Karen Templeton - Marriage, Interrupted

Catching the startled “What the heck is this?” look on Shaun’s face, Blake released his grip. After they both tugged at their jacket hems, neither seemed to know where to look or what to do with their hands. “You’ll see,” Shaun said, still eyeing Blake with suspicion.

As he followed Shaun down a short, tiled hall to the kitchen, a series of revelatory aftershocks rattled his skull (since clearly his brain hadn’t gotten the memo about scratching the epiphany off the list). It isn’t too late , came the thought. At least, there might still be time to forge a relationship with his son, to repair the inadvertent damage inflicted by total cluelessness.

But the epiphany had said family . Not son . Family. As in Cass .

Forget it , Blake mentally yelled at whoever was in charge of these things.

Uh…no , Whoever calmly replied. Which is when Blake came to the mildly depressing realization that there’s apparently an iron-clad No Return policy on epiphanies. Who knew?

All well and good. Except how the hell was he supposed to heal a breach with someone who regarded him as though he were carrying a contagious disease, hadn’t even buried her second husband yet, and—oh, yeah—was pregnant with said dead husband’s child? The timing wasn’t exactly ideal here.

Tough. Deal with it .

Yeah, well, there was also the minor detail of his still, to this day, having no idea how to fix something that had at one time seemed so right and yet had gone so horribly wrong.

Then maybe it’s high time you get off your lazy butt and figure it out .

Right about now, Blake thought as they reached the kitchen, a lobotomy wasn’t sounding half-bad.

“Well now…” The generously bosomed black woman in the monochrome kitchen, her prodigious figure encased in a geometric-pattern shirt and polyester pants with permanently stitched-down creases, rose from a stool behind the granite island and walked over to Blake, clapping a firm hand on his arm. The dark eyes that met his were warm and fearless and unapologetically judgmental. “I take it you’re this boy’s daddy.”

Blake met her confident grin with a slightly less certain one of his own. “Last time I checked.”

“Well, I’m Towanda, and the rule around here is don’t give me any guff and we’ll get along just fine.” With that she returned to whatever she’d been doing, her crepe-soled oxfords making no sound on the gray-tiled floor. “Coffee’s over there,” she said with a twitch of her head, her dark blond waves remaining suspiciously rigid. “Help yourself.”

In business, Blake mused as he filled a mug, he’d gloried in a succession of triumphs. In life, he’d bombed, big-time. After the divorce he’d dated, some, when he could fit it in, but none of the budding relationships ever caught fire. Nor had he cared overmuch that they hadn’t. No other woman had ever gotten to him the way Cass had, and he suspected no other woman ever would. And if that sounded sappy and overly sentimental and improbable, so be it. He hadn’t purposefully closed himself off to loving again, but since it hadn’t happened, or even come close, in all this time…

Blake took a sip of the best coffee he’d ever tasted, mulling this over.

For way too long, he realized, he’d dwelled on what had gone wrong with his marriage, an exercise which had done little more than leave him with a nagging, burning sensation not unlike chronic heartburn that he’d somehow let the ball drop. That he’d given up too easily. Well, now…maybe, just maybe, it was time to remember what had been right. And with time—lots of time, considering the woman’s husband had just died—with patience, and with a lot of prayer, maybe Cass would remember, too.

Of course, there was also the definite possibility that he was on the brink of making a total ass of himself.

He took another sip of coffee, then grunted.

Which would make this not exactly a venture into new territory.

By midafternoon, the crowd had begun to thin, as more and more people slipped out the front door and back into the stream of their normal lives. The funeral, the burial, 1001 nameless condolence givers had all—mercifully, Cass decided—become an indistinct blur.

Except for Blake.

She sat on one of the sofas in the living room, Lucille next to her, close enough for the older woman to occasionally squeeze Cass’s hand. That is, when she wasn’t talking off the ear of whoever came over to offer his or her sympathy. Cass didn’t know ninety percent of these people, a fact that made it much easier to keep her emotional cool.

Except about Blake.

His nearness, both through the services and now, back at the house, tormented her no less than the too-hot-for-March noonday sun that had seared her skin through her black silk maternity dress. Had she been deluding herself these past dozen years? Cass really had believed she’d broken Blake’s almost mesmeric hold on her heart, her mind. Her soul. But the truth was, she now realized with a mixture of embarrassment and horror, the attachment had never truly been severed. Like stretching a rubber band thin enough to give the illusion of separation, if you increase the tension even a little too far— twannnng! Right back where you started.

Like now. Her mental and emotional resources stretched to the max, all it took was Blake Carter’s reappearance in her life, and… twannnng!

And, boy oh boy, did it smart.

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” said yet another pleasant-looking middle-aged stranger, grasping Cass’s hand. Cass gave the woman a brave little smile and murmured her thanks, wondering which one of them was more relieved at having gotten through the requisite contact. That done, now whoever-she-was could scarf down the catered hors d’oeuvres with a clear conscience, while Cass could return to obsessing about her ex with anything but.

All she knew was this absurd attraction was inappropriate at best and sheer, stark-raving, just-lock-me-up-now-and-throw-away-the-key idiocy at worst. All she knew was, whatever was going on in her head had to stay there, where no one could see, or know how seriously flawed she was. All she knew was, she was a brand-new widow, almost seven months pregnant with her second husband’s child, but she would have spilled state secrets to feel her first husband’s arms around her. So damn Blake Carter for reappearing in her life to remind her of what she’d lost, of what she’d missed, of what she would never have again. Not with him, at least. And judging from her abysmal track record thus far, not with anybody else, either.

Speak of the devil. Cass glanced up to catch Blake approaching her, his brows dipped in an undecided expression somewhere between pity and confusion. His nearly black hair was still too long, she noticed, the threads of silver at his temples the only thing making him look any older than when they’d been married. She knotted her hands together at the memory of gliding her fingers through those thick waves when they—

The tiny moan just sort of slipped out. Yet someone else she didn’t know gave her a funny look. “The baby kicked,” she said with a shaky smile.

The woman smiled back and returned to her conversation while Cass went back to studying the only man who’d ever rocked her world. In rapid, profound and heart-stopping succession.

Okay, she really had to stop this.

Mercedes Zamora, one of her business partners, had snagged him with a tray of something or other. Blake politely took one, obviously trying to extricate himself from Mercy’s rapid-fire monologue. Thank God for small favors, Cass thought, trying to shift her weight on the sofa. Maybe by the time he made it over here, her heart rate would be back to normal.