Starting Over On Blackberry Lane. Sheila Roberts

Good.”

      She walked to the TV and stood in front of it. “I said I returned the presents.”

      He frowned and his fingers stopped moving on the game controls. “What?”

      “I can’t do this. I can’t marry you.”

      He blinked and set aside the controls. “Griff, what the hell are you saying?”

      “I’m saying I don’t want to get married.”

      He sat there a moment, staring at her. “You’ve been wanting to get married for the last three years.”

      She shrugged. “Now I don’t.”

      His brows drew together. “You want to just keep living together? Your mom won’t like that.”

      “I don’t want to keep living together. I don’t want to be together anymore.”

      “What the...?” He leaned back against the couch cushions, dumbfounded. “What the hell did those women say to you?”

      “Nothing. It’s what I said to myself.” Behind her, something boomed as one of the players on the screen went down. “This has been building for months. I guess I didn’t want to admit it.”

      He shook his head. “You aren’t making any sense.”

      “I’m making sense to me.”

      He glared at her. “You need to explain how we’ve gone from being a couple to you coming home from your damn wedding shower not wanting to get married.”

      She joined him on the couch. “We’ve been drifting. We’re not together for the right reasons anymore. We’re just...a habit.”

      “We’re a good habit,” he said and slipped an arm around her shoulders.

      She pulled away. “No, Steve, we’re not. Not really. I don’t want this to be the rest of my life.”

      “This what?” He held out his hands as if waiting for her to drop a better explanation into them.

      “This life we’ve ended up with.”

      “What’s wrong with our life? It’s great.”

      “It’s boring.”

      He shrugged. “Okay, so we’ll do more stuff.”

      She shook her head. “No, we won’t. You won’t change.”

      His expression made her think of a kicked puppy. “Sorry I’m so boring.”

      The apricot torte and punch weren’t playing well in her tummy anymore. “It’s not you.” Well, yes, it was. “It’s just that this isn’t going to work. I see that now. We don’t have enough.”

      “Enough what? Sex?”

      “Enough...anything. We don’t talk.”

      He moved closer again and put his arms around her. “I can talk. What do you want to talk about?”

      “Us.”

      He frowned. “We’re fine, Griff. I don’t know what those women told you, but they’re wrong. We’re good together.”

      “I don’t want good. I want better.” Okay, that hadn’t come out right.

      He set his jaw. “So you’re breaking up with me after all these years?”

      “Yes, I am.”

      “Because you want someone better.” He dropped his arms.

      “Just someone better for me.”

      That hadn’t exactly softened the blow. His face turned to stone. “Fine. I’ll start packing.”

      She felt like the rottenest woman on the planet. “Steve, I’m sorry.”

      “Yeah, right,” he snapped and stormed out of the living room.

      And now they were over. In less than five minutes. Just like that. He’d hardly fought for what they had, which showed how little they had. She stayed on the couch and stared at the stupid avatars on the screen and wished she’d blown up the TV when they first moved to Icicle Falls.

      Steve was packed and gone in two hours, leaving her with the parting words “Keep the ring and have a nice life.”

      She already had a nice life. And that was the problem. She wanted more. What if she never got it?

      What had she done?

       Chapter Three

      Cass returned home from Griffin’s shower to find Dan Masters and Tilda’s husband, Devon Black, packing up their tools.

      “We can’t do much more with the ceiling until it dries out, but we’ve patched the hole. Don’t forget what I told you about that roof.”

      “I know,” Cass said with a sigh. “I’ve been putting off dealing with it.”

      “Some things you don’t want to put off,” Dan warned. “A new roof is one of them.”

      “The Linds put one on this summer, and it cost them thirty thousand dollars.” She didn’t have that kind of money in savings. She supposed she could take some out of her retirement fund. Or get a home equity loan. Ugh.

      “Ralph’s Roofing,” Dan said with a knowing nod. “They’re not cheap.”

      Devon shrugged. “At that price it’d be blue tarp city for Tilda and me. Thank God that’s not on the list.”

      Devon and Tilda had a fixer-upper and they’d been putting in a lot of work into it. Lucky girl to have a man to help her with her home repairs.

      “I can recommend someone who’ll help you,” Dan told Cass. “My dad.”

      “He a roofer?” Cass asked.

      “He’s an everything. There’s nothing he doesn’t know about houses. He started Masters Construction.”

      “So you worked for your old man?” Devon asked.

      “Yep. He taught me everything I know. Left me the business when he retired.”

      Before her pal Charley married Dan Masters, Cass had never heard of Masters Construction. They had worked primarily in Wenatchee and its close environs.

      But then Charley had needed her restaurant rebuilt after a fire, and Masters Construction won the bid. After that the construction company was very much in demand in Icicle Falls. They did good work—and they looked good, too. Women came into Gingerbread Haus talking about the “hunky construction guys.” Dan fell for Charley and was almost instantly off the market, but his employees were all single. They were also in their twenties and thirties—cougar prey.

      Cass wasn’t exactly cougar material. Those guys soon all had girlfriends anyway.

      “Is your dad gonna come back and work for you?” Devon joked.

      “Nope, but he is coming back to work. I knew that whole early-retirement thing wouldn’t last.”

      Cass had met Dan’s dad when she went to Las Vegas for Dan and Charley’s wedding. Her jaw had dropped at the sight of him. He’d been happily married back then, to a woman who had found her husband’s effect on other women more amusing than threatening. Of course, she’d been pretty and obviously secure in herself, sure of his love.

      There was no wife now.

      A sudden fantasy of herself getting pulled into the arms of a bare-chested man sporting jeans and a tool belt invaded Cass’s mind and she felt instantly guilty. The man was a widower, for crying out loud.

      How long had his wife been gone? She couldn’t remember.