The Men With the Golden Cuffs(116)

She’d been barely nineteen and the possibilities had been a whole wide future. “Well, I only know that the reality was a man who threatened to walk out on me any time something went wrong. The whole marriage was one long fight where I had to give in to him or lose the relationship. I finally found something I wanted more than that marriage. I found writing. I don’t think I’ll ever get married again.”

It was easier this way. She could just live for the moment and know that it could all end tomorrow. It was the truth. Nothing was certain, so why should she pretend it was?

“My husband died. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t marry again.”

“But you had a happy marriage?” There was a huge difference there. Grace’s husband hadn’t meant to leave her.

“For the most part. There were whole parts of myself I shut off because I didn’t think my husband could handle it. And then I found Sean. I’m too old to start over. I told myself that like a hundred times. But it doesn’t work that way, at least it doesn’t have to. I’m forty-one. I should be a grandmother, but here I am having another baby, and I think this one is going to keep me young, like Sean does. I thought that loving Sean would be the stupidest thing I could possibly do, but it turns out to be the joy of my life.”

“That’s wonderful, Grace.” It was a lovely story. It just didn’t have anything to do with her.

“Why won’t you give them a chance?” Grace sat back, her hand on her round belly. “Tell me if I’m intruding.”

“You’re intruding.”

A slow smile slid across her face. “I might be now, but if you let yourself, we would be such good friends. So I’m going to claim pregnant-lady rights and plow through anyway. I’m going to say a few things because I love Adam and Jake and because I love you, too.”

Serena shook her head. “You don’t know me.”

“Oh, but I do. You’ve been a voice in my head for the last few years. It’s like that with some authors. When I was really lonely, I had your characters. And I learned a lot from them and the woman who wrote them.” Grace put her hand on the stack of books that represented Serena’s life work. “This woman is strong. This woman doesn’t let the past rob her of a future. This woman reaches out with both hands and grabs what she deserves. This woman knows how to love and how to fight. I pray for my friends that this woman isn’t a work of fiction.”

Serena stared at her books, her life’s passion. But what did her life mean if all her passion was spent on words? Her marriage had been a failure. Did that mean she should be alone for the rest of her life or simply exist in the moment because future hurts were too much to contemplate?

“Serena? Are you ready?” Jake stood in the doorway looking handsome in a dark suit and tie, the jacket of the suit in his hand. He had a leather shoulder holster on, his gun in plain sight, reminding her that she needed a bodyguard.

Was she ready? She probably wasn’t ready for any of this. She wasn’t ready to make a decision about anything.

“Baby?” Jake stared down at her. “You okay?”

She shook her head. He was asking if she was ready to go to the signing, and she was sitting here asking enormous life questions. Questions she still didn’t have a damn answer for, but Grace Taggart was making her think. She’d been obsessed with this signing for months and now all she could think was that it would be nice to get it over with because she had a lot of thinking to do.

“I’m ready.” She stood, her focus caught on the books. Was she just fiction? Or were those books her training wheels, her way of getting ready to do what it took to be truly strong, to take the risk to really love again? Her voice was steadier this time. “I’m ready.”

Jake took her hand and led her to the car.







Jake really wasn’t ready. He looked around the small store and realized he wasn’t ready to put her in harm’s way, and he damn sure wasn’t ready to let her go.

“So, this is where our illustrious author chooses to sign her books?” Detective Hernandez held up a vibrator in a box. “Well, we know what the books are about, at least.”

Jake had had just about enough of the detective. He turned to Detective Chitwood. “Maybe we don’t need Dallas PD here. This asshole obviously has a real problem with my client’s work.”

Chitwood motioned Jake over and kept his voice low. “Please, Mr. Dean, give him a little leeway. I’ll talk to him. He’s going through a bit of a rough patch at home. His wife seems to have found herself, so to speak. She started a new career, and she’s leaving him behind. And she loved romance novels. Not like Amber Rose’s, but Mike is lumping them all in together. I’m afraid he thinks his wife got unrealistic expectations of what to expect from books like that.”