Page 31 of First Date: Divorce (Wyoming Marriage Association #1)

This was the wedding kiss times ten. Ten times ten.

This was nothing but the sensation of his mouth on hers. No one watching, not even themselves, in this darkness.

Nothing to add context or subtract meaning.

Just his mouth. Her mouth.

Then, slowly, his hands on her upper arms. Hers on his shoulders.

Her lips parted under his. She met his tongue. Ready to explore more.

Until the mundane requirement of breathing overrode deeper, more important needs.

“Melody would be very disappointed with us.” Eric’s low voice came out of the dark, and it found her, too, making her shiver.

He placed a gentle open-jawed bite on the line from her shoulder to her neck left bare because her blouse had slid to one side.

Then he licked the spot. The shiver matured to a shudder of pleasure and longing.

“Failing to refrain from physical intimacy.”

He tightened his hold at that last word, and she pressed against him, feeling how they might fit together, where his hardness met her softness. Where his desire met hers.

“Eric.”

She’d meant it to be a warning. She feared it might be an invitation.

He certainly took it for that.

His mouth on hers was even surer, even more dizzying. His hand drew down the front of her blouse, flicking open buttons. He cupped her breast.

She released his shoulders to wind her arms around his neck, deepening the kiss again.

The door swung open behind her.

“Oh!”

Even with her back to the door, the light blinded her. Or the shock of it opening did.

She bent her head, trying to right her blouse. Eric stepped between the door and her.

A man chuckled. “Oh, look, Izzy. It appears someone else has found our little hideaway.”

Decent once more, K.D. looked around Eric and saw Izzy and Orion Rettaford.

“Sorry to interrupt,” said the woman with a smile. “We had no idea anyone else had resorted to the closet.”

“Damned cameras,” muttered her husband. He nudged Eric. “Bathroom works, too. But I had a hip replacement last year, and all that tile gets slippery.”

“Breaking rules left and right, aren’t we,” K.D. managed with credible lightness.

She stepped out of the closet, and tugged at Eric’s sleeve. He appeared all too ready to ask Orion about the bathroom logistics. “We’ll be late for our next session if we don’t hurry.”

“So will we, but we don’t mind,” Izzy said.

The smiles from her and Orion were downright wicked as they stepped into the closet.

Before they pulled the door closed behind them, Izzy said, “We’ll see you at the dessert spread later.”

“Unless we find something better to do.”

Izzy’s giggle came through the door.

*

“We only have a few minutes before our session and I still have something to tell you,” K.D. said. “Should have told you right away. Follow me.”

For an instant, Eric hoped she meant to find another closet.

Nope.

She hurried down the stairs, then out the back doors, stalking away to a spot next to a garden bed away from the patio, pool or any listeners.

Still, she kept her voice low when she spun on him, grimacing. “Look angry. Or fed up,” she ordered.

He crossed his arms over his chest and scowled down at her.

“Good. I overheard some stuff before I intercepted Lily.” She faltered an instant, remembering the closet interlude after that. “We need to hit the disagreements harder.”

As she explained, his scowl became real.

*

“…and impulse — spontaneity — can add to your enjoyment,” Melody said.

“I don’t act on impulse,” K.D. said coldly.

“Why not?” he asked before Melody could say anything. “Impulse can lead to wonderful things.” Like the impulsive moments in the closet.

She looked away. Playing the role? Or not.

“Because impulse in important situations leads to bad decisions. Decisions you can’t get out of.”

That sounded real.

She was saying the closet had not been important, despite it being the first time they’d kissed of their own volition.

Unless you counted the second time he’d kissed her for the video.

Either way, this had been different. Including the fact that she’d not only kissed him back, she’d deepened the kiss.

Nah, she didn’t really think the closet kiss wasn’t important.

But did she think she thought so?

He pushed with, “Speaking from experience?”

“No. I told you, I don’t act on impulse.”

“So, you’ve only had observation.”

“Close observation.”

“Right. You saw a situation that involved someone you know well — say a close relative — interpreted it a certain way to match your preconceived notions, jumped to the conclusion that—”

“I don’t jump to conclusions, either.”

“—impulse always leads to disaster. All from one incident, seen from the outside and—”

“Not from one incident. From a lifetime. And not from the outside. From having a mother who jumped on impulse into a marriage that has made her miserable.”

“Has it? She says she’s not miserable. What if she’s telling the truth? What if your mother loves him? What if their marriage gives them both what they want? Isn’t that what a marriage should be?”

“ What if —?”

“Let’s sit with that a moment,” Melody said. “It’s time for the dessert buffet. We’ll take this up tomorrow.”

K.D. closed her mouth, no doubt on words as stormy as her expression.

Eric sat back.

This was nuts.

He was nuts.

Yes, he and K.D. had chemistry. Fine. Enjoy it. No need for more.

After his experience with Hilary, he should run as far and fast as he could from the concept of marriage. Why in hell tick off K.D. by trying to persuade her not to run from it?

*

The dessert session took place on the patio, with most of the tables removed, subdued lighting, strictly enforced one glass of wine per person quota, a music sound system tolerable only because it was kept very low, and a spattering of Marriage-Save employees to keep an eye on things.

There were plenty of desserts. Not up to Ellyn’s standards, but passable.

A few couples danced. Most stood around and chatted about almost anything other than why they were here.

That’s what he and K.D. were doing when Izzy and Orion danced past, waving to them and smiling broadly.

K.D. met his eyes for an instant that projected possibilities like a movie played against clouds.

Then she looked away.

That was definitely not what they were here for.

*

They followed the same bedtime routine as the night before. But this time as Eric eased under the sheet, he slid one arm across the mattress and lightly brushed her back.

“You awake?” he asked softly. He sounded as if he’d barely moved his lips.

“Awake.”

She shifted slightly, which broke the contact, whether she meant to or not.

“Realized some gaps today,” he whispered.

“Yeah.” She barely seemed to breathe the word, but she shifted again, onto her back, so they were side by side.

“It’s … weird saying things in those sessions, making things up, mixing in truth. Kind of freeing in a way. Sorry if I hit a nerve.”

“How did you know my mom says she’s happy being married to Mark?”

“Your lack of experience with people getting divorced. If they were headed that way, you’d’ve said,” he whispered, “Sorry if I overdid it. What don’t you like about your— About Mark?”

She was quiet so long he thought she might not answer, then her whisper came.

“My mother always dressed and groomed to perfection. Maybe my … plainness was reaction after watching the time and effort she put into her appearance. Always with the goal of finding a guy — the guy — who would take care of her.”

Her voice seemed to strengthen without getting any louder, as if she mastered whispering word by word.

“Since she’s married Mark, though,” she continued, “she doesn’t get new clothes, doesn’t get her hair and nails and face done, doesn’t do them herself the way she used to, no matter how tight money was. She doesn’t think she’s worth it anymore, all because she’s married to Mark.”

He turned his face toward her. “Marriage doesn’t have to be that way. It can be two people as a team.”

She rolled her eyes toward him, a glimmer in the darkness. “Like you and Hilary?”

“ Not like me and Hilary.” He added the emphasis without increasing his volume. “That’s why we’re divorced. But I’ve seen a lot of marriages that are. Look at Orion and Izzy.”

“Mark and Mom are not Orion and Izzy. I keep telling her she should ask for money for those things. He spends on himself. But she says she can’t. She’s his wife .”

“Sounds like a dirty word to you.”

She hesitated. “Close.”

“Yet it’s what your mom wanted.”

She made a sound. The whisper equivalent of a snort. “Yeah, what she wanted. She once said everything would have been better if she’d married the boy who got her pregnant — who saddled her with me—”

His turn for a whisper-grunt of objection.

“Don’t go all dewy-eyed about how she was blessed to be a mother. She did that enough on her own. Her life would have been better if she hadn’t been a single mother. But not at the cost of marrying the guy who—”

She broke off, apparently realizing her volume had nearly topped their safe whisper.

Eric thought she’d retreat then, close the door on sharing.

Maybe she thought so, too, because a pause stretched before she said as quietly as ever, “The boy pushed her. She’d never call it that, but it was date rape.

When she came up pregnant, he acted like it was all her doing.

Like a hundred or two hundred years ago for heaven’s sake.

And her parents were just as bad. Her father threw her out.

Her mother went along with it. And then she’d send these cards and things, Mom’s birthday, my birthday, Christmas.

Always with a little money in them. Money she’d sneaked away from her husband because he’d forbidden any contact with Mom.

“Never a return address — couldn’t risk that.

What if it got sent back for any reason.

Couldn’t have that, because then her husband might find out she’d defied him.

” Bitterness edged her whisper. “Mom always cried when they came, as if her mother did something great for her. Cried even harder when they stopped coming a couple years back. She had me search — she could have asked Mark, but she didn’t want to bother him. I found her mother’s obituary online.”

She turned her face toward him.

“And you know the real kicker? The obituary said she was a widow. I looked that up, too. And her husband had died seven years earlier. Seven years . She could have seen Mom. Visited her. For God’s sake at least called her. Instead, she stuck with being the wife doing her husband’s bidding.”

Without words, the sound of her harsher breathing came clearly.

“That sucks.”

She hiccupped something between a breath and a sob. “Yeah, it does.”

“You do know not all marriages are like that.”

She said nothing.

“I could tell you about my family, but unless you saw them for yourself there’d be no reason to believe me … But you have seen Cully and Jessa, Ellyn and Grif, along with the others — Kendra and Daniel, Luke and Rebecca, Cambria and Boone.”

“Not all people who jump off cliffs die, either. But I’m not jumping off a cliff because of that.”

He felt her words as if they were physical. Which made no sense. He’d seen the bottom of the cliff up close.

“It’s a big topic for whispering,” he said. “We better get some sleep.”

“Yeah. Night.”

She rolled away from him.

*

She heard him breathing. Knew he was awake, lying silently beside her. Not touching.

But their separation came before this physical distance.

She didn’t regret what she’d said. Not any of it.

Pauline said he needed honesty, well, that’s what he got from her.

Not because Eric Larkin needed it, but because that was who she was. So, if that drove him away, so be it.