The Women of Brambleberry House Collection Volume 1 by RaeAnne Thayne

Author:RaeAnne Thayne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HQN Books
Published: 2018-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

IT WAS JUST a damn kiss.

Three weeks later, Will backed his truck into the Brambleberry House driveway, fighting a mix of dread and unwilling anticipation.

He knew both reactions were completely ridiculous. What the hell was he worrying about? She wouldn’t even be here—he had finally managed to work the molding job into his schedule only after squeezing in a time when he could be certain Julia and her children were safely tucked away at the elementary school.

The very fact that he had to resort to such ridiculous manipulations of his own schedule simply to avoid seeing a certain woman bugged the heck out of him.

He ought to be tougher than this. He should have been completely unfazed by their brief encounter, instead of brooding about it for the better part of three weeks.

So he had kissed her. Big deal. The world hadn’t stopped spinning, the ocean hadn’t suddenly been sucked dry, the Coast Range hadn’t suddenly tumbled to dust.

Robin hadn’t come back to haunt him.

He knew his reaction to the kiss had been excessive. He had run out of her apartment at Brambleberry House like a kid who had been caught smoking in the boy’s room of the schoolhouse.

Yeah, he had overreacted to the shock of discovering not all of him was encased in ice—that he could desire another woman, could long to have her wrapped around him.

He still wanted it. That was what had bothered him for three weeks. Even though he hadn’t seen her in all that time, she hadn’t been far from his thoughts.

He remembered the taste of her, sweet and welcoming, the softness of her skin under his fingers, the subtle peace he had so briefly savored.

He couldn’t seem to shake this achy sense that with that single kiss, everything in his world had changed, in a way he couldn’t explain but knew he didn’t like.

He didn’t want change. Yeah, he hated his life and missed Robin and Cara so much he sometimes couldn’t breathe around the pain. But it was his pain.

He was used to it now, and somewhere deep inside, he worried that letting go of that grief would mean letting go of his wife and baby girl, something he wasn’t ready to face yet.

He knew his reaction was absurd. Plenty of people had lost loved ones and had moved ahead with their lives. His own mother had married again, just a few years after his father died, when Will was in his early twenties. She had moved to San Diego with her new husband, where the two of them seemed to be extremely happy together. They played golf, they went sailing on the bay, they enjoyed an active social life.

Will didn’t begrudge his mother her happiness. He liked his stepfather and was grateful his mother had found someone else.

Intellectually, he knew it was possible, even expected, for him to date again sometime. He just wasn’t sure he was ready yet—indeed, that he would ever be ready.

It had just been a kiss, he reminded himself.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.