another relationship. In order for it to be another, there had to have been a first. Was the one he was counting theirs? “You didn’t want another relationship,” she repeated, mainly to make sure she heard him right.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Why not?” Okay, that wasn’t the exact question that she wanted to ask, but it could still give her the answer she wanted.
“Because I’d recently learned I wasn’t commitment material, and I wasn’t in the mood to start yet another no-strings deal with no potential to go anywhere.” He looked at her pointedly, and in that instant, Babette recalled that last phone conversation, the one that ended . . . whatever it was they’d had.
“You were talking about Lindy and Little Ethan, and you said that you wondered whether your kids would be anything like them.” Then she’d told him he didn’t have to worry about it, because having kids involved commitment, and he wasn’t the commitment type.
“I was trying to get your take on having kids,” he said. “Or, more accurately, your thoughts on the possibility of having mine.”
Babette stumbled over a tiny ledge in the sand, or maybe she just stumbled over the jolt of what she was hearing. “My thoughts on having kids—with you? But you’d always said you didn’t want any part of long-term, that what you liked about us was that there were no strings, no commitments.”
“So I’d started wanting string. We began seeing each other when I was thirty-four, and I was suddenly thirty-seven, ready to grow up and move our relationship to the next level, but you didn’t see things the same way I did.” He continued walking, but more slowly, and he kept his attention on her face, watching her response to his statement. There was no way she could control her body language now. Her pulse thundered, her skin bristled, and her breath caught in her throat. She was surprised—no, shocked—at his sudden proclamation. She shook her head. This was so not what she’d planned to hear. “You ended things with me because I said you weren’t commitment material.”
“We weren’t going anywhere but to bed, Babette. I wanted more.” Then he paused, grinned. “Not that I minded going to bed, but there comes a time when a relationship gets more serious. I was ready for that, and you didn’t see me, didn’t see us, that way.”
Her head was throbbing. Pounding. He’d wanted more, with her, and she’d blown him off, thinking they were just picking at each other the way they always did. In other words, she’d hurt him, terribly. And then, he’d met Kitty.
Kitty. That’s what she was supposed to be talking about, his relationship with Kitty, not his relationship with Babette. She had to stay focused, or she could kiss her career—and her proof that she could commit to something—goodbye.
“If you didn’t notice Kitty, then what happened?” she asked, not knowing how to make sense of it all, and not all that certain what to do about it either.
“She apparently took my lack of interest as a challenge and set about meeting me, and I know it’s pretty shallow, but hell, at that time, I wanted the ego stroke. And then, as I got to know her, I really did come to care about her.”
“You fell in love with her,” Babette said. “After I’d turned your love away and bruised your ego doing it.”
“Yeah. And then, I asked her to marry me, started foreseeing myself with Kitty for life, and she left with Sam Farraday.” He smiled, but this wasn’t his usual smile. This one was bitter.
They continued walking, both of them apparently reflecting on everything that went wrong back then, and everything that had gone still wrong now.
“I really only said that back then because I thought that’s how you felt,” Babette whispered.
“And because it was how you felt,” he said. “You didn’t see me as the kind of guy who’d be a good father.”
“We’d never even talked that way, so I hadn’t even thought about it.” They’d agreed that they weren’t interested in long-term. She had no way of knowing that he’d changed his thoughts on the matter, or maybe she would have considered settling down before now.
Before now. Funny, now she was thinking she liked the whole commitment thing, and now Jeff wanted no part of settling down, with her or with Kitty or with anyone, from the looks of things.
“That’s why you came up with this commitment proposition,” she said, putting it all together. “You don’t