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Help her? I didn’t even know how to help myself.
There was no point in trying to defend myself. “Tomorrow night there’s a town festival. I’d completely forgotten about it. I’m expected to be there and so is Jillian. As my wife. She’ll need something to wear. Usually there’s a huge sale in the boutique shops in town selling dresses. You and Jillian should do some shopping. You can take my credit card and get whatever she needs.”
“We have plenty of dresses,” Danielle said slowly. “Why would she need to buy something?”
“We’re not talking about a gala in the city,” I pointed out.
“Right. Western chic. I’m all over it.” Danielle nodded rapidly, clearly making a checklist in her head. “Get your shit together, Brendan. I don’t want to have to come back here. I’m not super crazy about the smell of horse manure, and your employees keep giving me weird looks. Plus, I find it weird that your wife is feeding apples to a damn horse. She’s a city girl.”
“Carrots only for Silva. No apples. He’s got enough stimulation with Darling in front of him. He doesn’t need the sugar rush.”
She rolled her eyes before she walked away. Unable to help myself, I looked back at the stable. The fact that Jillian hadn’t been with anyone since our separation explained so much about last night.
It appeared that we’d dealt with the end of our marriage very differently. I’d done my best to find someone else to help me forget about her, and she’d walled herself off, not just from me, but from men in general.
It wasn’t just my fault. I wasn’t the only one to shoulder the blame, but Jillian was important to me. Maybe reintroducing her to passion really would help her, and maybe finally, we could both get the closure we needed.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Jillian
“What about this?”
I held up an ankle-length brown dress with long sleeves and a high neck. The dress shop was crawling with other women who were apparently shopping for the same party, and Danielle and I were the center of attention. It was hard to ignore the stares, but it was better to have them staring at me than Brendan.
I groaned at myself. Jealous much?
“I swear, if you pick out one more dowdy mu-mu, I’m going to lock you in the dressing room.” Danielle crossed her arms and frowned. “What is wrong with you? You’ve normally got a great fashion sense. Even if you shy away from the super sexy, you don’t usually stoop to something my great-great-great-grandmother would wear.”
“Oh, come on. It’s not that bad. It might get chilly tonight.”
“This is California,” Danielle said dryly.
“And the color would contrast with my blonde hair—”
“And you’d blend right in with the ground. Jillian, what is going on? Are you trying to be invisible tonight?”
Frustrated, I shoved the dress back on the rack. “Yes, I would love to be invisible tonight because tonight I’m supposed to be Brendan’s lovey-dovey wife in front of Mr. Blackwell, and after last night, that’s going to be a little harder. I would like to wear something that covers everything and doesn’t give him any ideas.”
“Based on what you told me about last night, I’d say that even that dress wouldn’t temper his desire for you.” Danielle laughed as she shuffled through another rack of dresses. “So you might as well wear something like this.” She pulled out a blue dress and handed it to me with a knowing smile.
I immediately handed it back. “That looks like something you bought and then shrunk a few times in the dryer. This is a small-town festival, not a strip club in the city.”
“Are you going to dance with him?”
Walking over to a rack of clearance dresses, I glared at her. “Two hours ago you were calling him a bastard for seducing me, and now you want me to dance with him? You’re all over the spectrum. You need to pick a side, and since you’re my best friend, that automatically means that you need to be on my side.”
“You were the one who told me that last night was very mutual,” Danielle pointed out. “Yes, I think it happened a little too quickly, and yes, I think you two need to work out your issues before it happens again, but I think that maybe tonight will be good for you both. It’s a public venue so he can’t seduce you.”
“If you think that’s going to stop him, then you don’t know him very well,” I muttered. I thought back to all the times we’d been very sneaky at public events.
She pulled out a purple dress and held it up for inspection. “I just think that he’s concerned about more than just sex and land, and maybe tonight, you two can actually talk.”
Three of the women in the store were inching closer. Worried that they might overhear, I grabbed her arm and tugged her away. “Shh,” I whispered as I looked around. “Small town. Lots of gossip.”
