Best of My Love (Fool's Gold, #20)(63)

She was completely different from the last time he’d seen her. The dark circles were gone and she seemed more relaxed. He knew that in addition to letting them take care of Starr’s party, Destiny had started sharing the responsibility of Tonya a little more. She’d also told her manager to back off for the next month while she continued to recover from childbirth. An impressive turnaround.

He supposed the lesson was that everyone was capable of changing, when motivated. Look at him. He’d come a long way.

Tonya began fussing. Shelby rocked her. Destiny took one more sip of her green drink, then stood.

“Sorry, guys. She’s hungry. I was hoping she’d eat before you got here, but we’re having another schedule shift. Give me ten or fifteen minutes and I’ll be back.”

She collected the baby and walked out of the room. Shelby watched her go.

“She has to be so happy,” she said wistfully.

“Feeling the need?”

“A little. I always knew I wanted kids, but I was scared. If that makes sense.”

“Sure. You wouldn’t want anyone to go through what you went through. Why wouldn’t you be cautious?”

“You’re becoming so insightful.”

He gave any exaggerated sigh. “I know. Perfection looms. Soon I’ll be a demigod.”

She laughed. “If only that were true. I could say I knew you when. Do you want kids?”

And they were back to that.

For a second, he felt a tightening in his chest. The precursor to panic. But there was no need for worry. Not with Shelby. He would trust her the way he wouldn’t trust other women.

“Sure. Kids would be great. I like kids. I come from a big family, so more is better.”

“I’d like four,” she told him.

“That’s a lot.”

“I like the idea of happy chaos and noise. Plus they’d be there for each other the way Kipling was there for me. That was always a good feeling.”

Aidan nodded. “When I was growing up, Del had my back. We both took care of the younger ones. Especially the twins.” He paused. “I’m never going to think of them as anything other than the twins.”

“Does that have to change?”

“They’re not twins. They never were.”

“But it’s how you think of them. I wonder if it’s how they think of themselves.”

Aidan had no idea how Mathias and Ronan had worked things out. Or even if they had. “They live in the same town, work in the same studio space. They must have come to terms in some way.”

“It had to have been hard, though. One second they thought they knew who they were and the next, their whole identity had changed. Ronan lost his family and Mathias lost a part of himself.”

He wanted to say she was being dramatic, but he wasn’t sure. Maybe she was the one who had it right. Ronan must have felt like a fraud, or at the very least, an interloper. Mathias would have, as Shelby had pointed out, lost a piece of who he was. He knew for his two youngest brothers, their “twinness” had defined them. What had it been like to find out it had never existed?

“Look at us, all philosophical,” Shelby teased. “Next thing you know, we’ll be solving global problems.”

“Or attempting to.”

She laughed and stood, stretching her arms over head before bending down to touch her toes.

She was petite, with small bones and a slightness about her that belied her internal strength. He should have realized how tough she was when she’d first approached him about her plan. That had taken guts and determination.

“What are you thinking?” she asked when she’d put her arms at her side.

“About how you stalked me back in January.”

“I didn’t stalk you. I considered you a good candidate and I was right. We’re good together.”

“We are.”

He wouldn’t have guessed that they would become such good friends. When the six months were over, he knew things would change between them, but he hoped they would still spend time together. He liked being with her.

But wanting it might not be enough. She would be busy with her new business and he would be in the high summer season. Plus they would probably each be looking for a relationship. Shelby had been very clear about what she wanted. A man she could fall in love with. While he was looking for—

“Okay, that’s a serious expression,” she said. “What?”

“I don’t know what I want.”

“In life?”

“When this is over. You and me. You’re going to go find Mr. Right, get married and have four kids. What am I going to do?”

“What do you want to do?” She raised a hand. “No, that’s the wrong question. Does being in love still mean you’re stuck?”

A question he hadn’t considered in a long time. When he’d been a kid, he’d seen his mother’s devotion to her husband as a bad thing. Now he was less sure. He didn’t agree with her choices, but he thought maybe he understood them more.

Shelby sat next to him on the sofa. She angled toward him and took his hand in hers.

“She could have stood between you and Ceallach, but she didn’t. That was her decision. That decision speaks to her and not to the entirety of being in love.”