LITMIR.BIZ

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the more she reminded herself of his place in her life, the less she’d be affected by things like the swift concern lowering his brow. Since his place in her life was to provide advice, she might as well take advantage of his counsel.

      “Do you want to be a little more specific?” he asked.

      Pretty certain the tensions of the day had just caught up with her, she dropped her glance to the slender ornament between her fingers. What she wanted had nothing to do with the store. But Erik did have a certain amount of experience in this particular area. He’d lost someone who’d once been important to him, too.

      “I overheard some things at Curt’s funeral that I can’t seem to forget. About our marriage,” she explained, her voice quietly matter-of-fact. “Since he’s not here for me to ask about them, I think what I really want is to know how long it will take before the answers don’t matter so much.”

      Erik watched her blink at the ornament, her eyebrows knitted as she stared down at what she held.

      She’d never told him what had happened to her husband. Neither Phil nor Cornelia had mentioned it, either. And he hadn’t wanted to ask. It had seemed to him that the less he knew about her, the easier it would be to keep her pigeonholed as a project, a duty. Something with a start and end date that required nothing of him in between but a little business advice and elbow grease.

      It would have helped enormously if her little boy had been a brat.

      It would have helped even more had she not been trying so hard to move on.

      “What happened to your husband, Rory?”

      Her focus remained on the light reflecting off the crystal. “He was on his way home from work. It was late and a drunk ran a red light.” The twin slashes between her eyebrows deepened. “He was dead at the scene.”

      The unnatural calm in her voice belied how totally her world had shattered at that moment. That same stillness held her there, motionless except for the movement of her finger along the spiral facets.

      “And what had you heard that you couldn’t ask him about?”

      She barely blinked. “That he’d married me to spite his parents.

      “It was after Curt’s funeral,” she added quietly. “At the reception.” His parents had wanted the reception after the service at the club. She hadn’t cared where it had been held, had been fine with going in whichever direction she’d been pointed. Other than Tyler, she hadn’t cared about anything at all.

      “I was in the restroom when some other women came in. They didn’t know I was there because I overheard one of them ask how long Curt and I had been married. One of Audrey’s friends told her, then said I was nothing like the women he’d usually gone out with. Refined women, she’d called them. I heard someone else say that everyone knew he’d married me just to spite his parents. Apparently, not long after Audrey heard we were dating, she started setting him up with women she thought more appropriate. The more polite consensus was that he’d married me to get her off his back.”

      That was the only clear memory she had of that entire day. So much of it had been a fog of hugs, sympathetic murmurings and just wanting to find the friends watching Tyler and get her son out of there.

      She absently hooked the icicle she held onto the nearest branch. “He’d never told me his mother was doing that. But it could certainly explain why he’d wanted to elope.” She’d thought at the time that his idea to run off to Lake Tahoe had sounded wonderfully romantic. But at barely twenty-one, what had she known?

      “I’d been happy. I’d thought he was, too.” Her hand fell, her voice along with it. “He’d always put in long hours. But that last year he’d put in even more. He’d been trying to make partner,” she said, though she had no idea why the detail even mattered now. “After hearing those women, I couldn’t help wondering if he was really away so much because of work. Or because he just didn’t want to be there with me and I’d been too naive to realize it.”

      Her throat felt oddly tight. It had been well over a year since she’d verbalized that fear. She’d found out later that some of their friends had heard the rumors that day, too. Audrey, grieving herself, and in an apparent effort to save face for both of them, had even called her the next day to apologize for her friends’ “lack of sensitivity at such a time.” She had not, however, denied their conclusions.

      Rory swallowed. Hard.

      Feeling nearly as bewildered and betrayed as she had that awful afternoon, she pushed her fingers through her hair, trying desperately to force a smile. “I think now would be a really good time for you to give me the estimate I’m looking for. Six more months? A year? Please just don’t say ‘never.’”

      For long seconds, Erik said nothing. He remained an arm’s length away, his thoughts about the women’s thoughtlessness anything but charitable, and fought the instinct to pull her into his arms.

      He’d had closure when his marriage had fallen apart. He’d had answers to his questions. After he’d divorced, there had been no doubt in his mind that his marriage had been irreparably broken. The way this woman’s had ended, she was left with questions that could never be answered.

      Not by the man she’d married.

      He seriously questioned Curt having had any ulterior motive when he’d married her. There was far too much about her to be attracted to, too much to truly care about.

      Since the guy wasn’t around to tell her what all those things were, he’d just have to enlighten her himself.

      “Come here.”

      Taking her by the hand, he led her toward the wing chair by the sofa, muting the television on the way, and nudged her to the cushion. With his side to the fire, he hitched at the knees of his jeans and sat down on the heavy hassock in front of her.

      Resting his forearms on his thighs, he clasped his hands loosely between them. “You want my take on this?”

      Her arms crossed protectively at her waist, she murmured a soft, “Please.”

      “For starters,” he began, being as objective as possible, “it’s far more logical to conclude that he married you not to spite his parents, but in spite of them. You’re beautiful, smart and easy to be with. For the most part,” he qualified when she blinked at him in disbelief. “You can be pretty unreasonable at times,” he pointed out, mostly so he wouldn’t have to consider how unwillingly drawn he was to her himself. “But, trust me, he was attracted to you. He had to be.” Especially if she’d showed up at the office looking the way she had the other night in that suit and heels.

      “As for what those big mouths in the bathroom said about you being different,” he continued, “you probably were. If he’d been going out with society types or old money or whatever his mother considered ‘refined,’ you’d have been a breath of fresh air.”

      A few years out from leaving the mobile nest of her fairly unconventional parents, there probably hadn’t been an ounce of pretension about her. Even now, the polish he suspected she’d acquired in her husband’s circles seemed as understated as her quiet sensuality. There was something about her that defied definition. It was almost as if her desire for permanence had forced her from her parents’ artistic, nomadic lifestyle to seek stability in the urbane and conservative and she’d yet to find where she was comfortable in between. What truly impressed him, though, was the strength that pushed her past what many would see as totally daunting obstacles, along with a seemingly innate ability to nurture, to ease and to make a man feel as if every word he uttered mattered.

      The way she made him feel just then.

      “He might not have even realized how constrained he felt until you came along.” Thinking of the emotionally vacant relationships he personally limited himself to, he cleared his throat, glanced from the quiet way she watched him. “You went to work as his secretary. Right?”

      Looking a little doubtful about his assessment, she

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