Page 132 of It's Not PMS, It's You

“Idohave a job, you know. What do you want me to do? Quit?”

Nick shook his head. “I would never tell you to do that.Youare the only one who gets to decide how you want to live your life.”

I blew out a frustrated breath. “It’s justonenight of work. Tonight. I asked for a raincheck, so you know I want to see you again. We can even get together tomorrow night.”

“But what if something else comes up tomorrow night and you have to cancel on me again? And then something else comes up the day after that? Every day we have something planned I’ll be wondering if it’s actually going to happen or not. I’ve lived this life before. It didn’t work. That’s one of the reasons I’m divorced.”

I honestly didn’t know how to respond to that.

“And I’ll be honest with you, this was really the only negative thing I could see coming between us if there was going to be a relationship of any kind. How could I love a woman when she’s never around?”

I stared at him. “Love? Who’s talking about love?”

Yes, I was falling for him, but this was not the time to mention that.

“I was being hypothetical, but it’s like you said . . . things can happen a lot faster at our age because we have the experience to know exactly what we want and what we don’t want. We’ve already been through a lot of the crap that young people have yet to experience. Under ideal conditions, I could fall in love with you in a heartbeat if it wasn’t for that one question that keeps popping up in my head. Will your work get in the way of us having something meaningful?”

“And your answer is obviouslyyes.”

Nick shook his head. “I didn’t have to answer the question, actually. You answered it for me.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

RUTH

I thought of last night’s party for at least the hundredth time over the last ten hours. Except for the food and dancing with Nick in the banquet room, the party was a complete bust. The look on Nick’s face when I told him I wanted to take a raincheck broke my heart. It was almost enough to make me cry.

He didn’t deserve that.

And I did truly understand his point of view and couldn’t blame him for the way he felt.

We were silent in his truck when Nick took me home from the hotel. When he pulled into my driveway, he told me he would be finishing up the job in my backyard tomorrow, and he would get out of my hair and give me time to think about things.

I didn’t need time to think.

And I loved having him in my hair.

Lucky for me, I was never one to back down from a little adversity.

A bump in the road wasn’t going to slow me down.

I would repave the road if I had to.

I was confident things would work out well. Especially after I shared with Nick my idea for the company. He helped me come up with it and he doesn’t even know it.

It started during our conversation over dinner when he and I ate the leftover Italian food at my house. Nick had asked me if I was happy and what I did for living. It was obvious at that point that he didn’t approve of my chosen career. The thing that hurt the most was when he said that we were complete opposites because he built things and I tore them apart.

I hadn’t wanted to hear it, but it was the truth.

Then Nick asked me a wise question.

Why don’t you go in there and help them turn the company around instead of gutting it?

I had answered Nick by telling him because it wasn’t my job.

It wasn’t what my company did.

But why not?