Page 33 of Loved By Tandy

“I haven’t met them. Raised a great kid, though.” I fold my arms, fighting the urge to take Matthew’s hand. But since he’s thinking about Catherine, I feel like I shouldn’t touch him. “I’m sorry, Matthew.”

“She was never big on birthdays, but I’d always gather a handful of whatever wildflowers I could find and give them to her.” He points to patches of color near the path. “She’d love this field.”

I stay quiet, letting him talk.

“After dinner, if you don’t mind, I might stop in for a cup of tea.”

“I’d like that.” I give up resisting and take his hand.

We’re quiet for the next few minutes, then I venture into new territory for us. “Tell me about her.”

Matthew smiles. “You would’ve liked her, I think. She had more patience than any other person I’ve known. She had to in order to put up with me.” He pinches his lips and squeezes my hand. “She made our house feel like a home. I’m proud of my kids, but the credit is all hers.”

“I bet she’d say the same things about you.”

His eyes are misty as he chuckles. “I’m not so sure about that.”

“I’m happy you found your happily-ever-after. And I’m sorry it ended too soon.”

Head bobbing, he stares ahead. “I’ll always miss her.” He stops and puts his arms around me. “But I’m thankful we reconnected. You’ve chased away the lonely that I thought would be part of my life until my last breath. When I accepted that job from Blake, I just wanted us to talk. I hated that you were mad at me. What we have now is more than I expected. And I’m happy. I love our morning walks, having tea on the porch in the evenings. The companionship. And if you’d like to come with me to dinner, I’d be open to that.”

“Not tonight. You spend the evening with your family. But I’ll put the kettle on when you come over.”

Hand in hand, we continue down the path. I have fallen victim to the slippery slope, and it’s hard to be mad about it.

I like how things are. Mostly.

The next morning,Matthew hands me a breakfast taco when I slide out of the truck. “Morning, sunshine. I made us a quick breakfast.”

“Thank you.” I reach into my truck and grab two travel mugs. “And I brought us coffee.”

“Perfect.” He drops his tailgate so that we have a place to sit.

I’m less than graceful when I climb up, but eventually, I sit on the edge of the tailgate, and my feet dangle. “It’s warming up. The mornings no longer have that chill.”

“Sadly.” He unwraps his taco. “Hopefully it isn’t a scorching summer like last year.”

“Agreed.” I bite into my taco.

“When I asked if you’d become a therapist, you wrote down a vague answer. Care to expand on that?”

Surprised by the question, I choke on my bite of taco.

He taps my back. “Now I’m even more intrigued.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t heard already. I never made a secret of it, and the way news travels around here, I figured you’d already heard that I worked as a sex therapist.”

He slaps a hand over his mouth just in time to keep bits of taco from flying out.

“It’s not that funny.”

“It is to me. I felt horrid, thinking you were so crushed by what happened that you never moved on. And I’m laughing at how wrong I was.” He bumps my shoulder. “I’m glad you found a fulfilling career. You were probably great with that.”

“I was. Many happy couples left my office. And I did move on. I haven’t spent fifty years pining for you, but I couldn’t bringmyself to marry any of the men who got down on one knee. They weren’t like you.” I’ve probably said too much, but after his bout of vulnerability yesterday, I’m risking a bit of honesty.

He wads up his trash and holds his hand out for mine. “Ready to walk?”

“Yep. Thanks for the taco. It was good.”

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