Page 28 of A Beach House Beginning

She seemed willing to be friends. She had invited him and Brielle to dinner, after all, and had agreed to take their girls out for tacos some other time during the week.

Could Wes put away his growing attraction for her and be content with only a friendship?

What choice did he have?

He liked being with her. Maybe in time she would trust him enough and would begin to relax a little more in his presence.

He had very few friends here in Cannon Beach. He didn’t want to lose this one, even if that meant shoving down his growing attraction for her.

Chapter Six

Later that evening, Wes sat at Jenna’s dining table, feeling distinctly uncomfortable.

The food was delicious, pasta in a creamy spinach and tomato sauce with a tossed salad and fluffy breadsticks.

The conversation was fine, too, with the girls chattering away and carrying most of it.

Still, he was aware of a vague feeling of unease.

This felt entirely too domestic, the kind of warm, enjoyable scene that he had dreamed about through all the long months he spent on the inside.

His own marriage had never been this cozy. He and Lacey had been a bad combination from the start. She had been so young, not at all ready for marriage but eager to escape her difficult family.

He had liked her more than most of the women he’d dated. When she had become pregnant about four months after they started dating, despite their use of protection, they both decided marriage was the best course of action.

She had lost the baby a week after their wedding at the county clerk’s office in North Carolina, where he had been stationed at the time.

He had once cared about her. Or told himself he had, anyway. Having Brielle two years later had been a joy for both of them, going a long way toward erasing much of the pain of that first miscarriage. But somewhere along the way they had both realized they weren’t a good fit and had been talking about ending the marriage before he had ever been arrested.

He knew he had been a lousy husband and blamed himself for the breakdown of their marriage.

He had been a workaholic, completely focused on building up his business. At the time, he told himself he was doing everything for Lacey and Brielle. Lacey had begged him to slow down, to spend more time with them, to help her out more around the house and with their child.

He had made empty promises, again and again, but he hadn’t changed.

In prison, he had finally acknowledged to himself that he had always held part of himself back from the marriage. He had never let himself be vulnerable with Lacey, had never truly opened his heart to her.

He had seen how devastated his mother had been after his father’s murder, and maybe some part of him had internalized that and prevented him from completely letting down his guard.

Even if he had, he wasn’t sure they ever could have healed all that had been withered because of neglect.

By then, Lacey had already reconnected with her childhood sweetheart. She was now very happily remarried, expecting another child with her new husband.

She had found in Ron Summers all that Wes hadn’t been able to give her.

When he saw how happy they were together, Wes had decided he had been the problem all along, as he suspected. He sucked at marriage, apparently. Maybe he should just stick with being the best possible father to Brielle to make up for lost time and leave domestic bliss to others more suited to it.

This, though. This felt so comfortable here in Jenna’s apartment, easy and natural and soothing. Rain clicked against the windows and the puppy snored at the girls’ feet. As she listened to the girls’ steady conversation, Jenna smiled with a warmth that made something in him ache with cravings he thought he had buried long ago.

“That lasagna was delicious, Mrs. Haynes,” Brielle said.

“We did a good job on it, didn’t we? Thanks for helping me. All of you. We have so much left over—you can take some home and put it in the freezer for another day.”

“Good idea.”

Dinner prep with her had been a delight as she showed the girls with calm patience how to make the sauce and then layer the ricotta and spinach sauce on the noodles before rolling it up into pinwheels on the pan.

“You did most of the work with dinner,” he said now to her. “We can clean up.”

---