Babymoon or Bust: A Novel
Ava Hunter
Psst.
The next page contains trigger warnings.
Please skip if you wish to avoid spoilerish content.
A Note from Ava
Dear Reader, This book contains a descriptive traumatic childbirth scene as well as brief references to the past death of a spouse by accident and to the past death of a parent to cancer.
If you’re sensitive to subjects such as these, please use this warning to make an informed decision about whether to proceed with the story.
But I always promise a happy ending and a growling mountain man.
With big love and all good wishes, Ava
ba·by·moon ?bābē?mo?on
noun
INFORMAL
a relaxing or romantic vacation taken by parents-to-be shortly before the birth of their baby.
“on the eve of the third trimester, two strangers are stuck together among the whispering palm trees of Mexico for a torturous week-long babymoon”
o a critical period of time after childbirth where the new parents run on madness and caffeine while establishing a bond with their newborn.
“a babymoon is regarded as a special time for the mother and father to fall in love with their baby. . .and each other”
Get lit, get loose, get laid.
Tessie Truelove lives to cross out each and every item outlined in her carefully planned agenda—three priority tasks a day. But this specific request doesn’t make the cut.
As much as she’d like it to.
Tess shuts her planner on tomorrow’s lengthy to-do list. Exhaling a determined sigh, she swivels on her barstool to survey the dank Tennessee bar the locals call the Bear’s Ear. She can appreciate dive. Hell, she was raised in a dive. Dives can give lessons in bold clashing patterns and thinking outside the box. Automatically, her mind goes to prettying up the surly space. She can’t help it. It’s ingrained. The walls could use a coat of paint. She’d nix the antlers. Small furry beasts of burden. Get rid of the wooden beer cooler. Add black horseshoe booths for smooth lines. Keep the loud music. Funky country with a beat.
Locals and tourists alike face off over beers and booths. A bachelor party, the men pounding shots with masculine exuberance, roars in the corner. A singer on the jukebox croons about whiskey and the way his ex-wife slugged him with two rounds of lead back in fifty-three. Tessie squints at the plaque behind the bar proclaiming Bear’s Ear a must-visit destination.
Drink.
She needs a drink.
And maybe a tetanus shot.
Pushing herself up on her stool, she lifts a hand to the bartender. “Excuse me. Do you have a wine list?”
He scowls, pulling drafts with reckless abandon. “Beer or liquor, blondie. That’s all we’re servin’.”
She holds his hard stare. “The name is Tess, and yours?”
He sighs.
She presses her palms together in a prayer pose. “I really need a glass of wine.”
Another sigh. “Tequila okay?”
Inhaling a breath, ready to ramble, ready to work her best no-nonsense magic, she leans across the bar and locks eyes with the man. “Listen, I didn’t work a seventeen-hour day and get lost on these dusty back roads to shoot piss-poor tequila shots in a dive bar with nudie calendars on the wall and an eardrum-shattering jukebox. No offense. After the day I’ve had, I deserve a glass of wine.”
The bartender’s jaw twitches.
“Please.” She lifts her chin. Narrows her gaze.
He stops. Wipes his rag along the bar. Tilts his head. Then a sigh of defeat. “Red or white?”
She smiles. “White, please. With ice.”
A curl of his lip. “Don’t push it.”
He Hulk-smashes a hand into the ancient fridge and fumbles around until he retrieves a dusty bottle. The wine is a translucent white with peach undertones. She doesn’t need to pull her Pantone book out of her bag to know which color she’d assign to the drink.
Swatch 9180.
She lives by Pantone colors. They are blissful order. Neat squares that tell a person exactly what to expect. No surprises; no chaos.
Tess jumps as the bartender slams the bottle of wine onto the bar top in front of her with a hard stamp of disapproval.
“Thank—”
Tess is midsentence when he hurries off to surlier patrons. At least he left her the bottle.
“You,” she mutters, eschewing etiquette and propping both elbows on the lacquered surface in front of her before dropping her face to her hands.
Even the bartender hates her. And why wouldn’t he? She’s terrible.
Terrible Tess.
She scowls. Fucking Atlas. He’s the one who saddled her with the awful nickname after the whole carpeted wall debacle years ago.
Usually, she’s content donning the Terrible Tess moniker because it means she gets the job done for her clients. And rather than her interns, she takes Atlas’s wrath.
But tonight, that means she’s in the boonies celebrating. Alone.
Per usual.
Rallying optimism, Tess closes her eyes and inhales deep, doing her best to focus on her big accomplishment of the day.
The newly opened Grey & Grace Hotel in Nashville is the highlight of her portfolio. A popular country singer opened a bar on Broadway and selected her as head designer. A two-year long project finally finished. If this doesn’t clinch her promotion at Atlas Rose Interiors—an internationally renowned celebrity interior design firm—nothing will.
After the big reveal and the client walk-through, Tessie offered to buy her junior design staff a round of shots.
They looked at her like she was off her rocker.
“Get a life, lady,” one of the interns had grunted before the group of them trudged off.
She opened her mouth to snap, “I have a life,” then just as abruptly, she shut it. Sven the intern was right. She doesn’t have a life. She has a job and an angry boss and her mood boards and Pantone chips. She has her records and a bubble bath and a glass of wine when she finds the time.
Who could blame them?
Who’d want to hang out with her after she’d barked orders all day?
She barely wants to hang out with herself.
It was that heart-twisting, face-slapping realization that had her spiraling. That made her grab her rental car keys and punch the gas and drive. Just drive. Away from the city and onto dusty country back roads.
In search of a reprieve. A second to be the so-very-not-uptight, not-so-terrible Tess she’d come to be.
And she found a bar where she doesn’t have to be herself. A city where no one knows her. A night she doesn’t have to hide behind her professional fa?ade. Where no one will call her terrible.
Maybe her cousin Ash’s words of wisdom—get lit, get loose, get laid—are worth considering.
Because tomorrow, she goes back to the rat race that is Los Angeles Tomorrow, she’ll be Terrible Tess once more.
She examines her gold-tipped nails and drains the remainder of her wine. Refills the glass with a hearty pour.
She loves her job.
But for one night, she wants to forget.
Make mistakes.
Have fun.
Tessie never expected to put her entire life into a job. But here she is, thirty-two years old, and it’s exactly what she’s done—it’s what she’s good at. Sleeping alone. Working sixteen-hour days. Keeping acquaintances, not friends. Spending all her time in showrooms, lugging heavy containers of tile and fabric samples, scrambling to appease her clients. Tearing out the most beautiful parts of ancient houses to make way for depressing gray floors and the same boring open concept floor plans. Kissing Atlas’s ass and refilling his Xanax prescription for a chance to make it as a senior designer.
She chugs her wine.
God help her, if the hotel she single-handedly designed doesn’t get her the Penny Pain account, she’ll fling herself into the Cumberland River. She’ll float her way back to LA, her perfect makeup ruined. A gorgeous corpse, but a dead, jobless, bloated corpse, nonetheless.
Still.