Forty Candles

by Virginia Nelson

  He didn’t feel even a little guilty about wanting her, though, regardless of what he said. If he got his hands on Chloe in the process of winning her back, it wasn’t cheating. It was retrieving what was his.

  “You weren’t very moral when you bent me backwards over—”

  Turning, he clamped a hand over her smiling mouth. “That wasn’t immoral. That was fun. Maybe I want more than just fun? That doesn’t mean I’m feeling any shame...”

  Removing his hand before she bit him, he saw she hadn’t lost the grin. “Dare you to tell your parents about it, then.”

  “Red, you don’t want to dare me something that is going to embarrass you far more than it will me.”

  Laughing, she seemed recovered from their bout of desperate passion, although he felt pretty sure he was in for a case of blue balls from hell if he didn’t jerk off in the near future. “Look, sorry. Lost control for a minute there.”

  “No worries. What is a little tonsil hockey between friends? So…I made dinner.”

  Laughing out loud, she bent to help him with the broken glass. “If I’m staying for dinner, put on a damn shirt.”

  Jack worked to hide his grin.

  The plan seemed to be blasting off better than expected if just the sight of him without a shirt made her dive across a bar at him.

  ***

  “Jim, I really would like it if you came with me.” Yanking on white shorts over her bikini, Chloe spoke loudly so he could hear her on speakerphone. “We haven’t spent much time together lately.”

  He’d been all about them getting together, practically begging her to date him and, now that she returned his texts and made time for him, he couldn’t find a spare moment to hang out with her. Sadly typical, but…He was the one who tried to pursue her, claiming their friendship could be so much more if she gave him a chance.

  “Things are really crazy at work right now. You know how it goes, Chloe. Just go, enjoy yourself, and we’ll get together later tonight.”

  Frowning, Chloe adjusted the girls in the mirror. For someone who seemed incapable of getting laid, her breasts sure were perky. “I kind of wanted some alone time, just you and me.” She let the invitation into her tone, practically purring into the phone.

  “I want that too, you sexy redhead. You know how long I’ve liked you. I enjoy your company and I miss you. I’ve always thought we could be more…if I could, I’d come, promise.”

  Her frown turned into a smile. Perhaps the seduction idea from yesterday should be revisited. There was something about the idea of desk sex…”Miss you, too.” She didn’t miss him, not really, but maybe she would if they spent more time together. So it wasn’t exactly a lie.

  That it bugged her right after she said it left her gnawing her lip in frustration. She could date, like a normal person, and it would be fine. She didn’t need entanglements, she needed casual and comfortable. Jim could be that.

  “Well, talk to you soon.”

  Hanging up, Chloe grinned at her reflection. “Sooner than you think, big boy.”

  She totally had time for an office quickie before heading over to Wilkerson’s pond to meet the gang for a picnic. Grabbing her car keys, she felt energized. If the taste of Jack lingered on her lips, the feel of his hands still ghosted on her flesh, it was only because she missed sex. She was a normal, red blooded woman. She had needs and she owned that…so she could fulfill her drive and move on with her day. No biggie. The Sex in the City gals did it all the time—why not her?

  This late, Jim would be alone at his office. And, in a small town, no one locked the doors…she’d even visited Jim at work once, back before she and Jim hooked up on their failed relationship attempt. Sneaking into his building, she was exhilarated. She hadn’t pulled shenanigans like this in years and she couldn’t remember why she’d stopped and started being adult, logical, sensible…Right then, she felt sexy, young and unstoppable.

  Opening the door, she closed it behind her, breathing deeply before turning…

  And saw his ass pumping with fervor into what appeared to be a very young, very blond, very naked woman. The woman shrieked, Jim stopped humping like a rabbit and, since he held her hips, he took the blonde bimbo with him when he spun towards the door. Her torso slid from the desk, apparently much to her surprise because he thumped her head into the chair intended for clients before he dropped her.

  If the situation wasn’t so horrible and clichéd, Chloe would have burst into laughter.

  But it was awful.

  Covering her mouth with one hand, as if to hold in the wrenching pain in her stomach, Chloe spun back to the door and pinched her eyes closed. She was an idiot, a complete and total fool. Not that she could un-see what she saw. There were some things that burned themselves on the backs of your eyelids and the spectacle in the office definitely ranked on that list.

  Yet more proof, if I needed it, that I’m not enough for a man. Any man.

  “Chloe, what are you doing here?”

  Not, I can explain, or it isn’t what it looks like. Instead, the defensive.

  “I told you I had work.”

  “I saw.”

  She didn’t turn. She couldn’t.

  “Look, we agreed that we didn’t want commitment. That we wanted to have fun. An open relationship allows—”

  Holding one hand up, she silenced him. “I may not have wanted commitment, but I wanted more than this. I don’t know anyone who would want this.”

  With that, she turned the knob and, with as much dignity as she could muster, walked out.

  All of it happened so fast that she was halfway to the pond before reaction really set in.

  Younger. Blonder. A newer model.

  It was so damn trite. It didn’t seem real.

  But it happened.

  Swallowing, she took the hit to her ego and accepted the bitter pill. If nothing else, the situation proved that men weren’t made for monogamous relationships. She’d been right about that. She wasn’t going to cry. Another man—choosing someone other than her. Story of her life.

  When Gary left her, Jack’d been there.

  Pulling over, she allowed herself a moment to be weak, to remember.

  Chapter Five

  Hitting her like a slap to the throat, Gary’s words choked Chloe.

  It took her a minute to even manage a response. “A divorce?”

  “Yeah, a divorce. I don’t want to be married anymore.”

  She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t stand. Couldn’t think. This wasn’t happening. Not to her. They weren’t even fighting. Didn’t you have to be fighting for your husband to ask for divorce?

  “I’ve been seeing someone for a while. She’s nice, I met her at work and…” The buzzing drowned out his words, as if her ears were full of bees. Her knees, suddenly unable to support her weight, bent and she felt the cement curb under her ass jar her spine as if it were a punch to the base of her skull. She realized she’d been holding her breath and sucked in air.

  “You’d like her.” His words penetrated the haze.

  “What?” Tears blurred her vision, not that her view of his knees was interesting, anyway. “What in the hell makes you think I’d like some whore you’re fucking, some bitch you’re replacing me with?” She regretted the venomous words as soon as they were spoken and rubbed her face, as if to erase them.

  “Don’t make this harder than it has to be, Chloe.”

  Don’t make this harder? He cheated on her, he was dumping her and he didn’t want her to make it harder? Harder for whom? Him? “I can’t be a divorced person.” It’s not in my plan.

  “Let’s not dramatize this.”

  He seemed so calm. She wanted to hit him. To hurt him. To beg him not to do it. She couldn’t stop the tears. They kept coming, kept flooding down her cheeks like some waterfall of sadness. This wasn’t really happening. “You don’t mean it. You asked me to marry you. We were going to start a family. Why would you ask me to—?”

  Meeting his eyes, sh
e searched for an answer, but he interrupted her with a shrug. “I didn’t think you’d say yes. You don’t love me, Chloe. Never really did, which was fine in the beginning. We wanted the same things and I thought we didn’t need love, not like that. As to kids, I think we both know that’s not happening.”

  Slick. She’d thought him so clever, obviously headed places with all his ambition. Together, they would make a difference which they had all planned out. Or maybe he really would just go.

  Opening and closing her mouth, she took the new blows, adding them to the injury. Didn’t think she’d say yes? What, when he proposed? And the kids bit—she didn’t want to miscarry. Three babies started to grow inside her, three deaths she carried long after the possibility of children passed.

  “Look, I’m going to go.” He shuffled his weight side to side and she could tell he was moments away from leaving her.

  For good.

  Panic, rich and coated in adrenaline, flooded her and she reached for him, numb fingers clutching the denim covering his legs. It was like reliving her childhood nightmare. She had planned, made sure this would never happen to her. “Don’t go. We can talk. We can fix this. Let me fix this.”

  “Yeah, no.” He stepped away from her grasping hands.

  Her heart thumped so hard, she thought it might explode in her chest.

  She couldn’t be divorced. She planned her life. She fixed things. This wasn’t supposed to happen to her, too. She wasn’t like her mother.

  His shiny sports car, the perfect car for a future politician sitting so neatly in their perfect driveway, fired up and she watched him peel out. Just like her daddy, so long ago. These things happened to other women, not her. She was twenty-five, she had plans and goals, and her marriage was a cornerstone of those ideas.

  Somehow, she managed to get to her feet. To stumble into the house. To make it to the bedroom to lie and stare at the wall. The sobs didn’t stop, the rearranging of her life and her plans an impossibility, while everything she thought she knew crumbled. Not sure how much time passed, a hand on her shoulder broke the endless repeat of the conversation playing in her head.

  “Chloe?”

  Jack. She hadn’t heard him knock. The man seemed to have a radar for when her life went to shit. Chest aching, mouth dry, cheeks crusty with dried tears, she didn’t know if she had the energy to answer him. The bed moved as his weight joined hers on the mattress. She couldn’t turn, couldn’t face him.

  “What are you doing?”

  Burying her face in her hands, she fought a fresh wave of sobs.

  “Baby…” His arms closed around her and she rolled and crumpled into the leathery man scent of him, borrowing his strength. He was familiar, safe, in the storm of unwanted emotions.

  Jack’d been around for most of her life, a friend and companion. The kid next door. Her first real boyfriend.

  “He left me.”

  The words ripped from her on a wail and he rubbed her back in soothing circles.

  “He’s a dick.” Jack sounded so flat, so emotionless. “He didn’t deserve you to start with.”

  Laughter, sounding hysterical even to her, bubbled up and caught on the next wave of sadness. “I failed, Jack. I should have guessed…I’m just not made for this kind of thing.”

  “What kind of thing? Being married to a self-centered dickhead?”

  She couldn’t laugh. She understood now that it wasn’t him. It was her. She was broken inside and she should have known Gary would see it eventually.

  Jack’s arms cradled her, protected her, and she became aware of the world around her. The sun slanted at a different angle through the window. The smell of Jack, the strength of him, soaked through her pain and she noticed his hands shook a little as he touched her.

  Jack always liked her, but she’d dumped him, fearing what he offered. Because he had plans of a future she wouldn’t ever fit into.

  Because she couldn’t imagine losing him when he saw how empty she was inside…like Gary apparently did.

  In this moment, when she already lost so much, that fear seemed sort of inconsequential. She lost her husband, why worry overmuch about losing Jack?

  Dragging her hand up his back, using her nails on him in a way she knew tripped his trigger, she rubbed her face into the hollow of his neck, breathing deep the rich smell of him.

  “God, Chloe, I feel bad for what you’re going through, but it feels good to hold you.”

  It would. He liked her. He didn’t see the ugly bits, the parts that drove Gary away.

  Wriggling closer to him, she allowed her legs to part, to pull him closer. His slight groan and the feel of him hard against her rewarded her bravery.

  “It feels good to be held, Jackie.”

  He rained kisses over her cheeks, her eyes, cupping her face in his hands. “I’m just trying to comfort you, not come onto you.”

  “Then comfort me. Make it all go away, Jackie. I don’t want to think about it anymore.” No sooner had she whispered the words that he closed his lips over hers. Electricity, vibrant and alive, arced through her, making her feel more wonderful than she remembered feeling.

  “Baby, you could tempt a saint.” He tried to pull away, give them both some breathing room to think, but it wasn’t what she wanted and she slid her fingertips under his shirt, searching for hot flesh. “And I remember the taste of you. You’re not making it easy to be a good guy, here.”

  “Then make love to me, Jack. I don’t want to think, like I said. Make it go away. I can’t deal with it today.”

  He groaned before merging their mouths, his hands racing across her body as if he starved for the feel of her. “This isn’t what I ever planned for us.”

  Like a knife, she took the blow. She pulled away, withering into herself, as he so closely echoed her own thoughts. Life wasn’t about what you planned, she learned that lesson today. “Go. Go home, Jack. Get away from me before I poison your life, too.”

  “No.”

  The decision in his voice was clear and she only had a moment before those searching hands returned, pulling her back against the hard planes of his big body. As if he knew her better than she did, he soon had her trembling, crying out, trying to flip to reach him but he didn’t allow it.

  The first orgasm razed over her sensitized nerves like a forest fire, raked by high winds. Only leaving her hungrier before his hands again sought the next series of touches, strokes, and rubs to make her scream out his name.

  He took nothing for himself, giving her release and breathing hard in her ear, as she moved to the rhythm of his magical hands. Replete, body sated, she panted off the sensations, eyes closed against the reality of the room.

  Somehow, she’d wound up naked in the rumpled bed. He still lay behind her, fully dressed, fully aroused, but not taking what she offered. “Feel any better?” The growl of his words made her shiver.

  “You didn’t—I mean…”

  “Nope. When I make love to you again, Chloe Sabatina, it’s not going to be to help you forget. It’ll be to help you remember.”

  Sitting up, she pulled the sheet around her nakedness to walk away from him. “Don’t give this more meaning than what it deserved. And quit with the Yoda bullshit. You know I hate it when you act all sage. The wise redneck.” She snorted in derision, hiding her desire to curl into him, to lie in his arms until she found her spine again.

  He stretched, looking hot as hell in his faded tee shirt and worn jeans on her flowered comforter. “See, that’s why we didn’t have sex.”

  Blushing, and feeling exposed, she dropped the sheet and yanked on clothes. “Jack, I’m having sort of a shitty day.”

  The knock at the front door startled her. Dropping the shirt she was about to tug on, she spun. “I’ll get it. Put your shirt on. We’ll talk about it.”

  Striding out of the room, and looking entirely too comfortable for her peace of mind, Jack vanished around the corner.

  Great. Husband leaves, I practically have sex with my
ex-boyfriend, and now someone’s at the door just in time to see me looking like I just crawled out of bed.

  Today rocks.

  Breathing hard, and unreasonably filled with a sense of impending doom—what worse could happen?—Chloe followed Jack’s path to the door. His body blocked her view of the visitor and she couldn’t tell, at first, what they were saying.

  Then a shift of Jack’s shoulders allowed her a glimpse of the state highway patrolman. The officer looked at her, asked her name, but all she really heard him say was one word.

  “Dead.”

  It solidified out of the quiet conversation and she gripped the wall. Jack closed the door with a soft click and didn’t turn around. “Jack?” He would tell her it wasn’t what she thought. His face, when he turned, told her more than she wanted to know. “No.” As if she could make it not true by denying it.

  “He died, Chloe. In a wreck.” Jack looked stunned, as if he wasn’t sure what to do, which was weird because Jack always seemed to know what to do. It had to be bad, had to be real, if Jack looked like that.

  She shook her head. “He was just here. A little while ago. He was just here.”

  Again, she found herself in Jack’s arms, but this time her body seemed washed in ice, numb, unable to take the comfort he offered. “It was fast, Chloe. He didn’t suffer.”

  “Why do people say that? Is it supposed to make it okay?” Pushing away from him, she headed to the kitchen. This was all some weird nightmare. She’d wake up tomorrow and tell Gary about it.

  Well, except for the sexual bits with Jack. Those she might not tell anyone about.

  “Chloe, talk to me.”

  Pouring a shot of whiskey, she swallowed it, reveling in the burn.

  Dead.

  Gary couldn’t be dead. Closing her eyes, she found she’d cried herself dry. Pouring another shot, she slung it back, still not answering Jack. Three shots in, the blur in her mind began, rivaled by the burn in her throat and the churning of her stomach.

  Facing her best guy pal, she made a decision. “We tell no one he wanted a divorce. No one has to know.”