Page 225 of His Virgin Romance Series

It felt as though she wanted me to tell her to stay. But I wasn’t sure if that was just wishful thinking on my part. She had made it clear from the start that I was the wrong type of guy for her and this was the wrong lifestyle for her.

“Ryderary?”

I blinked and focused on Miriam. “You’re married, right?” I asked, turning the questions around on her.

She smiled and nodded. “Twenty-four years this winter.”

“And what’s it like being in a long-term relationship?”

“Fucking irritating,” Miriam replied. “Eighty percent of the time.”

“I see.”

“But the other twenty percent… well, that’s magic right there,” she said. “And it’s worth it.”

“Twenty-eighty,” I said. “Doesn’t seem like it is.”

“Oh, trust me, you’ll only realize it when you’ve found the right person,” she said. “But it’s totally worth it. Can you imagine what it’s like to have a partner in life, someone you can trust and rely on? You’ve got a best friend and a lover all rolled into one; you have someone you can yell at for no reason who won’t hold it against you the next day. You’ve got someone who can pick up the slack when you’re sick or tired. You’ve got someone who will have your back when no one else will. I mean, who wouldn’t want that?”

I smiled. “How did you meet him?” I asked.

Miriam seemed amused by my questions. “It’s interesting that after all these years, you’re finally interested in my life.”

“Sorry…”

“Don’t be,” Miriam laughed. “Sometimes you need to relate first before you can be interested in someone else. I suppose you never had a reason before Abby.”

It was painfully obvious that she knew why I was asking so many questions about her marriage. She saw the same need in me that I had recognized. I wondered if I was that transparent to everyone or if Miriam was just very perceptive.

“I met Darren when I was twenty-seven,” she said. “I was doing my Ph.D, and he was a surf instructor.”

“What?” I asked.

Miriam laughed. “Which part are you surprised by?”

“Every part,” I replied. “The fact that you have a doctorate, for starters… and the fact that you’re apparently married to a surfer.”

Miriam winked. “It doesn’t sound good on paper, does it?”

“No.”

“That’s what everyone thought too,” she laughed. “Hell, that’s what I thought. But we had this connection that was impossible to deny. He had just come off a messy divorce, and I was still figuring out my life, so it was just supposed to be a fling. We actually broke up for about six months. I ended things with him because I thought we were too different. Our lifestyles would never meld together.”

“Then what happened?”

“I realized that the six months we were apart were the worst of my life. I even had to take a break from my Ph.D. because I couldn’t concentrate. We ended up getting back together, and three months later, we were married.”

“Wow.”

“I got my doctorate, we bought a house by the sea, and somehow… things worked out.”

“How did you end up here?” I asked. “Running a burger shack in this tiny town?”

“It was the one thing we had in common,” Miriam laughed. “He loved to cook and experiment with food, and so did I. We decided that when the kids left the nest, we would start up a burger shack together… and amazingly, we did.”

I nodded. “That’s quite the love story.”

“It’s beautiful when you hear it in a couple of sentences, but we’ve had our rough patches, too. We separated for a couple of months when the kids were really young, but we always found our way back to each other.”

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