All They Need - By Sarah Mayberry Page 0,26
Naive, perhaps. Or maybe it had simply been a way to get through those hard first months. Whatever the reason, the notion that she might be ready to reenter the world of male-female relations made her feel more than a little anxious and panicky.
Because even if her body was ready, her mind wasn’t. Not even close. It would be a long, long time before she was ready to trust a man again.
She forced herself to take a deep breath and calm down. She was freaking out over nothing, over nobody.
After all, on the most basic of levels, even if she had felt the stir of desire as she stood next to Flynn and registered his body heat and looked at his mouth and inhaled his scent, it wasn’t as though anything would come of it. The man was in a relationship with someone else, a beautiful, sophisticated woman from his own world. The chances of anything happening between her and Flynn were nonexistent.
Her thoughts slowed as her anxiety receded and common sense returned. A long time ago, before Owen, before she’d been stripped of her confidence and sense of herself, she’d enjoyed sex. Not indiscriminately, but it had been a normal, healthy part of her life. It wasn’t exactly a miracle that her sexual self was rising from the ashes of her marriage in the same way that so many other aspects of her self had. Her sense of humor. Her pride. Her determination. It was a good sign. A sign that she was healing.
Feeling more rational, she started her car and headed for the certainty of home.
CHAPTER FIVE
FLYNN BREATHED IN THE COOL winter air as he walked toward the house later that day, allowing the fact that he was here and this was real and that he was actually doing this to sink into his bones. Yes, restoring Summerlea was going to be a huge challenge, but it was doable. It was definitely doable.
He’d spent the past few hours completing a slow, painstaking tour of the garden. He had a list as long as his arm of basic maintenance issues to attend to, and he mentally allocated his free time to tasks as he climbed the stairs. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know that it would take him a long time to turn things around here, doing it piecemeal, when his schedule allowed. A lot of people would simply throw money at it and let other people make the problems go away, but Flynn hadn’t bought Summerlea to delegate. Once, he’d hoped to spend his life making other people’s gardens beautiful, livable and sustainable. He’d given that dream up, but Summerlea offered him a different outlet for his passion.
Some people might call it a sop, and maybe it was. But it was his sop, and he was bloody well going to give it his all.
He kicked his shoes off inside the door, then padded around the house in his socks, washed his hands and finally carried the groceries he’d bought for dinner from the kitchen to the living room. He lit half a dozen candles, then set a match to the fire he’d laid earlier. Flames licked up the kindling and flared along the logs and he felt a very primitive sense of satisfaction.
Me man, me make fire.
Smirking at his own idiocy, he turned his thoughts to dinner. He’d bought a range of goodies—a truly indulgent picnic, really. A round of brie, gourmet crackers, olives stuffed with almonds and feta, tiny bell peppers filled with goat’s cheese, salty cashew nuts, a long, thin loaf of Afghan bread slathered with garlic, triple-smoked ham. For dessert, he had a slab of fruit and nut chocolate, and he had a choice of either an Australian shiraz or a New Zealand pinot noir to accompany his feast.
He was unwrapping the creamy-looking round of brie and contemplating which bottle of wine to open when he heard what he thought was a knock at the front door. He stilled, head cocked to one side. Sure enough, after a few seconds the knock sounded again.
He walked into the hall, baffled as to who it might be. The only people he knew in Mount Eliza were Mel and Spencer, the real estate agent. Given the way Mel had retreated when he’d bumped into her in town, he figured the odds were good it was Spencer. Which was a bummer, for a number of reasons.
Then he opened the door and recognized Mel’s tall, athletic silhouette in