The Child Who Changed Them (Parent Portal 5)

“I do love him—as a family member. So much. But I was never in love with him.”

“Because you loved his brother.”

“That,” she said, cocking her head slightly as she shrugged. “And... Wood has always been a brother to me. He’s a hunk, don’t get me wrong. Women have been flocking around him ever since I’ve known him. He just...doesn’t do it for me...in that way.”

He felt sorry for the guy. Deeply sorry.

And gratified for himself.

Not sure what kind of man that made him, he said, “Yet you lived together as husband and wife. At least for a time.”

He couldn’t imagine sleeping with someone he wasn’t sexually attracted to.

When Elaina shook her head, he was suddenly sitting up at attention. “My marriage to Wood was never consummated.”

At first Greg wasn’t sure he’d heard her right. Took a second to give himself a mental instant replay. And then another to quit high-fiving himself.

There was nothing to celebrate in her news. He hadn’t just been elevated up a step in the rankings.

Nothing had changed. The facts were still their facts. But in a way he couldn’t yet define, those seven words had changed everything.

Greg no longer had a living, breathing man keeping him from Elaina.

His only deterrents were a ghost and his own desire to avoid emotional complications.

Greg was sure that Peter’s memory would linger forever.

He was not going to make more of their association than was there. Was not going to rush to find something that didn’t exist. Or to make it exist.

His child’s best chance at a happy future depended on it.

And Elaina was depending on him to keep his distance, too.

Chapter Eleven

Elaina wasn’t unhappy when Greg decided it was time for him to go home. Sitting there talking to him about her lack of sex with Wood, about not being turned on...when he knew more than most exactly what did turn her on, in detail...wasn’t the way for them to proceed successfully on their quest to a healthy future for all of them.

He couldn’t just be her no-strings-attached lover anymore.

And she couldn’t take him to her bed in any other capacity. Too much inside of her prevented that choice.

Still, she couldn’t help realizing, as she walked him back through the house toward the garage door, that it was easier having him leave knowing that he was coming back.

To stay.

“I was thinking about getting a dog,” she blurted when his backside in those tight jeans got her again. When would she learn to quit looking?

Or at least quit getting herself in positions where she was walking behind him?

“What do you think about dogs?” she continued, focusing on his shoulders and finding them equally distracting. She knew the strength in them as they held her full weight up against the wall of his bedroom as he’d...

No. She couldn’t erase the memory. Or the fact that she’d enjoyed the mind-blowing sex she’d had with Greg Adams, but she could most certainly control her thoughts about it.

She was a grown woman. Not a pubescent kid.

“I like dogs.” He’d turned, his hand on the doorknob, and she’d been so busy not looking at him she’d almost run into him. Was so close she could practically see the whiskers on his chin move as he spoke.

“I...was thinking about getting a rescue...” she said, taking too long to take a step back.