He knew how to romance a woman he was dating, although it had been a long time since he’d done so seriously. But Lynn was his wife. They were getting to know each other, developing a degree of comfort. What if he made an unwelcome advance and blew what progress they’d made?
Another difficulty was that he didn’t want to be dishonest with her. He liked her, he found her very appealing. But he hadn’t let go of his feelings for Jenny, and he didn’t know if he ever could or wanted to.
Tenderness, liking, sparks—he was hoping for all those this time around. But he was afraid that if he started bringing home roses, Lynn would get the wrong idea.
Adam wasn’t sure why that bothered him. He’d married her, after all. He took the vows seriously. He wouldn’t be unfaithful.
But when he took to thinking about love, he started feeling edgy, uncomfortable. Disloyal. He didn’t want to be a man who slipped on a new wife to replace the old as if they were nothing more than a succession of favorite shirts. He’d loved his Jenny, although already memories were slipping away. He wouldn’t so quickly dishonor her or his feelings.
But he really wanted to get closer to his second wife.
Loneliness had been no more than an occasional irritation until he had a woman in his house. Now it was more like a bad back, an ever-present ache that stabbed sharply when he moved wrong.
Proximity explained it, he kept telling himself. Lynn was a pretty woman, but would he especially have noticed her if he’d happened into her bookstore? No. Love was when you were struck by lightning, when you knew this was it.
This was just attraction. Plain and simple.
But something told him putting it that way to her wouldn’t lure her into his arms. Lure. See? Even his choice of words to himself implied a lie.
"Why don’t you help the girls wash their hands?" She was bustling around him as if he were an inconvenient post holding up the kitchen ceiling. If he’d been staring, she hadn’t noticed or was pretending not to.
A lot of pretence going on, Adam thought grimly.
But he was still glad to be home, glad that dinner was bubbling on the stove instead of sitting in the refrigerator with a sticky note from his housekeeper telling him how to cook it. He was glad Rose hadn’t had to spend ten hours at preschool today, and that Shelly had been here to hug him when he walked in the door.
And he was glad that Lynn would be there after the girls went to bed tonight, quiet company if they both read, good conversation if they chose not to.
"Sure," he said, "if I can’t do anything here."
She cast him a mildly amused look as she dumped spaghetti and boiling water into a colander. "Nope. Just get Rose and Shelly."
At the dinner table, she insisted on good manners, something he’d never done but which seemed, if nothing else, to introduce a different note to mealtimes for the two three-year-olds. At breakfast or lunch, they’d giggle, make messes, even occasionally start food fights. At dinner they were on their best behavior. He liked the change, as he liked most that Lynn had brought with her.
Tonight the girls told him about the playground and how it had started to snow—slushy rain, Lynn interjected with crinkled nose—and they got all wet but they played anyway—did Daddy know your bottom stuck to a wet slide?—and Mommy made them take a hot bath when they got home.
"We were sea lions," Shelly told him. Bouncing in her chair, she barked like the ones on the rocks offshore from Otter Beach. "Like that."
"Yeah. We were both sea lions!" Rose said.
Lynn laughed. "Of course, most of the bathwater washed up on the beach."
"The beach!" They thought that was hysterically funny.
He grinned at her. "Sounds like fun. I hope you had some beach towels."
"I used half the contents of your linen closet," she said, a smile shimmering in her eyes. "Thank goodness for your little elf."
"Ann? You don’t see much of her, huh?"
"She pleasantly made it known she’d just as soon not ‘trip over us.’ I try to either take the girls someplace, or at least keep them out of her hair. She’s going to be glad when we’re gone Thursday."
He wasn’t. He hated Thursdays. Lynn and Shelly packed up at the crack of dawn and drove away so that Lynn could open the bookstore at ten. He