She shrugged and sipped her drink. “I’d be seen as nothing more than a pathetic light skirt, scaling the corporate ladder on her knees. But I loved him so. I knew he was both the beginning and end of me. Jerry offered to quit, give it all up.” She ducks her head as if laughing inwardly. “But that wouldn’t have changed the perception of me. We were at a stalemate. Fated to both love and resent each other.”

“What did you do?” Obviously, she’d married the man.

“I broke up with him.” She pops a cherry into her mouth and chews industriously. “And I was damned miserable.”

“Did you go back to him?”

“No.” She smiles. “He called every evening with one question. ‘Is it still worth it?’ I held out for months. Until finally, I could answer, no, being apart from him wasn’t worth it.”

“Then you got together, lived happily ever after and all that jazz, right?”

Mrs. Goldman shakes her head. “No. Everything I feared they would think, they did. I had to quit the firm and open my own. Set me back years because no one wanted to hire a woman as their financial manager.” A dark look comes into her eyes. “But I persisted. And I made it.”

“But you lost—”

“What?” she cuts in. “The respect of a bunch of ignorant cocks who didn’t really respect me in the first place? Lost sleep? Money?”

She rests her arm on the table and for a moment the expression in her eyes is wide open and young. “I lost all those things. And gained the love of my life. It wasn’t all champagne and roses, though we indulged in those every day. We struggled, fought. Jerry had dark months of depression now and then. So did I. On paper, we were a disaster. Together …”

She tails off with a shrug and looks away. Tears well in her eyes, and she sniffs. “Damn, I really do want a cigarette.”

Her loss and the love she felt for her husband wraps around us, both smothering and yet somehow warm. I give her a moment, my own thoughts running amok.

“I don’t know if John is the one,” I say finally. “But he’s only one I’ve thought about taking a chance on.”

Mrs. Goldman straightens and pins me with a look. “Then what are you waiting for?”

Chapter Fifteen

Stella

* * *

My fingers are ice cold. I don’t know why I fixate on that, but I can’t seem to ignore it as I open the sliding glass door that leads to the terrace. My heart pounds heavy and frantic in my chest, and I take a deep breath in an attempt to calm down. I have no reason to be nervous, but here I am, freaking out.

At my ankles, Stevens lets out a plaintive yowl and rubs his sleek body against my calf. He’s been sticking close by since I got sick. I’m better now, but the little guy still worries.

“You’re staying here, bud.” I gently nudge him back into the house and close the door before he can follow. He stares at me with solemn eyes as if he’s sending me off to war.

I laugh at my wayward thoughts but it still doesn’t ease my tension.

The setting sun burns pink and gold along the terrace and warms the stone that runs along the wall between Killian’s place and John’s. I press my hands to the stone and close my eyes for a long second before leaning over and calling out. “I’m coming over the wall!”

John’s doors are open, and I soon hear his voice inside. “You can’t just text like a normal person, can you?”

“Nope!” I scramble over the wall—all grace and dignity—and hop down on his terrace. My hands have gone from icy to clammy.

I rub them on my shorts and make my way inside.

John sits slumped on his massive couch, his head turned my way. His expression is blank but despite his casual pose, the long lines of his body are tight and still, as if he’s holding his breath. He isn’t wearing anything but a pair of jeans slung low on his lean hips. His bare chest and hard abs are distracting as hell.

For a second, I just look at him. His chocolate-brown hair sticks up like he’s been gripping the ends of it. Thick stubble shadows his jaw, making his wide mouth seem paler but softer somehow. But his green eyes are hard now, an almost eerie jade surrounded by his dark lashes.

Facing him now just makes it more acute; I am seriously attached to John Blackwood. And this is not a good thing. He looks at me as if he’s thinking the same, like he’s warning me to turn around and get out while I can. But it’s too late.

I take a step closer to him. “So …”

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