Good Husband Material. Kara Lennox

as much control as a teenager, which was only appropriate, since they were acting like teenagers.

      Suddenly a horrible thought occurred to him. “Dammit, I don’t have any protection.”

      Natalie laughed. “Josh, get a grip. Remember who you’re with.”

      “Oh. Right.”

      “Even if I’d been fertile as a bunny rabbit in my twenties, I’m forty-three now.”

      “Jeez, Nat, I’m sorry.” How could he have made such a blunder, reminding her of what had torn them apart? “I guess I was back in time, when we did have to worry about that. But I never for a moment forgot who I was with.”

      She grinned. “I should take it as a compliment that having sex with me made you forget what year it is.”

      “We’re not having sex,” he argued.

      “Not yet.” But she soon changed the status quo.

      As he entered her, he felt as if he’d come home after a long, long absence. No, he would never mistake her with any other woman.

      He tried to make it last, but it took everything he had to hold off just long enough so that she could reach the peak of pleasure. Then he fell into a void, a vacuum in which there was nothing but white-hot sensation. He wanted to stay in that place forever, but it was over far too quickly.

      When he returned to the here and now, he realized they were both slick with sweat. They’d been in a sealed car on a warm Texas summer night while generating their own heat.

      He cradled Natalie against his left arm while he sat up slightly and reached for the car key. With a flick of the ignition the engine was running, the air-conditioning blasting.

      “Well,” Natalie said.

      Josh laughed. And when he looked down at her with her dress half off, her hair everywhere, her makeup smeared, not to mention his state of disarray, he laughed again. “Guess we still got it.”

      She punched him lightly on the arm. “Is that all you have to say?”

      Okay, so he’d never excelled at after-sex dialogue. One of his many failings. “Natalie, that was fantastic.”

      “Yeah, we still got it. We’re still crazy. What if our children saw us right now?”

      “Shh. Our children aren’t here. And we’re consenting adults. We haven’t done anything wrong.” In fact, he thought it had felt pretty right.

      She leaned her cheek on his chest and sighed. “I’m glad you have tinted windows.”

      “There’s nobody out here, anyway.”

      “Josh, why did we do that?”

      Good question. If he thought there was any chance they could start over…But that was impossible. They didn’t even live in the same city. It was a four-or five-hour drive between Dallas and Houston, depending on how far one exceeded the speed limit.

      But even if they weren’t geographically challenged, there’d been too much pain between them. Each time they’d failed to conceive, Natalie had gotten a little more frustrated, a little angrier, until those negative emotions had infected every aspect of their lives.

      Not that he couldn’t take some responsibility for the mess they’d made of their marriage. He’d been less than sensitive to her insecurities. He’d viewed their infertility as a logistical problem to be overcome. If they just tried a little harder…

      He hadn’t realized that Natalie considered her misbehaving ovaries a slap in the face of her womanhood, and he hadn’t understood her emotional storms. Sometimes, when she’d seemed especially moody, he’d just removed himself rather than comfort her and say the things she needed to hear—that he would love her forever even if there was never a baby.

      Their disagreement over adoption had been the proverbial straw.

      Right now they were wallowing in the good times, the fun times of high school, before real life intervened. But they were riding a pink cloud of nostalgia that couldn’t last for long.

      Still, this night could last.

      “Let’s go back to the hotel,” he said. “I want to make love to you properly, on a real bed, with air-conditioning.”

      “Oh, no, I don’t think so.”

      “What?” What was she saying?

      “We need to get back to the reunion. There are so many people I haven’t talked to yet—”

      “Nat, you’re making excuses. What’s the real reason?”

      She maneuvered off his lap, managing to narrowly avoid kneeing him in the groin. “I don’t regret this, Josh, but I think we should return to our senses.”

      “I happen to think making love to you in a comfortable king-size bed is perfectly sensible.” He adjusted his clothes and buttoned his shirt while Natalie located her panties and worked her feet back into her high-heeled sandals. “Besides, I’m not sure you want to go waltzing back into the VFW Hall looking like that.”

      “What?” She pulled down the visor and checked herself in the mirror. “Oh, my God, I look like I just had sex in a car. Melissa would know instantly.”

      Everyone would know instantly, but he didn’t say so. She opened her little purse and pulled out a comb and a lipstick, working feverishly, first on her hair, then her lips.

      “This is hopeless! And I’m all sweaty.” She smelled her hair, then her shoulder. “I smell like Stetson! All right, yes, take me back to your hotel room. I’m going to shower and air out the dress.”

      Not exactly what he wanted to hear, but it gave him time to change her mind. “I have to go inside to get my jacket and tie,” he said. “What do you want me to tell Melissa? Because she’s going to ask where you are.”

      “Tell her we’re going for a drive.”

      NATALIE SAT IN Josh’s fancy car waiting for him to return and ordered herself to calm down. She needed to downplay what they’d just done, or Josh would know how profoundly it had affected her.

      She’d had no idea what she’d been missing. She’d thought her memories of Josh were pristine, untouched by the years of separation. Every so often—probably more often than was healthy—she trotted out those treasured memories and relived them. But clearly she’d suppressed some things—like how Josh could send her to the moon with a simple touch.

      Her hormones hadn’t had a workout like this in a very long time. But it was more than just the physical stimulation. Memories assaulted her from every direction, things she hadn’t thought of in twenty years. Like when Josh had carved their initials in that picnic table, her first real indication that what he felt for her was more than fondness or teenage lust. And all those times they’d driven out to Cemetery Road and made love in his truck. They’d always done it in the cab, because the one time they’d spread some blankets out in the truck bed and attempted to make love, a sheriff’s deputy had driven by and caught them with their clothes half-off. He hadn’t turned them in, hadn’t called their parents, but he’d told them to get dressed and go home.

      Natalie had never been able to look Deputy Klegg in the eye again.

      So many good times—picnics, taking Josh’s family’s boat to the lake with their friends and waterskiing, parties at Melissa’s house dancing to MTV. So much love.

      Though they’d raised a lot of eyebrows by marrying so young, most people thought they’d make it. The only ones who weren’t surprised when Josh and Natalie divorced were his parents. Though they’d always been civil to Natalie, she’d known they thought Josh could do much better.

      Josh returned a couple of minutes later with his jacket and tie in hand. “Good news,” he said as he climbed into the car. “Melissa was out on the dance floor. I didn’t