Bride for Hire (Bay of Islands Brides Book 5) by Serenity Woods

Author:Serenity Woods [Woods, Serenity]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-10-13T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

Noelle sat on the edge of the bed and stared out at the view of the Thorndon Hills, black and slightly sinister in the darkness. Her reflection in the glass looked pale and sad, and it wasn’t long before she got up to close the curtains to shut it out.

Coming back to the bed, she turned on the lamp on the bedside table, sat again, and lay back, looking up at the ceiling.

She’d done the right thing. This wasn’t going to work. When you were fifty-two, you couldn’t fly off with a hot rich guy and expect to feel as if you were eighteen again. She thought she could do it, but she’d changed, and she hadn’t taken into account how much. She’d read that a person’s cells renew themselves every seven years, so technically the young girl she’d been wasn’t buried deep inside her—she’d been replaced one cell at a time, until she was a completely different person. Her body had changed, and not for the better.

She’d once gone with Cathy to a kind of New-Age seminar for ‘mature women’ called ‘Don’t Let Age Beat You’, where the presenter had talked about the three stages of life—Maiden, Mother, and Crone, and how each one was as important as the other. Afterward, Noelle had remarked to Cathy that she didn’t like the notion of turning into a Crone no matter how wonderful this stage of life was supposed to be. Cathy had suggested that Wise Woman was a better term, and since then Noelle had tried to think of herself in that way: the village wise woman, the one whom everyone turned to for advice and help. That was the person she’d become. That was who she was now.

And yet… she didn’t feel that way inside. In her mind and spirit, she felt as young as the day she’d walked into the café at the swimming pool and seen Cameron waiting for her. She could remember it so clearly. She’d watched him in the pool, and had been impressed by his physique, his swimming technique, and his good looks, and she’d been thrilled when he’d walked up to her and asked her if he could buy her a Coke. He’d been so young, slim and fit. He wasn’t quite the same now, of course, and yet the glint in his eye that had told her he’d like to show her the tricks he knew in the bedroom was still there. He was no different inside either.

What was she afraid of? Well, losing him again—after this week, he would go back to England and she’d stay here in New Zealand. But so what if that was the case? Wasn’t it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? At this moment, would it hurt any less if they slept together, and then he disappeared?

She was afraid that she might disappoint him. It was an understandable fear after being with the same man for so long.

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