When You Least Expect by Lydia Rowan

dating, or whatever you want to call it.”
    “It is if you’re ready and when we talked about it, you seemed to be.”
    “I was. I am, but I guess I just never thought…I mean, Dani loves him, Mandy. Is over the moon about him.”
    “That’s a good thing,” Mandy said.
    “But she doesn’t really understand what it means, but she will soon enough and then what will she think?”
    Mandy blinked and then narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear Matilda brainwashed you or something because you sound exactly like her. Come on, Ariel, you know better.”
    “Do I? I mean, maybe she has a point. I have to set an example,” Ariel said.
    She’d said and thought those words so many times in the weeks since she’d been seeing Matt, she was sick of them. That fact didn’t make them any less true though.
    “And what, being a responsible adult woman who’s seeing an equally responsible adult man is not setting a good example?”
    “But she doesn’t need to see me like that,” Ariel said. The words lacked conviction, but she voiced them, the little worry that had wormed itself into her brain unwilling to rest.
    “And the alternative?”
    “I could end it,” Ariel said, surprised by the shard of pain that speared her stomach when she voiced the thought.
    “And that would be a better example? Instead of showing your daughter a strong woman who moved on after a loss and lives a full, happy life, you’ll just be stuck waiting until you think it’s okay and then realize that you’ve let way too much time pass you by? Things might not work out with Matt, but if they don’t, you’ll manage. And I trust you enough to know that you won’t do anything to harm your daughter. You should trust yourself, too.”
    “And Daniel? His memory?” Ariel couldn’t help but say.
    “Honor it by living the way he would have wanted you to,” Mandy said.
    ••••
    “So tell me about yourself, Matt,” Ariel said a couple of days later.
    Dani was with her grandparents, so she’d taken the opportunity to have dinner with Matt.
    He glanced across the table at her and smiled, looking slightly confused.
    “You pretty much know all there is to know, I think,” he replied.
    “Nope. I disagree. I know what you do, where you’re from, but I don’t know you ,” Ariel said.
    “Where’s this going, Ariel?” he asked, sitting up a little straighter, eyes clouding.
    She paused, wanting to kick herself for opening the topic, and so ham-fistedly no less. “Why aren’t you married?”
    He waved nonchalantly, but Ariel could see his discomfort with this conversation. “Haven’t found the right person,” he said.
    “Matt…”
    “What?” he said shortly.
    “Let me in,” she said softly.
    He pulled his lips tight, and then he relented. “To be honest, I never considered it.”
    “Why?”
    “After my mom… My dad, he was broken. He completely fell apart, couldn’t take care of himself or me.”
    “I understand. And I can’t even explain how hard it is to pick yourself back up after something like that.”
    “You seemed to do it.”
    “I got there, but that was luck more than anything. Some days, I didn’t think I would,” Ariel said.
    “But you did. And he didn’t. Didn’t keep up the house, couldn’t hold down a job, he just fell into a pit so deep I don’t know if he’ll ever be able to get out.”
    “You hate him for it?”
    Matt shook his head and shrugged, his big, muscled body relaxed, almost nonchalant, but his face tight. “Not anymore. I still get pissed when I think about it, and I get so frustrated by him, I can’t even bring myself to talk to him sometimes. It was really bad last year, right around the time Blake came home. He’d been gone a couple years and eventually drifted back, I guess after he heard I’d bought the house.” Matt looked off for a moment before turning his gaze back to her. “Working on this place dredged up a lot of crap that I thought I