Page 13 of A Kiss to Remember
“It started with complaining about me not having enough time for her. So no matter how tired I was from work and school, I tried to give her more attention. Then she accused me of being too needy, so I pulled back. I’d arrive at work and discover that my files were missing information, or the numbers had been transposed. Or I had to make a presentation, and the PowerPoint had disappeared from my computer. When we attended my office parties, she either flirted with my colleagues or deliberately insulted them. Or as I later found out, slept with them.”
“Shit,” she whispered.
“Yes, shit.” He chuckled, but it didn’t carry any humor. “She tried to sabotage my career before it could really begin. The betrayal...” He cleared his throat. Paused. “The betrayal when you’ve done nothing but love a person... It destroys something in you. Your trust. In other people. In yourself. It’s not something you forget—or want to repeat.”
She got it. God, did she get it.
“She didn’t break you, though,” she whispered.
“No,” he whispered back. “She didn’t.”
“Declan?”
“Yes.”
“I’m glad.”
CHAPTER FIVE
LASTHALLOWEEN, DECLANattended a friend’s party, dressed as a pirate, and ended up going home with a sexy as hell cat—or maybe she’d been a mouse.
The Halloween before that, he’d spent the evening at a business dinner. And had his dining partner for dessert.
This Halloween, he stuffed goody bags with candy, toys and small books for the fifty or so excited children that crowded into the Rose Bend Public Library for the Spooks ’n’ Books Bash.
Being the town librarian’s “boyfriend” definitely had its perks.
He smirked as he tossed a mini pack of M&M’s into a plastic bag decorated with goofy ghosts, cats and witches. In the three weeks since he’d started dating Remi, he’d gone to a high school–sponsored haunted house, judged a pumpkin pie contest that she’d volunteered him for when the scheduled judge came down with food poisoning, and gone on his first ever hayride. He’d eaten his first s’more in nineteen years, tasted his first cup of homemade spiced cider ever and snacked on honest-to-God grapenut custard, hauling out and dusting off childhood memories he’d long forgotten.
Yes, these last three weeks had definitely been an experience. As different from his outings with Tara as the Patriots from the Lions. He’d had fun.
Damn.
When had his life stopped being fun?
Not that his life was bad. God, no. It would be the height of white privilege to cry about a challenging career he enjoyed, the luxurious lifestyle it afforded him, the doors to the elite business and social worlds it opened to him. And he indulged in it all.
But did he feel that pure excitement like a child on Christmas morning or a kid soaring down a steep hill on his bike at full speed? Like a teen discovering the bloom of his first crush?
No. That had been missing.
Until now.
Until Remi.
His pulse an uncomfortable throb at his neck, his wrists, he scanned the library, and like a lodestone, his gaze found her. Maybe it was the dark fire of her hair—or the brighter flame of her very essence—but she seemed to gleam like a ruby among the crowd of parents who stood in the outer ring surrounding the children who gathered for story time.
A smile flashed across her face at something, brief but so lovely, and the air in his chest snagged.
Jesus, the power of it.
Like a hard knee to the gut and a gentle brush of fingers across his jaw at the same time.
He blinked, dragging his much-too-fascinated scrutiny away from her and back to the task at hand. Goody bags. Candy. Toys.
“Is this my son over here in the back doing manual labor?” His mother appeared in front of the table, a wide smile stretched across her pretty face. Tiny lines fanned out from the corners of Janet Howard’s blue eyes as she nabbed a small box of crayons and swung it back and forth in front of him. “If I didn’t see it with my own eyes...”
He snorted, holding his hand out and curling his fingers, signaling for her to hand over the box. When she did, with an even-wider grin, he drawled, “Laugh it up now, woman. But just because I work behind a desk doesn’t mean I don’t know the meaning of labor.” He arched an eyebrow. “I mean, who do you think mows that big yard I have?”
