LITMIR.BIZ

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just got really overwhelmed by everything.

      “People figure that getting married and having babies is no big deal—but it is. It’s a huge deal, and there’s a lot of adjusting to be done by everybody. You impress me as a sensible, hardworking young man, and I can tell that you love Claire—just like I can tell that she loves you. But she expected that life would go on being one great big party, and that’s just not so. Marriage takes work and sacrifice. That’s the part people forget about. If you find someone you love, there always comes a time when you have to fight for them. And that’s a good thing in the long run because nothing that’s precious gets that way if it’s too easy.”

      Levi nodded. “I’m willing to fight for Claire until my dying breath.”

      “Nobody’s talking about dying, boy,” Gene told him, clapping one hand against Levi’s broad shoulders. “Now come with me. I’ve got some things in the basement I need moved around and brought up to the kitchen. I could use a hand with them.”

      “Absolutely,” Levi responded eagerly, wanting nothing more than to try to pay the man back in some small way for his kindness in allowing him this chance to win back the only woman he had ever loved.

      * * *

      Not a day went by when Claire didn’t regret all the hot words that just seemed to fly out of her mouth on their own accord that fateful morning after the wedding reception. Most of all, she regretted throwing Levi out—and throwing her wedding ring at him. But she had been so angry and so hurt that he had preferred a stupid card game to being with her, she’d lost all reason. She’d been so furious, she was almost blinded by it.

      At first she’d been so angry, she felt justified in leaving his phone calls unanswered.

      But then he’d stopped calling.

      Which meant to her that he had stopped caring. Because if Levi cared, he would have upped the number of his calls, not stopped them so abruptly. If he cared about her, truly cared, he would have come looking for her and wouldn’t have stopped—not to eat or drink or sleep—until he found her. And then he would have gone on to move heaven and earth to win her back.

      Since none of that, heretofore, had happened, nor did it appear to be happening, it just told her that she was right.

      Levi didn’t care anymore.

      Well, if he didn’t care anymore, then she didn’t, either.

      Except that she did.

      She cared so much, she literally hurt inside. Which just served to make her feel as if she was a fool. Only a fool pined for someone who wasn’t worth it, she argued over and over again.

      What she needed to do, she told herself at least once a day, was to forget all about Levi and just move on, the way normal people did.

      But how could she forget about him when every time she looked down into her daughter’s face, she saw traces of Levi?

      How could she move on when every morning began with thoughts of Levi? And every night ended that way, as well?

      How could she forget about Levi when, in her head, she kept hearing his voice? Seeing his face? Everywhere she turned, she could swear he’d been there, or even was there.

      She felt haunted, and with each day it was just getting worse, not better.

      “Okay, today is the first day of the rest of your life, and you are going to stop this,” Claire ordered her reflection in the mirror over the bureau. “You are going to take your adorable baby and march right out that door and into the rest of your life. A life without boundaries and without Levi.”

      Easier said than done, a little voice said in her head.

      Still, she couldn’t just live her life standing here in this room, staring at her reflection, too afraid to venture out.

      “The hell I am,” she declared out loud with enthusiasm.

      So resolved, she took her baby daughter into her arms, rested Bekka on her hip and walked out of her room and into the rest of her life, or so she wanted to believe.

      Unfortunately, as she all but marched into the hallway, she also walked straight into the person she was trying most to avoid.

      She walked straight into Levi.

       Chapter Three

      Caught completely off guard, Claire shrieked.

      Her breath caught in her throat as she felt her heart—an organ she had become painfully aware of in the past month—slam against her rib cage.

      Stunned, she blinked, fully expecting Levi to fade away, a mere wistful product of her overactive imagination.

      He didn’t fade away. Levi remained exactly where he was, standing in front of her, holding on to her shoulders to keep her from falling.

      He’d been hoping to run into her, but not quite like this and definitely not so literally.

      Reacting automatically, Levi had grabbed his wife by the shoulders to steady her. That turned out to be a good thing, seeing how if he hadn’t, Claire would have probably stumbled backward and fallen while still holding Bekka tightly against her.

      Holding on to Claire like this did more than just prevent a very unfortunate accident from happening. The exceedingly brief contact once again brought home the fact that he’d missed her. Missed his wife acutely. Missed the sight of her, the feel of her. The very first time he’d laid eyes on her, he’d known. Known that Claire Strickland was the one for him. Known that there was something very special going on between them.

      The chemistry that all but sizzled whenever they were close to one another was just too hard to miss and too intense to ignore. At that moment he’d realized that he would have rather waited forever for Claire than settled for anyone else, no matter how willing she might have been to be in a relationship with him.

      Claire was completely shaken. It took everything she had not to visibly tremble. Ever since she had thrown her husband out of her life, her nights had been filled with Levi.

      Filled with dreams of him, with memories of him.

      Filled with overwhelming longing for him.

      In the privacy of the room she and Bekka were living in, she’d allowed herself to cry over a precious relationship that she believed in her heart had died—and it was her fault.

      Bumping into Levi like this, in the last place in the world she’d thought that she would see him, her first reaction was a surge of sheer joy, not to mention that every fiber of her being had instantly—physically—responded to the very sight of him. At that moment she would have thrown her arms around Levi’s neck if her arms had been free.

      The next moment her sanity, as she chose to view it, returned.

      Luckily for her, she realized, her arms were filled with baby, so she couldn’t go with her first impulse. That allowed her second impulse to take root and swiftly take over. Her second impulse belonged to the young woman who had felt hurt and abandoned that fateful night a month ago. It belonged to the young woman whose husband was absent a good deal of the time—not to mention that the one time he wasn’t absent, he’d turned his back on her, choosing a stupid poker game over her company. That made the whole thing even worse because he’d abandoned her without so much as a second thought, as if she were some inconsequential afterthought in his life.

      As that realization had taken root, Claire felt that she had to be worthless and unattractive in his eyes. This despite the fact that she had always made sure that she was her most attractive before he laid eyes on her in the morning. Even before she’d said “I do” she was determined not to turn into one of those wives who allowed herself to let her appearance go after the wedding.

      To that end, Claire made sure that she was always

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