“Selina.” He put out a hand to touch her, but she drew back, raised her arms defensively.
“Don’t,” she said. “Just don’t.”
She turned her head, peered down at the water.
“Are you crying?”
“No.” She sniffled.
“Honey,” he whispered. “Are you all right?”
She raised her head, drilled him with her eyes. “Fine, I’m perfectly fine.”
“You don’t look fine.”
“Well, I am.”
She jerked her gaze away again, busied herself with casting her fishing pole.
“You’re driving me crazy.” He shoved a hand through his hair. “If you hate me so much, why don’t you just sign the damn divorce papers and be done with it?”
“Is that what you really want?” she asked quietly.
“No, it’s not. It was never what I wanted!” he shouted, the temple at his vein throbbing.
“Then why did you have an affair with Vivian?”
“How many times do I have to tell you? We didn’t have an affair. Okay, I admit, I flirted with her through e-mail. Big deal. It was harmless. It meant nothing until you made something out of it.”
His words stabbed her heart. The man truly did not get it. “I wasn’t talking about now,” she said quietly.
He blinked at her. The anger came out of him in one loud whoosh of air like an inflated balloon let go without being tied off. “Selina . . . it wasn’t what you think.”
“Please,” she said, raising her palms to ward off his excuses. “Don’t insult my intelligence by lying to me again. For once, stop denying the truth. Once and for all, come clean so I can forgive you.”
Their eyes met and what she saw reflected there both surprised and puzzled her. Michael looked as if he was hurting more than she was. “Okay,” he said and gulped. “You want to hear me say it?”
“I’ve been waiting twenty-seven years.”
“You sure?”
“I already know the truth. You reeked of her perfume when you came stumbling in from your bachelor party that night.”
His face contorted with pain and shame. “Okay, yes, yes. I had sex with Vivian on the night before our wedding.”
The words fell like bricks, hard and rough. They echoed off the water, sending ripples of sorrow throughout Selina’s body, even though she’d braced herself to hear them.
“Say it again,” she said, keeping her face as emotionless as she could.
“Sel . . . ” His eyes begged her forgiveness.
“Say it again.”
“I had sex with Vivian on the night before our wedding,” he repeated, his voice filled with contrition.
“I already knew.”
“How did you know?” He looked haunted.
“I know you better than you know yourself. What I want to know is why,” Selina said, sounding as clinical as a psychologist even to her own ears. “If you loved me the way you said you did, why did you have sex with the one woman who could kill my soul?”
“Because I was scared out of my skull, Selina. I was nineteen years old. I wasn’t ready to be a husband and a father.”
“You think I was ready? You think I wanted to give up my dreams of college?”
He looked stunned. “I thought . . . I thought being a mother was the most important thing in the world to you.”
“It was. Is. But if I could have chosen, I would have waited ten years to have babies. But I loved you and —” She broke off that train of thought. “What I do want to know is the reason you had the affair. Was it because you thought I trapped you into marriage?”
“It was just one night!”
“One night that changed the whole trajectory of our marriage. All these years, have you been pining for Vivian?”
He reached across the boat and grabbed her wrist. “No! God, no.”
The fire in his eyes sent blood rushing to her heart. She clenched her jaw. “It’s okay to tell me the truth. I can take it.”
“You’ve got to believe me. From the minute I first saw you, there was never anyone for me but you.”
Selina furrowed her brow. “And yet you slept with your ex-girlfriend the night before our wedding.”
“I was drunk,” he admitted. “But it was no excuse. I was scared and . . . ”
“Looking for a way out.”
Michael grabbed her by the shoulders and stared her straight in the eyes. The look she saw there was so passionate a faint flicker of hope flared in her chest. “You were the one I loved,” he declared. “The only one I’ve ever loved. And since we’ve been married I’ve never once cheated on you. Not even after you left me.”
“You haven’t” — Selina paused, appalled by how much hope was surging through her — “slept with Vivian since she came back to town?”
“No.”
She knew this man inside and out. Knew when he was telling the honest truth and when he wasn’t. His eyes did not lie. She swallowed, splayed a hand against her chest, felt her heart gallop.
They were breathing hard, staring at each other. Feeling things they hadn’t felt in years. Anticipation, relief, tentative trust, and a brief, bright flash of joy.
For one lovely moment, she thought he might kiss her. He leaned in closer. She tilted up her chin, her mouth suddenly dry.
If he kissed her, she was gone.
Please let him kiss me. Please let everything be all right. Please let the last twenty-seven years of my life have meant something.
A noise from the shore disturbed the moment. It was the sound of an expensive sports car engine.
Selina looked from Michael to the bank. They were near a picnic area. Cement tables and chairs. Shade trees. A parking lot. The scarlet red Jaguar pulling up was impossible to miss.
And so was the sophisticated woman slipping from behind the wheel, dragging a wooden picnic basket done up with a red-and-white gingham bow along with her.
Vivian.
She walked to the water’s edge, swinging the basket. She waved at the boat. “Yoo-hoo, Michael, I brought your lunch.”
Disbelief squeezed out the hope. Suspicion squashed the relief. Betrayal stomped the tentative trust.
“What’s she doing here?” Selina asked, hearing the ice in her voice. I won’t shout. I won’t do it. I won’t give that bitch the satisfaction of seeing me lose it.
“Honestly, I don’t know.” Michael stood, the boat rocking beneath them. Selina stood up, too.
Michael had to have set up a rendezvous in this spot. He had to have known Vivian was coming. The woman was cunning, but there was no way she could have known where they’d be fishing if Michael hadn’t already told her.
Selina crossed her arms over her chest. “Don’t lie.”
“Okay, okay.” He raised his hands. “I might have told her where my favorite fishing spot was, but you have to believe me. I did not invite her out here.”
“Really, Michael,” she said. “I don’t give a damn. You want to be with Vivian. Go be with Vivian.”
Then Selina placed two palms against his chest and shoved him headlong into the chilly October waters of Lake Valentine.
JUST BEFORE DUSK, Rachael and Brody returned to the marina empty-handed. After Brody had done what he’d done to her, they’d spent the rest of the day kissing and canoodling and enjoying each other’s company.
While other Fish-A-Thon entrants unloaded their catches, she and Brody sat in the boat grinning at each other, waiting their turn to tie up at the docks. His gaze was on her. His eyes alight with a spark of sexual hunger so hot it caused a trickle of sweat to roll down her breastbone in spite of the cooling air.
The wake of arriving boats rocked their little craft like a cradle. Water splashed against fiberglass in rhythmic, soothing sound. The remaining rays of late-afternoon sunshine dappled off the lake in a glistening golden glow.
The combination of Brody’s hungry gaze mixed with the pastoral tempo of the lake ignited a deep yearning inside he
r. It was all she could do not to reach across the boat and kiss him again, in a dizzying lullaby of love.
No, no, not love.
Lust.
She had to stop confusing the two. Would she ever learn to stop confusing the two? She was a terrible Romanceaholics sponsor, unable to control herself when faced with temptation. The embarrassing thing was, she wanted more.
Lots more.
As long as you acknowledge what you’re feeling is lust instead of love, it’s okay to want him. Just don’t romanticize him and you’re hunky-dory.
But if she slept with him, really slept with him, all night, in a bed, with full-on sexual contact, did she have a prayer of keeping her heart out of the fray?
There was the rub.
Her fingers itched to pull his shirt over his head and run her fingers across his bare chest. Her mouth — which was already achy from so much kissing — tingled to taste him again. Her ears pricked up, desperate to hear him murmur her name in the throes of the most intimate of embraces.
Anticipation tightened her spine. Sexual hunger narrowed her eyes. Tension curled her toes inside her wading boots. Would these stupid boats ever move along so they could get out of here?
By five o’clock, all the contestants had returned except for her parents’ boat. Because they hadn’t made it back in time, they were disqualified. If Rachael hadn’t been so wrapped up in Brody, she might have wondered where her parents were. She might have spun fantasies about them getting back together. Instead, all she could think about was what Brody looked like naked.
Finally, it was their turn to dock and climb ashore.
Judge Pruitt was in the gazebo, weighing fish and tallying up the scores. Rachael was surprised to discover that not only did Kelvin Wentworth and Giada Vito win the competition, but they were eyeing each other like lovers instead of enemies — an odd turn of events that would have aroused her curiosity if she had not been so preoccupied with Brody.
“Well,” Brody said, walking her to her car as the crowd dispersed into the gathering twilight.
Rachael pulled out her car keys. “Well,” she echoed.
They both laughed, staring at each other as if no one else existed. It was a scary realization. Knowing they both wanted the same thing. Knowing how dangerous this step was.
Lust, lust, lust, Rachael told herself. Just lust.
“You wanna grab a bite to eat?” he asked.
She sniffed at her shoulder. “I smell like fish.”
“You could come over to my house,” he invited. “I whip up a mean omelet.”
“Are Maisy and Deana there?”
“Yes. You’ll be safe.”
“What if safety was the farthest thing from my mind?”
He arched an eyebrow and his smile turned wolfish. “How about your place?”
“Mom’s there.” She frowned, wondering where her mother had gotten off to. “Or if she’s not there she could walk in at any moment.”
He leaned in closer, lifted a finger to trace a strand of hair curling against her chin. “We can’t have that.”
Her heart was a caged tiger clawing at the prison of her breastbone.
He stepped toward her until there was barely room between them and lowered his voice. “We could sneak off somewhere. Finish what we started in that fishing boat. Maybe drive over to the state park and rent a cabin for the night, out of sight of the Valentine gossipmongers. We could pick up some groceries along the way.”
Watch it. Slow down. Think things through. Are you sure you really want to take this step?
His body radiated heat. His gaze burned.
Her stomach quivered.
Please don’t let him ruin it by saying something romantic. Please, please, please let this be strictly about sex.
“I want you,” he said, “in my bed.”
“Oh, Brody,” she murmured and sank against him. “I thought you’d never ask.”
AFTER SHE’D PUSHED Michael overboard, Selina went to Audie’s hardware store and rented an electric jackhammer from the teenage clerk behind the counter. With most everyone in town out on the lake for the Fish-A-Thon, she didn’t meet with any resistance as she dragged the heavy equipment out onto Main Street and borrowed an electrical outlet from Higgy’s Diner to plug in the thick orange extension cord.
She counted off the concrete sidewalk tiles hand-carved with hearts and flowers and entwined doves. One, two, three, four steps away from Higgy’s front door she found it.
Their square.
Michael Henderson loves Selina Hernandez forever and always, June 21st, 1981.
Tears clumped in her throat as she remembered the day he’d carved it for her. It was the same day she’d told him she was pregnant with Rachael. They’d been pouring the new sidewalk down Main Street and everyone who was in love had been rushing to grab the prime spots. He’d bribed Kelvin to guard a section in front of Higgy’s until he could get over there to make his mark.
Selina’s heart clutched as she recalled the way Michael had looked, on his knees, a Phillips-head screwdriver in his hand as he used a heart to dot the ‘i’ in her name. When he’d finished, he’d thrown her a boyish grin over his shoulder, his face flush with the excitement of young love. It made her heart clutch just thinking about it.
They’d both had such high expectations.
What had gone so wrong?
Her insecurities? His wealthy family? The kids? Vivian Cole? All of the above?
Or was it simply that those same high expectations that had initially sustained them, in the end became their downfall? No marriage could live up to the romantic fantasies they’d spun in their heads. Life just didn’t work that way.
A tear trickled down her cheek, but she brutally swiped it away with the back of her hand. The romance was over. The ride at an end. It was time to move on. With this symbolic gesture, she was setting herself free.
Sucking in a deep breath, Selina positioned the jackhammer’s chisel tip at the apex of the heart. Forever and always was such a short time.
Bracing herself for the impact of the vibrating jackhammer, Selina flicked the switch.
Nothing happened.
She flicked it again. Off, on, off, on, off.
Dismay, as sudden as it was overwhelming, washed over her. She’d worked up the courage to eradicate her past and fate was conspiring against her.
She laid down the jackhammer and stalked over to the electrical outlet set into Higgy’s outside wall. Maybe she’d tripped the ground fault breaker. She switched outlets and punched the reset button, then resolutely walked back to take up the jackhammer again.
You chisel this up, you can’t get it back.
That was the point. She needed to do something irrevocable to show her commitment to her new path. To prove to herself she was over Michael.
Ha! You’ll never be over him. You can’t even carve up the sidewalk with his name on it.
The hell she couldn’t. Grimly, Selina grasped hold of the jackhammer and flicked the switch again.
It jumped to life in her hands.
The power of the jackhammer was unexpected. It jerked her around like a rag doll. Her top teeth slammed against her bottom teeth, rattling her head. Her boobs jiggled. Her entire body vibrated. She felt as if she were inside a food processor.
The force was so strong she couldn’t hold it in place.
On the sidewalk, the chisel tip bounced across the surface of the cement, hopping adroitly over the letters she was trying to destroy, doing little more than kicking up dust. Purposefully, she gripped the jackhammer tighter. The tip made a loud -rat-tat-tat noise as it bit shallowly into the cement. Yes, yes, it was working. She could do this.
But her triumph was short-lived when she realized the tip had moved so much she was no longer even on the same square. She was chiseling up someone else’s heartfelt declaration of love.
Crap!
She tried to drag the jackhammer back to the right square but her arms felt like they’d been
jerked from their sockets. Dirt flew into her mouth and she spat, only to taste a fresh round of grit. Her hair swung, slapped across her face. Her eyes watered. Her ears rang. She trembled from head to toe. Maybe she should have spent a few weeks pumping iron at the gym before tackling this project.
To hell with it.
Selina dropped the jackhammer. It snaked across the ground, vibrating impotently. Angered by her lack of results, she grabbed hold of the extension cord and tugged it out of the wall.
The jackhammer fell silent. Cement dust motes swirled in the suddenly still air, but her ears kept ringing.
She looked up. A small knot of old-timers had appeared in the doorway of Higgy’s Diner. They stared owlishly at her. Nodding curtly, she picked up the jackhammer, ignored her throbbing arms, and dragged the damn thing the four blocks back to the hardware store.
“You gotta clean it if you want your deposit back,” said the kid behind the counter. He had a stainless-steel spike in his chin and a tattoo of a snake trailing up one arm.
“Keep the deposit,” she snarled.
“Dude,” the kid said, raising his arms defensively. “I just work here.”
Selina narrowed her eyes at the teen, who could have stepped right out of a Beavis and Butt-Head cartoon. “You ever been in love?”
“No,” he said.
“You’re smart.” She pointed at him. “Stay away from love. Have sex if you want, but stay away from love. And for God’s sake, use a condom. You’re certainly in no position to care for a wife and children.”
The kid looked stunned by her frankness for a fraction of a second, then he snorted a laugh as Selina turned and walked out of the store, feeling hurt and angry and defeated. She couldn’t even do a simple thing like break up a chunk of concrete.
But there was something far more irrevocable than jack-hammering up Main Street that she could do.
Selina went home and climbed the stairs to her bedroom. She plucked the divorce papers off the bureau, sat down at her desk, and signed them. Then she stuck the papers in an envelope, sealed the flap shut, and took it to the post office.
Chapter Sixteen
It was pitch dark by the time they arrived at the rustic cabin deep in the heart of the state park. Brody’s pickup truck was laden with supplies for their sexual tryst and Rachael’s body was tense with anticipation. She’d been waiting for this from the moment he’d dragged her down off the billboard.
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