“I had a lot of years with him, you know.” She shook her head. “His battle with cancer was a long one. A hard one. Every time we thought that damn disease was gone, it came back.” Her expression turned earnest. “But I’m telling you, Emma, every minute I had with my Henry made getting through the bad times worth it. That kind of love doesn’t seem to come around much nowadays.” She smiled. “So I’m going to keep hoping you and Cliff will find a way.” She opened the door. “You have yourself a nice weekend.”
“You, too,” Emma belatedly called after her as she left.
Emma couldn’t stop thinking about Sadie’s words as she drove home at dusk. Nor could she stop thinking about Cliff.
She rolled her eyes at herself. As if that was anything new. She always thought about Cliff. Tragic though it might seem, Sadie was right. The connection Emma and Cliff shared was real, not imagined. What she felt for him wasn’t simple infatuation. It wasn’t lust, easily assuaged. It wasn’t a desperate attempt to escape boredom or alleviate loneliness. It wasn’t any of the things she had experienced with the few boyfriends and even fewer lovers she’d had in the past.
It was so much more than that. If she was honest with herself, what she felt for Cliff made everything that came before him feel like a teenager’s fleeting crushes.
Reducing her speed, she waited for a logging truck driving in the opposite direction to pass, then turned onto the long dirt road that led to her small country home.
She was falling in love with him.
Her hands tightened on the steering wheel. No. She already had fallen in love with him. She’d never felt like this before… like she would walk through fire just to have one more minute with him. She’d never met a man who so enthralled her that she would rather have a platonic friendship with him than take another man as a lover.
Which was not to say she wasn’t physically attracted to Cliff, because… damn, that man was hot. Just the press of his muscled thigh against hers under the table left her all hot and tingly.
Pulling into her driveway, she cut the lights and turned off the engine. Though the house had an attached two-car garage, her car wouldn’t fit in it. Ever since she had proudly withdrawn a sizable chunk of her savings account to put a down payment on the house, she’d been using the garage as a workshop for all her fixer-upper projects. Tools and materials occupied half of it while the other half accommodated the old economy car her parents had taught her to drive in and given her when she’d started college. Emma had thought it might be smart to keep it on hand as a backup in case the newer one ever gave her trouble.
A sense of satisfaction filled her as she crossed the grass.
The place hadn’t been much to look at when she’d decided to make the leap and purchase it, but it’d had what her dad called good bones. Her parents had always instilled in her the importance of owning property. She glanced around. Now this—and several acres surrounding it—was hers.
She smiled wryly. As long as she kept up the mortgage payments.
Fortunately, the network paid her well enough that she was able to make two mortgage payments a month and was already a couple of years ahead on her payments now. The network also offered employees no-interest home loans for the duration of their work tenure.
Thanks to people like Sadie, the network was seriously loaded and went above and beyond anything she’d seen any other company do to keep its employees happy.
No wonder Sadie and other elderly employees were loath to retire. Free meals—breakfast through dinner if one so desired—prepared by talented chefs. Free healthcare with on-site clinics that required no appointments. Free childcare for employees with little ones. Mr. Reordon even offered grants to college-bound children of employees.
And from what she understood, other branches of the network did the same.
A cool breeze set plants to dancing and swaying as she headed up the pretty stone walkway that led to the porch. She had laid those stones herself. The lawn that had been patchy at best the year she bought the place was now thick and green. She smiled. The shrubs she’d planted along the front of the house on either side of the path were coming along nicely. Hanging baskets overflowed with flowers