Page 79 of The Homemaker

“You didn’t,” I say because I did everything to hide my grief, my reality. “Had you known, you wouldn’t have been anything more than a guy renting me a place to stay for two weeks. And I don’t regret anything except,” I shake my head.

“Except what?”

“Nothing,” I whisper. “No regrets. Right? Isn’t that how we should live?”

He shrugs a shoulder. “I suppose if the world were perfect. But it’s not, and neither are we. So my list of regrets is long and ever-growing.”

With a sad smile, I tighten my towel around my body and turn to head back to the guesthouse.

“Alice?” he calls.

I stop.

“My regrets? You’re not one of them.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

Murphy

If you can’t remember how it ended,

did it really end?

I spendthe rest of the Fourth with Hunter. Then I keep my head down, work, and eat at my desk, biding my time until Blair and Vera come home.

Alice was engaged, in love with another man. And she was right. Our time together wasn’t real. She fell in love with the escape. I was the escape. On our last night together, the wall between real life and a contrived reality broke. Why? I don’t know, and I can’t change it anyway. It’s time to put that time of my life to rest and forge ahead with my future and the woman I’ve known for much longer than a fortnight.

By one o’clock, I look at Blair’s location. She’s still in New York at the airfield. I gather my dirty dishes from breakfast and lunch and return them to the kitchen, listening forAlice, hoping to avoid seeing her. When I succeed, I can’t just be happy that I’m avoiding her. Instead, I wonder where she’s at. Then I hear laughter, so I follow it all the way to Hunter’s study.

It’s story time.

My curiosity is stronger than my willpower to avoid her, so I stand around the corner from the partially opened door and eavesdrop. Last I knew, she was reading him a romance novel, per Vera’s suggestion.

“I think women write men how they want them to be, not how they are,” Hunter says. “We’re not … what’s the word? Swoony?”

Alice giggles. “But you could be.”

“Do tell, young lady. How do you suppose I becomeswoonyat my age?”

“Actually, you already have some serious swoon game.”

He barks a laugh. “Like what?”

“Every day you tell Vera you love her.”

“There’s nothing special about that. Men should love their wives.”

“Yes, but you whisper it in her ear when you think no one is watching. And I know that doesn’t seem like much, but it’s the little things that mean the most.”

“Go on,” he says. “I’m listening. What else do I need to do?”

“I can’t tell you. These have to be your little things. And you surely have more of them, because Vera is still with you.”

“Have you been swooned?”

Alice chuckles. “Yes.”

I’m not sure I can listen to her talk about the man she lost. Yet, I can’t seem to pull myself away from the door.