Page 41 of Marcus

“She doesn’t do that, you know?”

He arched a brow. “Pardon?”

“Tiffany. She doesn’t talk to men outside of the family often, if at all. I can count on one hand how many she will talk to. I think it’s partly because she’s never really had a male figure in the house what with her father dying when she was still a baby. It’s another reason why I’m nervous about her starting school when I suspect there’ll be male teachers, and—”

“She talks fine with me.”

Right.

Then, Marcus asked quieter, “Did I cross a line? I didn’t mean—”

“No, of course not.”

All Cella’s feelings were hers. Just hers alone to handle, not his. It wasn’t his fault that she didn’t know if this felt like betraying her dead husband’s memory, or not, and she certainly wouldn’t make him think otherwise. Or hell, maybe it was the fact that she didn’t feel badly about this that had her in a strange headspace. Whatever nonsense her heart wanted to produce about this wasn’t something she would put on his shoulders. And once she had time, she might sit down and try to figure it out.

What else could she do?

“So, you made a date with my daughter, huh?”

He stood from the chaise, all lean and tall but so fit and looking damn good. She would be a liar if she said every step he took toward her on the bed didn’t have her entirely entranced. Once he came to the edge of the bed, he put his hands on either side of the mattress beside her, and leaned in close so that their lips barely grazed.

An almost kiss, but not quite enough.

“And you, too, I hope,” he murmured. “Because it won’t be as fun if you don’t join, too.”

Instead of agreeing, she pulled him into bed with her.

Wasn’t that a good enough answer?

Cella admired the stained-glass windows of her family’s church, finding herself far more interested in that, than in whatever the priest was saying from his pulpit. Her lack of attention in church wasn’t normal. Growing up, she came here once a week, every single Sunday, never failed. She took confession here … sat in these pews with the rest of her family.

She loved the church.

Its smell.

The parish.

All of it.

And yet today, all she seemed to want to do was stare out the window that faced the graveyard to the east of the church. Because for the last week, since she’d left Marcus in Toronto and returned home, her mind had been on only one thing.

Her dead husband.

And if she was doing the right thing.

Or if it even mattered.

These were things she didn’t know, and since she also wasn’t sure how to broach the topic with someone else, Cella decided it was just better for her to stew in her feelings alone. At least that way, she wouldn’t have anyone else’s judgments about her life choices. And at the same time, she also didn’t have anyone to vent to.

What a wonderful mess this was.

“Cella, sweetheart?”

“Hmm?”

Looking to the side, she found her mother and father were already standing from the pew where they had been sitting beside her. She tried at least once a month to make the six-hour drive to her parents’ to attend church with them. Usually, she attended a parish that she found in Rochester with Tiffany, but she still found herself coming back to this place often.

More often than she cared to admit.