LITMIR.BIZ

      Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter Fifteen

      Chapter Sixteen

      Chapter Seventeen

      Chapter Eighteen

      Chapter One

      The shop, like the steep, rather narrow street it stood on, had a feel of times past about it. The oyster-white sign over the door read Linen and Lace in flowing script. Vines and morning glories twined and trailed in and out of the lettering.

      Mack McGarrity stood beneath a striped awning, his hands fisted in his pockets, staring in the window to the left of the shop’s entrance. Beyond the glass was a brass canopy bed. The bed was draped with lacy white curtains, covered in filmy white linens and piled with embroidered white pillows.

      Next to the bed, on the left, stood a white dresser bearing a white pitcher and bowl. On the right, a white nightstand, with a vase of white roses and a white-shaded lamp. White lacy nightgowns, each one a little different from the next, had been tossed in an artful tangle across the pillows and the filmy bedcovers, as if the lady who owned them all couldn’t make up her mind which to wear.

      Mack smiled to himself. The fists stuck in his pockets relaxed a little.

      On their wedding night Jenna had worn a nightgown like one of those thrown across that white bed—an almost transparent gown, with lace at the collar and down the front. And roses, little pink ones, embroidered around the tiny pearly buttons.

      Those buttons had given him trouble. They were so damn small. And he had been nervous, though he’d tried not to show it.

      But Jenna had known.

      And she’d laughed, that soft, teasing laugh of hers. “It’s not as if it’s our first time,” she’d whispered.

      “It is the first time. My first time…with my wife.” His voice had been gruff, he remembered, gruff with emotions he’d never allowed anyone but Jenna to see….

      Mack turned from the window. He stared across the street, at a store that sold hand-painted furniture. A man and a woman stood at the display window there, admiring a tall bureau decorated with a woodland scene. Mack watched them, not really seeing them, until they disappeared inside.

      Then, rather abruptly, he turned back to the shop called Linen and Lace. Two determined steps later, he reached the glass-fronted door. He took the handle and pulled it open.

      The scent of the place hit him first—floral, sweet but not too sweet. An undertone of tartness. And something spicy, too. Like cinnamon. It didn’t smell like Jenna, exactly. But it reminded him of her. Sweet and just a little spicy.

      He’d barely started to smile at the thought when he realized he’d tripped the buzzer that would warn her she had another customer. She turned and saw him just as he spotted her.

      When the buzzer rang, Jenna glanced toward the door out of habit, ready to send her new customer a swift, be-right-with-you smile.

      The smile died unborn on her lips.

      It was Mack.

      Mack.

      Her ex-husband. Here. In her shop.

      After all these years.

      It couldn’t be.

      But it was. Definitely.

      Mack.

      Her throat closed up on itself. She gulped to keep from gasping.

      He looked…terrific. Older, yes. And somehow more relaxed. But in a deep and fundamental way, the same.

      He was staring straight at her through those eyes she remembered much too well. Not quite blue and not quite gray, like a sky caught between sunshine and cloudiness.

      He smiled at her—that beautiful, half ironic, half shy smile, the one that had dropped her in her tracks nine years before.

      He’d lived in an apartment down the hall from her. And she had knocked on his door to tell him that she knew very well he’d been feeding her cat.

      When he answered, he actually held Byron in his arms. That sleek midnight-black traitor had the nerve to purr as if he belonged there.

      “I’ll have you know, that’s my cat,” she’d informed him, doing her best to sound bold.

      He had smiled, just the way he was smiling at her now—like the sun coming out on a gray, chilly day. She’d felt the warmth, a warmth that reached down inside her and then started to spread.

      “Come on in,” he had suggested as he stroked her cat. “We’ll talk about it.”

      It had never even occurred to her to say no.

      And now, all these

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