Page 82 of Must Be Love - Irresistible Bachelors

“Have you talked to your brother recently?” Mom asks.

“Yeah, yesterday. Things are going well. He sent me the first ultrasound.”

“Isn’t it just so exciting!?! We’re going to have a new baby in the family. It’s about time you boys brought me a grandchild!”

I cringe. “Yeah, Mom. I know you’re dying to be a granny.”

Mom ignores my dig. She hates the term “granny.” She’s gone so far as to say her grandkids will just call her Nina.

“What about that girl you’ve been seeing? How is she? When do I get to meet her?” Mom asks.

So much for keeping my mind off Amber. I never should’ve told my mother about her.

“We’re done,” I say.

Mom scoffs. “Absolutely not.”

“Mom, she doesn’t want anything to do with me. It’s over.”

“I don’t believe that. You seemed so happy with her the last time you talked about it. What could you have possibly done wrong in such a short period of time?”

“What makes you think I did something wrong?” I ask.

“Please. I know you, Aaron. You had to have pushed her away somehow. Just like you did with your fiancée!”

“My fiancée was cheating on me!”

“Beside the point.”

I take a deep breath. Yes, it is my fault that Amber and I broke up, but it’s shitty that my mom automatically assumed that. And that she’s saying the breakup with Marnie was my fault. I may have been the one to technically end the engagement, but Marnie was the one who cheated. I’m pretty sure that makes the breakup her fault, not mine.

“Come on, Aaron. Tell me what you did.”

“Trust me, Mom, you don’t want to know.”

“So you admit it was you?”

I sigh. “Yeah. This time, it was all me. I don’t blame Amber for leaving me.”

“I must say, I’m disappointed in you.”

“Gee, thanks, Mom.”

“I raised you better than this! What could you have possibly done that was bad enough to warrant a breakup? I thought you were going to marry this woman.”

I did, too, but there’s no reason my mother should have thought that. She’s never met Amber. I talked about my girlfriend one time, and it was to get her off my back. We haven’t spoken about Amber since then. I don’t know why my mom thinks the relationship was that serious. I purposely didn’t tell her much about Amber to avoid this kind of situation.

“Like I said, it’s better you don’t know what happened. It has to do with my work.”

“Your work? Everything has to do with your work. And you wonder why your relationships never last! You’re a workaholic, Aaron.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Like hell it isn’t,” Mom says. “You and I both know how you are. You get so invested in one of your products, and you let everything else in your life slip away.”

I clench my fist. “I’m telling you, you’re wrong.”

“You need to apologize to Amber. Tell her you’re sorry and that you’ll focus on her and not your job from now on. Put some effort into this relationship. Don’t ruin it because you’re too busy working to see the amazing woman in front of you.”

Mom tries to continue, but I hang up the phone. I’ve never hung up on her before. Even when she first berated me about the failed engagement, I simply let it happen.

But I couldn’t take it this time. My mom is right, at least partly. Not about the work stuff. Yes, my work is important, but I made time for Amber in the two months we were together. However, I do need to put effort into our relationship if I don’t want this to be the end.

The silence in my townhouse is deafening. After Briana left my office, I canceled the rest of my appointments for the day. It’s going to suck to make them up this week when I was supposed to be in the lab, but I couldn’t bear to be in the office anymore. I told Ginger I was sick, which was obviously a lie, and I left her and the nurses to close.

There’s some paperwork I should be doing. We have three new products going into the testing phase. A lot has to be done before the trials can begin.

And my home office is a mess. I haven’t had time to clean it because I’ve been so busy with Amber.

Funny, my mom claims I work too much and don’t make time for my personal life. In this case, my personal life was my priority. I spent more time thinking about Amber than doing any actual work.

I’m not upset about it, though. I don’t feel like that time was wasted. With Marnie, I hated when she would distract me from my patients. That’s probably why my mom thinks I’m a workaholic. The truth is, I didn’t love Marnie enough to want to put my work to the side. It was totally different with Amber.

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