Sandcastle Beach (Matchmaker Bay #3) - Jenny Holiday Page 0,149
line was so awkward and cheesy, yet somehow perfect.
The reply came instantly, and it sent a shiver up her spine.
Jay: Hell yes.
Jay: I’ll be right there. I just need ten minutes to get myself organized, and then I’m out the door.
Elise: Actually, I’m already in my car. Is it okay if I come to you?
That would give her something to do. Forward motion. And it would get them together sooner—she didn’t need ten minutes to get ready to go.
Jay: Of course. You haven’t been here, have you? I’m at 12 Bellair, unit 1803.
She glanced at herself in the rearview mirror. She was really going to do this.
Elise: Should I pick up some condoms?
Jay: I have some.
Elise: I’m clean, actually.
She wasn’t sure why she sent that last text. It wasn’t normal to forgo a condom when you were having casual sex. Which was what they were having. Right?
Jay: Right. Me, too, but pregnancy…
Yes. She forgot that other people had to worry about that. She sighed.
Elise: Not a concern. That surgery I had took with it one ovary, and apparently the other side isn’t in great working order.
He didn’t reply, which seemed weird. Had he somehow been put off by the notion that she was unlikely to be able to conceive? Since she’d known for years she almost certainly wouldn’t be able to have kids—biologically, at least—it was something she’d come to accept. She’d become rather matter-of-fact about it, even. But okay, infertility probably wasn’t a topic to introduce into a hey-we’re-going-to-have-some-hot-sex logistics text thread. She should probably do some damage control.
Elise: Sorry to drop that on you. Not even sure why I brought it up. It’s not relevant. It’s not like we’re going to get married.
They were going to get married, was the thing—if Jay had anything to say about it, anyway.
He was standing in front of his bathroom mirror. He had hightailed it in there to brush his teeth when the first booty call text arrived. Now he was staring at himself like he was looking at a fantastic mythological animal, at some exotic creature he didn’t recognize and couldn’t name.
The revelation had arrived in his head fully formed, an automatic response to her breezy assertion that they weren’t going to get married. It came with a rush of possessiveness. In keeping with the animal metaphor, he felt like some kind of primitive ape beating its chest, pointing at his mate and claiming her. Mine.
As revelations went, it was a big one. But not as big as the one that hit him right on its heels, an aftershock a thousand times more powerful than the original: he wanted to marry her regardless of her fertility status.
Holy shit.
Elise Maxwell, the woman he wanted more than anyone else, had just told him she couldn’t get pregnant. This should have been the best news he’d ever received. And it was. But she could have just texted him about her desire to have fourteen kids, and he still would have wanted to marry her.
What. The. Fuck.
He almost laughed, it was so absurd. They would have had some shit to work out if that had been the case, but he would have been online in an instant, cruising through listings for relationship counseling. Which he was pretty sure meant…
He was in love with Elise Maxwell.
Of course he was. It was so obvious now that he did laugh. Stared at his reflection, at this man who looked familiar but had suddenly become a stranger, and cracked right up.
He had always experienced love, or affection, or whatever it was he’d had with his past girlfriends, as a more gradual thing. There would be an initial attraction, then a getting-to-know-you process. Feelings developed gradually. Like immersing yourself in a cold pool one body part at a time, taking time to adjust to the new sensation before progressing any farther.
This was…not that. This was jumping into the deep end and not even realizing you’d jumped until you were already there, sputtering for breath and swimming for your life.
So much for his decades-long insistence on women who’d aged out of their childbearing years. He’d met Elise, and all that discipline had just tumbled down like a poorly constructed Jenga tower.
Although it turned out the collapse didn’t matter. The universe had given him exactly what he wanted, in the form of exactly who he wanted. He must have been a saint in a past life.
She was his dream woman. She was everything he wanted—and nothing he didn’t want.