The Right Thing by Donna McDonald Page A

whether she absolutely needed the shower or not.
    Whatever concerns Morgan had, there was no question in his mind at all about whether or not the woman wanted him.
    “I can wait for you. I swear it. Conduct your ritual. No regrets tonight,” Morgan told her.
    “Great. Just what I needed,” Thea said dryly, a full blush sweeping up to cover her face. “Ten years and I pick a man who can read my mind and see all my doubts. I think I’m going to go drown myself ”
    “Now you have me worried, so a half hour is all you get. If you take any longer, I’m coming in after you,” Morgan warned.
    “I’m not that much of a coward. I meant it when I said I wanted this,” Thea told him. She disappeared down a hallway and into a room.
    Moments later, Morgan heard the shower running. A half hour wasn’t much time to look around, but she had practically invited him to do a little snooping.
    Instead of sitting as Thea had suggested, Morgan prowled the living room, stopping to look at photos. There were pictures of Thea and a tall smiling man, his arm tucked around her possessively. This had to be the husband, he thought.
    “You must have been quite the guy to hang on to her for so long,” Morgan said to the smiling man in the picture.
    There was an assortment of other photos. There were her children who both looked like her, their spouses, and even some older people that Morgan thought were probably her parents since Thea favored them.
    Again—and just like in his father’s situation, there were no visible signs of any excesses of money. There was nothing in this room but evidence of a hard-working person who lived an honest, full life.
    Morgan concluded that the only indulgence—if you wanted to call it one—seemed to be the number of books which were scattered around. Some were slid into neat, orderly shelves. Others were stacked in piles. Some were bookmarked and dog-eared. Morgan found books on Egyptology, philosophy, metaphysics, and even Atlantis, he read with grin.
    Pulling the Atlantis book from the stack, Morgan took it to the couch to flip through it. Maps were marked. Comments were written along the outside of columns. It amused him to see comments written in bright blue ink, making them very noticeable against the black and white text.
    He turned the pages slowly, skipping the real content in favor of the more interesting dialog of the person who had studied it before him. He came across the word “bullshit” underlined twice by a passage, and it made Morgan laugh out loud to discover Thea was so opinionated about her reading. It was like discovering an intimate secret, more intimate than her finances, and one he doubted many knew.
    Some thirty minutes later Thea emerged from her bedroom and headed back down the hall to Morgan. Peeking into the living room, she saw him contentedly reading a book. She had rushed drying her hair because her time was running short, but thought now she could have just taken her time given how engrossed he was.
    Luckily she had found a silk nightgown and robe set in the back of a spare closet that hadn’t been cleaned out in years. Thea hadn’t worn either in so long that she was grateful they still fit, no matter how out of fashion they probably were. At least she hadn’t had to come out in her well-worn cotton pajamas. Wearing the gown and robe tonight actually gave her courage when she was having to dig pretty deeply inside herself to find some.
    Regardless of her declaration to Morgan, Thea discovered she wasn’t really sure at all about what she was doing. Now that the moment of truth was even closer, she found she was actually terrified. Doubts moved through her mind like tumbleweeds rolling across the desert.
    What if she couldn’t get aroused, she wondered? What if she discovered that she truly was as physically used up as she often feared? Thea hadn’t prepared sufficiently for sexual failure and that was a distinct possibility in her situation. Catching her in a weak