“Doesn’t want them.”
“Oh, well.” His mom’s frown disappeared. “That’s different. Always breaks my heart, the women who want them and can’t have them. But if the mother thing isn’t her calling, who am I to judge?”
“You wouldn’t be disappointed?”
His mom dabbed her mouth with a napkin. “I’m not going to say I wouldn’t love to see miniature versions of all my children. But I have other grandkids. And I respect that there are other walks of life besides parenthood.”
Nick took a sip of coffee, feeling his mother studying him.
“But you want children,” his mom said softly.
“I do,” Nick admitted. “But I also want Taylor.”
“Can’t always get what we want,” Belinda said with tart pragmatism.
“Very inspiring. Thank you, Mom.”
“Well, what do you want me to say? That you can eat your cake and have it too? I wanted to marry a doctor who’d whisk me off to San Diego or somewhere warm, where I’d have three girls, two of them twins with blond spiral curls born on Valentine’s Day.”
Nick scratched behind his ear. “That’s…specific.”
“Point is, I didn’t get it. I got a bunch of messy boys, and my girls were brunettes, and not a damn one of you was born in February.”
“So sorry to disappoint you.”
“Be quiet and listen. What I’m trying to say is that I got what I was supposed to have, and I wouldn’t change a thing. Not about your father, not about you kids.”
“Not even our birthdays?”
“Maybe that,” Belinda granted. “Always was a pain in the ass that Kerry was born on Christmas Eve. But listen to your mother, Nicholas. The things we want change over time. That’s what life is. One big, endless, wonderful cycle of growing and changing and adapting.”
“I should have brought a notebook to write all this down,” he teased.
“I’ll email you the highlights. In the meantime, just remember this: There are plenty of fertile fish in the sea, plenty of women who want to be mamas, but none of them might make you feel the way this girl makes you feel.”
His mom’s comment was so gut-wrenchingly true that he couldn’t even bring himself to protest her use of the word fertile.
His entire being had ached when he lost Hannah, and he’d assumed that becoming a father again was the only way to ease the pain.
He’d been wrong. Being with Taylor made him feel more alive than he’d ever been.
Damn it. His mother was right. He did love Taylor Carr.
Now he just had to figure out how to tell her and convince her to love him back, all while keeping her from freaking out in the process. No problem.
His mom was holding out her plate. “I’ll have another.”
“You told me not to let you have more than two.”
She scowled, an expression he recognized well from looking in the mirror. “Did I mention that hip replacement surgery is a major operation? That I could have died?”
He rolled his eyes and stood, taking the plate to the kitchen for a refill.
“I think we should Skype this Taylor girl,” his mom was saying. “I want to meet her.”
“Nope. Not happening.”
His goal was to not scare Taylor off. His mother talking about Valentine’s Day babies wouldn’t help.
“Well, I’ll get to meet her before the wedding, won’t I?”
“Mother. Enough. Don’t your soap operas start up soon?”
His mom smirked, no doubt having noticed that he hadn’t denied that someday there would be a wedding.
Chapter 27
If Taylor hadn’t been so eager for a distraction, she might have said no to the invitation.
But now that she was here, she was glad she hadn’t. Strange as the pairing was, Taylor was a little surprised to learn that she liked Jessica Hayes.
“Thanks again for agreeing to meet with me,” Jess said.
Taylor took a sip of her club soda, channeling Karen for today’s happy hour. “Yeah, well…it’s not every day your ex-boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend asks you out for drinks.”
Jessica gave a rueful smile and took a sip of her red wine. “I know it’s weird. I guess I just needed someone who got it.”
Taylor nodded, because she did understand. She understood all too well the disillusionment of finding out that the man you’d put on a pedestal wasn’t even close to deserving it.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Taylor asked cautiously.
Jess sighed. “I don’t know. I go through periods of wanting to just bare my soul, and then periods of thinking he’s not worth another breath.”
“Been there,” Taylor said. “So been there.”
They sat in companionable silence for a moment, two women who had once been in love with the same guy sharing a high table at a trendy midtown bar.
“I don’t think he ever got over you,” Jess blurted out.
Taylor looked up in surprise, then was in for even more of a shock when she realized that Jess’s words did nothing.
She didn’t care even the slightest whether Bradley Calloway regretted that he’d ended things between them. She was glad he had.
It had led her to something infinitely better. Someone infinitely better.
“I think I knew from the minute he said he wanted me back that something was off,” Jess said. “I got why he left me for you. But leaving you for me? It didn’t make sense.”
Taylor pinned the other woman with a look. “Listen up, Hayes. You should know that I’m sort of a tough-love type of person, so I’m going to tell you straight up that the whole self-deprecating thing you’re pulling right now is super unbecoming.”
Jess let out a startled laugh. “See, this is why I could never measure up. Your personality is bold and colorful, and I’m like mashed potatoes in comparison.”
“I like mashed potatoes,” Taylor pointed out.
“Okay, fine, mashed potatoes where someone forgot to add the butter and the salt.”
“Ooh,” Taylor breathed. “That’s bad.”
“Super bad.”
“And yet you dumped him, right?”
“I was just so…”
“Bored?” Taylor guessed.
“Yes! Bored. That’s exactly it. He didn’t read me badly, I thought we wanted all the same things, and on paper we do. I just…I realized that every day felt the same, and then I kept thinking that it would be like that for the rest of my life, and I just…I don’t know. I guess I wanted more, even if I don’t know what more looks like.”
“I get it,” Taylor said. “And I wish I had advice on how to find the more, but honestly, I don’t think it’s something you can go looking for.”
“I hope mine looks like yours,” Jess said with a coy smile. “Tall, dark, handsome, and right across the hallway.”
Taylor couldn’t stop the happy smile that crept across her face at the mention of Nick. He’d been gone just over a week, and she hated that she’d become that girl, but she’d started counting the days until he got back.
“You never looked that happy when you were with Bradley,” Jess said quietly.