Waiting on Love (Love in Madelia Book 3) Read online

  Waiting on Love

  Love in Madelia: Book Three

  By

  Jessa Chase

  Copyright © 2017

  Jessa Chase Writes Stuff

  Introduction

  Even though I was so excited to see this series completed with this third installment, I was also a little sad to close this chapter on Madelia, WA.

  I have laughed and cried with these characters, I have agonized over their failures and celebrated their successes. I can honestly say I have loved each and every one of them, and have really enjoyed seeing their growth through three stories.

  My hope is that you enjoy this one as much as I enjoyed writing it. This story in particular, centered on Daisy Hewett, was probably the most personal for me. She’s a single mother, working to better herself…felt pretty familiar!

  Finally, I’d like to dedicate this book to my daughter, without whom I would never have written one word. She is my inspiration and my biggest fan. Love you, monkey!

  Table of Contents

  Introduction

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1.

  Chapter 2.

  Chapter 3.

  Chapter 4.

  Chapter 5.

  Chapter 6.

  Chapter 7.

  Chapter 8.

  Chapter 9.

  Chapter 10.

  About The Author

  Other Books By Jessa Chase

  Prologue

  DAISY

  Daisy Hewett checked her cell phone, reading the text message with a sigh. Cheryl had bailed on her last minute, with nothing more than a so sorry, bf came home early so we’re staying in tonight. She hadn’t had a chance to catch up with her old friend in what seemed like months, so to be stood up after all their careful planning felt like a slap in the face.

  Daisy had long ago accepted that most of her friends from high school were not in the same place in life that she was. After all, she’d gone and had a baby when most of them were getting their drivers licenses and stealing kisses in the back of their parent’s Buicks.

  Even now, years after high school, while she was working double shifts at the diner to keep clothes on the back of an ever-growing kindergartner, her friends were hitting their prime partying years and living their lives to the fullest extent that alcohol would allow.

  It wasn’t easy for her schedule and theirs to sync up, so nights like tonight were few and far between. But even after being stood up, Daisy was determined to stick around the bar and enjoy herself.

  After all, she’d finagled babysitting for the evening out of Kate and Logan McAllister, who’d been more than happy to add Mason to their little brood for the night. Their daughter Ella wasn’t quite a year old yet, but she’d fallen madly in love with Mason pretty much at first sight.

  Daisy smiled then, as she always did when she thought about her son. He was bright, sweet, and just an all-around good kid. She wasn’t sure at all what she was doing right in her life, but she knew she was doing something right when it came to Mason.

  She tapped out a quick text to Kate, checking in, when she saw a man sidle up on the barstool next to her. He was lean and tall, and looked like he’d just stepped out of a big city law firm. He was gorgeous, but in a kind of nerdy way that Daisy had found a lot more attractive the older she got.

  Daisy smiled over at him when she noticed him looking her way. She flipped her hair, a mass of curly red ridiculousness no matter what she did with it, and tried her best to remember how to flirt.

  “You don’t look old enough to be here,” he said, his voice barely above a conspiratorial whisper. Daisy glanced down the bar at the bartender. Seeing him busily attending to a bachelorette party, she whispered back.

  “I’m not. But you didn’t hear that from me.”

  The man chuckled. “Your secret is safe with me.” He extended his hand toward Daisy. “Cole.”

  She slipped her hand in his and smiled. “Kellie, assuming you’re in the ID checking mood.”

  Cole laughed then, loud enough that several of the ladies in the corner looked over with interest. Daisy knew exactly what they were looking at; the man was seriously drop-dead gorgeous.

  Men who looked like him just didn’t come into McGinty’s; the bar primarily catered to bored housewives, perennial barflies and college students who appreciated their lax ID checking policies.

  “Is that your group down there? I wouldn’t want to be keeping you from all the fun.” He motioned to the ladies with his glance, and Daisy sensed some humor behind his question.

  She sighed. “Nope, all by my lonesome tonight. Was supposed to be meeting a friend here, but she had a better offer and bailed on me.”

  “I can’t picture that,” Cole replied.

  Daisy caught his eye and gave her best sultry sexpot look. Frankly, it needed work; she really was out of practice at the art of flirting, and she hadn’t been all that good at it even when she did plenty of it. But a sexy stranger in a bar was the perfect excuse to practice. After all, what were the chances she’d ever see him again?

  She felt the liquid courage of her strawberry daiquiri urging her to be bold. She licked her lips before she replied, thinking of her favorite romance novel heroines for inspiration. “Well,” she finally said after a moment. “Her loss, your gain, right?”

  His smile went all the way up to his eyes and Daisy felt a familiar little shimmy feeling in her chest. She scooted closer to him, enjoying the feeling of his arm pushing up against hers.

  “Can I get you another drink?” He pointed to her mostly drained daiquiri glass.

  “Absolutely,” she replied in a rush of breath. He reached behind her to signal the bartender for refills, and although Daisy wasn’t sure if it was intentional or not, the increased physical contact sent a sexy thrill up her spine.

  It wasn’t something she’d felt in a while, but Daisy smiled when she came to recognize the first licks of fire slow-burning in her belly.

  A man wanted her, she thought with a grin. And she wanted him back.

  Chapter 1.

  DAISY

  Love stories almost never began with headaches. Some started with the happy protagonist rushing out into the world, ready and willing to meet the challenges of the day. Others started with the hero pining for the other half that can make them whole, their soul mate, their happily ever after.

  Not a single one started with the hapless heroine curled up in bed with the covers over their head, fruitlessly trying to ignore the overwhelming pain.

  Daisy was a veritable expert on love stories. The kind that happened between the pages of a novel, the kind that happened on screens big and small. She was pretty sure she’d read and seen every big love story there was to absorb. They all had a lot in common, tropes that included the couple meeting in a predictably adorable fashion. Sometimes they hated each other at first sight, sometimes one of them had a secret they desperately needed to keep from the other.

  Daisy’s favorite stories included a dashing hero who would stop at nothing to keep his beloved safe from harm. Love stories were the reason she had a pounding headache that morning, as she’d stayed up entirely too late the night before, flipping pages in her most recent borrowed book until she’d read the entire thing. She hadn’t read an entire book in one night since she was pregnant, and her pounding temples were reminding her why.

  “Momma?” From beyond the comfort of her blanket fort, Daisy heard her son, Mason, calling for her. At nearly 5 years old he was an early riser, and he had zero concept of sleeping or days off. The fact that his mother had gotten in way past his bedtime had little bearing on when he decided to get
up for the morning. She listened as his bare feet slapped on the wooden floor.

  He moved closer to the bed. Closer. Closer. When she thought he was standing directly in front of her, Daisy popped up from underneath the blankets. “Boo!” She shouted, grabbing her little boy around the waist and dragging him under the covers with her to his great delight. A tickle-fest ensued, during which Daisy nearly managed to forget all about her headache.

  It was Monday morning, and Mrs. Shuster had given Daisy the morning off in exchange for agreeing to help her with the food preparations for the town council meeting that evening.

  She’d managed to wrangle an evening of babysitting from Kate and Logan, who’d brought their own little one, Ella, over to watch movies with Mason. When Daisy had snuck in after her little tryst with the man from the bar, she’d felt like a guilty teenager, sneaking in past curfew.

  Instead of finding a judgmental parent, however, she’d found Kate McAllister, cleaning up in the kitchen while Logan snoozed on the couch with Ella.

  They’d gone home and Daisy had taken the chance to peek in on Mason. He, of course, was sacked out in his own bed. She’d always been so thankful he’d been a good sleeper his entire life. Even as a baby, she thought to herself.

  She hadn’t gotten much of a chance to sleep before he’d woken for the morning, but it was nothing a strong cup of coffee couldn’t fix.

  And now, as she danced around her small kitchen to a bubbly pop love song on the radio, Daisy ran through her to-do list in her head. She needed to do laundry and grocery shopping for the week ahead, clean her bedroom and supervise the cleaning of Mason’s room. All the little household jobs that sometimes fell by the wayside during a busy week. The last week had been a very busy week, which preceded a very busy month, in what seemed like an increasingly busy year. Mrs. Shuster had been giving Daisy a lot more responsibility at the diner, including doing more and more of the ingredient purchases and learning how to balance the books.

  She enjoyed the increased duties and she cherished the chance to show Mrs. Shuster what she was truly capable of. After all, the old woman had taken her in when she was 16 years old, when she’d had nothing to her name except the clothes on her back and the growing child inside of her. Daisy had worked her butt off ever since, wanting to show her adoptive momma that she’d made the right choice in believing in her.

  She felt a little guilty that she’d ended up spending one of her precious nights off with a man she’d met at the bar, but as the headache receded, so did her residual feelings of guilt. She didn’t take a lot of time for herself, so enjoying an evening in the company of a drop dead sexy man wasn’t going to be the end of the world.

  Besides, she thought with a smile as she put the finishing touches on Mason’s breakfast, didn’t all the best romance novels start with the heroine doing something totally out of character? Didn’t they practically require it?

  “Mason!” She stepped away from the kitchen and called to her son, who was laying on his stomach on the floor at the other end of the trailer, his nose in a book. Daisy smiled as she watched him.

  He was so interested in books, and facts, and all the things she was too busy for when she was a kid. Every day she found something else to be thankful for about Mason, and today she was grateful that he was interested in furthering his education.

  It wasn’t that Daisy wasn’t smart; no one had ever called her dumb. But when she was younger she’d just always had better things to do than stick her nose in a book. Boys, mainly, she thought with chagrin.

  She wanted better for her son that for him to see parenthood as a teenager. She wanted him to go to college and find a life for himself, doing what he wanted to do.

  Daisy sighed. There was that guilty feeling, rearing its head again. She didn’t want anyone to ever think she regretted having Mason at such a young age. She didn’t, even when she saw how much she’d missed out on.

  She saw Mason off to kindergarten, and then grabbed her stuff and headed out. Hands wrapped around a big hamper full of their clothes, she managed to unlock Mrs. Shuster’s front door by memory more than sight of the keyhole. She’d lived there with Mason in the beginning, when she was just a terrified teenager with no home to speak of and no idea what she was going to do with a child.

  Mrs. Shuster had given them a roof over their heads, and a stern but loving sense of belonging. She’d encouraged Daisy to finish her high school education by getting her GED after Mason was born, and she’d been delighted when Daisy had agreed to come work for her at the diner.

  Mrs. Shuster had made none-too-subtle comments more recently about Daisy going to college, but she hadn’t pushed much beyond that. Truth be told, Daisy had an eye on college herself, but she couldn’t quite decide on what she wanted to go for. She really enjoyed watching food be made, and she loved working in the diner.

  Her other major passion was writing, although she hadn’t made that known to anyone else yet. She had burned through a few notebooks, stashed away under her pillow when she wasn’t using them, but she hadn’t ever finished one complete story.

  Truth be told, Daisy enjoyed the beginnings of writing a love story a whole lot more than she enjoyed trying to write an ending. She liked the newness and the freshness, the cuteness of the meetings between two destined lovers.

  She liked the passion, and the romance, and everything that built up to that grand ending...but having never experienced it firsthand, she found it difficult to properly end any of her stories.

  And so, they sat there, unfinished. And unread by anyone else. Daisy was far too shy about her writing to let anyone else know about them.

  Besides, didn’t it make more sense to go to cooking school? It was more of a career, while writing was just something people did for fun.

  Cooking. She could do that for a living, at the diner even. Old Enzo wasn’t getting any younger, and maybe by the time she graduated he would be ready to hand the ladle off to the younger generation.

  Daisy smiled when she thought of herself behind the gigantic stove in the diner. She pictured herself in a cute pink apron, maybe some kicky little shoes. Her hair done up, something sexy but not too overdone. Casual, but adorable.

  She inched down the steps to Mrs. Shuster’s basement, where the washer and dryer were kept. They were gigantic machines, old but dependable, and they would probably be working just fine for many years to come. She tugged the clothes free from her hamper and tossed them in, marveling at how big Mason’s clothes were getting.

  How big Mason was getting, she corrected herself. It didn’t seem like that long ago that she was washing and drying clothes that looked impossibly tiny. Onesies that folded up to fit in her hand, little socks not much bigger than her fingers.

  She couldn’t believe he’d be 5 this year. And she’d be 21 soon, she realized. That felt so...old wasn’t quite the right word. Mature? No, that wasn’t it either.

  Daisy racked her brain, trying to find the right word while she poured in the laundry soap and hit the power button.

  The washer roared to life as she closed the top and patted it for good luck.

  Was worldly the word she was looking for? Couldn’t be, she thought with a laugh. Daisy hadn’t been any further outside of Madelia than a few towns over where she could sneak a beer or two with her fake ID. She was about as opposite of worldly as a person could be.

  She looked at her watch and realized she was running later than she thought. She’d just have to swing back to Mrs. Shuster’s and switch the clothing over to the dryer on her break.

  Outside, Daisy felt the breeze catch on her skirt as she picked up her pace, heading down the street toward the diner. It looked like it was shaping up to be a beautiful day, the kind that could wipe away a headache and put a smile on your face.

  She felt good getting a few of her weekly errands done, and between the supervised room cleaning earlier and now the laundry, she was nearly finished. Tonight, she supposed, after Mason went to bed for the night, she�
�d have time to look online and see what kind of culinary schools there were nearby.

  “Smart. Canny. Astute,” Daisy said as she rounded the corner where the diner was. She’d thought of a few more words similar but not identical to “old” and “mature”. She liked astute, felt it might apply to her. She’d grown up a lot in the past few years and had developed an awareness of the world that she’d sorely lacked at 16.

  “Daisy,” Enzo was waiting near the front door when she stepped in. She glanced around, surprised to not see any of the afternoon regulars in the diner. And Enzo was wearing such a forlorn expression, she felt her heart begin to race with worry.

  “What’s going on?” Daisy put her hand to her chest, because surely her heart was about to gallop right out of her any minute.

  “Mrs. S, she’s...well she’s real sick. Her heart.” Enzo crossed himself. “She’s at the hospital. Come sit down.”

  Enzo wrapped his hand around her wrist, but Daisy pulled herself free and backed up.

  “I can’t. I have to go. I...She’s going to be okay, right?”

  Enzo shook his head. “I don’t know. But Daisy, you should stay. There isn’t anything you can do there.”

  “I can be there. That’s something.”

  *

  The drive to the hospital was a blur for Daisy, her eyes heavy with tears. After speaking with Enzo, she’d sprinted down the road back to her trailer, gunned her car into drive and sped off as quickly as she could. While on the road, she’d made arrangements with the kindergarten teacher to bring Mason home with her and her son, so that he wouldn’t be waiting for her.

  As Daisy pulled into the large parking garage attached to the hospital, she tried her best to appear calm and collected. Mrs. Shuster didn’t need to be dealing with a hysterical woman on top of her other more pressing issues at the moment.

  She took the ticket from the man in the booth, found a reasonably close parking spot, and turned her car off. Daisy took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and had just about convinced herself she was ready to face whatever was ahead of her.