Page 15 of Fierce-Dane

“I’m glad,” she said. “Guess your mother knows you well. Or your kids.”

“They do,” he said. “Or they think they do. Tiffani is at this stage where she needs to tell me what to do. I think it’s more that she hears what others say and jumps on that bandwagon.”

“It’s got to be a hard age,” she said.

Sloane tried to remember what she had going on in her life as a young child, but most of it all blurred together of her mother trying to teach her but not doing a great job of things. There were other women around who could do the schooling, but her mother was more about working the land and doing what needed to be done.

She was no stranger to physical labor from an early age.

“It is,” he said. “The bopping around between twoparents’ houses isn’t easy and she’s one to try to get her way any way she can.”

She was surprised he’d admitted that and wondered if her massage wasn’t just loosening up his muscles but also his tongue. She’d noticed that a lot with her clients and wouldn’t take advantage of it.

“But she’s got her sibling with her,” she said.

“They are two different kids,” he said. “Tyler, he likes being with me. He needs that man in his life and wants to be like his dad. I’ve got to say it feeds my ego, but he’s young yet.”

“That’s sweet,” she said. “I’m sure Tiffani wants to be with her dad too.”

“Oh,” he said, “she does. Then she gets jealous if Tyler gets more attention and wants to like what I do too.”

“I get it,” she said. “She liked coming here and then wanted you to like it too?”

She was leaning over him, her breasts almost touching his head as she reached forward but stopped herself enough so that she wasn’t.

There was silence there for a second and normally she wouldn’t notice it because she was trying to focus on her job.

“I didn’t think of it that way.”

“What way?” she asked, then moved to the work on his lower back.

“That she enjoyed coming here with my mother and sister and she wants me to have the same experience she did. Even if it’s a different service.”

“Again,” she said. “I think that’s very sweet and thoughtful of her. Mature in a way for a child.”

“Tiffani is mature on some levels. Maybe this was her idea and not my mother's.”

“You didn’t think it was?” she asked.

“I wasn’t sure. But she did say how Chloe kept talking about her massage and how wonderful it felt.”

“Then maybe there is your answer,” she said. “Could be she wanted her father to feel as good as her aunt.”

“I think you might be right. I’ll find out tomorrow when I pick them up. I’ll see my mother too, as the kids will be there during the night since I’m on call.”

Which told her that there was a mother in the picture and they obviously weren’t together.

Maybe it was time to change the topic some. She didn’t want him to think she was prying.

“Did you always want to be a doctor?” she asked. She had her thumbs pressing into his upper glutes now. He wasn’t moaning as much, but he wasn’t tense either. Exactly what she wanted to get to.

“Not until I was in college,” he said. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do in high school other than I liked science.”

“I find it funny that at seventeen and eighteen someone has to figure out what they want to do with the rest of their life when they’ve only lived a tiny fraction of it. And as a pediatrician, you know those years are building. There isn’t a lot of knowledge or the ability to make informed decisions. Yet for some reason society tells us we have to decide at twenty what we are going to do career-wise for the next forty-plus years.”

“I agree one hundred percent,” he said. “Though I doubt it’s going to change much. I want my kids to try everything they can while they can until they can find what they enjoy. I also want them to know that life is about change and just because you decide on one thing doesn’t mean you have to still have that thought process years later.”

Hmmm, made her wonder now which one of them ended the marriage.

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