All They Need(26)

“It’s generous of you, but I won’t.”



He was watching her with the same very focused intensity that she’d noticed at Summerlea two weeks ago. She made a big deal out of shuffling her bags around before offering him a small farewell wave.

“See you around.”

She turned and walked away. It wasn’t until she passed the butcher’s shop that she remembered her car was parked in the opposite direction. She glanced over her shoulder, but Flynn was still in front of the bakery, his phone in his hand. Feeling like a teenager, she took the long way around, past the supermarket and through the parking lot until she’d done a loop and could approach her car from behind.

You’re an idiot.

It was true, for more reasons than she cared to count, not least of which was the fact that her heart was pounding out a fast, heated beat beneath her breastbone.

She threw her bags into the back of her car and climbed in. It was tempting to lie to herself and put her body’s reaction down to the fact that she’d taken a completely unnecessary walk around the block, but Mel knew better. Standing so close to Flynn for those few seconds, she’d suddenly remembered that he was a man and she a woman and that it had been a long time since she’d felt the warm press of another body against her own.

On one hand, she understood why it had happened. He was handsome, after all, and he’d been nice to her. A woman would have to be dead from the neck down not to respond to his strong, very male body and natural charm.

The thing was, Mel had thought she was dead from the neck down. But apparently she wasn’t. For the past year, she’d been in survival mode. She’d done what needed to be done to keep her head above water and no more. There had been a certain comfort in her batten-down-the-hatches mentality—she hadn’t asked too much from the world, hadn’t risked herself, hadn’t expected too much from herself.

But now the nonessential parts of her life appeared to be coming back online. The parts that got lonely and horny and enjoyed flirting and laughing with a man. How…strange. She’d honestly thought she would never be interested in a man again. Naive, perhaps. Or maybe it had simply been a way to get through those hard first months. Whatever the reason, the notion that she might be ready to reenter the world of male-female relations made her feel more than a little anxious and panicky.

Because even if her body was ready, her mind wasn’t. Not even close. It would be a long, long time before she was ready to trust a man again.

She forced herself to take a deep breath and calm down. She was freaking out over nothing, over nobody.

After all, on the most basic of levels, even if she had felt the stir of desire as she stood next to Flynn and registered his body heat and looked at his mouth and inhaled his scent, it wasn’t as though anything would come of it. The man was in a relationship with someone else, a beautiful, sophisticated woman from his own world. The chances of anything happening between her and Flynn were nonexistent.

Her thoughts slowed as her anxiety receded and common sense returned. A long time ago, before Owen, before she’d been stripped of her confidence and sense of herself, she’d enjoyed sex. Not indiscriminately, but it had been a normal, healthy part of her life. It wasn’t exactly a miracle that her sexual self was rising from the ashes of her marriage in the same way that so many other aspects of her self had. Her sense of humor. Her pride. Her determination. It was a good sign. A sign that she was healing.

Feeling more rational, she started her car and headed for the certainty of home.





CHAPTER FIVE



FLYNN BREATHED IN THE COOL winter air as he walked toward the house later that day, allowing the fact that he was here and this was real and that he was actually doing this to sink into his bones. Yes, restoring Summerlea was going to be a huge challenge, but it was doable. It was definitely doable.

He’d spent the past few hours completing a slow, painstaking tour of the garden. He had a list as long as his arm of basic maintenance issues to attend to, and he mentally allocated his free time to tasks as he climbed the stairs. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know that it would take him a long time to turn things around here, doing it piecemeal, when his schedule allowed. A lot of people would simply throw money at it and let other people make the problems go away, but Flynn hadn’t bought Summerlea to delegate. Once, he’d hoped to spend his life making other people’s gardens beautiful, livable and sustainable. He’d given that dream up, but Summerlea offered him a different outlet for his passion.