Page 49 of Slow Kind of Love

“Okay,” she said softly. I can do this.

She grabbed her clutch and made her way down the hallway. Link was still at the door, though he’d grabbed her dress coat off the rack and held it open so she could slip into it. He pressed one last kiss to her temple, and then they headed out into the early evening.

Dusk was falling, and lights twinkled as they drove through town and headed to the lake where Boone’s home was located. As it wasn’t far from Link’s stone cottage, it would have made more sense for her to meet them there, but Link had insisted on picking her up himself.

Ever the gentleman.

They were running twenty minutes late and the car service was early, so they’d barely had time to finish their drinks and celebrate Poppy and Boone’s good news—a pregnancy—before they left for the gala. Which was fine with Elise; she needed a crowd tonight. A buffer to ward off the looks her son kept sending her way when he thought she wasn’t paying attention and white noise to fill up her head and purge her mind of all the hot things coursing through her veins.

The want and the need. The desperation. It was as if her body knew it would soon be denied the drug it had come to crave, and it was rebelling. Like a junkie, she was going through withdrawal before it was time, and she found it hard to concentrate or keep up with the many conversations swirling around her.

And the gossip. Lord knows the sight of Elise Avery on the arm of one of the county’s most eligible bachelors was more than enough to keep the tongues wagging for days and days. She tried her best to ignore it, and in the end, her scattered mind allowed just that.

Dinner was long over and they’d just finished the live auction. Link was chatting with Boone and some of the other men across the room, and though she tried, Elise couldn’t take her eyes off him.

Poppy slid up between Boone and Link. She watched them for a few moments, thinking again of Poppy and Boone’s happy news. Tears pricked the corners of her eyes, hot and smarting. She was over the moon for her son and incredibly grateful for a new life. But a part of her was sad, and if she were honest with herself, that sadness was tinged with jealousy. She’d made a choice so long ago. A choice that at the time seemed to be the right one. But what if she hadn’t have gotten the surgery? What if she could still bring life into this world? One created with the man she loved? Would she do it? At her age?

Did it matter now? The answer was simple. No, it did not. She knew what she had to do for Link to one day have what she couldn’t give him—a family of his own.

God, she was hot and mad and upset and filled with something that could turn ugly if she didn’t tame it. She turned away and pushed past Clive Barton, an old friend from school, who’d been jabbering on for five minutes or so. She knew he was single since his wife had left him for the local barber, and she felt bad for the guy, but she didn’t have the time or patience for him. With a polite excuse of needing the powder room, she fled to the lobby and headed out into the crisp, Michigan air.

She kept to the shadows and moved to the right, leaning against the cold brick and liking the feel of it against her skin. She wasn’t sure how long she stood there, but it was long enough for her dress to become damp from the chilly night air. Long enough for a group of women to pass by and light up a few feet from her. She couldn’t see them clearly as there was a big pole between Elise and the women, but she sure as hell recognized Darlene Crenshaw’s raspy voice.

“Can you believe it? He’s got to be twenty years younger than her.”

That got Elise’s attention.

“Oh, come on, Dar, if Link Major wanted to do the horizontal dance with you, no way in hell would you be turning him down.”

“Hey, I’m not knocking it. I say all the power to Elise. I mean, I think we can all agree she looks pretty good considering she’s pushing fifty.”

Smarting at the wave of giggles that came with that comment, Elise felt her cheeks grow hot and she considered leaving, but then she’d have to walk by them to get back to the door.

“Elise Avery looks half her age, so get over it.” That was Shelli Gouthro. “You girls are just jealous.”

“She’s a grandmother,” Darlene shot back.

“So?” Shelli replied, voice going up a notch. “Grannies still have sex.”

“I heard she spent a small fortune at the spa getting fillers and Botox. And that rack? No way are those puppies real. No one looks that good without a little help.” That voice belonged to Anna Devane.

“Again, who cares?” Shelli sounded exasperated. “Honestly, if you guys gave even half of this effort to yourselves instead of talking shit about someone you barely know just because they’re winning at life right now, well, who knows where the hell you’d be.”

Darlene guffawed. “You been reading those inspirational books again?”

“I’m just saying, why do you care so much what Elise Avery does and with who? Personally, all I want to know is how big he is and how well he uses his equipment.”

“We all know Ben used his all over town and didn’t care too much where he put it.”

No one said a word to Darlene’s last comment, and bolstered by that hot, dark energy inside her, Elise walked toward them, loving the shock and surprise, and, even better, the embarrassment that touched each of them when they spied her.

“Darlene,” Elise said, stopping a few feet away, voice dripping honey. She gave the woman a look that could cut through glass and turned to Shelli, who was in the process of lighting another cigarette. “I like your dress.” The woman worked out at the gym every day and had legs most women would die for.

Cigarette dangling from between wet, ruby lips, Shelli smiled. “Thank you. I like yours too.”

Elise ran her fingers down the front of her dress, eyes back on Darlene, with her overly bleached hair that would never grow past her ears because it was too brittle from thirty years of dying it. And Melinda, a woman who sat in the front pew at church every single Sunday and judged pretty much everyone who crossed her path, even though her husband was as much of a dog as Ben Avery had been, and her oldest son was the biggest drug dealer in town.

Then there was Anna Devane, the lady Elise dealt with at the bank. A woman who was so sweet to her face and obviously poisonous behind it.

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