Page 43 of Duty and Desire

She wasn’t beautiful. But she was pretty. Crazy pretty.

Her sister, Jet, had the quiet, shy, girl-next-door vibe going for her.

Mac couldn’t be more different.

She lived life large and loud. She was sexy, but not brash, instead ballsy. She had an opinion, she stated it. She loved you, she showed it. You were toxic, she scraped you off. She identified a goal, she worked to it.

If she wanted it, she got it.

Except a man.

She was a serial dater, not because she liked to play the field, but because most men were motherfuckers and she had zero tolerance for that.

Not that she should.

She just didn’t.

As far as Smithie was concerned, that Rock Chick posse had lucked out. Found the best men there were in Denver. Claimed them (or got claimed, whatever). Game over.

Then again, Lee Nightingale had essentially vetted them for his woman’s friends, so he’d already taken the guesswork out of it.

“Havin’ a kid is a lot easier when you got someone to help,” he pointed out.

“Havin’a kid is all on the woman,” she retorted.

“Okay then, smart girl,raisin’a kid is a lot easier, you got someone to help,” he revised, and before she could get anything out of her mouth, he went on, “and you can’t argue that. You had a single parent home and who raised you?”

That mouth closed.

“Your sister ’cause your mom was working,” he answered for her. “Now what’s your sister got?” He again answered for her. “Pointin’ out the obvious, I didn’t wanna hear this shit, but I heard it when you bitches were gabbin’, and from the first, if he wasn’t workin’ a case, Eddie got up with Jet for every feeding. Everydamned one. Went and got his boy and brought him to his wife. Took him back and laid him down. Same with the next one that came along. And so on. Jet didn’t even have to get out of bed.”

He had a point to make but he took that too far and he knew it when her chin wobbled before she got control of it.

“Mac—”

“I want a baby,” she whispered.

He believed her.

She also wanted an Eddie.

“Give it time,” he whispered back.

She threw up both hands. “How much?”

“As much as it takes.”

“Sadly, I can’t Mick Jagger this sitch and make a baby when I’m seventy.”

Jagger shouldn’t even be doing that shit.

“Honey, you’re still in your thirties,” he reminded her.

“They’re all gone,” she declared.

Now he had no idea what the woman was talking about.

“Who?” he asked.