The Taming of the Bachelor by Jane Porter

yourself tomorrow.”
    She blinked hard, her chin lifting. “I wouldn’t.”
    This sucked. This sucked bad. She’d come down the stairs excited and shy, hopefu l, and now she stood in the hall, sad, and hurt.
    He could see it in her face, see the pain as it registered...he was rejecting her.
    He was walking away from her.
    Dillon forced himself to breathe, in, out. He didn’t like hurting her, but he had to do the right thing. He had to shut things down before they got out of control. Better one of them kept it real, thought it through.

    P aige wouldn’t cry in bed. She hadn’t cried in years. She’d forgotten how to cry after Lewis died. And for a year or two she’d forgotten how to laugh, too.
    She’d begun to find her sense of humor in the past year but the tears hadn’t returned, although tonight her eyes had burned and she’d felt so naked standing there at the foot of the stairs, naked and stupid and embarrassed. Embarrassed because she’d come down the stairs excited and so full of feeling, so full of yearning.
    And then she saw Dillon’s face. She saw how he looked at her, distant, detached. No longer a woman, but a mom. A mother. Not sexy, not desirable. She was...nothing.
    She hugged her pillow to her chest, swallowing hard, once and again to keep the emotion from rising.
    She wouldn’t be sad, wouldn’t be angry, either. She wouldn’t give him another thought, wouldn’t waste her time or heart. He was leaving town in two days. He’d be gone and this whole embarrassing night would be behind her.

Chapter 7

    P aige was starting her Sunday in another standoff with the toilet.
    Having to borrow a plunger again from neighbor, Carol Bingley, only made the situation worse. In fact, asking to borrow anything from Carol was far worse than the overflowing toilet itself.
    If she wasn’t a single mom she could have left the sleeping kids with the husband and zipped down to the hardware store on Main Street and purchased her own plunger. She ought to own her own plunger. In fact, she was sure she’d bought one. Sometime. Somewhere. But tools seemed to disappear.
    Kind of like socks....
    And husbands.
    But no, that wasn’t fair. She’d only had one husband, and she didn’t lose him. He’d died, doing what he loved. And she missed him, and she’d grieved for him, but truthfully—and it was a terrible thing to admit, something she couldn’t admit to anyone but herself—if she had the chance to get him back...would she take it?
    Obviously, for the kids, yes.
    But for her....if she were only thinking about her needs...was he the right one for her?
    She’d thought so when they were dating and newly married. She’d tried to continue believing in them when he set off on his treks and journeys, but in all their years of marriage, he’d never asked her what she wanted.
    What she needed.
    Like Dillon did last night.
    Not that she wanted to think of Dillon. She was so uncomfortable with how things had ended last night. She still felt raw this morning. Raw and embarrassed.
    She’d practically thrown herself at him, begging him to be with her—
    She broke off and ground her teeth together, trying to block out the memory, and her sleepless night. Heartsick, she’d tossed and turned, checking the bedside clock every hour or two, desperate for morning to come.
    Why had he kissed her, if he wasn’t interested in her?
    Worse, why did she have to respond the way she did? She hadn’t held back. She’d given in to the desire, surrendering to the moment, and now she just felt stupid. Mortified.
    For God’s sake, she wasn’t a teenager. She was eight years older then Dillon. She was a mom. She’d been a wife. She wasn’t someone who ever threw herself at a man...
    She’d never even thrown herself at Lewis.
    Paige jammed the plunger up and down, furious with herself and Dillon and the entire Bachelor Auction. She shouldn’t have gone out last night. Shouldn’t have worn that stupid jumpsuit. Shouldn’t