Page 61 of A December to Remember
“I’m not ruling out other activities,” he said with a lazy smile and a raised eyebrow. “But in the tent of intent, talk comes first.”
“Like dinner before pudding.”
“Exactly like that.”
“You didn’t go for a run at all, did you?”
“No.”
She had known her stalling would catch up with her eventually. If she’d discovered his cunning plan sooner, she would have feigned an excuse, but she’d been so eager to get laid, she hadn’t bothered to ask.That’ll teach you to think with your lady parts!
She tried a different tack: she sidled up to him and began to trail kisses down his neck.
“What if my intentions for the tent of intent are physical rather than verbal?” she whispered.
Joe cleared his throat and shook himself, and she was pleased to see she had him flustered. But he took her hands in his and used them to gently push her arm’s length away from him.
“My tent, my rules,” he said. “We are going to have a grown-up conversation about us.”
“God!” she huffed. “So unfair!”
Joe smiled and lifted the flap to the tent. “After you,” he said.
She sighed and climbed inside. The floor was lined with cushions and a double sleeping bag lay unzipped across them. She fixed him with a stare as he climbed in beside her.
“That’s a little presumptuous,” she said, gesturing to the sleeping bag.
Joe settled next to her and zipped up the tent flaps. “Oh, I think not.” He grinned knowingly at her. “But first, we talk.”
She rolled her eyes as though disinterested, but inside she felt leaden with dread.
“I am in love with you...” She opened her mouth to protest, but he held up his hand for her to be quiet. “Please, Mags, I need to tell you this. I have fallen in love with you, and I want to be with you. Properly with you, not sneaking around, not pretending we are onlyfriends with benefits. I want people to know about us. I know that you’re stressed with the flat and the shop and everything, but losing the building needn’t be the end of something. We can make a new start together, find a place and put both our names on the lease. Start a business together. And if that feels like it’s too fast or too much for you, then we’ll go at any pace you like, so long as we go public.”
“Public?”
“I don’t want to hide in the shadows like your dirty little secret anymore. I want us to be a couple, and I want the people that matter to us to know it. I want us to sit down with Patrick and Verity and tell them we’re going to be a family.”
“I haven’t even told the kids we’re being evicted yet. I think one bombshell is enough to be going along with, don’t you?”
“Why would your kids finding out we’re together be a bombshell? What we’ve got going is a good thing, a positive, life-affirming thing. Don’t put our relationship in the same category as your eviction.”
She pulled her knees up and hid her face in them. She so desperately wanted all the things Joe wanted, but it wasn’t realistic. Sooner or later he would see it too and it would be messy,and she would be heartbroken, and Patrick would say “I told you so” and he’d be right. She pulled her head away from her knees and took a deep breath.
“I am not a good bet. You could have anyone you wanted...”
“I want you!”
“Joe, I let you talk, now you have to listen to me. I’m forty-four years old. I am not going to have another baby at my age—I don’t want one, I’ve done the baby stuff. Plus, I’m pretty sure I’m perimenopausal, so the clock is ticking on that one anyway, even if I did want another baby, which I absolutely don’t. And by the way, do you really want to be with a perimenopausal woman when you could be with some perky little thirtysomething? You’ve seen me have a hot flash, right? It’s not pretty and it’s probably going to get worse. I can’t deny you the chance to have a child of your own. You would make a wonderful father, I won’t stand in the way of that. And that’s before all the complications that come with me, my kids, and my precarious financial and living status, not to mention a myriad of hang-ups about allowing myself to depend on somebody. If I was on the outside looking in, I would see a whole lotta baggage and very few benefits to recommend me.”
“Do you love me?” he asked.
“Did you hear all the things I just said? Think seriously about what you would have to lose by being with me.”
“I am not afraid of menopause, Maggie.”
“That’s what they’ll start calling me, you know?Menopause Maggie!Do you want to be associated with that?”
“Don’t do that.”
