Yours Seductively

Chapter 4.3 (Part 2)

   He could still feel her fingertips against his jaw. He could still feel the warmth of her lithe, vibrant body standing so close to his. He could still hear the echo of her husky laugh, like a brush of feathers against his nerve endings.

   Tyler downed the single shot of bourbon her allowed himself each day and set the glass aside, his movements unhindered by the near-total darkness in the room. He was used to sitting in his living room alone in the dark, long after the children were in bed. Many nights he sat there resisting an urge to pour another drink—and brooding about Stephanie. Remembering the satisfying, if somewhat unexciting, relationship he'd thought they had. Mourning the loss of the woman he had once loved and illusions she had shattered. Facing a future that bore little resemblance to the one he'd envisioned when he had married her.

   Tonight he found himself thinking of Jane, instead.

   It was still hard for him to believe how close he'd come to acting like an awkward adolescent outside his parents' door earlier. He was a grown man, a widower, the father of two children, and still Jane has brought him perilously near stammering incoherence—with only a brush of her fingers and that soft, sexy laugh. They seemed to have little more in common now than they'd had as teenagers—and yet he still found himself tempted to duck behind the high school gym with her.

   She had always had the strangest effect on him. He would have thought he'd outgrown it by now.

   Apparently, he hadn't.