For the Girls' Sake - By Janice Kay Johnson Page 0,43

block. "I don’t think so."

He frowned at her. "If you lived closer, we could see our daughters more often."

"You could move to Otter Beach."

"You know that’s impossible," Adam said impatiently.

What was this all about? "I have an established business," she said reasonably. "Moving wouldn’t be any easier for me."

"What if you could find a bookstore for sale over here? Or a good location to start one up?"

She set down her fork. "You’re serious."

"Yes." He took a swallow of coffee. "Aren’t you getting tired of these teary goodbyes, too?"

"Of course I am, but..."

"But what?" He leaned forward, his expression persuasive. "Think about it. Will you do that?"

"Do you have any idea how tough it was to start up a small business?"

Adam opened his mouth, but she overrode him.

"Without my parents’ help, Shelly and I would have starved," Lynn said fiercely. "Ninety percent of small businesses don’t make it. I did. And you want me to throw that away. Start all over. It’s just not that easy!"

He wasn’t ready to give up yet, she could see. He still leaned forward, intent on his perfect plan. "What if you found a going concern that’s for sale? Portland has plenty of suburbs that support bookstores."

"Sure it does. Some of those stores are a lot bigger than mine. I couldn’t afford them, even assuming I could conveniently find a buyer for my store at the snap of my fingers. Others...well, independents are being driven out of business by the hundreds. Thousands. On-line booksellers like Amazon.com are taking a lot of business. That’s bad enough, but as you pointed out yourself, in a metropolitan area like this I’d have to compete for what’s left with big-name bookstores like Barnes & Noble.” She pushed away her half-eaten pie, her appetite gone. "Take a look. Either the independents are big enough to compete, and are therefore out of my league, or they’re on the verge of bankruptcy. Trust me."

Adam sat back, his dark eyes not wavering from her face. After a moment, he said, "You could get a job."

"Sure I could. Working for someone else. Hey, maybe if I was lucky Powell’s would hire me to be a manager at one of their smaller branches! That would be a thrill after owning my own store."

His mouth twisted. "All right. You’ve convinced me. Bad idea."

"I am tired of saying goodbye. It’ll get worse once Rose knows I’m really Mommy and Shelly thinks of you as Daddy. But what can we do?" Now she was pleading with him. "We have responsibilities."

"Sure we do," Adam said flatly. "One of mine is going to be pacifying Jennifer’s parents, convincing them to be patient."

She’d almost forgotten. "If you talked to them first, wouldn’t they be satisfied just meeting Shelly? For now?"

He closed his eyes wearily. "If only she didn’t look so much like Jenny."

"I’m sorry." She bit her lip. "I forget."

A razor edge of pain showed in his brown eyes. "I don’t."

Had his wife known how much she was loved? Once upon a time, Lynn had fooled herself into believing she and Brian were in love, but even then she had known they weren’t soul mates, meant for each other through the centuries. But he was handsome, and he wanted to be with her, and he made her laugh. Love was supposed to grow, wasn’t it? The grandest kind, she had always believed, was in the quiet clasp of gnarled hands that had known each other’s touch for sixty years or more. Why couldn’t she and Brian have that, if they worked at it?

Now she knew better. Perhaps the grandest love was the kind ripened by half a century or more together, but people couldn’t endure each other that long, didn’t care enough to hold on through hard times, if what they started with wasn’t more heartfelt than "he wanted to be with me" and "he was handsome."

Adam, she guessed, had been lucky enough to know real love.

"You still miss her." Lynn touched the back of his hand.

"When I let myself."

His hand turned over, slowly, giving her time to withdraw. She didn’t. He gripped her hand gently, his so much larger, browner. Lynn lifted her gaze to see that he, too, was studying their hands.

"Tell me about your husband," Adam said unexpectedly. "Why did he think you’d been unfaithful?"

A sting of hurt cured her of any drift toward a romantic mood. She tried to yank her hand back, but he held on.

"I know you weren’t," he said. "Even I can see that you’re