“I can’t believe it’s only Wednesday.” Taylor retrieves several cocktail glasses out of a top cupboard and places them on the glossy white counter. “The closer we get to summer, the crazier the kids become.”
“Mine are always crazy,” Mya sighs. “The boys are so active now.”
“You’re surprised?” Cassie rolls her sky-blue gaze as she pours margarita mix out of a carafe into the lined-up glasses, her pink dipped nails tapping on the glass. “You’re raising mini hockey players. That’s what happens when you marry a Blackhawk. I’m surprised they aren’t belting each other with sticks.”
“Only because she won’t let them play with their hockey gear in the house,” Taylor says.
“And you would?” Mya asks, plucking a hair tie from her wrist and using it to contain her red hair in an elegant bun on top of her head. Lithe and long limbed, she’s graceful as a ballerina and has one of those bodies that bounces back despite having three kids under four years of age. She swears it’s yoga.
“Not a chance.” Taylor runs her palms down her black leggings then presses them into the edge of the counter and hoists herself onto it. The overhead lighting glints off her lightweight raspberry jacket that match her Chuck Taylors. Polymer watermelon wedges dangle from her earlobes. “I teach kids in the hopes they won’t be heathens trying to club one another.”
Where Cassie is polished perfection, the girl next door meets playboy bunny; and Mya is a study in strength and classiness, Taylor is no nonsense beautiful. Dark corkscrew curls, no makeup. Fun.
“Are you sure you don’t teach kids in the hopes of meeting their fathers?” Cassie coos.
“How is Max?” I ask, snagging a corn chip and dipping it in salsa.
Taylor takes her time smearing guacamole on a taco bite that she pops in her mouth before speaking. The entire time she sports cheeks a hue pinker than her jacket. “He’s... good.”
Taylor’s been talking about this guy for the past six months, but she has a strict no dating policy in regard to her students’ parents. Not that it stops him from flirting with her. Not that she stops him flirting with her. As long as he doesn’t ask her out on a date. Because that is a line she will not cross.
“I bet he is,” Cassie says. “Are you finally going to throw him a bone when the school year ends? I can’t imagine it would be easy to get laid as the sole parent.”
“How was your appointment, Jane?” Taylor deflects, her voice rising over Cassie’s.
“I can start trying whenever I’m ready.” I’m suddenly not hungry. “My not broken ovary is producing viable eggs. There’s every chance that I can have a baby.”
“That’s good.” Cassie comes over and links her arm through mine. “So what’s the plan? When are you going to start? Have we picked our potential sperm donor?”
“The appointment was today. I haven’t had time to organize all that.” I slip my arm free and snag a napkin so I can dispose of my half-eaten corn chip and wipe my fingers. “And none of it is possible right now anyway. The house in London hasn’t sold yet. I can’t even afford to move out of my parents’ until that money comes through. I don’t have the dough for fertility treatments and donated sperm and insemination procedures. And that’s based on one round. It’ll probably take months of trying.”
“It took us six months to conceive the twins,” Mya says sympathetically. “And those hormones... I was a mess.”
“Oh, we remember.” Taylor winks at me.
Mya picks up an olive and throws it at Taylor who ducks and laughs. The olive lands an inch from Daisy, the Hawthornes’ Great Dane’s nose. Her ears prick, and she puffs out a breath that shifts her harlequin sides, at the offensive green.
“Now kids, let’s behave like the grown women that we are.” Cassie rolls her gaze to the ceiling. “Who needs kids when you two are so childish.”
I missed this while I was gone. A small ache starts in my chest as I think about how much I missed. Three babies. A wedding. Birthdays and boyfriends and promotions. Book club.
“Do you need help?” Mya asks. “Financially? I can talk to Ford...”
“No,” I snap. I don’t mean to, and as soon as I do I take a breath and reel in my emotions. The whole situation is a lot to sort through. And none of it is guaranteed. “Thank you, but if I’m going to do this on my own I need to work out how to do it on my own.”
The doorbell chimes in the background and all three girls still.
“I wonder who that could be at this time of night,” Mya says in a way that makes me think she knows exactly who is standing at her door.
The fact that Taylor and Cassie both side eye me makes it obvious this was planned.
I groan.
“I better go and see,” Mya says, sliding out of the kitchen.
“So what can we do to help?” Taylor asks.
“You can pass me one of those donuts,” I say. “If Mya is going to try and set me up with another one of Ford’s colleagues.”
“Pink icing or chocolate?” Cassie flips open the lid and pushes it toward me.
“Pink with blue sprinkles,” I snag one out of the box. I probably shouldn’t, but in a minute Mya is going to drag some gorgeous, tall, brutally aggressive man in here and introduce us in the hopes he’ll be interested. Poor fool has no idea what she has in store for him tonight and I am not in the mood to watch another man’s eyes glaze over once he’s checked out the size of my hips. “Is there any other kind?”
“Look who stopped by,” Mya says, her hands around the huge bicep of Trent Walker, left wing for the Blackhawks. “He was passing by and thought he’d say hi.”
“Uh-huh.” Cassie slides her peepers the entire length of his body and whispers so low only I hear her. “More like she bulldozed Ford into inviting him over to play Xbox so she could matchmake.”
Mya shoves him bodily in my direction. “Trent, this is my good friend, Jane. She recently moved back from London, where she was a marketing manager for Glamour.”
“That’s cool.” Navy blue eyes stare down at me from atop a body built like, well, like a hockey player, before flicking past me to focus on Cassie.
It was inevitable really. Cassie is beautiful. Guys fall all over themselves like dogs to get close to her. Which would bother me if she didn’t have the biggest heart. And a romantic life that could rival mine in the suckage department.
“Cass.” He jerks his chin. “What’s up?”
“My period,” she deadpans without missing a beat. “Are you a saucy kind of guy?”
Mya gasps.
Taylor laughs and chokes on the margarita she was sipping.
“Um, I...” His cheeks glow bright red and he runs a hand through his hair. He’s completely ruffled as he takes a step back and yet he still can’t stop staring at her because she’s a bombshell. He looks to Mya for help. “I’m going to go find Ford.”
“That’s... yep...” she says as he slips from the room.
“Holy shit.” Taylor slaps her knee.
“I can’t believe you did that,” Mya snips. “That was so embarrassing.”