Page 70 of The Marriage Mistake

JACK

The mac and cheese was definitely better than mine. I had two heaping servings and bickered with Darby about taking more than her fair share of the breadcrumb topping. Ember laughed at us, red-cheeked, eyes aglow. Pleased, as if I’d offered her the world on a platter instead of complimenting her cooking.

She fit. She was meant to be here. With me. With us.

As I ate the last bite of my dinner, I looked down at my bowl and noticed it was one of Tanya’s. She’d inherited it from her grandmother: scalloped edges with little blue flowers dancing around the rim, the glaze crazing in a spiderweb pattern all over the surface.

Guilt nipped at me. I hadn’t thought about my late wife at all today—or any day this week while I’d been taking care of Ember. Then Darby pushed her chair back and grabbed my bowl to bring it to the dishwasher, and the feeling eased. She stood next to Ember at the sink, who knocked my daughter’s hip with her own.

It was okay to move on, wasn’t it? It had been over a decade since Tanya passed. There was nothing wrong with feeling a spark of happiness again.

I sat there until the tightness in my back eased, and then I helped the girls with the last of the clean-up.

EIGHTEEN

EMBER

I knew he would come to me, but it still sent a shock through me when I heard the quiet knock on my bedroom door. I set my reading aside and padded across the room. The doorknob was cool under my fingers, the hinges silent as I opened.

“Yes?” I said.

Jack stood in the doorway, his arm propped above his head as he leaned on the frame. His eyebrow quirked. “That’s all I get? Just ‘yes’?”

He looked so handsome. It almost hurt to look directly at him, especially when his hair was slightly mussed and his eyes were so soft. He looked tired, like he’d had a long day and all he needed was to wrap his arms around me to make it all go away.

That right there would be my undoing. That look on his face. That tone of his voice.

After dinner, I’d scurried up to my hidey-hole in the attic and tried to get my head on straight again.

I told myself again and again that I couldn’t fall for him. That yes, he’d cared for me when I was sick, but that was just a mix of guilt and duty on his part. He was devoted to doing the right thing.

And the things he’d said to me in the kitchen…

You couldn’t believe the things a man said to you when he was trying to get in your pants.

But try as I might, I couldn’t get myself to believe my own lies.

I wanted him. I wanted a life with him here, in this house, with his daughter. I wanted the fresh air and the rabid raccoons. I wanted the ring on my finger. I wanted him to look at me just like that, every day for the rest of my life.

My pride demanded I put up some sort of resistance. Some last fortification in my mind told me this was a dangerous path, and I, as a rule, did not like danger. I forced myself to hold his gaze. “Do you need something, Jack?”

He prowled forward, and I had no choice but to take a step back. The door closed behind him, and we were alone. “Yes, I need something. I need you on your back with your legs spread. You think you can do that for me, Ember?”

Yes.

My pulse fluttered. I could feel it in every corner of my body, pounding heavily between my legs. “I’ve been thinking,” I started.

His hands slid over my jaw, and he tilted my face up to meet his. His eyes were dark, dark blue, the color of the sky a moment before the last light of the day ceded to night. “Less of that,” he murmured.

“Less thinking?”

His smile was wicked. It turned my insides molten. He chose that moment to kiss me, slow and thorough, and he didn’t stop until my hands had curled into the soft fabric of his sweater and a soft whimper escaped my lips. He hummed, hands coasting down my sides until they dipped under the waistband of my pajama pants. His thumbs pressed against my hipbones, fingers splayed over the soft flesh covering my hips. I rubbed my thighs together, needy, already losing control.

He pulled back enough to grin at me. He knew.

“You’re going to have to try to be quieter than you were this morning,” he said in a low voice, bringing one hand up to cup my jaw. His thumb pressed my bottom lip. “Can you do that for me?”

“I don’t think we should be doing this,” I whispered.