Page 95 of In Spades

“You sound like Will.”

“Or Will sounds like me,” she tut-tutted. “How are things with your boyfriend? Has he proposed yet?”

I tossed my head back as a bellyaching laugh ripped free. “Proposed? We’ve barely been together for a month.”

“My Antonio proposed to me with a gumball machine ring after two weeks. We were married forty-six years before he passed on,” Maria said. “You kids these days wait too long, thinking you need to have your whole life figured out before you let yourself fall in love. The point is to fall in love, then figure the rest out together.”

That was another thing about turning over rooms with Maria. She had a way of being the snarkiest trash talker around. Then, three seconds later, she would casually drop the heaviest, life-altering truth she could muster.

I loved her, but I didn’t particularly appreciate her calling me out like that.

Even if she was right.

“Marry him and have babies,” Maria said, spouting off like that was the answer to everything.

Okay, so she wasn’t always right about everything.

I snorted. “The first is a long way down the road, and the second will never happen.”

“You’ll change your mind.”

“No, I won’t.”

I loved Maria, but the woman was dead set on playing hop-scotch all over my last nerve today. Why did people think it was okay to tell a woman that she would change her mind when it came to having kids? Some people didn’t feel the need to see mini versions of themselves running all over the damn place and that was perfectly acceptable.

“I don’t know if Will wants kids either. We haven’t talked about it.”

Maria wrinkled her nose. “Ask him.”

“Will isn’t exactly young. He’s a lot older than me.”

Seeds of doubt took root in my mind. What if he did want kids? He seemed unfazed by the age difference, but numbers were what they were. Even if I came around to having kids eventually, would he be willing to wait that long?

“How much older?” Maria asked.

“Thirteen years,” I said as I checked the minibar. It was untouched, so I swiped a dust rag across the slick surface and tossed it back on the cart. “He’s thirty-eight.”

Maria laughed as she karate chopped the tops of the pillows. “Same age as Antonio was, but I was eighteen when I married. Now, twenty years—that is an age difference. Yours isn’t a gap. It’s only an age ditch. A little hop.”

“Seriously? Twenty years?” I shook my head as we moved on to the next room. “I bet your families had a few choice words about that.”

“Did they ever,” she snickered. “Don’t bother yourself with the opinions of unimportant people. Unimportant people are quick to criticize and slow to support. It's a pity that people are so concerned with cramming love into a one-size-fits-all box instead of just celebrating it.”

“Will and I aren’t in love,” I said all too quickly.

“Yet,” she said with a wink. “You aren’t in love yet.”

I held on to that thought as we cleaned two floors full of rooms. By the time I clocked out, I’d all but forgotten about the management drama.

That was, until I saw Hannah Jane talking to Karina in the lobby.

I started toward them to get some answers, but my phone buzzed with a selfie from Will. He’d been out of town for meetings that required security clearance and a stack of signed statements promising he wouldn’t tell a soul about anything. Those nondisclosure agreements didn’t say anything about selfies, though.

Will looked bored out of his mind.

I still didn’t have a clue what he did. He dabbled in a lot of things. I knew he had money. Hell, he lived in a freaking waterfront mansion. That thing had to be as pricey as Maddie and Luca’s place, and Luca was loaded.

I knew Will wrote software and built things like computer chips for defense companies, but it seemed more like a hobby—like Maria and housekeeping. She just did it to have something to do. Will was the same way.

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