Page 27 of Mountains Divide Us

And neither would the children I’d never be able to give him.

Was that why he was attracted to me? Was that what he wanted?

I looked at Brady. “You don’t think…?”

Confusion was making him frown. “Think what?”

Whipping around, shelving books in the wrong places, I brushed off the thought. Or I tried to. “Anyway,” I said, ignoring his question, “we probably don’t have anything in common.”

“Didn’t you talk about that last night?”

“Not really. I guess I talked. Frank isn’t much of a conversationalist. I mean, he talked a little. Oh, he did tell me he was adopted.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, but that’s all he said. He didn’t expound.”

Brady followed me down the aisle. “Maybe it’s not an easy subject for him.”

“Maybe. He said his adoptive parents are good people, but he didn’t say much about his life before they adopted him.” I stopped walking. I was nervous to bring up the kid subject, but I really wanted to know. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Do you and Theo ever talk about… having kids? I mean, like, how you would go about doing that since, obviously, you don’t have a uterus.”

“Yeah, we’ve talked about it a couple times. Not seriously, but I suppose we’ll probably look into adoption or surrogacy if we’re ever at that place in life. Why?”

“No reason,” I lied. I hadn’t told Brady the extent of my infertility issues. He knew I’d had a late first trimester miscarriage in grad school, but that was it. “Frank mentioned wanting a big family, so I guess it just made me wonder.” Yeah, right. It made me wonder how I could ever have that. And how I could ever give that to a man like Frank. Technically, I did have a uterus. The only problem was that my uterus was a busted-up, barren wasteland.

“How was Paulo’s?”

“The food was good. Have you been there?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Theo and I ate there the other night. A guy he invested with a few years ago opened it. He’s here now to get things goin’, but he plans to put a local manager in charge so he can go back to Boston. I don’t know how well it’ll do. It’s kinda expensive for Wisper. It’d probably do a lotter better business in Jackson.”

“I know, right? My shrimp scampi was delicious, but fifty bucks for a steak? Frank paid. In fact, he refused to let me pay my share.”

“Hm,” Brady hummed suggestively. “Sounds serious.”

“It was one date.” I raised a brow at him this time and continued to the next aisle. “Although…”

Following closely, almost stepping on my heels, he was begging for information now. “Although what?”

“I told him I didn’t think it could work between us, but then he… he kind of kissed me.”

“Sam! How could you leave that part out?”

I stopped and turned, unable to hide the smile on my face. “Brady, it was so good. No one’s ever kissed me like that before.”

“Like what?” he asked, hanging on my next word.

“Like, sexy. Insistent. Demanding.”

An “I told you so” grin slowly spread across his face.

“Yeah but…”

“But what!” He was practically jumping up and down, bouncing on the balls of his feet, waiting impatiently for me to spill the details.

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