Page 41 of Kind of a Dirty Talker

“You’ll be fine,” he says, biting into his apple and grinning as he chews. “That’s why the phrase is ‘just like riding a bike’ not ‘just like factoring a quadratic equation.’ It’ll come back to you like that.” He snaps his fingers, earning a clucking sound from Freya that sounds way too much like a laugh.

“I think Freya’s amused,” I say dryly, as Wes chuckles along with my traitorous pet. “Or looking forward to how stupid I’m going to look before I go flying over the handlebars.”

“Never. You’re going to do great.” He glances back my way, grinning. “But we’ll get you a good helmet, just in case.”

* * *

A little over nine hours later, after eating our sandwiches on the road to save time, and only stopping once for gas, we’re pulling into Trout World, an outdoor store so enormous we might need mountain bikes to get all the way around it in the thirty minutes we’ve allotted for the stop.

I tell Wes as much and he laughs. “Nah, I know my way around a Trout World. If you’ve been to one, you’ve been to them all.”

“No way,” I say, sticking close as he sets off diagonally through the woman’s fashion department, bound for signs that read “snow and ski” and “water sports.” “There’s more than one of these?”

“It’s a chain,” he says. “There’s one not far from Minneapolis. Matty and I make a trip out there for fishing equipment before the big family party on the lake every summer.”

“That party is so fun,” I say, practically skipping past the snowboard display. “I get so sunburned every year, but it’s worth it. The pool noodle game Binx invented is my favorite.”

Wes grins at me over his shoulder. “I love that one, too. Hopefully, she’ll still want to play this year. What with my mom and dad giving her such a hard time.”

Some of my giddiness fading, I ask, “Can’t you say something to them on her behalf? I mean, she shaved her hair off to raise money for a little girl’s surgery. That’s the sweetest. They would be so proud if they knew.”

His grin fades. “Yeah, but…”

My brows shoot up. “What? You don’t you think it would make a difference? I mean, your mom is set in her ways, but she’d do anything for a kid in need. I would think she’d be proud that her daughter is doing the same.”

Wes sighs, pausing at the intersection between life jackets and inflatable water toys before turning right. “I’m sure she would, but Binx will kill me if I tell them. She doesn’t want them to accept that she shaved her head because she did it for a good cause. She just wants them to accept it, accept her, full stop.”

“Yeah, I get that,” I say. “Still, if it were me, I’d be tempted to tell them, just to smooth things over. Especially considering they’re probably too old and set in their ways to change at this point.”

He grunts. “Binx would say that kind of thinking is what allows assholes to keep being assholes and that age isn’t an excuse for acting like a bag full of dicks.”

I laugh. “She would say that. I love her. I wish I were that badass and firm in my beliefs, especially at her age.”

“I think it’s easier at her age,” Wes says. “When I was twenty-six, I thought I had a good handle on what was right and wrong. Now…” He shrugs. “The older I get, the more I realize life is…complex. Occasionally things are black and white, but most of the time they’re confusing shades of gray. Makes decision-making and standing firm in your convictions a lot harder.”

I want to ask him if the situation with Darcy was a shade of gray and to tell him that I understand if it was. I’ve obviously never had a partner tell me he was pregnant, but if one of my exes had dropped an emotional bombshell on me right as I was planning to end things, I probably would have hesitated, too. Whether a relationship is going to work long term or not, I wouldn’t want to hurt someone I cared about, or abandon them in a time of need.

Especially if their “time of need” was something I had contributed to creating, like a baby…

I was only weird about hearing his explanation because pregnancy is a triggering topic for me. Probably the most triggering. Being continuously rejected by potential partners for not being able to have babies, while also coming to terms with the fact that I can’t have biological children, has been one of the most painful disappointments in my life.

Which is one of the many reasons it would be a good idea to come clean with Wes about my infertility. That way he can stop flirting with me, embrace our destiny as “just friends,” and we can put that steamy night behind us, once and for all. There’s no chance that Wes doesn’t want children. He said he wanted them yesterday and having big, boisterous families is practically compulsory for the McGuires. It’s as much a part of them as their dark hair, bright eyes, and killer senses of humor.

My lips part, the words on the tip of my tongue, but I swallow them down.

This isn’t the time. We’re on a mission for treasure-hunting supplies. We’re Preston and Lady Gray, and Preston and Lady Gray aren’t concerned about things like infertility or incompatibility. They just want to find the gold and become part of a Wild West legend.

Ignoring the annoying voice in my head, assuring me I’m a coward living in a dream world, I point to the sign dangling from the ceiling not far ahead. “There! Hats!”

Dashing to the aisle, I breeze past the baseball caps, easily finding the Indiana Jones’-style fedoras and reverently plucking one from the shelf. I plop it on my head, turning to ask Wes, “How do I look?”

“Like a professional,” he says with an approving nod. “Though you might want a larger size.” He presses down on the top of the hat, only for it to pop right back up again. “Have to take the hair into account.”

I take the hat from my head, handing it to him. “You’re right. My brain is also very large, in addition to my hair. But this one will probably fit you.”

He snorts. “With my much smaller brain?”

I shoot him a grin as I sift through the remaining hats, looking for a larger one. “It’s okay. You probably use a lot more of it, percentagewise, than other small-brained people. I mean, you are a lawyer. That’s not easy. You have to hold laws and precedents and all the facts of a case in your head. All I have in mine is an endless supply of recipes and acid and fat combinations.”

---