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I turn to Rusty, smiling as I shake my head. “Now tell me, boy. How could he possibly know that, huh?”
For a second, I think the pooch might actually respond. He looks at me with such human characteristics, eyes wide, as though contemplating my question.
When he decides he’s still a dog, I turn back to Ryland.
“I guess you’ll have to answer.”
His expression is bright, far more involved than I ever could’ve imagined him when we were destined to only speak through the online chat system. He’s got a sparkle in his eye.
A sparkle.
Do I imagine it? Wishing it into existence?
“I can see how passionate you are,” he says.
“Lots of people are passionate,” I counter. “It doesn’t mean they’re going to succeed.”
There’s a chance he could get the double meaning, the one I didn’t even intend on giving.
We’re passionate, clearly. Our kiss in the elevator showed that.
We probably wouldn’t have stopped if it wasn’t for Rusty.
But then what?
Our passion could’ve failed us. Or, more specifically, mine could’ve failed me.
“You were terrified of performing your music,” he goes on. “But you found a way to do it. You found a way to overcome your fear. I think you’ll find a way to overcome every obstacle life puts in your way, Rachel.”
I bite down, stopping whatever words are going to rise. I have to because they all have something to do with how he and I are fated to be together. They all have something to do with how he’s going to help me, how I’ll always be able to lean on him, and that’s how I’ll succeed.
“Thanks for saying that.” I turn back to my meal. “What about you?”
“My work?” he asks.
I nod. “Yeah.”
“It’s mostly charitable now,” he tells me. “I’ve also invested in real estate and a few other endeavors over the years. Nothing flashy, nothing sexy, but enough so that I’m set for life. My kids are set for life.”
“Kids?”
My body seizes up.
My hands grip the silverware way too tightly.
All the time we’ve been talking, and he never mentioned kids. That means there’s another woman out there, one who demands child support, who maybe wants to get back with him.
Why wasn’t this mentioned anywhere online?
He flashes me a grin. “I don’t have any kids yet. I meant future children.”
I sit back, letting out a breath. “Well, I feel like the biggest idiot in the universe.”
“If I didn’t know any better, Rachel, I’d say you were getting jealous then.”
“Nuh-uh,” I say, which is a complete lie.
Jealousy was twisting through me like poison, corrupting this growing… relationship? Romance? Thing?
“But you want kids?” I ask in a frantic effort to change the subject.
Too late, I realize I’ve just traveled into far more treacherous territory.
If he was able to read my jealousy so easily, is he going to be able to sense the importance I place on the word kids?
Maybe he’ll peer through my façade with his eerily perceptive eyes, spy all the mess of want, lust, and need beneath. Maybe he’ll somehow guess that, insanely. I fell for him the first time I saw his photo too. Not even the physical him but a picture on the internet.
“I do,” he says, his voice suddenly grave. “What about you?”
I nod far too quickly, way too keen to show him how badly I want a family, his family.
“How many?” he asks.
I shrug. “I never really thought about it…”
Before I met you, I was going to add.
It’s the truth. Before I saw Ryland, before every inch of me aimed toward him and the future we’re going to share, I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about having a family.
But with him, it’s all I can think about – having a family and all the steamy things we’ll have to do to make it a reality.
There’s a voice beneath it all, taunting cruelly, telling me it’s never going to work, and he’s going to laugh at me when I reveal the truth.
“What about you?” I ask.
“Four or five,” he says.
Suddenly, a fictional house springs into existence in my mind. It would be a place big enough for Ryland, me, and our four or five children. I hear footsteps running down the hallway, laughter filtering in through the window from the garden…singing, perhaps, our daughter’s voice raised or maybe our son’s, mine joining in from across the house.
A smile spreads across my face, wide and content. I’m already there, and I don’t have to dream anymore.
“That sounds great,” I say after a pause.
“Are you offering?” he jokes.
I snap my gaze to Rusty again, my cheeks heating up. “What, as a service sort of deal?”
I try for a laugh, but it sounds hollow.
“You pay me X amount of dollars, and I become your, uh, broodmare or whatever?”
I promised myself I wouldn’t say um. Clearly, I have to add uh to that list.
