Players, Bumps and Cocktail Sausages (Silence #3)(14)

“Am I in trouble?” I asked, grinning, “or do you just want her out of the way, so you don’t get in any more trouble?”

“Shut up, Jasper.”

“You two sound just like me and Brad,” Holly said and laughed. Flashing them a smiled, I went to see if Marcus wanted any help.



After chatting with Holly and taking a million instructions for the new equipment that was being delivered for the new football pitch, Oakley left to take Everleigh swimming then to some messy play group. I’d take my kid to all that crap too. I was sort of looking forward to it.

Holly kept to herself most of the day, working hard and doing everything exactly as she’d been taught. She worked like a newbie, before long she’d be on Facebook between booking customers in and filing. If she even had a Facebook account. Surely she would have.

The day dragged by so, so slowly. It didn’t usually, but I was on a pretty sweet promise tonight, so I wanted to get home as soon as possible. Finally though, Oakley was back for a few hours while Cole gave Everleigh a bath, so I was free to leave. My sister also had a sweet deal tonight; she made the mess with Everleigh and her husband had to scrub the paint off her skin and hair!

Abby’s car was in the drive. I practically abandoned my car on the street I was so excited to get this evening underway. My heart was racing and jeans were tightening with the excitement. I threw the front door open and legged it into the kitchen. The smell of steak and peppercorn sauce hit me as I walked through the door.

“Hey, babe,” I said, grinning from ear to ear. My wife looked stunning in a summer dress with her hair pulled back, revealing her kissable neck.

She turned and handed me a bottle of beer. “Hey. Dinner will only be two minutes so why don’t you sit down and I’ll bring it over.”

“Thanks.” What the hell did I do to get this lucky? I sat at the table and watched her and her sexy arse as she finished up and brought our dinner to the table. My mouth watered as I flitted between looking at the big, fat juicy steak and my gorgeous, juicy wife. I couldn’t wait to get her into bed and potentially make our baby. My heart suddenly dropped a little. We had to talk about what was going to happen on the baby making front.

I took a huge swig of beer, gathering as much courage as I could. Man I’m such a pussy. Grow some balls and ask your damn wife when she wants kids!

“Abby, did you really mean it when you said you don’t want children yet?”

She froze; her wine glass suspended in the air and then she put it down. That wasn’t a good sign.

“How come you’re bringing this up now? I thought we were having a relaxing evening together.”

“We are.” What did that mean? We can’t talk about things like that because we were supposed to be having lots of sex later?

She sighed, pushing her food around on the plate. “Jasper, right now just isn’t a good time. There’s so much going on, and if we have a baby now it’ll be ten times harder to go back to work after.”

“Of course it will, but it’ll be harder whenever we have one. You know we’ll work out childcare with Oakley.”

We split having Everleigh between us so we could both work at The Centre, so I knew she’d do the same with her niece or nephew. Abby wouldn’t even have to give up work. I wasn’t a chauvinistic bastard, and I didn’t expect her to give up on her career goals. I wanted to do as much as I possibly could. Hell, I’d do it all if I had to.

“Right. So you want to wait a year or…?”

“Maybe we can talk about it again in a year.” Just talk about it again in a year. What if she decided she wanted to talk about it again in another year? I nodded, pretending that I wasn’t so disappointed it was crushing me.

“Okay, we’ll talk next year,” I whispered, forcing a smile. Our night was ruined; I could feel it by the way she dropped her eyes to her dinner and refused to look at me. Did she not want children at all now or was it really just not in the next couple years? I’d wait a few years if that was what she needed but not having them at all would be too much. I couldn’t do that.

I gulped and forced in another mouthful. If she didn’t want kids at all, it was over.





Chapter Six


To say I was in a bad mood was an understatement. I was pissed. My wife was being fucking impossible, and I had no idea if she was bullshitting me and didn’t want a baby at all or genuinely just wanted to wait.

I tried bringing the subject up again, but all I got was her cutting me off and telling me we’d agreed to talk about it in a year’s time. And we hadn’t had sex since the night before our should’ve been romantic evening. We were back to another dry spell.

“Jasper, I think the chip and pin machine is broken,” Holly said, frowning and shaking it as if that was going to magically make it work.

“Some twat is coming to change it tomorrow,” I replied.

Her eyes darted up to mine at my choice of words.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

Sighing, I took a seat next to her. Holly had been working with us for a week, and she was doing a great job: she was also a better agony aunt than the ones in Abby’s magazines.

“Nothing, just the usual.”

I’d told Holly all about Abby’s change of baby plan. I hadn’t even told Oakley. There was something about Holly that made you open up, probably because she was the first girl that I wasn’t related to that I didn’t try to pick up – before I was married of course. I didn’t have a girl friend. There was Kerry, but we were only friends through Ben. I wouldn’t admit it to her and let her get a big head, but I really valued Holly’s friendship.