my only real connection is...this place. So I know it might seem a little bit crazy that I’m here, but it... It’s my only connection to the past.”
She nodded slowly. “Funny you should mention family secrets.”
“You have some of your own?”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
“Apparently.”
“I’ve learned from your great-great-grandmother,” Wendy said slowly. “I’m sorry you didn’t know about her until recently because she was an amazing woman. I talk to her sometimes up here. Think about her an awful lot. She left everything she knew behind and she made a life here. I always thought I was like her. But Jenny was braver than I am. Jenny came here and shared herself fearlessly. And it’s how she found love. I kept my secrets. I kept people out. I let my daughters think a certain thing about their past. About my past. And...” She looked at him. “You were a good man, weren’t you? A good husband.”
“I like to think I was.”
“Were you faithful to your wife?”
He nodded once. “Yes, ma’am.”
Well, she would see just what he thought of her—really thought of her—in a moment. Like Anna said, maybe it was time for her to cope with what people would think of someone like her. Because while she had enough self-hatred to go around, she hadn’t had to deal with the hatred of others.
“I had an affair with a married man. For years. I’ve never been married. I loved someone that I couldn’t have, and I... You know, I don’t know if his wife ever knew about me. I don’t know if I hope that she found out, and found someone better, or if I hope that I never got the chance to hurt her.”
“Love makes fools out of all of us in time. And there are ample ways to be hurt by it,” he said.
“You don’t sound shocked to find that out about me.”
He shook his head. “Life is long, and it’s a hell of a strange trip. Besides, I’m not the same person I was even ten years ago. Much less thirty.”
“I suppose that’s true. Though, I wonder who I would have been if I would have been up front about what I’d done. With my girls. With everyone. I can’t help but wonder. I punish myself all this time. Tried to make myself into something... Something else. Have you been with anyone since your wife?”
His charcoal-gray eyebrows shot upward. “There’s a question. But, yes. I have been. It’s been a long time, like I said.”
“Ever come close to getting married again?”
He shook his head. “No. When my kids were young, there was no chance of that, and then... I don’t know. I got kind of accustomed to my own company. Can do whatever I want, go wherever I please. But you’ve been single a long time, you ought to understand that.”
She nodded. “I do. I understand that well.”
“And you know, now I’m free to go to a lighthouse bed-and-breakfast on a whim, whenever I feel like it, because I have people to help manage the ranch in my absence, and I don’t have anyone to question where I go.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad.”
“It hasn’t been. But sometimes it’s lonely.”
“Sometimes it is,” Wendy agreed.
“How about you? I figure the question is fair to ask back.”
“No one,” she said. “Because I made myself into a lady of virtue, and I figured that I’d better live up to that.”
“Well, that,” he said slowly, “is a hell of a lot of pressure to put on a man.”
“Or an honor,” Wendy said. “Though, who said I was going to bestow it?”
“Just wishful thinking, I suppose. Though, I have to tell you, I don’t think being with a man you find attractive is a black mark on your virtue. You seem like a pretty damned virtuous woman to me, Wendy, but then, I’m not sure that I’m an arbiter of virtue.”
“I don’t know that I’m virtuous,” she said. “But I’m also not sure I care anymore.”
She did feel like a teenager. Giddy and waiting for her first kiss, because she might as well be.
And when he did lean in and kiss her, she melted, grabbing hold of him and clinging.
She liked him.
The whole feel of him. His mouth, his broad shoulders...everything.
“I might not be a young man,” he said. “But I know what I’m doing.”
And Wendy believed him.
And for the rest of the night she was determined to focus on nothing more than all the things that John Hansen knew how to do with a woman’s body.
25
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