Picking Up the Pieces. Barbara Gale

and she had terrible regrets, she would keep them to herself. “Let me be, Harry,” she said quietly. “Don’t ask me any questions, and I won’t ask you mine.”

      They never got personal again, and they never talked about their past together. Harry would have—it was always a word away from his lips—but Althea’s message was clear, and he sensed that one wrong word and she might be out the door, a gamble he didn’t want to take.

      And he would have touched her—oh, countless times he would have liked to reach out—but his hand always stilled. He would not make the same mistake twice. Her ex-husband, Daniel, was nothing, a year out of Althea’s life, a mistake. But wasn’t he, too? That’s what Harry kept telling himself, the long hours he lay in his hospital bed, up to the very moment he was informed that he could leave the hospital four days later. Very nearly what Althea told herself, too, as she prowled her apartment that long week, so it was not surprising that their needs would blend.