Page 52 of Temptation at His Door

Carrick shrugged and Ronan felt a surge of frustration. “She was your one, Carrick, the person meant for you. How can you not see that?”

“How do you know?”

Was Carrick really going to make him explain? Well, if talking sliced through his brother’s stubbornness, he’d give it a shot. “Because I know true love when I see it, Carrick! I lived it, I had it and I recognize it. She is your other half, the person you are supposed to be with.”

“I thought the same with Tamlyn.”

Ronan didn’t know how Carrick could compare the bright, funny, lovely Sadie with his ex-witch. Annoyed, the words tumbled out of him. “You don’t only get one person to love and you love people differently, at different times of your life. You loved Tamlyn, but you’re a different person now to the person who loved her. You don’t only get one shot at marriage and love, Carrick.”

Ronan heard his words, knowing he was walking straight into a trap, a trap his brother wasn’t going to let him wiggle out of. “I hear you, Ronan, I do.”

Okay, maybe Carrick was too deep in his own misery to toss Ronan’s words back in his face.

“So, you are going to sort out this mess with Sadie?”

“I am. But before I do, can I ask you one question?”

Ronan nodded, then shrugged. “Sure.”

“Why is there one set of rules for me and a different set for you? If I get to take another shot at a relationship, why can’t you?”

“Why is there one set of rules for me and a different set for you? If I get to take another shot at a relationship, why can’t you?”

After leaving Carrick’s office, the tough question burning in his brain, Ronan walked straight to his car and headed home, needing to be where Thandi was. Because Thandi wasn’t in a grave; she lived within his sons, in the memories they shared in their West Roxbury house, in the rooms she’d walked and lived and loved in.

Before entering, he’d checked his security cameras and knew that Joa wasn’t home. She’d left somewhere around eleven and, hopefully, she wouldn’t be back anytime soon. He needed time alone, time to think.

With Carrick’s question floating around in his brain demanding an answer, Ronan entered his house, thinking that he was seldom here when the kids weren’t. Ronan didn’t bother to shed his coat; he just stood in front of Thandi’s portrait, the first thing anyone saw as they walked into his house. His beautiful wife, the beat of his heart.

Was she, still? Was he still in love with her? Oh, he still loved her but was he stillin lovewith Thandi?

If I get to take another shot at a relationship, why can’t you?

He’d gone into Carrick’s office to straighten him out but he’d been the one who’d come out of that encounter feeling scathed and shot, his entire world upended. He’d been so damn arrogant, telling Carrick he had a right to another relationship, that he was throwing away the chance of happiness because he’d had a bad marriage with a bad woman.

You don’t only get one person to love and you love people differently, at different times of your life.

Did that mean he was allowed to fall in love again? Could he? Was Joa the one he could take that chance on?

Ronan turned his gaze onto the photograph on the hallway table, the photograph of he and Thandi on their wedding day. They’d been so happy. Could he even be half as happy with someone else?

Yet he had been, these past weeks, with Joa. A different type of happy. Not better or stronger, just different. Ronan looked into the great room, saw the many photographs of Thandi on the mantelpiece, the massive silver frame on top of the piano. There were photos of her on the fridge. In fact, there were photos of her everywhere.

Ronan mentally moved up the stairs, picturing the photos of her on the walls, photos of her on the table on the landing, photos of her scattered around his bedroom. What did people think when entering his house? How did they feel about being surrounded by images of his dead wife? His entire house was a shrine to Thandi, and maybe it was time to let her go.

Time to embrace something,someonedifferent.

Maybe it really was time for him to start living again...

Ronan turned at the sound of the front door opening and his heart rate accelerated as Joa stepped into the hallway, black hair glinting in the sunlight streaming in from the glass insert above the door. She looked surprised to see him, then her face settled into a bland expression, the expression she used to put distance between them.

Joa was acting like his employee, like his reticent nanny. He wanted the warm, exciting, hot-blooded woman who’d shared his bed last night, not this cool beauty with flat eyes and a taut mouth.

“What are you doing home?” Joa asked, placing her bag on the hall table. She never hung anything up. It should annoy him, but it didn’t. He was just happy she was there, sharing and messing up his space.

How could he explain? How would she react if he told her that she brightened his life, that he wanted to see whether they could, maybe, make this work? That he thought he might be falling in love with her...

“Uh...”

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