Mr. Right Next Door. Arlene James

chuckled. “On occasion. But what about the paperwork?”

      She halted, ashamed suddenly of the lie, and stammered, “Uh, i-it c-can wait.”

      He shrugged and clapped his hands together, rubbing them briskly. “Okay, so, got any bread? A little salad maybe?”

      She pointed to a cabinet door, then opened the refrigerator and looked inside. “I’ve got some greens, but there doesn’t seem to be any dressing.”

      He took a bottle of red wine from the cabinet along with the bread, hefted it in one hand lightly and said, “I think I can take care of that. May I?” He indicated her pantry with a jerk of his head.

      She took out the salad and set it on the counter, saying, “Knock yourself out.”

      He went to work, and it became quickly obvious that he knew very well what he was doing and enjoyed it. To her, cooking was a chore that she often chose not to perform. Morgan not only enjoyed it but reveled in it, and the results reflected that. Sitting at the table with seasoned toast, salad dressed with red wine and spices, and a cheesy chicken casserole, Denise found herself smiling for the first time in days. Her smile turned into a hum of pleasure as she forked casserole into her mouth.

      Morgan smiled knowingly and said, “Good isn’t it? Want the recipe?”

      She shook her head then said, “Yes, it’s good. No, I don’t want the recipe.”

      “Don’t like to cook, huh?”

      She shrugged. “Don’t have the time.”

      He ate thoughtfully for a few seconds, then laid aside his fork and said, “I know what you mean. I always enjoyed cooking, but then I got so caught up in that whole corporate career thing that cooking-and just about everything else I enjoyed—fell by the wayside.”

      “Well, but if you enjoyed your career—”

      “I didn’t. Oh, it had its moments. I got addicted in a way to the thrill of the deal, you know, the one-upmanship, the winning. Then one day it occurred to me that if I, quote, won, unquote, someone else had to lose, and in so many cases it just wasn’t necessary. I started wondering why it couldn’t be a win-win situation at least some of the time, and I was told in no uncertain terms that I had lost my edge, that business always was and always would be about, and again I quote, going in for the kill.”

      He went back to eating, but she couldn’t help feeling that he’d left the story unfinished. “So what happened?” she prodded, irritated when he took his time chewing and swallowing.

      “What happened was, my wife insisted I go in for counseling. She couldn’t understand why I was unhappy, and she was convinced that the problem was all in my head.”

      “And?”

      “And the counselor possessed a very open mind. It only took a few sessions for both of us to understand that I’d been trying for years to fit a mold fashioned for me by someone else.”

      Denise couldn’t help a spurt of resentment. She flattened her lips. “So it was all the wife’s fault, I suppose?”

      He shook his head. “No, it was all my fault. I should have stood on my own values and principles from the beginning, but I wanted to make her happy. I didn’t see that mutual love, real love, accepts. Eventually we both realized that we didn’t really love each other. I was dazzled by her sophistication in the beginning, and what attracted her to me was my willingness to let her mold me into what she thought she ought to have in a husband. When I was no longer dazzled and no longer willing...”

      Denise finished for him, “The marriage fell apart.”

      He nodded, leaned both elbows on the table and linked his hands over his plate. “What about you?”

      Denise immediately felt the old wariness rise. “Me?”

      “Umm-hmm, you ever been married?”

      She briefly considered several replies, from an outright lie to flatly telling him it was none of his business, but then, she’d just elicited his story from him, so that hardly seemed fair. She kept her eyes on her plate and her fork busy as she said, “I was married.”

      “Divorced?” he asked quietly.

      “Yes.”

      “I guess you don’t want to tell me why,” he said after a moment, and she knew that the disappointment in his tone had less to do with curiosity than the fact that their so-called friendship was not turning out to be exactly reciprocal.

      She took a deep breath. “I got pregnant.”

      It took several moments for that to sink in. Once it did, he dropped his hands to his lap and said, “I thought getting pregnant was a reason to get married, not divorced.”

      The old bitterness filled her and she vented it with sarcasm. “That’s usually how it works, yeah, but not with my ex.”

      “I’m afraid I don’t understand that,” Morgan said softly.

      She gave up the pretense of eating and sat back in her chair, lifting her gaze to his. “We got married right out of college, top of our class, roaring to go. We were going to set the business world on its ear. No mention was ever made of children. I suppose I thought we’d conquer the business world and then move on to parenthood. Then I got a terrible sinus infection, and the doctor failed to tell me that the antibiotic I was on could affect the birth control pills I was taking. At first I just couldn’t believe I’d gotten pregnant. Then when the shock wore off I couldn’t help thinking like a mother, you know?”

      “I know. I have a son of my own.”

      She managed to smile at that. “I’m glad. I wish... Well, not anymore, but at the time I thought that if only Derek would be glad, everything would be wonderful.”

      “But Derek wasn’t glad,” Morgan stated gently.

      She marshaled the words in her head, still not quite able to reconcile them. “Derek gave me the option of abortion or divorce.”

      “And you chose divorce.”

      “I chose to have my baby, even if it meant having him alone.”

      “Him? You have a son, too?”

      She forced her tongue to form the single word. “Had.”

      A heartbeat later, Morgan Holt did what no one else had ever done. He got up from his seat and walked around the table, where he knelt beside her, took her hands in his and gently said, “I’m so sorry. Would you like to tell me about him?”

      Chapter Two

      Denise took up the pen and began writing her name on the appropriate line, and right in the middle of Jenkins, she completely forgot what she was doing. Her mind flashed on that moment when he had knelt by her chair and taken her hands in his. Her memory played for her a vision of blue, blue eyes so misty with understanding, so warm, that looking into them had seemed to melt something hard and icy deep within her. She couldn’t quite believe that, with tears rolling down her face, she had begun telling Morgan about the hit-and-run, even how she had resented that the other boys, three in all, had managed to escape with various degrees of injury, while her own son had died instantly. She had never told another soul that, and over the years she had felt genuine shame for her private reaction to the survival of those other boys. Now she was left wondering if anyone other than Morgan Holt would have accepted that confession with the same equanimity and nonjudgmental compassion as he had shown her that night, and the idea that he might be unique in even that one way somehow terrified her so badly that her hands shook.

      “Ms. Jenkins?”

      Her secretary’s concerned voice jerked her back to the present. Denise started and dropped the pen.

      “Are you all right?”

      Embarrassment started a