Maybe Baby Read Free

When you get to be my age, you take your compliments where you can get them.”
    Nick laughed and shut the door behind her as she floated into the bar. She was skating over the back end of her fifties, and still she moved like a girl. Maybe not as quickly as she used to; she’d definitely slowed down some in recent years. But there was a weightlessness to her step, as though there wasn’t a worry in the world that could hold her down.
    Unlike Dana, who worried about everything, who never took a risk, who held to the status quo like it was a damn life raft.
    Let it go already, Maybe, Nick thought. Life’s too damn short.
    “Whatever you’re here for, Babs,” Nick said as he rounded the bar and tended to the espresso, “the answer is no.”
    She put her purse on one stool and settled herself on another. “Well, that’s rude.”
    “Sorry. No time to be polite. Espresso?”
    “Please,” she said. “And how do you know I was coming here to ask for something? Maybe I was just stopping by to spend some time with you before you abandon me for California.”
    Nick chuckled as he placed the espresso in front of her. “And she comes out swinging.”
    “I mean, is it so unreasonable that I would simply want to have a nice visit before you hop a flight and leave me forever?”
    “I’m going to San Diego,” Nick said for what felt like the zillionth time, “not Siberia.”
    “Oh, pooh.” Babs waved her hand dismissively and pouted. “I can’t imagine anything you can get in California that you can’t get right here in Manhattan.”
    “Oh, I don’t know. Clean air. Ocean breezes. Personal space.” He shot her a grim smile. “How much time you got?”
    Babs held her hand up. “No need. It’s all a bunch of poppycock, anyway.”
    Nick raised an eyebrow. “Poppy-what?”
    She placed her elbows on the bar and leaned forward, her face full of knowing accusation. “You can spout off all you want about clean ocean personal space blah blah blah . I know why you’re really going to California, and I don’t mind telling you, I think it’s just foolish.”
    Nick rolled his eyes. Here we go. “I can put that espresso in a to-go cup, you know.”
    “I still can’t believe you took a job working for Melanie Biggs,” she said, pointedly ignoring him. “The woman is the Antichrist, you know. That’s why she never wears her hair up.”
    “What?”
    Babs motioned toward the back of her head. “Mark of the beast, right there at the nape of her neck. I’ve seen it.”
    “That’s a birthmark,” Nick said.
    “In the shape of the three sixes?”
    Nick heaved a rough sigh, knowing where the conversation was going and knowing also that once Babs got on a riff about Melanie Biggs, there was no stopping her.
    “You know she just wants to take you from Dana.”
    “Kinda hard to take me from someone I haven’t spoken to in six years.”
    “She’s always had it in for Dana, ever since you all were in high school together. You’re the one thing she could never take away, and she’s obsessed. She always has been.”
    “Is my hearing going, or did you just bring up high school?”
    “A woman can hold a grudge for a very long time.”
    “You don’t say,” Nick responded flatly.
    “You can’t trust her to keep up her end of this bargain,” Babs continued. “We don’t know if that nonsense about taking over Dana’s winery is even true. It’s not exactly like Melanie has a history of telling the truth.”
    “Drop it, Babs.”
    “Remember when she told Dana you two had slept together after the wedding? Big fat lie.”
    Nick grabbed a bar towel and clenched it in his fist. “Which Dana was quick to believe, as I recall.”
    “Only because you let her believe it.”
    “I was already out of town,” Nick said. “I didn’t even know what Melanie said until you told me about it. And why exactly are we having this conversation again?”
    Babs tossed one arm up in the air dramatically. “Because apparently we