Christmas Wishes and Mistletoe Kisses(25)

“What was your dad like?” she asked anyway.

He took in a deep breath and let it out. She was pushing him. The complete exhilaration she got talking to him and learning about him made it all worth it. She smiled at his slight frustration with having to answer yet another question. He caught it, his features softening slightly.

“Busy.” He looked down at the table, blinking his eyes a little more than usual. He was clearly uncomfortable sharing this bit of information. Then he looked up at her. “He worked most of my childhood. I barely saw him. Most of the time it was just my sister and my mother around.”

“I can understand what that’s like,” she said. “Remember, I grew up most of my life without my father.”

He nodded.

Their similarities seemed to hit home with him, and Nick fell quiet. They ate for a moment before he said, “My dad died before I could really know him as well. That’s why I’m determined to make his business successful.”

“How does making his business successful help you to know him?”

“It doesn’t.” He took a sip of his tea and set the glass down slowly. “But, I know he loved us, and I feel as though his work was so important to him that it kept him from us—the people he loved—so to honor his memory, I feel like I need to do this for him, to show him how much I loved him. Even when he worked all the time.”

“But what if working all the time wasn’t necessarily the best choice on his part, and now you’re following in his footsteps?”

“The difference was that he had a family and I don’t. I did, but I don’t now so it all worked out.”

“It all worked out?”

“I’m not meant to have a family. It’s not who I am. It took a misstep before I realized it.”

“Your marriage was a misstep?”

“My ex-wife, Sarah, was the ‘right’ girl for me on paper. She was raised in a similar family. I dated her long enough that when she began hinting around for marriage, I proposed. It was a logical step. I figured the least I could do for her was give her the big ring and decadent wedding. But once we were under the same roof, her insecurities were overwhelming. She was always trying to keep up with everyone else. She wanted more and more from me—a family that I wasn’t ready for, this house in Richmond…”

Abbey’s own experience with Vince paralleled Nick’s in a way. Vince hadn’t wanted a family either; he hadn’t been ready, and it had happened anyway. She couldn’t help but find a comparison to Nick. The difference was that Sarah hadn’t gotten pregnant. “So you left her?” she asked.

“I had to work quite a bit to bring in enough money to keep her happy. I didn’t mind that because I wanted the business to be successful for my father, and it kept me away. I knew that if I spent too much time with her, she’d want a baby and it wasn’t what I wanted. My life wasn’t in a place where a baby would be a good idea. I’d grown up missing my father, and I didn’t want that for my child. So, one night I came home to find her on the sofa. She’d been crying. She told me that she wanted me to stop working so much and to build a family with her, and if I didn’t, she’d leave me. I struggled with it, but in the end, I couldn’t give it to her. She left the Thursday of that week.”

“I didn’t plan on having my son, Max, and I wasn’t necessarily ready myself for a family, but now, I can’t imagine life without him.”

“We’re all different, aren’t we?” he said with a melancholy smile.

What Abbey had learned from Vince was that she couldn’t convince someone who didn’t want children to want them, so she decided that she’d better leave this conversation now. If she couldn’t persuade the father of her child that family was a blessing, she certainly wouldn’t sway Nick tonight over dinner. So she decided to lighten the mood.

“What do you do for fun?” she asked, resuming her questioning to change the subject.

“I collect cars,” he said.

“I need to understand your motivation for this,” she said. “You have a ton of cars that you don’t drive. You just look at them?”

“Yes. But it isn’t a ton. I have about ten.”

“Oh, only ten,” she teased.

“I have a Ferrari I’m donating to charity. You would probably like that, right?” He said it as if that would make everything else make sense.

He threw that word around—charity. “Do you have a passion for whatever cause it is?” she asked. Or did he just give things away to justify the rest of his spending habits?