Page 52 of New Girl in Town
Chapter Ten
Ihad been married—had only been with the same man—for a decade, and while our life began with passion, things between Dylan and I cooled over the years. Okay, things hadn’t just cooled, things had frozen over from the heated want of our co-ed years.
The moment I’d seen Dylan, I’d been a goner. One year ahead of me, he’d been the picture of sophistication, all smooth baritone and laughter. When I spoke he listened, and had even asked questions. It had been easy to fall in love with a man like that, when my cohort felt like a swarm of boys who hadn’t quite figured out life.
He’d proposed in the spring and I had accepted because it felt like a fairytale. I suppose for a while it had been one. But then there was the thing no one really told you when you were young and love moved fast and felt like life and death: I didn’t know Dylan.
I mean, I knew his favorite color was hunter green, and I knew that he detested shellfish. I knew that he was allergic to bee stings and preferred his coffee black. But I didn’t know him past the polished veneer he felt comfortable showing me.
The night I realized that I didn’t know the man I had pledged to love forever, we had been married all of seven months. I’d burnt dinner, which had set him off on a tirade. It was the first time he’d ever made me feel small, and I’d been packing my bags to spend the night at Melinda’s when he’d apologized. I’d accepted it. I was in love and a new bride, after all.
After that, Dylan kept a tighter lid on his outbursts, but I felt it simmering below the surface. There were those tense moments when I knew the man looking back at me wasn’t the one I had thought I’d married. I had convinced myself it was all a part of being married, all a part of the growing pains young couples went through. But Dylan’s carefully crafted persona fell away until that all that remained was a controlling, quick-tempered and irrational man.
In all the years we were married, I kept asking myself how I’d let this happen. How had I married someone and not known this was what awaited me? I asked myself that until the day I told him I was leaving, till the minute I was supposed to sign the divorce papers, and again as I left my old life for Colorado.
All of this had me nervous about how much I knew Grant. If I hadn’t known who Dylan was, could I be capable of making the same bad judgment call with Grant? I was falling—no, I had already fallen for him.
I was in love.
I didn’t know what his favorite color was, or what he preferred when it came to caffeine intake, but I did know what kind of man he was. He was gentle, kind, funny, patient, passionate, and earnest.
And didn’t that count for more than the small details?
It did to me. I hoped it would to him, too.
Parsing through these thoughts might have been less daunting if I hadn’t been caught off guard by Grant’s sudden announcement.
“I have to go back home.”
“Home?” I sat up in bed and glanced at him where he rested on his side, chin propped up on a fist while his other hand drew lazy circles against my side.
He nodded, eyes on where his fingers touched me. “I’m not looking forward to it.”
“Why not?”
“I didn’t leave things the greatest when I left home,” he said, and lifted his eyes to mine. “But you know how it is with family. It’s…” His voice trailed off with a sigh.
“Complicated,” I finished, leaning back against my headboard.
He huffed out a laugh. “You have no idea, sweetheart.”
“How long will you be gone?”
“Just a few days. I have to make an appearance.”
I raised an eyebrow at him and ran my fingers through his hair. “An appearance?”
He nodded, then wrapped his arms around my waist, and pressed his face against my thigh. “Yeah, just some family drama, but it won’t take long.”
I opened my mouth to ask more, but the press of Grant’s lips against my skin stopped me in my tracks.
“I leave in two days, so why don’t we...” He kissed me and slid his hand up, palm pressed flat against my side, until his fingers brushed the underside of my breast. “...Make the most of today? I’d rather be here with you than any place else, you know that, right?”
I nodded and leaned close to him, offering my mouth up to the kiss I knew he wanted. What had happened after that hadn’t consisted of words, but it had anchored Grant to me a little more. There was no denying that I was taken with him, that I was lovesick, because the word love had begun a rude dance through my brain without so much as a warning. It made for distracting work days at the museum, but I was in the middle of cataloging a new exhibit, which meant I was safe from looking too starry-eyed in front of my new co-workers.
If I had any hope of not facing my feelings, it was all out the window when I could feel, taste, and touch just what Grant did to me.
Seeing him off had hurt, but I’d been through worse, and like he told me with a grin, “It’s just a few days.”
