Page 43 of If We Never Met

"It's been on my mind the last year. More so since I started designing for my friends. But I don't know, Dante. I feel like that life has already passed me by."

"Why? You're not that old. Are you thirty? Thirty-one?"

"Thirty-one. And it's not just age; it's about lifestyle. What I was willing to do at twenty-two, twenty-three, I'm not sure I want to do now. Money has become more important to me. I don't want to live in a crowded apartment with three other people. I don't want to get coffee and run errands and go back to what I was doing."

"So, don't do that. Start higher. You have more experience now. A country music star just wore your dress on the red carpet. You don't have to do what you did before."

"It's still such a long shot. And New York is a long way from Whisper Lake. If something happened to my mom because I went off to try for something that's probably impossible to achieve, I don't think I could forgive myself."

"Something could happen to your mom while you're living in her house. You know that, Keira. Get honest. It's about fear that you're not good enough."

"I might not be good enough," she said.

"You won't know if you don't put yourself out there."

"It's more complicated than you understand."

"I get it. You have your mom to worry about. And as you told me before, practical matters, like money, play a role. But you don't want to look back years from now and wish you'd given your dream another shot. Have you talked to your mom about it?"

"No. I don't want her to think she is holding me back. That would hurt her too much."

He gave her a sympathetic smile. "You're a very kind, loving person. That's probably why you can't be as selfish as I can be."

She didn't know if he was selfish, or if he'd become an island of focus after his mom died and his father emotionally abandoned him. Maybe his pursuit of baseball had become the one thing in his life he could control. Now he'd lost that control, and he was desperate to get it back. But she'd probably done enough amateur psychoanalysis for one night. And she didn't want to keep talking about her career choices, either. She cleared her throat. "So, should we talk about the pictures?"

"Not yet."

She didn't ask him why he was stalling, because she didn't want to end the night yet, and it would end as soon as they got around to the real reason they were here.

Instead, she pushed her glass toward him. "In that case, top me off."

Dante needed to get down to the reason they were meeting, but he wasn't ready yet. He refilled both of their glasses and rested his arms on the table as he gazed into Keira's pretty brown eyes. Despite the fact that their conversation had gotten very personal, he felt surprisingly good. "Let's talk more about you," he said.

"I think we've already dissected my career prospects."

"What about your dating life? Have you heard from the real Danny again?"

"No. I think he got the hint when I left the bar so abruptly. We were not a match."

"I wonder how he's doing on his novel."

"Who knows?"

"He might become a famous novelist one day, and then you'll be like, damn, I had a chance to date him," he said with a grin.

She smiled. "That would be just my luck. But fame and money aren't important to me."

Other women had told him that, and he hadn't believed them. But he actually believed Keira. "What do you care about?"

"Being able to talk and laugh with someone. It's so right that it's easy. Every time I'm in a relationship that's too hard, I try to fix it, only to waste weeks of time to finally admit that it just doesn't work."

"If there isn't an immediate connection, it never really happens," he agreed. "How picky are you?"

"Not that picky to meet someone, but after that, I can get critical. I've seen all of my friends fall in love, and I want the best of everything. I want the smoking hot chemistry and the best friend."

"You do want it all."

"Yes, I do. There's a song by Etta James, 'A Sunday Kind of Love'. Have you heard it?"

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