Page 34 of I’m Not Yours

“I wanted him out of my life years ago. I can’t stand that the guy is renting space in my head.

I have to work to never think of him and it takes so much energy.

Plus, this divorce is so wearing. Sometimes he’ll send something, like flowers, or call out of the blue.

He does it deliberately to antagonize me. It’s sick.”

“You have a magazine editor from Couture Fashion coming to your home to photograph your studio and dresses soon, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“That’s big-time. It’s imperative that we get the papers signed before then.

Your sales are going to skyrocket. The more successful you are, the harder Grayson will hold on.

He’s seeing money, June. He’s smelling it.

He doesn’t get how flippingly successful you’re going to be, but he will soon.

He’ll demand half of June’s Lace and Flounces and then he’ll be in your life for years to come. ”

Gall. “I will hand over proceeds and control of my company to Grayson only after I have constructed a home-built spaceship and launched myself off my own roof.”

“Then, my friend, we need to talk about that house.”

I ordered another Bloody Mary.

Early the next afternoon, a florist truck rumbled up to the front of my blue cottage.

Leoni rushed to the window to join me, as did Estelle, our faces plastered to the glass. They both bounded down the stairs and brought up a huge bouquet of roses and lilies.

“It’s for you, June,” Estelle said. “Hopefully it’s not from that leach of an ex-husband of yours; you lost your mind when you married that one. What were you thinking? Had someone taken a hatchet to your head? Were you bleeding?”

“Probably, Estelle,” I said. “Probably.”

“Don’t be so tough on her, Estelle,” Leoni defended me. “She didn’t know he was a vulture. Vultures can hide their vulture-ness. I should know. I married a vulture myself.”

“I hope our ex-vultures eat each other one day, Leoni,” I said.

I ran a finger over the fragrant roses and lilies.

Flowers! As old as time. You send your justifiably raging wife flowers and she swoons and forgets that you were a wicked beast. Did Grayson honestly think I was going to swoon over his bouquets?

Did he honestly think we could erase the last hideous two years as he incessantly fought our divorce, not to mention the two years before that, with flowers ?

“I’ll drive them down to the assisted living center again,” Leoni said. “We don’t want the vulture among us.”

“A bleeding head,” Estelle said, tapping her forehead, “is no excuse for marrying him. Don’t you forget that, June. Use your noggin next time.”

I ripped the card from the flowers and tore it open, my anger zip-zapping along my body, head to foot. He’d done this before, and each time it made me more mad that he could intrude on my life, my time, whenever he wanted.

But . . . but . . . it was from. . . . I gaped at the card and made a choking, gulping sound in my throat. It was not from him.

It was from him.

The chariot rider.

Him.

That him.

Estelle and Leoni leaned over my shoulder.

“By gum and golly, this is a miraculous moment. It’s from the sneaker wave rescuer,” Estelle said. “You should get knocked over by sneaker waves more often. What’s a life-threatening event when you can meet a muscled, seductive rancher?”

“You obviously didn’t tell him that the male species will soon die out because of flaws in their genetic makeup,” Leoni gushed.

I stared at the roses and lilies, delicate, sweet, elegant.

“The note says,” Leoni said. “Looking forward to our survivor’s luncheon.”

“What’s a survivor’s luncheon?” Estelle asked.

“I think, at my age, I should go to one of those daily. But I don’t want to hang out with men my own age.

They’re boring. They complain all the time about their aches and pains.

They have bladder problems. They have intestinal problems. They’re fascinated by their bowels.

I want to hang out with the younger men.

I want to be a cougar.” She curled her hands into paws and made a cougarish sound.

I was not a cougar. Reece was not younger than me.

He sure was cute, though.

Estelle made another cougarish sound.

Leoni and I laughed.

Leoni pawed her hands in the air, too.

I growled back at both of them. “Grrrr . . .”

“To cougars!” Leoni shouted, holding up an imaginary champagne glass.

“To cougars!” We clinked glasses.

“Thank you for the flowers.”

“You’re welcome.” Reece smiled at me, dwarfing his doorway, his blue button-down shirt somehow making those piercing green eyes even brighter.

It had taken me hours of encouraging self-talk while I sewed my bridesmaid’s dress for August’s wedding—and an online Scrabble game where I spelled the words “fear,” “loathe,” and “prick,” and therapy-eating where I downed five warm chocolate chip cookies—before I could gather up enough nerve to slink next door to thank Reece.

And to tell him what he needed to know immediately.

On my way over, Estelle leaned out the studio’s window like an avenging gargoyle and yelled, “Don’t mess this up. It’s not like you’re going to get a lot of other chances to prove you can be nice to a man. You had to almost drown to meet this one.”

Leoni said, wringing her hands, “Be gentle, kind . . . feminine. “Do you know how to do that?”

Estelle said, “Don’t be a cougar, be a cougarette!”

“Grrrr,” Leoni called out.

“Grrrr . . .” I was almost shaking with fear.

“They’re beautiful,” I said into Reece’s handsome, chiseled face. “Sexy.” He blinked.

“I didn’t mean that.” Not again, June. Focus, focus! “I didn’t mean the flowers were sexy. I meant that they’re beautiful. The flowers. Not you.” He was a tall and broad specimen of a man. “Not that you aren’t, too. I mean! Aw.” I felt myself boil up like a furnace. “I have to go.”

“Please don’t go,” he rumbled out, still smiling. “Come on in. I thought you might need some color after you took a tumble in the ocean.”

“I do. I did. I do need them. Yes, and color. That was nice. Well.” I ignored the fact that my knees were shaking. If only he was a temperamental green centaur, this would have been easier.

“Thank you again.”

“You’re leaving already?”

“Yes and no. No and yes. No, no.” Sheesh.

“How about no? Come on in. I have lobster.”

Lobster was my favorite. I love lobster. Heaven is filled with lobster in tiny oceans where you can reach down and grab one at any time and they want you to eat them with a side order of coleslaw, thick, hot, white, buttered bread, and lemonade.

“You do?”

“Bought it an hour ago. Come on in, June.”

I hesitated. That man pinned me down and shook me up. He turned me inside out. I berated myself, out loud. “Who’s the boss here?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.” I waved a hand in front of my face.

He stepped back, welcoming, and opened the door.

I tripped a bit in the doorway as I bumbled on in. “Nice, June,” I muttered.

“What’s nice?”

I turned to him. I thought of him naked. I blushed. I thought of him in bed naked down the hall. I blushed further. I thought of us naked in the bed down the hall. I turned away and said, again, so ridiculously, “I love lobsters in bed naked.”

He laughed.

I blushed further. “Stop blushing, June!” I muttered out loud.

Humiliated.

“So, you’re renting this home?” I took another bite of lobster, dipped in butter and garlic sauce. It was absolutely delicious.

We’d set up a table outside on his deck, the ocean panoramically displayed for 180 degrees in both directions, the summer air warm, the smell of salt wafting in and out.

“A friend of mine’s mother owns it. Her name is Frankie Schaeffer. Frankie fell in love with a man she met on a wild girls’ trip to France and stayed in Paris. Sixty-two years old and she said she’s found true love for the first time in her life and isn’t leaving.”

I laughed. “Good for her. So that’s what happened. I’ve never met the owner and no one is ever here.”

“She’s here in spirit.” Reece laughed.

“I doubt it. The woman fell in love with a Frenchman in Paris. She’s having the time of her life eating croissants and coffee in tiny white cups.”

“Okay, you win. Her spirit is in France. By the way, I like your hair.”

“You do?” I self-consciously pulled on it.

“Yes. I can only compare it to gold moving.”

Gold moving?

“With sunshine and sparkles thrown in.”

Sunshine and sparkles. “Are you a poet?”

He laughed. “Not quite. I say what I think.”

“So, you’re a flirt.” I ignored a stab in my heart. Darn it. Flirts were dangerous. Teasingly, attractively dangerous. Light and fluffy and you are one of a harem . . .

“Not at all. You’re the first one in many years.”

He said it sincerely, so straight on. Could it possibly be true? I took a deep breath so I could spit out the truth. This was not gonna be fun. “Reece, I need to be completely honest with you.”

“Please do.”

I gathered my strength by studying the cliffs in the distance and the tide pools below it, then turned back to him. “I’m in the middle of a divorce.”

Reece’s eyes widened slightly and his expression froze, that hard jaw not moving.

“Or, I should say, I’m at what I hope will be the end of my divorce. It’s a mess. I’m a mess. I left him two years ago. He doesn’t want a divorce and he is fighting it with all he has, every loophole, every delay tactic.”

I hoped the sun, bright and bold in a deep blue sky, would warm up my scared-stiff and frozen body. “I should have told you at lunch, but I didn’t want to.”

“Why didn’t you want to tell me then?”

“Why?” I heard no judgment in his tone, only a question. “Because I wanted . . .”

“You wanted what?”