Confessions from the Quilting Circle - Maisey Yates Page 0,120
wanted. What it looked like to her.
Because otherwise she would pour years into this relationship, feeling like she did, and he wouldn’t be able to give it back.
And she would rather know now than wait until then.
No matter how much it hurt.
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He was happy. It gives me hope. Hope hurts so very badly.
—FROM THE DIARY OF JENNY HANSEN, SEPTEMBER 20, 1900
RACHEL
She had so many missed calls. Her poor daughter. Of course, now Emma would know how she felt, but that wasn’t fair. At a certain point last night the calls had stopped, and Rachel had a feeling she knew why.
Because while Anna was loyal, and was her sister, there was no way she was going to keep her secret at the expense of Emma’s or Wendy’s sanity.
Which meant the jig was up for her.
But worse than that...
She had fallen asleep with him. Like they were a couple.
Like they were married.
Her husband had died just a few months ago, and she was playing house with another man.
Guilt ate at her. That guilt that she had pushed to the side last night was back now with a vengeance.
She’d spent the night with him. Like a wife. Like a woman in a relationship.
She’d gloried in it. In being alive and happy. In Adam being strong and masculine. Someone who didn’t need her care. In the fact that the sex was the best she’d ever had.
She nearly doubled over with the guilt.
She loved Jacob. She loved him. Deeply. Profoundly. And the pain of loss hadn’t faded. It never would.
Twenty years of her life had been spent married to that man. He had shaped her. Who and what she was.
How could she...?
How could she?
She stumbled out of bed, and the sound of her feet hitting the floor made Adam stir.
“Rachel?”
“I really have to go,” she said.
“Stay,” he said.
“I’m not a dog, Adam. Sit. Stay. I don’t do tricks. You can’t give me a treat and get me to behave.”
“You do come when I call, though,” he said. The grin on his face was wicked, and she wanted to punch him, because he clearly wasn’t reading her panic.
“Stop it.”
“Hey,” he said. “What’s wrong?”
“You’re not my boyfriend. That’s not what this is. I can’t be spending the night with you. Emma’s worried about me. And now I’m going to have to explain.”
“Is that such a bad thing?”
“Yes. It is a bad thing. Because this was just supposed to be between us. It wasn’t supposed to affect my real life.”
“I hate to break it to you,” he said, pushing himself into a seated position and crossing his arms over his broad chest. “But this is your real life. Everything we’ve done is part of your real life. All of the conversations that we’ve had over the past three years are part of your real life. It’s not a separate thing that exists in an alternate dimension.”
“It was to me. It is to me. I have my family, and there’s you. You just existed for me. To make me feel better.”
“I think you were falling in love with me. For years. I think that’s what you’ve been doing.”
“No,” she said. “I was not. I was married. I was in love.”
She hated this. Didn’t want to think of it. Didn’t want to believe what Hannah had said about her was true.
“You are in love. With him. And that’s fine. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have feelings for me. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t a reason that you confided in me for all that time.”
“You were convenient,” she said. “And...that’s it.”
“You’re a liar.”
“Don’t—don’t do this to me,” she said, anger rolling over her. “I didn’t ask for this. I wanted sex, Adam, not...dinners and heart-to-heart talks.”
“If you wanted sex you could have had it with the man that you didn’t have a relationship with.”
“Well, I’m attracted to you. More than I am...to anyone else. But that doesn’t mean that there’s anything more, or that I was asking for anything more. Or that I wanted anything more.”
He crossed the space between them, over six feet of muscular, irritated, naked man that she found far sexier than she wanted to admit. Even angry. Maybe especially angry.
Because there was a vitality to this. To him. And it felt so sharp and raw and honest. She wanted... She wanted to have a fight. She wanted to yell at him.
“You say that you want to give to me, but you don’t. If you did, then you would just...stop it. You would quit pushing me. Quit