I’d never played darts before, but I figured it couldn’t be that difficult. I aimed and tossed one. It barely landed in the bottom of the board, giving me all of three points. “Wow, it’s harder than it looks.”

“Here, I’ll show you how to throw it.” Robert stepped behind me.

“You’re not going to do that whole put-your-arms-around-me-because-you-think-I’m-too-stupid-to-get-it-from-a-simple-explanation thing, are you?”

Robert dropped his arms. “Not anymore.”

I aimed higher, tossed my second dart, and watched it land to the right of the bull’s-eye, giving me thirteen points. “I think I got it.”

After several games—all of which I’d lost, even with the pity points he gave me—Robert held up his last dart. “Okay, how about if I hit the bull’s-eye, you go out with me this weekend.”

I hadn’t flirted in a while, but the guy was cute, and I figured I didn’t really have much to lose. “Are you that sure you can hit it? Or are your feelings for me so mediocre you’d risk it all on a game of darts?”

A cocky smile spread across his face. “I figure if I actually hit the bull’s-eye you’ll go out with me. But if I don’t, you’ll be so flattered that I’ve worked so hard to win you over, you’ll at least give me your number.”

“That’s twisting the game so that no matter what happens, you still win.” I leaned toward him, close enough our bodies were almost touching. “It’s cheating.”

“I happen to be a lawyer, so I know how to bend the rules to my advantage.”

“Ooh, a professional liar. Now I can’t go out with you, even if you do hit the bull’s-eye. You see, I don’t date liars. It’s a good way to get burned.”

Robert put his arm around me and locked his hand on my hip. He looked at the board and lined up his shot. With a quick toss, the dart flew through the air and hit the red center.

“I guess I’ll just have to take my prize now.” Before I could ask what he meant, he used the arm he had around me to pull me closer and planted a kiss on my lips. My knees went weak and I found myself parting my lips and kissing him deeper, while the rest of the world spun out of focus.

Two days later, we had our first official date.

Robert was a public defender. He was the “if you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you” kind of lawyer. Which meant he was overworked, underpaid, and took cases home with him.

He was confident and smart, and I loved how passionate he was about his job. Sometimes that meant he got swamped and we couldn’t do much. But he still made an effort to meet up for quick lunches or dinners. If we couldn’t swing getting together, we’d talk over the phone, often into the early hours of the morning.

Even with our hectic schedules, we managed to make things work. He told me how smart and beautiful he thought I was, he remembered the things I liked and didn’t like, and when I surprised him at work when he couldn’t get away, he thanked me for being so understanding and showed me off to his associates.

For five months, everything was great.

Then we had our first fight.

Robert had come over to my place for dinner. We’d both had stressful weeks, but we tried to at least spend one night together, no matter how exhausted we were.

As we ate, he filled me in on how his case had gone. “So we were able to get him off since the police officer didn’t follow procedure,” he finished.

“But he was guilty?” I asked. Earlier in the conversation, Robert had implied as much.

“Oh, for sure.”

“It doesn’t seem right. I admire you for keeping innocent people out of jail. But the guilty people should be in jail, not released for stupid reasons.”

“Honey, this is how the law works. If the police don’t follow procedure, innocent people would be convicted. So if they screw up, sometimes guilty people get off, too. Don’t worry, though, it was just minor stuff. A little larceny.”

“And he’ll probably do it again. Don’t you feel a bit responsible?”

“I feel responsible for making sure the law is enforced,” Robert said, his words clipped. “If the police have hard evidence, we plea and the guy does time. If not, he gets off.”

I frowned. “I’m not sure I could do it. I’d want to make sure he got what he deserved.”

“Then I guess it’s a good thing I’m the lawyer, and you’re a decorator.”

The condescending way he’d said decorator irritated me. “You make my job sound so unimportant. I’m not saying I’m saving lives, but turning someone’s home into a place he or she loves makes a difference.”

“I doubt many of them even realize how lucky they are to have nice things to put in their big houses. Several of my clients don’t have anything but a bare bed in a tiny room.”

“I get that, but think of how sad it would be if there was no color in the world. No beauty. No art.”

Robert took a sip of his water. “It’d be depressing, but it’s not like you need it to survive or anything.”

Anger bubbled up in me. “You know what else doesn’t help survival? Criminals being on the loose because their lawyers put them back on the streets!”

Robert threw up his hands and scooted away from the table. “All right, I guess I’ll go back to my drab apartment and figure out a way to keep more criminals on the street. You have fun in your fancy, well-decorated place.”

I didn’t even try to stop him from going.

Over the next few days, I missed Robert like crazy. I missed talking to him. Missed the way he always made me laugh. I thought over and over again, who am I to judge who goes free and why.

I realized I was in love with him.

I decided that after work I was going to drive to his office and tell him so, but before I could, he showed up at my work, told me he was miserable without me, and apologized for everything he’d said. I apologized, and told him I loved him. He said he loved me, too. Things went back to perfect.

Three months later, we started discussing our future. We talked about buying a place; the M-word was mentioned. We were at my kitchen table, looking at flyers for homes when the topic of having kids came up.

“We’ll start in a home like this,” Robert said, picking up one of the flyers. “But we’ll need to move to a bigger place once we start having kids.”

“I’m a little shaky on the kids issue.” I swallowed the bite of cookie I had in my mouth. “If we do decide to have one or two kids, though, three bedrooms should be enough.” I popped the rest of my cookie in my mouth and wiped the crumbs from my hands.

“I’m thinking more like five or six kids.”

I almost choked. “What? I’m not having five or six kids. After my parents got divorced, I went through this phase where I didn’t think I wanted kids at all. Drew and Devin pretty much solidified my stance on it. I’m barely getting used to the idea of having kids at all.”

“Since I’ve met Drew and Devin,” Robert said, “I completely understand.”

“Hey, those are my brothers you’re talking about. I can slam them, but no one else can. Besides, they’re not so bad now.”

“Yeah, I loved it when they dragged me along to show me”—he made air quotes—“real men’s work.” And how they called me a city boy when I fell off a horse. Or when they didn’t tell me that a giant bull was in the pen, so I climbed over the fence after them and came face-to-face with the beast.”

“Tiny’s the most gentle creature on the farm,” I said, picturing the enormous black bull Dwight treated like a puppy.

“He rammed me with his head.”

“He nudged you because he wanted his head scratched. You’re just lucky you weren’t holding a stick. Tiny loves to get scratched with a big rough stick. He’ll come running at you if you’ve got one of those in your hand.”

Robert exhaled, managing to convey with the sound how frustrated he was. “Anyway, all I’m saying is that I grew up with seven kids, and I’ve always wanted to have a big family. It’s crazy, but it’s fun. And we’ll have them all close together so they always have someone to play with.”

“You’ve got cases piled up all the time. How are you going to have time to take care of six kids?” I put a hand on my chest. “I’m not raising six kids by myself. I’m not even going to raise one kid by myself. Not to mention we can’t afford to have that many kids.”

“You can work from home. We’ll buy a fixer-upper. With how great you are at your job, you’ll find a way to make it nice.”

As nice as that vote of confidence was, frustration welled up in me. Cleary, he didn’t get what I did. “I can’t paint over bad plumbing or holes in the wall. And there’s no way I could work from home while taking care of kids. Don’t you remember what it was like last week at my parents’ house? Devin and Anne were about to go crazy taking care of Levi. He just cried and cried and nothing made him happy.”

I shook my head. “I can’t do that. I’m not even sure if I can do more than one baby. Then there’s the whole issue that most of the time my job involves working in the home I’m renovating.”

Robert tossed the flyer back down on the table. “We don’t have to figure everything out right now.”

I didn’t want to talk about it anymore, either. But in the back of my mind, I knew this was a problem we couldn’t ignore forever. I told myself it was okay, though. This was what people meant when they said relationships were about compromise. We just had to find the right balance.

A couple more months went by. I was working on a condo project that was hectic and stressful, and Robert had more and more cases piling up. We looked at homes whenever we could squeeze time into our crazy schedules. I kept telling myself we’d figure everything out. We did love each other, after all.