Three Little Words (Fool's Gold #12)

Clyde nodded. “Jack’s our youngest and he’s nearly seven.”


“I couldn’t believe it.” She leaned toward Isabel. “Clyde’s been in for the surgery now, but it’s too little too late.” She sighed. “Not that I’m not excited about the baby, but was he unexpected!”

“You’re having a boy?” Isabel asked.

“Clyde Junior,” Clyde said.

Linda looked at her husband. “You are not saddling a tiny infant with that name.”

“Why not? You can call him CJ,” Isabel said.

Linda looked at her. “That’s certainly better.”

Their server appeared with menus and explained about the specials. She took their drink orders and left.

Linda put down her menu. “So, what do you do? I’m a stay-at-home mom. I was just getting my résumé polished to get back in the workforce when I turned up pregnant with this one.” Her smile turned wry. “Not that I don’t love my kids. I do. But there are days I want to put on office clothes and go talk to adults.”

“My sister has four kids and another on the way. I’m sure she shares your feelings.”

The mention of Maeve reminded Isabel to go see her sister. They’d talked by phone a few times, but it was silly that they were in the same town and rarely saw each other. It wasn’t as if Isabel was staying in Fool’s Gold forever. After the first of the year, she would be heading back to New York, and she wasn’t sure how long it would be until she returned.

“Do you have kids?” Linda asked.

“No. I’m divorced and we never quite got to that stage.”

“I’m sorry.” Linda’s brown eyes filled with sympathy. “That’s hard. But Ford’s very handsome.” She smiled and leaned in conspiratorially. “In a sexy, muscled, tall kind of way. If you like the type.”

Isabel grinned. “I’m finding I like the type very much.”

“What are you two whispering about?” Ford asked.

“Nothing you want to know.”

He studied her for a second. “I’m going to take your word on that.”

“Smart man.”

Although imagining the look on his face if he found out that very-pregnant Linda thought he was sexy would be kind of funny.

“You never said what you did,” Linda mentioned a few minutes later.

“My family owns a bridal shop in town. Paper Moon. As I said, I’ve been living in New York. After the divorce, I wanted to get away, so I came back to run the business for a few months.”

Linda sighed. “Oh, that must be fun. All those happy brides. You get to help them find the perfect dress. Is there drama?”

“All the time. Emotions are running high and there are often mother-daughter conflicts. One wants traditional, the other wants anything else.”

“Sounds exciting. Clyde’s in auto parts. His dad left him a struggling business and he’s turned it into a multistate distributorship. We have over twelve hundred employees.”

“That’s impressive,” Isabel told her, thinking she and Sonia had talked about hiring one other person as they started their business. Twelve hundred was unimaginable.

“He wants to bring the sales team to the retreat,” Linda continued. “To help them relate to each other a little better. Sales can be competitive and Clyde’s worried their sense of unity is getting lost.”

“Clyde sounds like a smart guy.”

“He is.” Linda smiled at her husband, then turned back to Isabel. “Except when it comes to naming our baby.”

The server returned with drinks and took their order.

Clyde passed the basket of warm rolls to his wife, then looked at Ford. “How did you two meet?”

“I used to date her sister.”

Linda raised her eyebrows. “Really? And she doesn’t mind you two are together now?”

Isabel held up both hands. “There has been a lot of space and time,” she said. “Ford and my sister were engaged fourteen years ago. I was desperately in love with him, but he didn’t bother to notice.”

“My mistake,” Ford said lightly. “Maeve and I were way too young. A few weeks before the wedding, she realized her mistake. Because I was still a kid, I pouted. I left town in a huff, joined the navy. I got out a few months ago, returned home and we opened CDS.”

Isabel realized he’d given all the facts, yet kept many of the details private. She liked how he didn’t tell Clyde and Linda about Maeve cheating with Leonard.

He leaned toward her and grinned. “Isabel wrote me. A lot.”

She laughed. “Like I said, I was fourteen and had a mad crush on him. I wrote and wrote.”

“That’s so romantic,” Linda told her.

“Not really. He never wrote back.”

“Not once?” Clyde asked.

Ford shrugged. “There were a lot of reasons. But I enjoyed getting her letters.” His smile faded. “I was a SEAL. We had some tough missions. Reading about Isabel being a normal teenager in high school helped. She was a little wild in college, though.”

She pushed him. “Don’t spill all my secrets the first night.”