him how to hit the Little Tikes T-Ball in their tiny backyard, who could go to Family Day at preschool.
Eliza threw her head back, closed her eyes, and blew out all the air from her lungs. “Maybe I could’ve tried harder to find him.”
“What?” Grace’s alto voice went soprano with the one-word question. She rushed back to her seat, grabbed Eliza’s wrist. “Eliza, you did everything you could to find your mystery man back then. The hotel wouldn’t release his info, the business conference he was attending was a dead-end, the internet searching with no last name was a bust. There was nothing else we could’ve done.”
“I still wonder if I could’ve hired an investigator.”
“Sure,” Grace said, “if we skipped paying rent for a few months, went without food. Come on, Eliza. If we could have, we would have. It wasn’t a possibility back then.”
*****
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ "Another winner filled with love, devotion, commitment and steamy passion!"
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ "Wish I could give it more than 5 stars!"
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ "If you’re looking for a charming, authentic, heartfelt read, make sure you don’t pass up this fantastic story!"
