“Damn.”
“We had a few lean years after he passed away. Except for a brief period before she married my father, my mother had never worked, so she had no skills and no job experience. After he died, she took whatever jobs she could, usually working as a maid cleaning other people’s houses or watching the neighbors’ kids, that kind of thing. We made it through with help from family. My brothers got jobs and contributed to the household, and so did I once my mom said it was okay. We still help her out, but a few years ago she got her cosmetology license.” Anika smiled then, recalling how excited her mother had been to finally have a piece of paper that indicated she had a skill. And not only did she have a skill, she could now support herself on her own terms. “She works at a salon, which is the perfect job because if there’s one thing my mother knows how to do, it’s look good.”
They both laughed.
“Like mother like daughter.” Reed gave her a quick squeeze.
“To some degree. But she did instill in me the importance of being able to take care of myself.” That’s why buying into Davenport Design Studio was so important. It was a way to secure her future, especially if there was no husband down the line.
Anika snuggled closer to Reed. “It was awfully late for Brielle to be up, wasn’t it? Did she think she heard monsters tonight?”
“No. She hasn’t complained about monsters in weeks, to be honest. I think she just couldn’t sleep because she wasn’t in her own bed. She went into my cousins’ room and told them she wanted to talk to me, so they called.” He ran his fingertips across her shoulder blades. “We had a very interesting conversation about babies.”
Anika grew still. “Babies?”
“She wants a baby brother. My other cousin’s wife, Sophie, stopped by with their little boy.”
“Kids love babies. What did you tell her?” A queasy sensation hovered at the top of her throat.
“I told her that wouldn’t happen anytime soon. She wasn’t happy, but I think I put her off for a while.” She could hear the smile in his voice.
Don’t do it. Don’t ask.
“How many more do you want?” Anika asked.
“I haven’t thought about it much, but I guess two more would be nice.” His fingers stilled on her skin. “How many do you want?”
“I don’t think about it.”
“But you want kids?” Something in his voice caught her attention. There was an edge—not quite curiosity—more of concern.
And why wouldn’t he be concerned. Society dictated that having children was the norm. The baby watch commenced as soon as a couple got married, and magazines were filled with celebrities and their baby bumps. The message was clear: having children was not only expected, it should be celebrated.
Now was the time to come clean, but Anika wanted to enjoy this moment a little bit longer. She dreaded the change in Reed’s attitude toward her. It was coming.
Anika shut her eyes. She would tell him, but not right now. So she answered the question with her own brand of honesty.
“Yes. I would love to be a mother.”
Chapter 19
“Hey cuz!” Anika called as she walked up the driveway of her cousin’s house.
Veronica Taylor, nicknamed Ronnie, was her complete opposite. Ronnie was an auto mechanic and preferred comfortable shoes, no makeup, and had worn her hair in a low-maintenance natural style for years.
As she approached, Ronnie looked up from crouching over a tool box beside her pickup. “Hey! What’s up?”
“I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d stop by.”
“Oh really?” Ronnie said skeptically.
“Fine, I wanted some ribs. Did Uncle Ezekiel fire up the grill today?”
Ronnie’s father often grilled on Sundays after church. Newly married, he lived next door with his wife of over a year.
“Sorry to disappoint you, but he and Loretta went on a weekend trip with the church.”
“Again? I swear, those seniors get around, don’t they?”
“Tell me about it. They’re always gone. At least they’re out there being active, not stuck at home letting old age keep them in a rocking chair collecting dust.” Ronnie rummaged in her tool box.
“What are you working on?” Inspecting the area, Anika searched for a place to sit. Finding none, she leaned against the interior wall of the garage.
“You planning to help me?” Ronnie asked, dragging her toolbox to the left front tire.
“And get dirt and grease all over my clothes? Thanks for the offer, but I’ll pass.”
Ronnie smirked. “That’s what I thought. I’m changing the oil.” She removed the oil cap from under the hood.
“How are the salsa lessons coming?”
Ronnie’s fiancé, Diego, was Cuban and she took salsa lessons twice a week to prepare for the wedding in a couple of weeks. Being a no-frills type of bride, Ronnie’s ceremony was going to be a small affair with a small wedding party. As the maid of honor, Anika’s most demanding moment had been helping Ronnie pick out a dress. At one point, her cousin had insisted on giving up, but Anika talked her into staying at the boutique, and after two hours, they found the perfect gown.
Ronnie grimaced. “I still suck even with the dance classes. I tried to convince Diego to let me out of it, but he said if he has to learn the electric slide, I have to learn salsa.”
Anika giggled. “He has a point, Ronnie.”
“Who’s side are you on?”
“Yours, of course!”
“Uh-huh. I’m hanging in there, but don’t expect much. So what’s going on with you?” Ronnie lay on her back on a mechanic’s creeper and slid under the jacked up car.
Anika stuck her hands in the pockets of her denim dress. “Things are interesting.”
“Interesting how?”
“I’m dating.”
“You’re always dating.” She could hear her cousin tinkering under the car with a wrench.
“This is different. It’s a little more serious.”
“When did that happen? Did you meet him online?”
“I should start from the beginning. Remember when I told you that I’d only had sex with Emerson and Adrian?”
“Yes.”
“That might have been a little white lie.”
Half a beat later, Ronnie rolled from under the car and their gazes met. “How much of a lie?” She stood and wiped her fingers on a paper towel and then tossed it into a small trash can.
“It’s not too bad. It’s just that when I said that, I was only talking about domestic sex—as in sex in the United States.”
Ronnie’s eyebrows floated higher. “Um, how many extra penises are we talking about, when you say you were only counting—”
“No, no. It’s not what you think. I just had sex with one other guy besides those two.”
“And you didn’t count him because it wasn’t domestic sex?” Ronnie placed a hand on her hip. “Because international sex isn’t real?”
“Please don’t make fun of me.”
“Well then, I need a little bit of an explanation of why you didn’t tell me about the international peen you indulged in. Was he Italian? French? Details!” Ronnie grinned.
“You’re not going to believe this, but I barely knew him.”
Ronnie let out an exaggerated gasp.
Anika glared at her.
“Okay, okay. Continue.”
“He’s American. We worked together in the campus dining hall at GSU but we barely spoke. Most of the time we never even had the same shifts. It’s crazy, but I saw him in Venice seven years ago, the summer before senior year. I was standing outside my hotel, and there he was.”
“I vaguely remember you telling me about a guy you ran into from school. You said you hung out with him a few times, and the two of you did some sightseeing together, that kind of thing. Is that who you hooked up with?”
She’d greatly downplayed Reed’s role in her vacation. “That’s him.”
“I’m amazed you had sex with a man you barely knew. Miss My-goodies-are-a-treasure-and-not-for-everybody. My body is a temple. The same person who was appalled that I had sex with Diego on top of a car?”
“He wasn’t your boyfriend at the time, and do you have to remind me of all that right now?”
“Yes, I do. Miss I-can’t-have-sex-unless-there’s-an-emotional-connection.” Ronnie folded her arms and stared at Anika with an arched brow.
“I really can’t have sex with a man unless there’s an emotional connection.”
“Are you saying you were emotionally connected to him? A man you barely knew?”
It did sound far-fetched, but the heat and passion that brought them together had been real. After spending all that time together, sleeping with him had been completely natural, an organic result of the many hours they spent in each other’s company.
“I was in a place where I needed”—she swallowed—“reassurance, I guess. That’s around the time Emerson and I broke up, remember? I was at my low point.” He had made her feel sexy and desirable. Her ex had called her broken. Reed had made her feel whole.
“Oh.” That single word carried a lot of disdain. Ronnie had never liked Emerson, but Anika didn’t completely blame him for his reaction to her confession. She should have told him early on she couldn’t have children. Instead, she’d waited until a year into their relationship, when he was talking marriage, and he’d been brutally honest. He’d accused her of being dishonest and told her that she should have shared that information up front.
But she’d been afraid of that very reaction. Despite anticipating it, when he broke up with her, she was crushed. She’d wanted to beg and cry, but she’d foregone the begging and cried in private. Considering how torn apart she’d been by their break up, her strong reaction to Reed only weeks later had come as a surprise.
“I don’t know how to explain it, but every single one of my reservations flew out the window. Being with him was…intense.”
Ronnie’s eyebrow arched higher and a slow smile crossed her features. “You’re blushing. It must’ve been really good.”
Anika placed her hands to her flaming cheeks. “Better than Emerson, and made me think long and hard about what I’d been missing.”
“What’s his name?”
“Reed.”
“So how did you two find each other again?”
She explained how he hired her firm to redecorate his house, the weeks they spent in each other’s company, and her closeness not only to him, but his daughter, as well. “We’ve been spending time together whenever we can, and I know he wants more. He said he wants me to meet his family here in Atlanta.”
“And what do you want?”
“I’m excited but nervous.” Anika gnawed the inside of her cheek, hesitant to voice her true desires. “I want more, too, and I want to meet his family.” Just the mention of taking that next step made her heart flutter uneasily.
Ronnie shrugged. “So meet his family.” Tilting her head, her eyes turned sympathetic. “There’s a but in there somewhere, and I don’t know why. You obviously like him a lot.”
“A lot.” Anika wasn’t ready to voice that she’d fallen in love with him again. She’d thought long and hard about it the other day while soaking in the tub. She could barely control her emotions and the way her body reacted to him just by being in his presence.
“Maybe you should just have fun and not stress about where the relationship is going.”
“It’s not possible to just have fun with him, and I know he wants more than a hookup this time. I doubted his intentions before, but he’s made them clear.”
“So you’re into him and he’s into you. There’s chemistry and you’re reunited. What’s the problem?”
“You know what the problem is. He’s our age and has a daughter who wants a little brother. She’s a precious little girl with a big smile, who likes to hold hands and cuddle and ask way too many questions.” She laughed shakily and stared at her hands. “He wants more kids. Two more, he said.” Anika bit her lip.
Ronnie flung an arm around Anika’s neck, and Anika rested her head on her shoulder. One thing she couldn’t complain about was lack of support. Her mother, brothers, and Ronnie had all been supportive and never treated her differently because of her medical situation. She was harder on herself than anyone else.
“You have to tell him,” Ronnie said softly. “If you don’t, you could end up in the same situation you did with Emerson. You don’t want that, do you?”
“No,” Anika said quietly.
At one point in time she had convinced herself that she no longer cared if she could be a mother or not. Children were messy and loud. Their little hands were often dirty or sticky from some mystery substance. But the sentiment hadn’t lasted. All it took was spending a few hours with one of her brother’s children, and the baby lust came back full blast, reminding her that she was a lone wolf. An oddity in society.
Why couldn’t she be like her boss, Laura, and accept her situation? Because Laura had chosen to be childfree, but the choice had been taken away from Anika.
“When do you see him again?” Ronnie asked.
“Next Sunday, when we go to his cousin’s house.”
“Can you see him before then?”
“Probably.”
“Find a way to get him alone, away from his daughter and any other distractions. Have a heart to heart and tell him.”
Anika swallowed, fear and worry pressing at the back of her throat. “You’re right. I need to tell him.”
But even as she said the words, she wasn’t sure she could.
Chapter 20
Anika didn’t have that heart to heart with Reed. She kept putting it off and putting it off, and the next thing she knew, it was Sunday afternoon and she was standing in his cousin’s yard.
The Stewart men were a good-looking lot. She didn’t know what they were eating up in Oklahoma, but it resulted in three very handsome men, all with dark hair and great physiques.
Reed was in what appeared to be an intense conversation with Ransom, the eldest and chef of a local restaurant. He was currently busy at the outdoor kitchen cooking up a meal for the entire crew gathered in his backyard. Earlier the men had played a game of flag football, with the children participating and getting in the way with their utter disregard for the rules. They threw themselves on the grass and rolled around, and eventually the rules were abandoned altogether. At some point Reed lifted Ryan’s son, Ryker, in the air with the ball, and they called themselves the champs. An argument ensued. She still didn’t know who had won the game and was pretty sure neither did anyone else.
The rest of the group consisted of Ransom’s younger brother Ryan, in the process of blowing up an inflatable movie screen for the animated film they planned to show later. His youngest son, almost two, played with colorful plastic toys near his feet. Shawna, Ryan’s wife, lounged in a chair on the lawn, dividing her attention between talking to her husband and watching her older son and daughter jump on the trampoline with Brielle.
“Hi, there. Welcome to our home.” Sophie, Ransom’s wife, approached Anika, who lingered at the refreshments table, sipping from a glass of lemonade.
Sophie had amber-toned skin and wore her thick hair in a loose bun on her head. “Sorry I couldn’t meet you earlier, but I was on the phone and then had to feed my little guy.”
“How old is your son?”
“Only a few months. I’m still getting used to being a mommy.” She beamed.
“You must be exhausted,” Anika said politely.
“He’s a handful, and I am exhausted, but it’s a good kind of exhausted.”
Every mother said the same thing. No matter if they stayed up all night and struggled the next day from lack of sleep. No matter if there didn’t seem to be enough minutes in the day to work, engage with their partner, and handle the burping, feeding, and changing of diapers. They all made it sound as if being exhausted and lacking time
and energy was the best feeling ever.
Sophie poured herself a glass of tea and took a sip. “Mmm, this is good. Speaking of handfuls, Ransom told me about your experience with Brielle and how you saved Reed one day.”
“Oh, it was nothing.” She brushed away the praise.
“I wouldn’t say that. I’ve never seen one of her tantrums, but I’ve heard they can be quite…energetic, and she’s hard to handle in that state.”
“Brielle is a sweet little girl and except for the tantrum, well-behaved,” Anika said.
“Do you have kids of your own?”
It was a simple question and one that she’d been asked before. Anika usually had a quick, simple answer: No. But today of all days, being asked that amongst this close-knit family, with everyone playing and laughing together, the reality of her situation hit home.
At eighteen years old, she’d been in agony from cysts that had taken over her ovaries. Three different doctors came to the same conclusion: she needed to have her ovaries removed. So no, not only did she not have children, she never could.
She turned away from Sophie for a moment so the other woman couldn’t see the pain that crossed her face. Tossing a crumpled napkin in the nearby trash, she said, “No kids for me.”
“I don’t blame you. There’s no rush. Enjoy your freedom while you can.” Sophie laughed. “I love my little bear, but life has certainly changed with him around.”
“Come and get it!” Ransom called. He and Reed carried trays of grilled meat and sides from the kitchen. Screaming children scampered toward the wooden table and benches.
“Bon appétit,” Sophie said.
Anika sat next to Ransom, while Ryan, Sophie, and Reed sat on the other side of the table, with Sophie in the middle. Shawna sat with the children at the other table, holding her youngest on her lap.
“So my loser cousin said you guys met back in college?” Ransom inclined his head at Reed and reached for a piece of bread, deliciously pungent with garlic butter soaked into it.
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