She could have a hot rebound fling if she wanted.
Why on earth shouldn’t she, if Ken wanted that too?
On Saturday morning, she was supposed to take the day off, but she had a message for a custom arrangement to compose. The little poems usually came to her quickly. It wasn’t like they needed to be brilliant. They just needed to be clever and evoke real emotion, and she happened to have a knack for it. But for some reason the poem she’d been trying to write yesterday was giving her trouble. It wasn’t because the scenario didn’t emotionally resonate with her. It did. It was a husband who wanted a special arrangement and message for his wife on their fiftieth anniversary. She’d seen marriages like that. Her own parents had been married for thirty-one years. They’d moved to Florida last year after her father had taken early retirement, so she didn’t see them as much as she used to, but she was close to them. She knew what it took to make a marriage last for decades. She hadn’t experienced it, but she’d seen it. And if she could feel it, she could write it.
But she was blocked for some reason. She worked on it for two hours in the morning, drinking coffee and sitting on her couch in her pajamas, but finally she gave up with only three-fourths of it done.
Sometimes a change of scenery helped in inspiration, so she took a shower, dressed, and headed to the flower shop to see what Ria and Skye were up to.
Skye wasn’t there, but Ria was working in the back room. When Madeline came in, she caught her friend smiling and humming to herself.
“Thinking about Jacob this morning, I guess,” she said with a teasing lilt in her voice.
Ria grinned sheepishly after an initial jerk of surprise. “Why would you think that?”
“Because you had a decidedly sappy look on your face. That was definitely a Jacob look.”
“I’m sorry. Am I annoying about it? I try not to be. I know how it feels to be bombarded by other people’s romantic highs all the time.”
Madeline laughed as she propped herself on a stool in the corner of the room. “You’re not annoying at all, Ria. Seriously. I’m glad you’re happy. You deserve it. So what did Jacob do now?”
“Nothing really. He was just extra sweet this morning.”
From the particular resonance of the words, Madeline figured Jacob must have been extra sweet in the bedroom. While Madeline wasn’t ready to jump into another relationship right now, she wouldn’t mind some bedroom satisfaction herself.
Immediately she pictured Ken and what she and he might do under the covers. It got her hot and flushed, so she tried to push the visuals out of her mind.
She didn’t say any of that, of course. She just said, “I’m glad he really appreciates you and shows you he does. I never really got much of that from Josh.”
“I know you didn’t,” Ria said, her face sobering. “I sometimes wanted to ask you about it, but you always seemed fine about the relationship, so I figured you were happier than I could see.”
“I wasn’t. I just didn’t... I don’t know. I feel so stupid about it now. I guess I just assumed that was the best I could get, even though I should have known better.”
“It wasn’t anywhere close to the best you can get. A man who really loves you is going to make you feel loved and appreciated. And if he doesn’t, you’re better off without any man at all.”
“I know. I’m actually a lot happier now—like I’ve shed a huge burden. I want to just enjoy the freedom. To tell you the truth, I might not want to do the girlfriend thing again.”
“At all?”
“I don’t know. Not yet anyway. I want to be myself. Not some guy’s girlfriend. Is that bad?”
“No. It’s not bad at all. Maybe you’ll change your mind when you recover emotionally, but if you don’t, then that’s fine too. You should enjoy your freedom. Do something just for you. Something you want. You went too long without being able to do that because you were tied to Josh. Be free for a little while. Why shouldn’t you?”
Madeline smiled and shook her head. “Well, the honest answer to that is I’m always brooding over consequences. What if I do what I want and then it turns out to be a mistake?”
“Isn’t that what freedom means? If you’re free to choose, then sometimes you’ll choose wrong. But somehow I doubt that something you really want to do is going to be that wrong. So what if it’s a little reckless? You’ve never let yourself be reckless.”
“Yeah.” Madeline’s heart had started to pound as she mentally moved closer to a decision. Ria was smart and generous and knew her as well as anyone in the world. She wouldn’t advise her to do something stupid. So maybe she was right. Maybe she was allowed to throw off the shackles of responsibility and good sense for a little while.
Maybe she was allowed to do what she wanted for once in her life.
Even if what she wanted was screwing the sheriff.
“So what are you thinking?” Ria asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. You have something in mind. Something you want to do. Is it so bad you can’t tell me?”
“It’s not bad. At least I don’t think so. It just feels... I don’t know... private. For now.” Madeline licked her lips. She didn’t normally keep secrets from Ria and Skye, and she felt kind of bad about doing so now. She was almost tempted to admit it, but something kept holding her back.
“Okay. I get it. You’ll tell us when you’re ready.” Ria’s dark eyes were sincere. “If it’s something you want to do, don’t hold back just because you’re afraid. You deserve good things, Madeline. So let yourself have them.”
For no good reason, Madeline’s throat tightened with emotion. “Thanks,” she managed to say.
She did want this. She wanted to have sex with Ken. She wanted to really bad.
And she could no longer think of enough good excuses not to.
She chatted with Ria a little longer, and together they talked through the last part of the poem she needed to finish. After she’d written it down, she left the shop and started walking through the downtown streets until she’d reached the oldest residential neighborhood in town.
Several blocks down was a brick ranch house with a big yard and a one-car attached garage. It was Ken’s house. His garage door was open, and his pickup truck was parked inside.
He was home.
She didn’t know what had prompted her to do something so crazy, but she was here at his house at just after noon on a random Saturday.
And she was going to ask him if he wanted to have sex.
KEN WAS WORKING ON cleaning up one of the flower beds in his backyard. The previous homeowner had filled it with ferns that grew like crazy every spring, overflowing the bed and ending up everywhere, and he was tired of trying to keep up with them. But digging up fern bulbs was a losing prospect. Every time he thought he’d gotten all of them, a new round would appear out of nowhere.
He’d had a lot of excess energy this week after his hot evening with Madeline on Tuesday, so he’d woken up restless and jittery. Since he couldn’t go pounding on her door this morning and asking her again for hot sex, he committed to getting the rest of the fern bulbs out of that damned bed before they started popping up everywhere again in the spring.