Welcome to Wardham: Contemporary Erotic Romance Bundle

by Zoe York

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Heartbreak made mincemeat of indecision. Within a few days, Karen had found three programs that would accept a late application from her, and informed her parents of her plan to leave in August for a year. Functionally, this meant they needed to make a permanent decision about what to do with the store, because when, or if, she returned, it would be for a librarian position. She’d paid a high enough price for this adventure, she was damned sure she’d see it through to the end and make that sacrifice worthwhile.

  “Earth to Karen. Come in—”

  “Leave her alone, Carrie.” Evie Calhoun leaned over the back of their friend’s couch and gave her a smothering hug.

  Karen flashed them both a half-hearted smile. “I’m sorry, I’m not being very good company.”

  “Meh, we all have days like that.” Evie clambered over the couch and bounced into the seat next to Carrie. Karen shook her head at her friend’s energy. She needed to do more Pilates and fewer pints of ice cream. “Want to talk about it?”

  “Nope.”

  Carrie narrowed her eyes and ignored the answer. “So if you don’t want to talk about it, it could be work. Unless it’s personal…guy trouble?” Karen froze. Her best friend was way too smart for her own good. “Oooh--!”

  “It’s work,” she quickly interjected. “I guess you’ll hear about it soon enough. I’m heading back to school.”

  She outlined the tentative plan, glossing over what sparked her into action. After briefly outlining the pros and cons of the different schools she’d applied to, she reached for her wine glass and settled back into her seat for their reactions.

  Her friends exchanged a long look, then turned and pinned her with identical skeptical expressions.

  “So, first you don’t want to talk about it,” Evie started.

  “And then you talk about it.” Carrie crossed her arms over her chest. “Honey, do we look new?”

  “No?”

  “No. What else is going on? The last few days you’ve been miserable. We didn’t call an emergency girls’ night so we could drink wine.”

  “You don’t even have a reaction to me moving away?”

  “Are you going to stay away?”

  “No.” They exchanged smiles loaded with understanding and relief. “Thanks.”

  Evie leaned across the coffee table and tapped Karen’s foot. “Spill.”

  She couldn’t. Where to start? Where to end? None of what happened with Paul made sense to her, how could she explain it to anyone else? “I did something stupid, I guess. It’s not a big deal, except it might have been a big deal and I didn’t realize.”

  Carrie opened a drawer in the coffee table and pulled out another bottle of wine and a spare corkscrew. “We’ve got emergency supplies, we’re good. Start at the beginning.”

  By the time she’d caught them up to date on most of the details, leaving out only the bits about Paul’s life that she didn’t feel were hers to share, her friends’ expressions no longer matched.

  “I don’t understand. So he wants to have a relationship. Why wouldn’t you just date until you leave?” Evie shook her head. “Maybe it’s my utter lack of a sex life talking, but I think you made a mountain out of a molehill.”

  “No, you did the right thing.” Carrie pursed her lips. “I’ve seen you two together. You like him. No way would you end up leaving at the end of the summer.”

  Karen couldn’t help but protest. “Hey, I’m not a brainless bimbo.” But Carrie wasn’t wrong. “I’d leave. But I’d be miserable. And I’m not sure I wouldn’t come home early again.”

  Both women knew how Karen had ended up managing the grocery store. “You wouldn’t.” Evie shook her head violently. “You’re a different person now. You know what you want.”

  Karen glanced at Carrie, but her friend was studiously filling her wine glass. Not saying anything. She wanted to ask why. But a bigger part of her was afraid of Carrie’s honest opinion, so she silently slid her own glass across the coffee table and shifted the conversation. “Don’t you have the boys this weekend? Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the company, but…?” Girls’ nights were almost always called on Saturdays when Evie’s ex-husband had their two boys.

  “I’m going out of town next weekend. I got a smokin’ deal on a train and hotel deal, so I’m going to Toronto for a couple of days of culture that I can’t get in this backwards hick town.” Evie managed to say the last bit with a straight face, but her voice was softer than usual. It wasn’t the town she needed a break from. Karen grabbed her friend’s wine glass and shoved it toward Carrie. Top-ups needed all round.

  They drank in silence for a couple of minutes, giving Evie the space she needed. She’d share when she could, and it didn’t take long. “Dale’s introducing the kids to his girlfriend while I’m away. And she’s sleeping at his house, so they’re going to play happy family for 48 hours. I haven’t gotten laid in two years, and he’s managed to move on full-circle.”

  Shit. Karen hated that she’d been so buried in her own feelings that she hadn’t realized her friend was hurting. “How long have they been together?”

  Evie shrugged. “A couple of months. It’s not her. Or him. It’s just that I’m frozen in the moment after I left him, and it’s time for a thaw.”

  “You should take your own advice. Have some fun. Hook up with some big city cutie, love him and leave him.” Karen took a big slug of wine. The more she drank, the better a one night stand sounded. “That’s what I wanted to do with Paul.”

  “Maybe he’ll come around. Living next door to you would test any man’s resolve.”

  Carrie stood up. “If Evie gets any drunker, I think you could probably have a one night stand with her.”

  “Hey!” The pretty blond shrugged. “Yeah, you probably could.”

  “Great, so the list of people who would do me is a whopping two.”

  Carrie and Evie exchanged a look that Karen was either too drunk or too stupid to understand.

  “What?”

  “That’s seriously how you see yourself?” Carrie rolled her eyes and headed for the kitchen.

  “Hey!” Karen stumbled to her feet. “I get that I’m drunk, and a bit self-centered today, but are you being bitchy with me?”

  Instead of answering, the redhead stepped out of view, muttering under her breath.

  “Seriously, is she mad at me?”

  Evie raggedly shook her head from side to side. “Nah. She just doesn’t approve of casual sex.”

  “I’m the furthest thing from a prude!” This was shouted from the kitchen. Karen decided to ignore all comments that weren’t offered in a social fashion.

  “Maybe she’s not getting enough at home.” Instead of offending Carrie, this just got a sarcastic laugh. “Oh crap, that’s her point, isn’t it? That we should be looking for variations on Ian?”

  Evie drained her wine glass. “She wouldn’t be wrong, you know. Nixon men are good stock. Kyle has made my sister very happy.” Carrie’s brother-in-law had recently proposed to Evie’s sister. Proof that Wardham was too small and Karen needed to get out in order to find a life worth living. “But good men are hard to find.”

  Carrie popped back into the room at that. “That’s not true. They’re out there, but you can’t…” She waved at the two of them, at a loss for words. After thinking for a minute, she stabbed a finger in the air at Karen. “You’re so convinced that no one wants you, and you have no idea how gorgeous you are. And when you meet someone who doesn’t just like you, but likes you, you run scared at the first disagreement.” Karen opened her mouth to protest, but Carrie was on a roll. She turned toward Evie. “And you! You’re in the prime of your life. You’re right, it’s time to thaw, but don’t sell yourself short either. You deserve a good time and a good friend.”

  “Baby steps. First the good time. It’s been so long, I may have forgotten what to do,” the blond muttered, skepticism all over her face.

  “Not all men are as selfi
sh as Dale, sweetie.” Over the years, Evie had shared enough about her ex that Karen knew this needed to be said, but she was glad that Carrie was the one speaking the truth. Her relationship with Ian wasn’t perfect, but it was clear that man adored his wife and treated her like a queen. For years Karen had thought he was one of a kind. Her closest male friends, other than Ian, had spent most of their twenties proving that fact. Ian’s brother Kyle had recently rekindled a long ago relationship with his first love, and in his active pursuit of Laney, Karen and many others in Wardham had fallen for him as well. In a totally platonic, happy for them both kind of way, of course. But before that reunion, Kyle had been just as bad as Dale. Or their friend Ty, who had slept with half the pretty girls between Detroit and Toronto, and was on a mission to bed the other half.

  Paul had alluded to a messy past. Enough that his ex-wife would have concerns about any new relationship, which made Karen’s stomach pitch wildly. And yet with her, he’d been restrained and sweet. Right up until he got dirty, but even that had been…attentive. He heard her whispered fantasies and delivered. No way would Paul be selfish in the bedroom.

  “Care to elaborate about what’s putting that look on your face?” Evie looked so keen for something, anything, that Karen didn’t want to disappoint.

  “Is it possible that the best sex of my life was over the phone?” She let her head fall back against the couch with a small wail. “And I’m never going to have it again?”

  “Seriously, it was that good?” Carrie raised her eyebrows. “Maybe you should damn the consequences and go for it.”

  “It was incredible,” Karen whispered. The memory of his voice, his words, flooded her chest with heat. “Uninhibited sex is not a foreign idea to me, but up until last week, it was still just a concept, ya know? Now I’ve tasted it, and I want more.”

  “We had some knockout moments like that. One night we drank a magnum of champagne and did some unspeakable one-time-only things…I mean, I would have done them again, but Dale never mentioned them…” Evie shrugged. “I guess that’s one of the many reasons we’re divorced. Couldn’t even talk about sex.”

  Carrie nodded slowly. “Are you sure this isn’t just a communication problem with Paul?”

  Karen shook her head, misery replacing the temporary wave of desire. “There’s more that I can’t share, but he’s really not open to a casual fling, and I need to respect that.”

  It was late by the time Karen got home. Carrie’s husband had taken one look at the blushing, giggling women and pronounced none of them fit to drive, which was not a surprise. He loaded Karen and Evie into his truck, pulled his wife in tight for a kiss that bordered on indecent and left no doubt that he was comfortable with the unspeakable things. Ian Nixon was one of the good guys, and he treated his wife right. Karen knew that Carrie was speaking from experience when she suggested communication might be the key—Ian hadn’t always been that attentive.

  But she couldn’t see a way for this situation with Paul to be anything other than heartbreaking. For one or the other, and probably both of them.

  She almost climbed into bed in her clothes, but she wouldn’t be able to fall asleep without brushing her teeth, and that step in the routine led her to her pajama drawer as if by rote. On auto-pilot, she padded over to her laptop to check her email. What the hell, she was upright, might as well be thorough.

  It took her a few bleary blinks to understand the words swimming on the screen in front of her. After reading the message over a few times, she reached for the phone. Her mother answered on the third ring.

  “Karen? Is everything okay?”

  “Yep. Sorry, I know it’s late.”

  “That’s okay, sweetie.”

  “I got an email today, probably shoulda been sent to you.” Karen blinked again. She was pretty sure she just slurred the last three words together. Crap.

  “Honey, are you drunk?”

  “Tipsy.”

  Her mother chuckled in her ear. “Do you want to call me in the morning?”

  “Nah, it’s okay.”

  “Uhm, okay…an email, you say?”

  “I think it’s an offer to buy the store. I dunno, I could be wrong. I am drunk, after all.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  There would never be a good time for his ex-wife to visit and pass judgment on his new life, but Paul really wasn’t in the mood for it today. Unfortunately, Susan was heading to a cottage not far from Wardham for the weekend, so her offer to drop Megan off was entirely reasonable.

  He doubted she’d want to come inside, but vacuumed just in case. Rescued the latest issue of National Geographic from the bathroom and set it out on the coffee table. Paced for a while before convincing himself he was being silly. He opened his laptop at the desk under the front window and called up his email. There was a nice note from a student who had volunteered in his department in Windsor, asking for a letter of reference. He appreciated the distraction, and was mid-composition when Susan’s hatchback pulled up to the curb.

  He stepped out onto his porch and lifted a hand in greeting as she got out. She returned the gesture before reaching into the trunk to grab Megan’s backpack. His daughter was already bounding toward him from the curb, and he took the stairs quickly to greet her on the walk with a bone crusher hug.

  “Have a good week, sweetie?”

  She nodded. “I’ve got some homework to do, but it’s not too bad.”

  Susan joined them. “Hi, Paul.” She flicked her gaze over the small bungalow behind him, then over to Karen’s house, and down the street. “Nice neighbourhood. Cute town, too.”

  “Thanks. It’s nice. I like it.” Painfully wonderful and am tortured on a daily basis by my proximity to my off-limits neighbour would probably be too much information.

  She handed over a card. “I’m not sure what cell reception is like at the cottage, but they have a landline. Here’s the address and phone number. Try my cell first, but just in case…”

  He nodded. “You’re meeting friends there?” She didn’t answer right away and he waved her off. “Sorry, none of my business.”

  “No, it’s fine. Meg, why don’t you take your bag inside?”

  “Seriously? Mom, you always say that when you want to have an adult conversation.” Their daughter rolled her eyes.

  “With good reason, kiddo. Listen to your mom and dump your bag, then we’ll go for a bike ride. And put the eye roll away, please.” He took a deep breath and shared a What can you do? look with Susan.

  “I know it’s normal boundary testing, but holy crap, the attitude!” Susan puffed her cheeks out in frustration. “I appreciate you taking her for the whole weekend.”

  “It’s not a favour. I always want more time with her.” He crossed his arms over his chest and slowed his next exhale. This was the first deviation from their revised custody plan, and he couldn’t help but get his back up. After four years of only wanting to discuss this through lawyers, he didn’t know how to take this long unseen, more flexible, side of Susan.

  “I know.” She reached out and placed her small manicured hand on his forearm. “But thank you all the same. And about the cottage…I’m meeting a friend there. A man that I’ve been seeing.”

  “Has Meg met him yet?”

  “Yes, a couple of times. He has two kids, a twelve year old boy and an eight year old girl. We went to the sugar bush together.”

  Maple syrup season had been over for two months. “That was a while ago.”

  “We’re taking it slow. I want to get it right this time.” Paul winced, and she sucked in a breath. “Sorry, that’s not what I mean.” She squeezed his arm and dropped her hand. “Anyway, I thought you should know.”

  “Okay, thanks.” He meant it. He wanted Susan to know she could share anything that might affect Megan. And he didn’t harbour any ill-will toward her, or any lingering feelings, so if she was happy and his daughter’s feelings and safety were being considered, that’s all that mattered.

  The scre
en door slapped open and Megan stomped across the porch and down the stairs. “Are you guys done fighting?”

  “We weren’t—”

  Paul’s protest was cut off as Megan let out a holler and took off past him at a run. “Hey! Karen!”

  His heart thudded to a stop and his vision dimmed as Susan tipped her head to the side to better see around him where their daughter was headed. His back was to them, but he could imagine what was happening behind him. Megan, animatedly carrying on about something. Karen, listening, because she would still care about his daughter, and it was probably about books, so she’d care for that reason as well. If she was coming home from work, she’d be in jeans and a polo shirt. Otherwise maybe capris and a t-shirt. Something bright and colourful, because she’d be trying to put on a brave face to the world. He knew what that was like.

  “Who’s Karen?” Susan tilted her face up to his, and he willed her not to read anything there.

  “My neighbour.” He pointed to her house. “She manages the grocery store in town.”

  “Oh right, the cookie making incident! Meg thought that was pretty cool.”

  “Yeah. They both like books.” His voice was way too gruff, but he couldn’t help it. Any second now they’d drift into his peripheral vision. He could hear them approaching. Maybe ten feet away. Eight. Aching awareness prickled at the back of his neck and down his spine. Susan was watching him with unabashed curiosity, and he furrowed his brow. The best defense… “She’s nice. Not my type, but you know…pleasant.”

  As soon as the words were out his mouth, he regretted them. They weren’t even a little bit true, but Susan seemed to believe them. What did that say about him, that she so readily accepted him as an asshole? Disappointment, probably on behalf of all women everywhere, drifted across her face. In that moment as he turned to introduce Susan to Karen, he needed no more proof of his inability to love than his ex-wife and his fantasy girl standing toe to toe, about to bond over being done with him.