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Rob has a blank look on his face as his hand rubs the scruff on his jaw. He catches my gaze, with a peculiar look. He’s staring at me like we’re strangers who bumped into each other on the street and he’s curious if we’ve met before.
“What?” I place my hand on my mouth, wondering if I have anything in my teeth.
He waits a beat, his eyes narrowing while he searches for an answer or a clue to a question he didn’t know he had.
“Why didn’t you have children?”
I take a quick inhale, not expecting him to ask that. “I don’t need my own.”
His mouth purses for a moment before he adjusts his phrasing. “Did you ever want to have children?”
My breath comes out long and low. This is a complicated question with an even more convoluted answer. “I never wanted them enough to settle for just any man in order to have one.”
He nods. His looks pensive as he chooses his next question.
“Did you and Patrick plan on having them?” he asks, slow and deep.
I give a nod with a sway of my head.
I let out a frustrated breath. Standing, I place Olivia in her bassinet and cover her with a blanket. She’s snug and sleeping with her arms up and outstretched over her head. I walk into the kitchen and look through the pantry and sort through the shelves of boxes.
“Are you baking?” he asks as I take out a box of birthday cake mix and grab a mixing bowl from the drawer.
“Yes. It’s Olivia’s first week home. She deserves a cake.”
Rising from the couch, he heads over to the island. With a quirked brow, he watches me move about the kitchen. “You only bake when you’re working through shit in your head.”
I point a whisk at him. “Not true. I also bake when I’m horny.”
“Drop the whisk, Tara.” He takes strong, sturdy steps toward me. “Talk. I want to talk.”
“Why?”
“I think it’s important that if you and I are going to move forward in our relationship, we both understand what our future could look like.”
“I don’t need a crystal ball to see how it’s gonna go.”
He folds his arms and widens his feet. His posture is strong as he looks at me in a way that makes me feel weak with nerves.
The whisk is still in my hand as I explain, “I’ll keep my place in Newbury, and you’ll have the ranch. We’ll go back and forth for a while until we decide we can’t be without each other anymore—at which time, I’ll spend an exorbitant amount of money on knee-high boots. We’re gonna have to turn the bedroom downstairs into my personal office and closet because—let’s be honest—you can’t handle my mess. My things will need to be contained.”
Opening the box, I pour the mixture into the bowl and then walk to the refrigerator for eggs. Rob has a hand on the door, stopping me from opening it. I’m staring at the steel as he closes the space between us, leaning his head down, willing me to look up at him.
I do.
It’s unnerving as hell, the way those chestnut eyes sear me with a look that’s begging me to tell him the truth.
“You might not be physically walking out of this house, but you are running away right now. Instead of pushing, I’m doing my best to pull you in. You’ve got to speak to me, Tara. I know you talk a big game, and your confidence is one of the sexiest things about you. Your honesty is my favorite though, so if you’ll put down the whisk and talk to me, that would be greatly appreciated.”
My shoulders fall. He’s doing so much better than I am at this relationship thing. For a girl who waited for love to come banging down my door, I’m doing a half-assed job at letting it in.
My hands rise with open palms and drop as I give up. The whisk falls to the ground.
“When Patrick left me, Melissa went to talk to him to find out why. He said he just didn’t see a future with me because I wasn’t serious enough. We partied and had fun and dated and traveled. There was this box of all the places in the world we were going to go together that I’d made for us. He said he realized too late that the life he wanted wasn’t the one I was planning for. He wanted to have children right away and settle down in a small town. Ironic, isn’t it? He and I are both in the same damn small town while he’s raising his kids and I’m loving on Melissa’s. Patrick never gave me a chance to grow up with him. I did want kids, and I love this town. Apparently, I didn’t showcase that.”
I walk away from Rob and move about the kitchen. He places his back against the refrigerator, slides his hands into his pockets, and listens as I pace, fighting the urge to crack some eggs and whisk the shit out of that funfetti.
“I love children. If I got pregnant tomorrow, I wouldn’t panic. It’s just that the idea of that being a possibility left me a long time ago. I mean it when I say I don’t need children to feel complete. Meeting a man was always about love. Connecting with someone and sharing our happiness. If a child came of that, great. If it didn’t, fine. It wasn’t the endgame. I’m not trying to trick you.”
