the last time she’d felt that way. If she were guessing, it was a few years back when she’d been walking Jonas and a guy had whistled at her. The homeless man hadn’t had many teeth, so she wasn’t sure how valid it was. She’d been surprised he could still whistle with such a lack of enamel. “No, it’s not, but being attractive is not all you have going for you, Clay. That was unfair.”
“Thank you. So why don’t you want to see me tonight? We had fun.”
Daphne swallowed. “We did, but it’s like you said. Just sex. And I, uh, I don’t think we should continue to . . . have it.”
His gaze narrowed. “So you think it was a mistake?”
Yeah. Big-time. After all, if she hadn’t read that book and drunk a bottle of wine, there’s no way she would have slept with someone a decade and a half younger than she was. In fact, there was a pretty good chance she wouldn’t have even slept with a man her own age. It had been a moment of insanity, born from an unnatural compulsion to have sex, and she wasn’t going to give in to something like that again.
“Clay, it’s not that it was a mistake, per se, it’s that I am not that sort of woman. Nothing about sex is casual to me, and since you and I are more likely to spontaneously combust than enter into a relationship, I can’t do what we did again. You understand? It’s not that you weren’t terrific—you were—it’s that I can’t be that person.”
“So you’re saying it was a mistake.”
“No, it’s just not something I want to repeat, if that makes sense.” One and done. One and done. One and—
“So you’re looking for a relationship, huh?” Clay scratched his head as if he hadn’t been expecting that from her. “I guess that’s what all women seem to be looking for. Commitment.”
Daphne smiled. Clay said it like most men—like someone had sneezed all over their rib eye steak. “Maybe. I’m not sure. What I do know is that you’re young, and what you’re looking for is not what I’m looking for.”
Clay stared at her for a few seconds and then shrugged. “You got me figured out, I guess. I’ll get back to work now.”
Daphne watched him walk away and felt uncomfortable with how everything between her and Clay went down. He’d be working on her project for at least a month more, but she’d danced the dance, and now her fiddler was calling for his two bits.
So for the next two weeks, she’d lain low because it felt like the thing to do. When Clay asked something of her, she was friendly and courteous, but she didn’t spend any idle time chatting with him . . . or checking out how nice his butt looked in the work pants he wore. She suspected he was a bit miffed or confused by her professional demeanor, but he didn’t say much. Sometimes she caught him watching her, but she tried to avoid him as much as she could. As for her libido, Daphne ignored the impulses that arose when she thought back to that night, when she remembered how good it felt to be held and loved. She wanted that again, but she wanted intimacy on the right terms. Sneaking around with a man-child, even one as good in bed as Clay, while fulfilling in the short term, wouldn’t sustain her soul.
Daphne longed for a partner who would do just that—a man who would challenge her . . . a man who would sit with her on a cool fall morning, sip tea, and not say a word because none were needed.
Her phone dinged, and she lifted it from the edge of the rail on the screened porch.
Rex.
Coming to vineyard for the kiddo’s birthday. Hope that’s okay. Madison invited me. Got the last room in the B&B. Hope we can talk.
Daphne closed her eyes. “Nooo.”
Since the divorce, she and Rex had managed to be civil because that was what dutiful parents did. Things weren’t bad between them, but then again, both of them had given up on each other, and that knowledge sat there like a fat slug between them. Daphne had looked forward to an easy weekend, and nothing was easy about Rex and never had been.
From the beginning, Rex demanded attention. With cherub cheeks and blond locks, Rex had been the boy in class who twisted teachers around his pinkie while