Man's Best Friend (The Dogmothers #5) - Roxanne St. Claire Page 0,36

going to mention that he’d created a twenty-year gap that might just be the reason they were having this conversation in the first place?

“I will.” She finally took a sip of coffee, then set the cup down and leveled her gaze on him. “Why haven’t you had a family, Declan?”

He shifted his attention to the pie. “I think I just told you. Arm’s length and sabotaged relationships, or so says Dr. Smella Mahoney, my personal psychiatrist.” He gave a soft laugh. “She’s smart, though, and probably right.”

“Why wouldn’t that be true for me, then, too? Why would you assume it was work?”

He studied her for a moment, collecting his thoughts like he so often did. “I figured you wanted kids.”

“I figured you did,” she fired back without hesitation.

“I have oodles of nieces and nephews, and the way things are going, I’ll have more.”

She accepted that—and the fact that if she was going to get an explanation or apology, she’d have to ask. And she just didn’t want to do that.

After a moment, she finally took a piece of the sweet and sticky pie. “I…tried,” she admitted as she angled her fork into the crust. “Didn’t work out for me.”

He studied her intently, a hundred questions in his eyes. Did he want to know about exhaustive and stressful donor insemination attempts? About the tests that showed absolutely nothing was wrong except bad timing? About how she filled out a mountain of paperwork to adopt, but gave up after a sleepless night of sobbing because she absolutely did not want to do that alone?

Should she detail how every time she turned around, another year had passed, and she was still single and childless, but her career was skyrocketing? Or about how every time she dated someone or got intimate with a man, she ended up feeling weirdly empty and scared and lonely because that man wasn’t…who she wanted him to be?

No. That was all too much angst for pie and coffee the second day they were together after a twenty-year freeze that he wouldn’t even acknowledge.

“I’m a working-woman cliché,” she said simply, finally bringing the fork to her mouth. “No kids for me.”

“But you’re the end of the line,” he said quietly.

Damn it, was she never going to taste this pie without choking?

She put the fork down without taking the bite. “Now you sound like my grandfather.”

“It’s a noble line, that Bushrod-Hewitt family. I’m sure he wants to continue it. And your parents, too. Right?”

“My parents only want me to be happy, and my grandfather…” She narrowed her eyes, a picture she probably should have seen sooner beginning to emerge. “What exactly did my grandfather say to you yesterday, Declan?”

He paled slightly. “Oh…you know.”

“If I knew, I wouldn’t ask.”

“Evie, come on. Eat your pie.”

“Declan, come on. Answer my question.”

He smiled at her. “I just had déjà vu so hard. We always used to talk that way, remember? Echo words and sentences.”

“I remember.” Everything, Dec. I remember everything. Don’t you? “I also remember that you’re really good at changing the subject and managing to use as few words as possible when you don’t want to talk about something.”

“Hey, I brought it up.”

“Then answer. What did my grandfather say to you when you went upstairs with him yesterday?”

He put his fork down and pinned his gaze on her, dark, intense, and unwavering. “He said you should have a baby.”

“Well, that ship has—”

“My baby.”

All she could do was stare at him, speechless and stunned. Had he said…

“Hey.” He tapped her knuckles and pointed at her phone, lighting up on the table. “Doc’s texting.”

She glanced at the message. “Judah’s waking up,” she whispered. “We should go.”

“But we haven’t finished—”

“Why don’t you eat the pie and meet me there? I really want to check on Judah.”

“I meant we haven’t finished our conversation.”

She closed her eyes. “Clearly, my sweet Granddaddy has lost his ninety-two-year-old marbles. So, yes, we have finished the conversation.”

She slipped out of the booth and headed toward the door, more surprised at the sting behind her eyelids than the unexpected and insane turn that conversation had taken.

Sure, they could try. Might even succeed, since there was apparently no reason she couldn’t have a baby.

But then what would happen when he looked at her and remembered that if it wasn’t for her, he’d have a father? What would happen when she went back to her life in Raleigh, and he wanted to take the baby to Waterford Farm every weekend? What would happen when she fell