by L. B. Dunbar
“Did you mean what you said, darlin’?”
“What was that?” I smiled, feeling strangely at peace in his place, comfortable with his touch on my face.
“You’d move here, if I asked?”
“Yes,” I whispered, not trusting my voice, not believing the possibility of his asking.
“Then I’m asking, beautiful. I’d like you to take the job and move in with me.”
I could hardly contain my smile, but my logical side overruled my heart.
“Don’t you think it’s a little fast?”
“Not as fast as I’d like. I don’t want to wait three more minutes, let alone three weeks, but I understand,” he teased, his eyes melting to liquid chocolate. I didn’t speak, and the pad of his finger stroked over my bottom lip. “Sometimes fine wine needs to breathe. You’ve breathed enough. Now it’s time to savor you—every day, Edie. Every damn day.” His mouth covered mine and all sanity left me, just like that first time. A sane woman might not have done what I did that night, nor would she do what I was considering doing this night. But I didn’t consider myself insane, either. I was in love, possibly for the first time. This time around things would be different. I had to trust in myself and trust in Tommy, which I did. When he pulled back and stared into my eyes, I knew the idea of living without him outweighed my fears of giving up everything and moving here. Not to mention that the job offered by Ivy sounded more purposeful, more self-fulfilling, more beneficial to others, and I was ready for something like that in my life.
“I don’t want you to leave,” he said, his voice gravelly.
“I can be here as soon as mid-August.” The timing would be right, with Masie’s move, and allowing for a reasonable notice at work.
“Sounds like perfect timing,” Tommy offered, a smile breaking across his face. For his part, he needed the concert tour to end.
“What’s next? After the tour?”
Tommy shrugged. “There’s always something with those boys, but I’m looking forward to some time off with my girlfriend.” His lips covered mine again, and there was no more discussion.
Epilogue
Holiday in Hawaii
“This is where it all started.” Tommy smirked, rolling his head to look over at me as we sat at the edge of the pool, our feet dangling in the cool water while we soaked up the Hawaiian sun. It had been on the edge of this pool, one year prior, that I saw the tall, dark, and brooding man, dressed in black from head to toe, as if he were a security guard. The memory made me giggle, considering his present attire of bright orange board shorts with giant palm leaves printed at odd angles. Either way he dressed, he still gave off that aura of protective alpha, and I adored the care he gave to me.
When I gave my two-weeks’ notice, Max hardly contained his surprise. When I told him I was moving to California, to be with the man I’d met during my trip to Hawaii, his forehead furrowed in disappointment.
“To think I helped support that trip,” he had muttered, recalling the gift he’d given me. He hadn’t spoken in anger but shock. He surprised me by adding, “If I’d gone with you, maybe you’d be staying here to be with me instead.” It had been the first blatant comment that he’d been interested in something more with me, and I realized an opportunity had been lost between us. Then again, my more sat next to me on the edge of the pool.
In addition, nothing could have prepared me for David’s strong reaction to my decision.
“You’re what?” he’d barked into the phone, when for some strange reason I felt I owed him the courtesy of explaining I quit my job and planned to move across the country. “Is this about that tattooed dude in Arizona?” The venom in that question reminded me, I owed David nothing. I was free to live my life the way I wanted it to be.
Who knew my forty-third year would be a whirlwind that changed everything? New location. New job. New love. All after-effects of having cancer, a killer disease, that decided to rest for the moment and allow me a second chance at life. Love wasn’t on the prescription pad when I got the clean bill of health, but it certainly had been the pill I needed. I could have continued my life as it was and been fine, but like Tommy joked, why always settle for wine, when some days call for champagne?
Our trip to Hawaii would certainly qualify for celebration. We’d returned to honor Ivy’s annual tradition—as a family. Thankfully, Masie and Caleb were included in this special occasion. Shortly after moving to California, and moving into Tommy’s studio apartment, he asked me to marry him.
“I thought you said marriage wasn’t for you,” I teased, recalling his words despite the catastrophic marriage he’d had in his youth.
“Just hadn’t met the right lady,” he replied, tackling me onto his couch. “And you haven’t answered my question? Have I misread something, darlin’? Did you not want to do the marriage thing again?” His eyes held that hesitant gaze, one I’d seen more often than I originally witnessed from such a self-assured man, because therein lay the truth: Tommy Carrigan was just a man, who had once been a rock star, and he had doubts like every other man.
“I’d love to marry you, Tommy Carrigan.”
“So, let me ask again, and we keep all the other stuff out.” He winked, acknowledging that his proposal had been overshadowed by his previous marriage and mine.
“Edie Williams, I’d love for you to be the fine wine I sip every day. I warned you to not make me fall in love with you, but I don’t think you could help yourself. From the first moment I saw you, you were irresistible to me, and I want to continue to worship your irresistibleness for the rest of my days. Will you marry me?”
My head nodding before he finished the question, he paused, awaiting the word. “Yes. Yes, yes, yes.”
“Mmmm…You know how much I love it when you say that word to me,” he hummed into the crook of my neck before sliding off of me to kneel on the floor. He slipped a ring out of his pocket.
“Well, I love you,” I said, while righting myself on his couch. He remained on his knees before me, reaching for my left hand.
“I love you, too, darlin’,” his voice dropping in that pebbly sound as he slipped the ring on my finger.
Sitting by the pool, I stared down at that ring, glistening in the sunshine. His hand covered mine, and he brought my fingers to his lips, kissing over the knuckle below the ring. We were getting married the next day—a beach wedding, surrounded by immediate family.
“Tomorrow,” he muttered, looking up at me under hooded eyes. “And every tomorrow after that.”
+ + +
Want to read about some hidden gems in the story…find a sample of both The Legend of Arturo King and Paradise Found: Cain after the acknowledgements…
Acknowledgements
Words cannot express my gratitude for Loving L.B., my Facebook group. You Lovelies rock day in and day out, and it’s my pleasure to hang with you. Extra love and affection to Ashley, Chantell, and Karen for beta reads. A triple scoop of Tommy for Joanne Schwehm, Bestselling Author of the Prescotts. Darlin’, your suggestions were invaluable to me. Hugs to Sylvia for all the things.
Shannon, four years, twenty-one books, and five covers later, you are still with me, and I’m forever grateful.
Kiezha, I’ll never forget that your help pushed me to a new level.
Karen, a second helping of appreciation for being my second set of eyes, always.
Thank you to the ultimate silver fox, although, damnit, he still has more dark hair than gray (it’s all in that sexy beard), Mr. Dunbar. You’re my rock star. And of course, MD, MK, JR and A, my babies who I’ll motherly converse about any day.
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Like over 40 romance…you might like this gem.
Read more here.
The Sex Education of M.E.
M.E.
Match me
A mother and a widow. These things defined me. Forty-something, I stopped counting once the second digit rolled past another zero. It’s funny…as a child, I couldn’t wait to get to double digits. Ten seemed so important. Thirteen entered another realm. Eighteen, twenty, twenty-one. The counting slowed down when I got closer to thirty, but the years sped up. I wanted time to stand still at forty.
Whoever said forty was the new twenty clearly didn’t live in my body. It was curvy, but not in that seductive, luscious, twenty-something way. There were no toned abs and sculpted thighs on my body. These were the lumps and bumps of a woman who’d bore children, nursed them until her breasts sagged, and carried them until her back spread. Each child added pounds, and each decade refused to remove them.
It has been one year since my husband’s death. This isn’t a story about the dead, however. It’s about re-birth. After my husband died, I had two choices: I could continue to sleep away each day and feel sorry for myself, or I could get my ass out of bed and take charge of my life. The life that remained after my husband’s ended. A difficult year followed after the loss of a man I’d been married to for nineteen years, but I had two children, and they needed me. The past year was a blur of firsts I didn’t wish to recall.
What I wanted to recall was sex. More than recall it - reinstate the practice of it. To be perfectly honest, I hadn’t had sex in the last year either. The desire just hadn’t existed. I remembered it, but guilt kept me from doing anything about it. I didn’t want to dishonor the memory of a man I’d been with for twenty years. One man. It was no small feat. People wanted to glorify him after death. Nate Peters was a good man, but he wasn’t an angel. At times, I was angered by people’s praise of him; at other times, I wallowed in self-pity that I had lost a respectable man. Then one day, I snapped out of it. I still had a life to live.
So here I sat at a Fourth of July block party, a few streets over from my home. My best friend, Gia Carlutti, asked me to attend. The theme was screaming children and drunken fathers letting off fireworks, but what the hell, I had nothing better to do. Besides, Gia had been a huge source of support during the last year. Divorced long ago, she’d been gently encouraging me to date—something I’d refused to do.
“It will be good for you,” she said. “Meet some people. Go to a club. Be wild again.” She swung her large hips back and forth, fluffing out her hair like a teenager. She acted like one, and I loved her for it. I’d lost track of all the men she was dating at once. She lived the life, according to her, and I needed to live mine, too. I wasn’t convinced yet that living life meant sleeping with seven different men, one for each night of the week, but what did I know? The last time I’d dated, I had gone out each night of the week. With one man, who became my husband.
Sitting on her front steps, we sipped Moscato while her two young children rode up and down the block on their bikes, dodging laughing groups of adults and narrowly missing toddlers on tricycles. Admittedly, Sam and Sara were out of control, but Gia didn’t pay them much mind. A single mother of a six- and eight-year old, she did the best she could. According to her, their father was the one who made them unruly. He’d disappeared after only a few years of marriage. Parenting tips were not shared between us—what Gia offered was man advice.
“Here,” she said, reaching out for my phone that lay on the stoop next to me. I don’t know why I carried it with me. I was only a few blocks from home, but it became more and more of a security measure for monitoring my teenage daughters. They were both out on this crazy night. Mitzi went to the northern suburbs with a group of friends to watch the fireworks. Bree wandered the neighborhood with other teenagers not yet old enough to drive. The phone was mischief control.
Before I knew it, Gia had my phone in her hand, downloading an app. Another thing I hardly understood in the modern mode of communication. Other than maps and messaging, and of course, calling someone, I didn’t see the use of a variety of apps my children and Gia told me I needed. In seconds, she had something loaded and then began a litany of questions. Muttering to herself, she stated my name, birthdate, eye color, and hair color.
“Weight?” Side-glancing at me and pouting her lower lip while rocking back and forth, she answered her own question. “Ahh…let’s say one-fifteen.”
I snorted into my plastic cup of wine.
“One-fifteen? Unless you are discussing the time for a meeting, that is clearly not my weight.”
“You can’t be much more than that,” she mumbled, continuing to type.
“I can. And I am. What are you doing anyway?” I reached over her arm, attempting to retrieve my phone. She held it just out of my reach, but faced my direction, and I was able to make out the logo, if I squinted. That was the other thing about age. Slowly, my eyesight was failing. I refused to give into the need for an optometrist visit and be diagnosed with reading glasses. This over-forty-thing was the pits.
Narrowing my eyes, I read the blue swirl: MatchMe.
“Oh no.” Leaning into her, I reached for the phone again. “No, Gia, absolutely not. I’m not that desperate.” As soon as the words escaped me, I was apologetic. MatchMe was the dating site where Gia got all her men.
“I didn’t mean…”
“It’s fine.” She cut me off with the wave of a hand, manicured with red nails for the holiday. “I am desperate, and actually, so are you.” Her eyebrow rose at me. Gia knew some of my deepest secrets, one of which was I hadn’t had sex since my husband’s death, and I was getting…horny. As a college professor, the profession did not provide much mingling with other adults my own age very often. Other than the fellow faculty members, most of whom were either married, too old, too young, or gay, I didn’t meet many potential candidates for my pent up frustration. In a drunken stupor one night, when I learned I couldn’t drink like a college student any longer, I confessed to Gia I wanted someone to sleep with. Just that. No dating. Just sex.
“Friends with benefits,” I suggested.
“Fuck buddy,” Gia said.
“I don’t even know what that is.”
“It’s someone you call, and if he’s available, you get together for sex. Not friends. No dates. Just sex,” she explained. I laughed, but Gia was serious. Her dark eyes danced with pleasure at teaching me my first lesson in modern sex.
“Yes,” I said. “Then I need one of those.” Saying “fuck” seemed a little extreme. “Why couldn’t he be a ‘sex friend’?” I asked, to which she replied: “You could call him a boy toy.” That just sounded all kinds of wrong. I didn’t want a boy. I wanted a man.
She’d set me up with an account on her favorite dating site in hopes of finding me someone. Here’s the thing: I was scared out of my mind. I didn’t want some sex addict. I didn’t want an ax murderer. I didn’t want someone sleeping with fourteen other women ages twenty to twenty-one. A dating site wasn’t going to factor all those characters out. Every person there was like me - desperate to find someone for sex. I hung my head in shame at the thought. I was running out of choices unless I simply propositioned someone.
“Honey, it’s perfect. Most of these men are no strings attached. It’s just what you need.”
The fireworks were about to begin, and we entered the street like the rest of the neighbors. At the opposite end, in the cross streets, stood the first of many large displays the resident on the corner would release to celebrate the birth of our nation. Gathering in close with other adults, while children settled closer to the activity, I noticed Gia’s neighbor and a few of his male friends near us. Todd Swanker was just that – a wanker. He was crude and abrasive in his language, with no filter for all things inappropriate. Every neighborhood has one of those neighbors; the harml
ess, married one who flirts with every female above sixteen. Our neighborhood was not unique. Todd was our guy.
“Ladies,” he said, stepping up to wrap an arm around each of us, letting his fall from Gia almost instantaneously but lingering on my waist. A gentle tug toward him compelled me to pull back out of his grasp as he began the first of his unfiltered comments.
“Another year of fireworks, but of course I see them nightly,” he boasted, pausing to let the images of him and his wife sink in.
“Bet it’s your wife who sees colors each night. The inside of her eyelids as she holds them shut tight,” Gia muttered causing me to giggle at the thought of Todd’s sexual prowess.
“Of course, if Emme needed help in this area, I’m sure I could work something out.” He twitched his eyebrows and rubbed his hands together, as if it wouldn’t be a problem for him to provide his services to me. My name rolled over his tongue made me shiver.
With a brief, “No thanks,” I looked around the gathered crowd.
Nearby, but not too close, was a man I hadn’t seen before. He dragged his beer bottle up to his mouth and took a long pull before releasing the lip of the bottle. His throat rolled slowly as he swallowed, and for some reason, I was mesmerized by this motion. The slight glow of a street light illuminated our small patch of street and offered a backdrop that highlighted his features from the side: large arms with a hint of tattoo, flat stomach under a tight t-shirt, low-hanging shorts. I continued to stare, transfixed by the movement of his throat under a layer of scruff. Removing the bottle from his mouth, he turned in our direction, and I quickly looked away. My face heated, and I thanked the heavy black of night. I stared forward just in time to see another wave of fire light the sky ahead.
