She looked so broken he couldn’t stop himself, He reached out to cup her cheek. For just a moment she leaned into his hand, like she needed the comfort.
Then she pulled away. “We can’t talk about this here. We need to do it later.”
Her response to his touch had given him a surge of hope, but her withdrawal slammed the rising hope back into the ground.
She was going to break up with him now. He knew it for sure. That was why she wanted them to be alone.
It was only fair to wait for privacy to break someone’s heart.
He took a few shuddering breaths until he managed to pull himself together. He gave a jerky nod. “Okay. We’ll finish this tonight.”
He couldn’t get anything else said—not without losing it completely—so he turned around and walked away.
Six
MADELINE WAS SO UPSET she went to the bathroom and cried silently for a couple of minutes after Ken left.
She wished she wasn’t so terrified about any change in their relationship. She wished she could react more reasonably and maturely. But things were so good right now. She was happy with Ken. And the intelligent part of herself knew it couldn’t last. Knew it was so good because it wasn’t real.
Real relationships were hard. Took work. You had to pour yourself into them, and even then they often fell apart. She’d lived through that with Josh, and she couldn’t stand to feel that way about Ken. She was still too exhausted to go through all that.
She didn’t want to be a girlfriend. Not again. Not yet.
She just wanted to enjoy life for a little while longer.
So she cried briefly—mostly just to relieve the emotional tension—and then she pulled herself back into her typical composure and tried to work. She did manage to get some stuff done, but she was distracted and broody all day, constantly wondering what Ken was thinking, whether he was getting annoyed by her insistence on secrecy, if he was ready for this thing between them to end.
That possibility upset her a lot more than it should.
Her shift at the library ended at four, and she walked back to her apartment, counting the hours until she could talk to Ken. He always worked until six. Sometimes later if there was something big going on in the county. Then he would head back to his house to eat dinner, walk Marlowe, and give the dog some attention. He never came over to her place until well after dark.
It would be a long time before she would be able to talk to him and either fix things or resign herself to this being the end.
She really hoped it wasn’t.
If it was, it would be her own fault for not handling it better.
In her typical fashion, she mentally played out one scenario after another, imagining every possibility for what might happen and then reimagining what could have happened if she’d done better in the past. She spent a full ten minutes visualizing what her life might look like if she’d not wasted so much of it on Josh—how she could have fallen naturally into a relationship with Ken without any of these complications. None of this did a thing to abate her anxiety, and she was so caught up in thinking that instead of walking farther down the block to her apartment, she turned in to Second Chance Flower Shop without thinking.
She had no idea why she was even there until she saw Skye, who was sitting behind the counter, look up from her laptop and smile with genuine pleasure at seeing Madeline. “Hey,” she began. “I didn’t know you were—” She broke off as her blue eyes scanned her friend’s face. “What’s the matter?”
Madeline shook her head. The “nothing” she murmured was automatic. An instinctive brushing off of attention.
“Why do you always say that when it’s obvious that something is wrong?” Skye closed her laptop and stood up. “Nothing much is happening right now. Come on into the back and talk to us.”
For just a moment Madeline considered objecting. She’d spent so much of her life keeping the deepest things to herself. But she’d come here for a reason, whether she’d realized it or not as she’d opened the shop door. She was upset, and her friends would always help.
So she followed Skye into the back room, where Ria was supposed to be working. She wasn’t working. She was lounging in the one comfortable chair in the room, and she jerked upright at their entrance. “I wasn’t napping!”
Madeline couldn’t help but laugh. “That would be more convincing if we hadn’t caught you doing exactly that.”
“Well, maybe I was closing my eyes for just a minute.” Ria flashed a quick smile. “I got up way too early this morning for a pickup since Fitz couldn’t—” She broke off midsentence. “What’s the matter?”
“See, I told you it was obvious something was bothering you,” Skye said, jumping up to sit on the edge of one of the worktables. “Now tell us.”
Madeline looked from one of them to the other. She wanted to explain but didn’t know where to begin. She hadn’t even told them she’d been seeing Ken for the past month, and she suddenly felt incredibly guilty about keeping that secret from them.
“Does this have something to do with your rebound fling?” Ria asked slowly.
Madeline froze for a moment. Then nodded.
Ria’s dark eyes were thoughtful. Knowing. “Jacob mentioned a conversation he had this morning. Was he putting the pieces together correctly?”
“What conversation?” Skye asked, frowning and obviously displeased about being the last to know.
“Yes,” Madeline admitted, relieved at having an easy segue into the truth. “He put the pieces together right.” Sighing, she turned to Skye and explained, “Jacob was talking to Ken this morning, and I guess Ken wouldn’t tell him who he’d been seeing for the past month. Because it’s supposed to be a secret. Because he’s
