“I guess I don’t necessarily miss it as a job. But I do miss the feel of wood under my hands and the sound of the tools. I just… never had anyone to share that with the way you did.”
He studied me for a moment. Long enough that I felt pink creep up my cheeks.
“Why don’t you have any kids?”
My stomach tightened. I hated this question. I’d been getting it for years. But Jamie hadn’t asked in the way people usually did, with that underlying tone like my time was running out. Like it would one day be some big regret. He’d asked like he was genuinely curious.
“You don’t have to answer that,” he said. He pressed his hands to his knees like he was going to get up.
I didn’t want him to get up.
“I wanted them—once,” I blurted.
I was surprised to hear myself telling the truth. Usually, I told people it was a decision I’d made years ago that I was perfectly happy with. And I was, now. But it hadn’t always been that way.
“We tried. Me and my ex. For years. It just…” I cleared my throat. I’d made peace with this pain years ago, but it still sometimes rose up, like something rotten. “I couldn’t. The doctors said the chances of me conceiving naturally were one in a hundred or less. And Richard wasn’t interested in adopting.”
Jamie’s face held no judgment. Just interest in what I had to say.
For the first time in forever.
“But I had girlfriends, back then, who were childless by choice. They helped me see that half of it was a sense of moral obligation. That I was, in the end, perfectly happy focusing on my career. Even if Richard wasn’t.”
Jamie had an expression on his face that was hard to decipher. Then he said, “Sounds like that guy was baby enough.”
I couldn’t help it; I let out a choked laugh. “He was. Completely.”
It was funny; that was the exact word Winona called him just the other day when I was telling her how terrible our sex life had been. One time, about a year before we split, I nervously confessed that all the work I’d been doing to try to be more assertive and in charge didn’t apply in the bedroom. I wanted to be dominated and praised.
“Richard looked at me like I was dirty or something,” I told her.
“He kink-shamed you?” Winona was incredulous.
“I guess that’s what it was. I didn’t even think I was asking him to be particularly kinky. Just for him to boss me around a little. You’d think he would have liked that, seeing how much he didn’t like me being in charge in real life. But he accused me of watching porn and fantasizing about other men. Then he refused to have sex with me at all. For weeks! Not that I’d been clamoring for it at that point.”
“That man was a straight-up baby, Sarah.”
Except Richard wasn’t wrong about one thing. Ihadbeen watching porn. I’d found this site calledWomenVibesthat was all sexy videos of real-life couples making love. That’s where I’d learned being told what to do in the bedroom was what I liked. What I’d never had before.
For a moment, I looked at my boss as he pushed off the bed and headed to the desk next to me. His sheer size and sudden proximity sent heat shooting through my body.
I bet he’d be good at telling me what to do. For a split second, I imagined him opening the door for me like he had earlier. But instead of snapping at me, I pictured him closing the door and loosening his robe; grabbing that huge cock that even now I could see the faint outline of in his pants.
I heard his voice in my ears—deep, low, rough. “Get on your knees, sweetheart.”
My thighs clenched.
Then Jamie looked at me.
Heat rose in my cheeks. Could he see I’d been fantasizing about him while sitting within touching distance?
Something passed over Jamie’s face, but once again, I couldn’t figure out what it was. Then he held up a menu. “You want food? I’m starving.”
I nodded. “Yes,” I croaked. I was too. But I’d barely noticed.
As he dialed, he said so softly I almost didn’t hear, “Your ex is an idiot. Anyone who fucked up a relationship with you would be.”
That heat inside me intensified. I wasn’t convinced he was talking about Richard.