It's Never too Late - By Tara Taylor Quinn Page 0,65

he was talking about.

He hadn’t met Addy yet.

“I don’t know a woman who’d be happy knowing her husband didn’t want to marry her, knowing that she didn’t have his whole heart. She’d spend her whole life feeling like she wasn’t good enough.”

“You don’t understand.” But he wanted the out she was handing him. So badly he almost threw thirty years of right living to the side and took it.

“It’s not fair to Ella, either, marrying her when you don’t want to. You’re robbing her of any chance of finding a man who’d adore her enough to still find her beautiful after twenty years of marriage.”

Do you love me? Ella had asked right before breaking up with him. He’d said yes because he loved her as much as he’d ever loved anyone besides Nonnie.

He’d loved Ella as much as he thought it possible to love anyone.

Maybe he still did. His mind had the thought and his entire being revolted against it. He wasn’t in love with Ella. At the moment, he wasn’t even all that fond of her.

The way he felt about Ella was nothing compared to the way he felt about Addy.

The thought made him despicable.

And it wasn’t fair to Ella at all. Addy was right about one thing. He couldn’t marry Ella under false pretenses.

He had to tell her that he didn’t want to marry her.

Addy stepped closer, lifting her face to his. And Mark looked deeply into the eyes of the woman who’d stolen a part of him without his even knowing what she was about.

“Ella’s pregnant.”

* * *

ADDY WOKE UP in a bad mood the next morning. She didn’t want to be in Shelter Valley. She didn’t want to know if Will Parsons was guilty of discrimination or nepotism. And she most certainly did not want Mark Heber to marry Ella from Bierly.

Thirty seconds after she opened her eyes she was on her feet. She was going to stay in Shelter Valley until her job there was done. She was going to do everything she could to either protect Will Parsons from wrongful accusation or prepare him for any defense he might need—though if he was guilty, she would be turning over her research to another attorney of his choosing.

And she was going to be the friend to Mark Heber that she’d told him she would be. In her shock the night before, she hadn’t been able to put her heart back into the safe compartment where she’d kept it since the night her mother and brother died. She’d told him that she’d be around whenever he needed her. That, since they were two ships passing in the night, she’d be a good sounding board as he sorted through the choices he had to make.

Truth was, she hadn’t been able to turn her back on him. She cared too much.

Not that caring was going to do her a damn bit of good. Mark knew her as Adele, not as Adrianna. There was no way he’d ever forgive her once he found out about her deception.

There was no possible future for the two of them.

But she cared. So much that her involvement with Mark wasn’t about what he could give to her—it wasn’t about the future. He needed a friend now. And for whatever reason, he’d chosen her. She had something that he wanted. Or needed.

And she had to give it to him.

Which was why, when he knocked on her door just after ten that morning, telling her that Nonnie had gone down for a nap and asking if he could come in, she opened her door wider and stepped back.

“You do your homework at the kitchen table.” He nodded toward the computer and folders there, making her nervous. Her work for Will was done mostly on the computer and the evidence she was collecting was in secure folders, but she’d been collecting hard copy files, too.

“Yeah,” she said, and added, “I can hear the fountain better from there.”

Mark nodded again, obviously distracted.

“Did you get any sleep?”

He’d gone inside just a few minutes after delivering his bombshell.

“Very little.”

She hadn’t slept a lot, either.

Mark stood in the middle of her living room, his hands in the pockets of his jeans, stretching the fabric of his jeans across his groin.

She wished she knew what to do for him. “You have to work today?”

“No. I told Nonnie I’d take her for a drive. She wants to see some town called Tortilla Flat. It’s about an hour from Phoenix, straight up the