Page 47 of Wishes on Wildflowers
“Well, some of us want more out of life than wandering around a dimly lit clinic with smelly candles and classical music.”
“Bro, you canhavelaw school. Steel buildings full of Type A attorneys trying to one-up each other is not my idea of a good time.”
“I’m with Ev.” Alex chuckled. “Somebody has to keep the wheels turning in the real world so you can enjoy your fantasy one.”
“I resent that.” It might have sounded more emphatic if she weren’t so tired. It also wasn’t the first time her two younger brothers tag-teamed her. “Besides, I’m not going to be at the clinic that much longer. Eighteen and a half months, if anyone’s counting.”
“I can count that high.” Alex chuckled. “Numbers are my life.”
She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “Very funny. Just saying I do have aspirations.”
“To work with plants,” stuck in Evan. “You don’t make any sense to me, Jas. You’re as smart as any of us—”
“Thanks. I think.”
“Plus, you like to boss us all around. You should be inupper management somewhere, not making tea out of weeds you pulled out of the woods.”
They were going here again? She opened her eyes. “I happen to like foraging.”
Alex grinned as he glanced in the rearview mirror. “Dad and Mom did fine with Marco, but they messed up with her and Basil. Thankfully, they remembered how to parent by the time we came along.”
Jasmine’s back stiffened, and she narrowed her eyes at him. “I’ll thank you not to paint Basil and me with the same brush. We’re not anything alike.”
“Sure you are,” Alex said.
“You two are barely dry behind the ears. What do you know?”
“You both like to control everything, but then you’re satisfied with small bits of inanimate objects, like they’re the only ones you can be sure will do your bidding.”
“Hey, now.” Jasmine swiveled in her seat. “That’s not true.”
Evan held up both hands. “Just saying it like I see it.”
He couldn’t be right. She looked at Alex and raised her eyebrows, but he seemed very intent on the open highway. “Alex?”
“Uh...” His eyes darted her direction, and his hands shifted on the steering wheel. “Ev might be telling the truth in love. And we do love you, Jas.”
She swallowed hard and looked out the passenger window at the rural estates they passed, hills beyond them dry even in June.Lord, what do I do with this information? Are they telling the truth? They just see me as a control freak?
Wasn’t that what Nathan had said, too? He’d used nicerwords, blaming himself for being too immature to fit in with her plans back in college. But, he’d come back, right? He loved her. She’d been walking on air for the past week between her relationship with him regrounding and the anticipation of today’s road trip. Rob might have married Bren back in February, but today was at least as important. It was the day they became a family. Still kind of hard to think of Rob as a married man with two kids and one on the way.
“I hope Dafne has a happy ending like Bren.” Jasmine didn’t care if shewaschanging the subject. She was done with her brothers discussing her perceived shortcomings in her presence.
Alex shot her a sidelong look. “You think she should raise the baby herself?”
Well, duh. “Uncle Dino and Aunt Betta will help. It’ll be rough, but she can do it. Bren did.”
“There are lots of couples waiting to adopt a newborn,” put in Evan. “She can go to a private agency and even have a say in who the baby’s family will be.”
“Don’t you guys get it?” Of course they didn’t. They were male. “The baby is one of us. A Santoro.”
“A Hamelin.”
Jasmine stilled. She’d pushed the knowledge of Dafne’s former boyfriend out of her mind. Nathan’s half-brother, who’d pushed Daf to get an abortion and abandoned her on the doorstep of the clinic in the dead of winter when she couldn’t go through with it. “Connor relinquished any claim.”
Evan shrugged. “Doesn’t change the DNA.”
“You were telling me about that family at Green Acres Farm who adopted a few kids,” Alex said. “Maybe they’d like another.”
