by Dee, Bonnie
Second Chances
Formerly published in Prime Passions anthology as Moving On
Copyright © 2015 by Bonnie Dee
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
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Chapter One
The room seemed smaller without the books. Shouldn’t all those empty shelves appear wide open, ready to be filled with something? But without the rainbow of book spines filling the wall from ceiling to floor, the space appeared diminished.
Camilla smoothed her fingers over the brown tape covering the seam of one of the boxes. One end wouldn’t stay stuck down. If it peeled off, the items might spill out in the back of the moving truck. She needed to seal it shut and keep her things safe. What was in the box anyway? She’d forgotten to label it.
She tore off the tape, opened the flaps, and stared at the contents: Sam’s awards and plaques. What in the hell was she supposed to do with things like that? There wasn’t room for them in her new place, yet it seemed wrong to send these signs of her dead husband’s merits to the dump. She picked up the glossy plaque on the top of the pile—an award for excellence. Sam had been outstanding in so many ways: a brilliant linguist, an exceptional professor, a generous civic benefactor, a trustworthy husband and a thoughtful lover. If she’d felt a lack of something during these past few years, it must have been on her part, her foolish middle-aged craving for excitement due to a sense of time passing her by. Surely the flaw hadn’t been in such a good and kind man as Sam.
“You’re supposed to be closing the boxes, not unpacking them.”
She jumped and turned. A shaggy-haired young man wearing a gray T-shirt with a moving truck logo on the front stood in the doorway. Underneath the graphic were the words Bert and Ernie Take You Home.
She stared for a beat too long at the way the words stretched across his broad chest. “Are you Bert or Ernie?”
“I’m Ryan. Bert and Ernie stopped ‘taking you home’ about four years ago. I don’t think Bert could climb stairs anymore, let alone carry furniture down them. Your doorbell’s broken, but the door was open so I came in. Let me tape that for you.”
Walking toward her, he pulled a tape roller from a holster on his waist like a gunslinger. He waited while Camilla put the plaque inside and closed the flaps of the box. When he leaned over to seal a fresh piece of tape over the seam, Camilla inhaled the warm, masculine scent of his body. His large presence invaded her space, alive and youthful and far too magnetic. Something stirred deep within her, making her breasts tender and her pussy throb with her quickening heartbeats.
She stepped away from him and those uncomfortable, unacceptable reactions.
Ryan straightened and looked down into her eyes. His were light green. His low voice rumbled like the engine of a muscle car. “It’s hard to know what to keep, isn’t it? I’ve been doing this job a while. There are only a few reasons a person moves. New job, lost job, break up or death. Which is yours?”
Camilla would have resented his blunt multiple choice question if it weren’t for the kindness in his eyes and his sympathetic tone.
“My husband is dead.”
It was the first time she’d actually said the words aloud. She hadn’t needed to inform anyone. The news spread quickly through the university grapevine, and Sam had no family members she’d needed to call. Now each syllable dropped from her mouth like a cold, hard pebble. My. Husband. Is. Dead.
Should she break down? Should she burst into tears? It nearly made her weep that she felt no natural impulse to cry.
“I’m sorry.” The way the young man said it seemed like more than the perfunctory response people offered a grieving widow. “What happened?”
“Cancer. He went quickly.” She drew a breath and added. “He died about ten months ago. I thought...It seemed like it was time to move someplace new.”
Ryan nodded and slipped the tape gun back into his belt. “They tell you it gets easier with time. I don’t know about that. It just evolves into something different.”
She noted the furrow between his eyebrows. “Who did you lose?”
“My brother, when I was a kid. I remember how I felt right after it happened and for a long time after that. Now it’s a quieter loss. Like an amputation you get used to.”
He tapped a finger on the tape dispenser before sliding it back into its holster. “Also, a few years ago the woman I lived with left me. Not the same as death, but having the person you love tell you she simply doesn’t want you anymore, that you’ve become irrelevant to her…” He paused. “That can be pretty wrenching, too.”
Camilla abruptly felt the pain of his loss so sharply, it hurt more than her own. She could feel the poking angles of those barbed emotions.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, knowing those words were never sufficient in the face of heart break. But what else could she say?
“So I understand how hard it is to let go of stuff,” Ryan continued. “She left some things behind, and I carried those boxes of her crap with me from one apartment to another before I finally threw them out.”
Camilla looked at the sealed box in front of her. “Do you have a marker?”
He gave her a Sharpie from his tool belt.
She uncapped it and labeled the box, Sam’s Crap—Storage Unit.
In the end, wasn’t that what awards and plaques and trophies amounted to?
“Please keep all the storage boxes near the back of the truck so you can drop them off on the way. It’s Peerson’s U-Lock-It. I’ll meet you there with the key to the unit.” She smiled slightly at Ryan as she handed him the marker.
“Yes, ma’am.” He touched her hand, the heat from his lighting up her skin. “It does get easier just like they say.”
Camilla had experienced both sympathy and pity over the past months. Ryan’s compassionate eyes peering through a fringe of sandy hair offered empathy. They also contained something she hadn’t seen in a man’s gaze in a long while—interest in her as a woman. His gaze flicked to her chest for a microsecond before refocusing on her face.
His frank assessment made her twitchy. Parts of her that had lain dormant for much longer than Sam had been dead stirred to life. Excited and embarrassed and a little frightened, she drew her hand away from his and folded her arms over her breasts.
“I assume you’ll start with the furniture and then the boxes?”
“Yeah. My partner should be right behind me. Show me what you want done.”
As she led him from room to room, talking a little too fast and high as she pointed out items that would need special care, Camilla felt as if she were recovering after walking on shifting sand. The unexpected stab of lust had shaken her, but she could regain control. She’d controlled h
er emotions for quite a long time. She was a master at it.
“I took the shelves out of the curio cupboard, but will the glass front be all right? You’ll wrap it carefully?”
“Yes, ma’am. We have quilted pads for that.” The moving guy presented her with a clipboard of paperwork to sign, and when she passed him the pen, their gazes locked for a moment. Another stab of something flashed between them. Attraction, interest, pure lust?
She blinked and looked away. It must be her imagination. Why would a sexy young guy like this be interested in a practically middle-aged woman?
Another muscular man in a Bert and Ernie shirt clomped into the room, breaking the moment of tension.
“This is Pat." Ryan jerked his thumb at the man who looked like a former linebacker gone to seed.
Camilla nodded a greeting. “I’ll get out of your way and let you get to work.”
She retreated into the kitchen, where she poured one last cup of coffee before cleaning and packing the machine. As she stood in the kitchen doorway sipping from her cup, she watched the moving men carry seventeen years of her life out the front door.
By the time they’d removed the heavy pieces of furniture and were ready to start on the boxes, sweat stained both men’s shirts under the arms and up the back, turning the light gray dark.
“Why don’t you take a break? I don’t have much left in the fridge, but there’s some bottled water." She took the last pair of bottles of Spring Lake from the naked shelf and wondered if she should unplug the refrigerator before she left.
Pat thanked her for the water then pulled a pack of cigarettes from his jeans pocket. “I’ll be outside.”
Water in hand, Ryan sat on a stool in the breakfast nook. He took a long drink, Adam’s apple bobbing and sweat shining on his throat.
Camilla could almost taste the salt on her tongue. She looked down at the coffeemaker she was wrapping to distract her from staring.
He swallowed, sighed and capped the bottle. “I see your new address isn’t too far away. Where do you work?”
“I teach classic literature at the University of North Carolina. My husband was a professor there as well. Actually, he was my professor when I was a grad student. I never really left college. Went straight from attending to teaching there.”
“You ever think about going somewhere else?” He leaned forward, arms resting on his thighs, the bottle of water dangling between his legs. The placement of the bottle drew Camilla’s attention to his crotch and the bulge in his jeans. Her cheeks burned and she dragged her gaze back to his face.
“I like teaching well enough.” She set down the coffeemaker and thought about other dreams she’d once had. “It would be nice to travel, to see the birthplaces of some of my favorite authors or the lands they write about. I always thought teaching would allow time for traveling, but somehow Sam and I never got around to it.”
“Maybe you should now. Maybe this is the time in your life to try something new.” He smiled and grooves cut either side of his mouth. She had an overwhelming urge to put her fingertip into those deep dimples. Instead she turned to the counter and wiped up a non-existent spill.
“I’m moving to a new apartment,” she said. “That’s a start.”
“It is.” Ryan emptied the water bottle in a few more swallows, rose and walked toward her. Tall and broad-shouldered, he seemed to fill the room and steal all the air out of it. “Have you thought about dating?”
Her stomach flipped like a fish on a hook and her body vibrated at the suggestion.
“It’s too soon for that,” she answered stiffly.
“You love and miss your husband. I understand. But you must get lonely. Maybe you’d like to go out for coffee some time.”
She’d missed Sam since long before he died. The man she’d fallen in love with had become a different person over the course of their marriage. By the end he’d been more like a good friend, their relationship mostly platonic. But accepting a coffee date with a strange young man out of the blue was not something she was prepared to do.
“Go out for coffee with you? You don’t even know me,” she blurted, then wanted to cram the words back into her mouth. He might not have meant a date with him. He was probably making a general observation. What an idiot she’d look like for imagining he was interested in her.
“Maybe right now you need to spend time with somebody who doesn’t know you, somebody you have no history with.”
His eyes, as clear and translucent as green glass, gazed into hers and her entire body contracted then expanded like a fist full of fingers opening. Again he smiled, flashing those charming dimples, and her heart nearly stopped beating. Oh, he meant her all right. It was definitely an invitation, to coffee and maybe more.
Camilla exhaled. And inhaled. And exhaled again, collecting her scattered thoughts.
“I think it’s time you got back to work.” She didn’t mean to sound chilly like some lady of the manor putting a servant back in his place, but she was nervous so the words came out more sharply than she’d meant them.
The gorgeous smile disappeared and Ryan nodded. “You’re right.”
He stood and the sharp odor of clean sweat and male pheromones made her body weak. Her pussy clenched and then released, buttery soft and warm, open and yearning as she dreamed of the things a cup of coffee might possibly lead to.
His eyes met hers as he passed and they held the promise of something new and exciting if she only dared reach out and take it.
She returned to the box containing the coffeemaker and sealed it shut.
As the moving men continued trudging in and out with stacks of boxes on their dollies, Camilla remained in the kitchen. Under normal circumstances she’d be preoccupied with the safety of her china or her curio cupboard, but she was afraid to have contact with Ryan again. She hadn’t imagined his interest in her. She kept replaying their brief conversations, analyzing every word like some student’s mid-term essay she must grade.
Did this guy make a habit out of seducing widows by playing the sympathetic listener? A man that handsome could have a pretty young hottie just by crooking his finger at her. Why would he bother with someone more seasoned? Maybe it was a joke or bet between him and his friend—dupe the vulnerable older woman into agreeing to a date then stand her up for a laugh, or else see how easily she tumbles into bed.
Or maybe he was honestly attracted to her. Camilla’s self esteem wasn’t so low she’d ruled that out as a possibility. At the very least, this little adventure with the moving guy had distracted her from what would otherwise have been a miserable afternoon of watching her former life being dismantled.
A knock on the kitchen door broke her from her reverie.
Ryan opened the door and wheeled an empty dolly into the room. “Are you ready for us to take down the kitchen boxes?”
“Yes, please.” She leaned against the counter and watched as he loaded cartons of dishes, pots and pans.
He paused, resting his arms on top of the dolly. “I’m sorry about hitting on you. Trust me I don’t usually come on to strange women, especially not ones I’m doing a job for. I’m not like that. It was inappropriate and I apologize.”
He bit his lower lip, and the sight of his teeth biting into pink flesh made her swallow hard. He fixed his green gaze on her again. “I just wanted you to know I was interested and to find out if you were too.”
She shook her head. “Why on earth would you be interested in me?”
Ryan gave a scoffing snort. “Why not? You’re beautiful.”
Her eyebrows shot up. She’d never considered herself beautiful. Attractive maybe, or striking with her bold features and dark eyes and hair, but certainly not conventionally beautiful.
He smiled. “Come on. You have to know you’re pretty. You’re also sad and I want to see what you look like when you smile.”
If he was playing her, he was winning. Camilla’s stomach did another series of somersaults at his compliment, the likes of which sh
e hadn’t heard in years. Not that Sam hadn’t told her she looked nice when dressed to go out or thanked her for cooking a meal. But there was an automatic quality to his appreciation. She was giddy with pleasure at being told with absolute sincerity by a handsome man that he saw her as beautiful.
“Well, thank you,” she managed. “You’re very sweet.”
“Ah, there’s the smile,” he teased.
After that she couldn’t have kept the corners of her mouth from curving up if she tried. She felt like a wallflower who’d gained the attention of the most popular boy at the dance.
Ryan straightened and walked around the box-laden dolly which stood between them. He approached her slowly, as if she were a bird that might take flight, and stopped in front of her to gaze down into her eyes.
“I’m going to do something to try to convince you that going out with me is a good idea. If I’m overstepping, I’ll apologize again and we’ll pretend it never happened.”
Camilla was transfixed by his lips shaping those words. She knew what his mouth was about to do, but even he moved slowly giving her time to step away, she was shocked when Ryan covered her mouth with his.
I haven’t been kissed by any man but Sam in almost twenty years. The thought floated in her mind, while her body responded naturally to the soft pressure of the handsome young man’s mouth on hers. Her lips moved in a soft, grasping motion, plucking on his and tasting them. She pressed her hands to his solid chest, not pushing him away but not clutching at him either.
She burned with excitement and the heat of his body only inches from hers. Her nipples drew tight, and her pussy tensed, aching for the fulfillment it had been denied for too long. His kiss was careful and questioning but hovered on the verge of growing more demanding. She wanted that. She leaned irresistibly toward him like a dry leaf being sucked into a whirlwind.
Ryan broke off the kiss and stepped back. His cheeks, already flushed from physical exertion, were even redder, and his eyes had gone from bottle green to deep emerald.
When Pat suddenly pushed open the kitchen door, both of them jumped.
