Page 108 of To Save Him

 

 

 

Chapter Thirty-seven

 

IT SHOULDN’T HAVE surprised me that we made the trip back to Colorado faster than our journey to the east coast.  After escaping, we’d gone straight to the hotel, grabbed our things and checked out, hitting the road in less than an hour.  We didn’t even gas up until we were more than fifty miles away in another town.

We were paranoid, though, and kept looking in the rearview mirror, and I called the kids to make sure they were okay.  It wasn’t until we’d driven well into the wee hours of the morning and gone through Nashville that we began to feel a little more relaxed, and we found a hotel somewhere in Illinois, sleeping for hours before emerging the next morning…feeling rested, a little refreshed, and somehow lighter.

 

* * *

 

IT TOOK A few months to let go of the paranoia, though.  Brandon and I often talked about it in the dead of night when everyone else was sleeping, but we never told another soul about our journey.  Brandon stopped seeing Dr. Cartwright and also, strangely enough, his sexual tastes settled back into vanilla territory, but I wasn’t complaining because, at least, his appetite had returned.

By Christmas, my family felt almost normal.

I was visiting Gabriel’s grave more, but it felt more healing to me.  I talked to him (whether he heard or not was immaterial), and it gave me peace.  Annabel started seeing Liam again, but only after they had a discussion about respect.  And JR found his first girlfriend—with a little coaching from the man who one day might become his stepfather.

And, as we got ready that spring for my daughter’s impending graduation, I found myself letting go of so many things that had haunted me for years.  I let my oldest son’s memory rest, although he would never be forgotten and not a day would go by that I didn’t think of him.  My failed marriage also felt like ancient history…and I celebrated the present like I never had before.

 

* * *

 

“OH, MY GOD. Kimberly Grace!  What an honor to finally meet you.”  The thirty-something woman with the cutest dimples ever thrust a book in my direction—a tome I’d namedDecember Lust, a book that had become a tribute to the May-December romance, a story I would never have dreamed possible to have the success that it had.

But it had to be written.

Readers had responded to it.  More of the older women in my audience had appreciated it, but even my younger readers had enjoyed it.  I rarely wrote humorous books, but this particular one had a fun edge to it, and I’d had such a good time writing it.  It was the first time in ages I’d had an easy time writing a book.

I knew it was due to several things—the first was that I had found a way to let go finally, and I’d been doing that:  letting go of all my baggage, one ounce at a time, and I had one man to thank for that.  I’d also managed to start feeling like a good mother again, and that too had lightened my load.

And then Brandon.  Sweet, sweet Brandon.  Now that I knew I could trust him—and now that he was finding a way to be comfortable in his own head—he’d made me feel young again.  And with Annabel sticking close to home at night to play surrogate to JR in mid-April, I went to my first book signing in years.

It felt like a million bucks.

So I smiled up at the blonde handing me a copy of my book and said, “The pleasure’s mine.”  I took the lid off the black Sharpie and asked what name I needed to make the inscription out to.

“My name’s Kimberly, too—but I go byKim.”

“Lovely.”  I wrote a little something in the book—something like this, one of my standard inscriptions:  “If you want to find romance, you just have to look, and a book is the perfect place to start!”  I signed it and handed it back to her, inviting her to pick up one of the free pens or bookmarks on the table with my name all over them.

“Thank you so much,” she said, grinning, and then she noticed the handsome devil sitting next to me.  She glanced down at the cover of the book and then at some of my other book covers on the table, knowing that it was sometimes customary for cover models to accompany authors at big signings.  When she didn’t see Brandon’s face on any of my books, I could see the question in her eyes.  I simply smiled, prepared to answer and let her know that he wasnotmy son, should she ask, but she quite politely thanked me again and made her way to the author at the table beside mine.

Brandon looked up from his phone.  “Awkward.”

I looked over at him while I waited for another reader to approach.  He had no idea what he was in for, because these were just the VIP readers. The folks in charge would be letting the entire crowd inside in less than an hour, and then it would be joyous pandemonium.  “No,thiswould be awkward,” I said as I planted a long kiss on those full lips of his, loving that he was kissing me right back, no matter how weird it might feel.

 

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