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“I think you’ll keep developing your own brand of strength, without needing someone else’s.”
She grinned. “That’s a nice way of putting it. I’ll bet the kids in your class love it when you help them understand that being themselves is best.”
“Hey, you’re not one of my students,” he protested. It was the last way he wanted her to see their relationship.
“If I was, then I would have had, like, the worst crush on you.” She was biting her lip and he wanted to slug the people who had shaken the confidence she should have had in herself.
“Ah, gee,” he said, trying for a boyish tone. “That’s, like, totally nice of you.”
Her face relaxed into a more natural smile. “I was scared to admit it.”
“Because you still want to take things slowly?”
“That, too, but I’ve also worried whether I have lousy judgment about men.”
“Hmm. I’d like to say that you’ve simply had lousy luck until now, but that might sound egotistical of me.”
She slipped her arm through his. “I’m sure I’m right this time. I mean about you being one of the good guys.”
“Thank you, and let me return the compliment, except with the gender altered.”
As she walked closer in a sweetly intimate way, Barton knew how much things had changed in the past few weeks. Chelsea had helped him look at his marriage in a new way, seeing him and Ellyn as just two people whose goals had changed. It had felt quite freeing to let go of the guilt.
He was ready to get married again and was quite certain Chelsea was the right woman. But he was also willing to wait so she could be equally certain of herself and of them as a couple. Patience was something he’d have to work on, but he didn’t doubt they’d end up together.
His foot-in-the-mouth cousin had claimed that Nicole moving next door made Barton the luckiest dog in the world. But Greg didn’t know the best part had nothing to do with supermodels.
* * *
SITTING ON HER reclining deck chair, Nicole wasn’t sure she’d made the right decision to send Jordan away. In fact, she wished she’d chosen something to regret in the morning.
He’d been testing the waters that evening, to see if she would be open to further intimacy. She wouldn’t have needed to encourage him, just respond. Primal forces would have done the rest. They could be in bed right now, enjoying what it meant to be male and female.
By some standards it would have been very romantic—lovers destined to never really be together. In college, taking an English literature course, she had been confounded by the medieval concept of great romance—that such lovers were necessarily ill-fated. Why had medieval writers been so addicted to unhappy endings? Maybe, in a strange way, it had been an attempt at realism. The world back then had been hard and difficult to survive. Unhappy or tragic endings may have been the norm, so they accepted it as a necessary component to romance. Maybe she should have remembered that when resisting Jordan earlier.
Though tired, she returned Toby’s anxious display of affection. Already he seemed able to tune in to her emotions. As she patted him and rubbed his ears, she remembered her resolution that friendship was more satisfying than love. That was the reality in a world where guys said they loved her but only wanted the glitz and glamor of a supermodel. Their devotion had rapidly diminished, either under the scrutiny of cameras and reporters, or when her hair was tangled or her nose was red from having a cold…something that had particularly bothered her erstwhile fiancé.
Yet in reviewing the past, she knew she hadn’t truly loved Paulo. It was fortunate, considering everything, but she wasn’t going to be so lucky this time. She’d fallen for a man who wanted to stay single and carefree, both to achieve his ambitions and to safeguard against descending into the kind of hell he knew marriage could be. She could only blame herself for being the fool who’d fallen in love with him.
It was barely dark when she crawled into bed and lay cuddling with Toby.
“Thanks for being here, pal,” she murmured into his ear. “You may not be the male I’d like to have with me at the moment, but I appreciate your faithfulness.”
