Divine Temptation by Nicki Elson Page A

starting to throb, so I’d better go. Thanks for dinner tonight. Talk to you next week.” She hung up before he had a chance to respond.
    She wanted to rewind and go back to Sunday night. After he’d finished his first glass of wine, she should’ve sent him on his merry way. Or even tonight, she could’ve happily gone on the rest of her life telling herself Carl would’ve come around had she just been honest with him. But then she had to go and prove that theory wrong.
    She needed a temporary escape, so as soon as she got upstairs, she turned on the shower. Shedding her clothes, she stepped in and let the warm water run over her. How could she have been so stupid? Why had she let herself want him again? At the back of her mind she’d always assumed she could reel Carl back in if she ever chose to. It gave her a sense of peace to think so. Stability. Control. But she’d given him enough time to realize he didn’t want her. Her tears burned hotter than what was coming from the pipes, and she let them flow. It was the first time she fully acknowledged the finality of her loss.
    Her tears eventually subsided, and only the tepid, saltless stream of the shower ran down her face. It was time for Maggie to get out and move on. She brushed her hair straight back, lotioned, and pulled on her fuzzy robe. Stepping out of the bathroom, the first place her eyes fell was the bed. The scene of the debacle. She couldn’t make herself go there. She went instead to the chaise in the corner of the room, kicking up her legs and leaning back to stare at the quarter moon outside her window. An owl hooted. Maggie found his mournful call into the lonely night comforting—she had a comrade in her misery.
    The silver glow of the moon was mimicked just to the side of Maggie. She recognized the shimmer and turned toward Evan. “Hey.” She gave him a small nod and then turned back to the window. When the angel had come by earlier that week, she hadn’t even brought up the incident with Carl, preferring at the time to ignore it.
    “What’s wrong?” he asked.
    “I thought you were supposed to keep me from getting hurt.” She only meant it as a joke, but there was bitterness in her tone.
    “I didn’t detect any danger.”
    “Not tonight. Sunday.”
    “Sunday? You seemed to be rather pleased with the situation. Did he hurt you?” Quiet anger resounded deep in his voice, grabbing Maggie’s attention.
    She peered at him, noting a subtle tension in his balled fists and the flickering shards in his gray eyes. For the first time, she sensed the great power residing beneath his peaceful demeanor. “No, he didn’t hurt me. Not the way you mean.”
    The flash retreated from his eyes, but he continued studying Maggie’s face, and she felt the bite of tears again. He lowered himself to the chaise, sitting beside her hip. “In what way did he hurt you?”
    After releasing a sigh to loosen her tightening throat, Maggie answered in a husky whisper, “My heart. He hurt my heart.”
    She pressed back harder into the chaise and bit at her lip, trying to stem the fresh tears, but it didn’t work. Bringing her hand to her chest, she held it there, as if clenching at her robe would somehow take the pain away. She didn’t understand where these tears were coming from. She’d already let herself cry in the shower and should be dry by now. But her body wouldn’t be controlled by her mind. Her release escalated into small gasps. She’d worked so hard to get her life traveling along a nice, straight path again. Then Carl showed up, said a few pretty words, and she lost control. She lost control of everything. She didn’t know how to stop crying.
    Evan’s warm, watery-feeling hand wrapped around hers and pulled it from her chest, leaning his head there instead. Since they weren’t flesh to flesh, he didn’t sink into her, but the side of his face had a penetrating warmth to it, and as he lay there, still, his sweet, soothing vibe filtered into