Fortunate Harbor by Emilie Richards

anywhere near us? If this was summer, she could take him on a vacation somewhere far, far away. But he’s in school. This is the only way she’s going to be able to spend any time with him.”
    She considered that. It made sense.
    “We aren’t sleeping together,” he said, when she didn’t respond.
    “Neither are we. ”
    “I’m aware of that.”
    “That’s why I came over.”
    “To sleep with me?” Just the faintest hint of a smile touched his lips.
    “No! Well, not right now, anyway. I, well, I just needed to explain what happened the other night. At least as well as I understand it.”
    “Give it to me in a nutshell.”
    She considered. “Okay. Friday night when I was crossing the room to the sofa to sit with you, I thought I saw CJ on the road in front of my cottage.”
    “There’s that name again.”
    “Marsh! At least CJ’s not sleeping in my house.”
    “Touché.”
    “It was my mother’s phone call, I guess. Stirring up all kinds of stuff. And you being there, and me being kind of…” No sane woman told a man she was nervous about getting into his bed, because that gave him all kinds of power. “Kind of wanting to make things perfect,” she said lamely.
    “You really thought you saw him?”
    “You want to hear something stranger? He actually is out of jail, holed up somewhere in California, working with his attorneys to make sure he stays that way. If I’d actually listened to my mother’s phone call, I would have known. I guess she thought I was aware of it and she wanted to harass me.”
    “And that’s why you went all squirrelly?” He rested his palms on the car, one on each side of her head, and leaned toward her.
    “‘Squirrelly’ is an exaggeration.”
    “Could it have been him?”
    “Not likely. I thought I saw him again yesterday but I tracked that man down. Not CJ.” She declined to tell him the rest of the story, since admitting to visions of her ex-husband was embarrassing enough. “I guess all this just brought up a bunch of memories. But they don’t have anything to do with the way I feel about you.”
    “And how do you feel, Miss Tracy?”
    She smiled a little. He was smiling exactly the same amount. Both of them waiting, she thought, for the other to make the first move.
    “Like we missed an opportunity,” she said softly, her gaze dropping to his lips. “And there are so few opportunities in this life, we should never let that happen.”
    “You know, now that Sylvia’s here, I have a built-in babysitter.”
    “We should take advantage of that.”
    In the end, he was the one who covered the slight distance and kissed her.
    When the kiss ended, she opened her eyes and looked beyond him. Sylvia was standing on the porch watching, her expression a complete blank.
    “We have an audience,” Tracy said.
    He straightened and turned.
    “Marsh?” Sylvia called. “Hate to bother you, but I don’t know where you keep your bread, and I need to make Bay a sandwich for lunch.”
    “You go,” Tracy told him. “We’ll make plans later.”
    “I’ll hold you to that.”
    She watched Marsh walk back to the house. Now Sylvia was smiling sweetly. She lifted a hand and gave Tracy a half wave.
    Tracy’s elation vanished. Silhouetted in the doorway, Sylvia was the woman every man dreamed of coming home to.
    Marsh might think Sylvia was here to lick her wounds and visit her neglected son, but Tracy had grown up with too many women just like her. She was sure war had been declared, and Marsh was the prize.
     
    Wanda spent Monday morning baking. She wasn’t one to sit around and think about things until she was so confused she didn’t know where to turn. She liked the idea of baking pies for the Sunshine Bakery. Of course, she figured getting hired to do it was a long shot. The owner probably thought her own pies were just fine, but baking took her mind off the Dancing Shrimp, and besides, she needed to contribute.
    There were only so many books a person could take