Isabel Sharpe - Just One Kiss

On the other hand … what a colossal waste. And what was this woman thinking when she extracted such a promise? That the sun rose and set on her and he needed to keep it that way even after she was gone? Angela tried to put herself in the same position and couldn’t imagine saying to a man she loved anything but, “Go out there and be happy. Keep living your life as fully as you can. I am not and never should be your entire world.” Maybe she’d be selfish enough to ask him not to forget her, but that was it.

It might not be polite to disrespect dead people, but Angela was pretty sure she wouldn’t have liked this chick. Not as a friend for herself and not as a match for Daniel. White-on-white should not be paired with a chocolate guy.

“Well.” She tried to speak brightly, but disappointment was deeper than she’d expected. “I guess that’s a no, then.”

“I’m sorry.” He had a funny bewildered expression on his face, as if he were finding out he really was sorry, and it surprised him. Sorry and embarrassed and maybe a bit wistful.

His expression gave Angela permission to have a really wonderful and slightly devious idea.

She’d need to do this carefully and make sure she wasn’t stepping over sacred boundaries, but what if she used the power of their attraction, which she was sure now she hadn’t imagined, for a good purpose? Something more selfless than satisfying her hunger for touch and physical intimacy, which frankly Daniel had wrenched awake—a greedy, cranky, post-hibernation bear of a hunger. Something that would set him free from the unnecessary trap he found himself in, that would strike a blow for men and women everywhere who were unable to break free of ex-lovers, fiancés and spouses. Something that would make Daniel realize that he might owe this woman his past love and fond memories, but that he absolutely did not owe her from-the-grave dictatorship over his actions or his feelings or his body, and especially not over the pursuit of his own happiness, which was a constitutional right.

Something like Angela getting to know him. Becoming friends with him. And when he least expected having his unreasonable and unnecessary sentence commuted …

Seducing him.

SETH TOOK A long swig of beer, burped at a healthy volume and set the bottle back on the scratched, wobbly coffee table he and Jack had carried up from the street where someone had abandoned it. “We should do this more often.”

“What, belch?” Angela sent Seth a disapproving look. Boys would, unfailingly, be boys.

“You’re a pig, Seth,” Bonnie said mildly.

“But I’m the best darn pig I can be.” Seth gestured around the room. “I meant how we’re here talking about something other than mortgages and business plans and profit margins.”

“You’re right.” Jack helped himself to a handful of Cheetos Puffs. “This venture turned us into grown-ups too soon. We need to reclaim our inner frat boys.”

“And girls,” Bonnie said.

Seth held up his Elysian Fields Pale Ale in a toast. “I vote we do this once a month at least. For our sanity if nothing else.”

“Hear, hear.” Angela looked up from her busy job coveting Cheetos. Given how many baked goods she needed to sample, she tried to limit her snack intake. “That’s actually an important point, Seth.”

“Actually? Like I don’t usually have important points?”

“Just on top of your head.” Bonnie blew him a kiss.

“I meant that we’ve had some rough times and will probably keep having them.” Angela held up her bottle, too. “Here’s to continuing to keep our sanity. Which in the last year I’m convinced would have been long gone without you guys.”

Jack hoisted his ale. “And then some.”

The four of them were sitting in the living room of the building’s vacant sixth apartment, which they’d agreed to use as a common area. Each of them had donated whatever leftover odds and ends of furniture and kitchen equipment they didn’t need in their own places, and regularly contributed toward keeping the refrigerator and cabinets stocked with wine, beer and snack foods for times when they needed to meet, or, as Seth pointed out they did all too rarely, get together and unwind.

Tonight Bonnie and Seth shared the hideous olive-green couch they’d scored from Seth’s parents’ basement, each sitting rather pointedly, Angela thought, at either end. Jack sprawled in an overstuffed, worn rust-colored easy chair from Bonnie’s grandmother, and Angela perched in the graceful wooden rocker she inherited from Aunt Dorcas, which hadn’t fit anywhere else in her apartment. Demi Anderson, Caroline’s friend, who’d taken over her massage therapy studio, and whom none of them knew well, had donated the black-and-white leather love seat that looked as if it belonged on the set of a futuristic movie. The four of them rarely sat on it. Silly, because it was in perfect condition and comfortable. Somehow they felt as if they were trespassing. Kind of how Demi seemed to feel around them.

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