I might as well be honest, since I’m lying to him about almost everything else. “Oh, by the way, I love carrot cake,” I add as an afterthought. Daisy hates it—says carrots should only be consumed when dipped into ranch dressing.
“Carrot cake.” He nods. “Noted. Thank you for being honest about that. It must have been quite difficult for you. Dicey topic and all.”
“Hush, that was just a side note,” I say, waving my hand. “I’m going to tell you something else.”
“Please. I’m fascinated.”
“I want to have a career and a family and sometimes I’m afraid I’m going to wake up at forty with neither.” I glance in his direction. “No offense.”
“Very well.” He nods with that same smirk on his face. “None taken.”
“You’re a man so you have more time,” I point out. “I’m sure it’ll work out for you. I mean, assuming you want those things.”
“The compliments just keep coming with you, don’t they, love?”
“I just meant everyone has their own life path, you know? It’s okay to be a free spirit. My sister is a free spirit. It works for some people, I’m just not one of them.”
“Sure enough,” he agrees. “So you think you’re running out of time? Your biological clock is ticking, is it?”
“Oh!” I laugh. “No, not yet. Not ticking. I want to re-establish my career first. But I can see the clock, you know? I can’t hear it ticking, but I’m aware that it’s there. That it might need a battery at some point.” I shrug before continuing. “It turns out that I’ve wasted the last couple of years and now I’m starting over. Which is fine, it just feels like the starting line got pushed back, that’s all.”
“Well, then,” he says quietly. He looks pensive and I wonder if I really have just ensured I won’t be coming again this week, which was so not my goal.
“No, I don’t wish I could start over,” he says after a moment. He slides his arm behind my headrest and leans in. “I’m good. I’m exactly where I’m meant to be. As are you.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Jennings
I am exactly where I’m meant to be. If I’d settled down earlier I wouldn’t know how Daisy sounds when she comes. What she feels like wrapped around my cock. What she tastes like on my tongue. And not knowing those things? That’s what regret would feel like.
Do I wish I’d settled down in my twenties and filled a nursery? Fuck no. I’ve still got time for all that. I’m youngish, loads of time. So what if I’ve worked hard and put family off? I’ve never questioned it before, yet suddenly this woman has me thinking. This woman who thinks I’m a free-spirited playboy with a dodgy career.
I might be guilty of one of those things. It’s not as if I’ve ever had issues finding a woman to spend time with. But my career is solid—ten thousand employees rely on my career being solid—and I’m far from a free spirit. A structured workaholic is more like it. To a fault.
My parents had me just out of university, before my dad finished his legal training. Too young to my way of thinking. I was in short trousers by the time he qualified as a solicitor. A picture of me in one arm and his new practicing certificate in the other has been on his desk as long as I can remember. I used to look at it and think how exhausting it must have been to have a toddler at that stage in his life.
My mum must have agreed, because it was too much for her. The one who gave birth to me, not the one who raised me. My birth mum was gone before I was out of nappies. “She was too young to settle down,” my dad would say when I asked about her, skipping over the fact that he was the same age. “She needed time to find herself.” She found herself in Scotland, as it turned out. Married a Scotsman and had a couple of babies. Perhaps she was ready by then, as my half-sisters are both well over a decade younger than I am.
We did okay though by all accounts. Dad and I on our own. And then he met Elouise and she stepped in and became Mum. I’m not sure I remember a time before her. It’s her I see in my childhood photos, a huge grin on her face as we posed in front of one tourist spot or another. Her soothing words I remember when I scraped my knee or broke a bone or lost a game. She’s the only mum I’ve known and I’m okay with that. She really loves my dad. Must do, to have been so willing to accept me along with him.
So do I want a family of my own? Of course I do. Who doesn’t? And having a family business does sort of require a family to pass it along to, doesn’t it? Not that I don’t have cousins who can take care of that. But I’ve got plenty of time. Loads.