The New Girl In Town

“I’ll always care about you, Zoe.”

And that might have been enough to hold them together if other obstacles hadn’t got in the way. She rubbed her hand over her chest, trying to assuage an ache she wasn’t sure would ever go away. “Was that the only reason you called?”

“When’s your next appointment with Dr. Allison?”

She felt the sting of tears. If he’d been half as concerned about her twelve or even six months ago, what had been left of their relationship might not have fallen apart.

“I have to go, Scott.”

Before he could say anything else, she disconnected the call. She heard the telltale scrape of chair legs against the hardwood floor and blinked the moisture from her eyes.

She felt Mason’s hand on her shoulder, gently but firmly turning her to face him. “Zoe?”

She didn’t—couldn’t—look at him. She just needed half a minute to pull herself together, to find the cloak of feigned confidence and false courage that she’d learned to wrap around herself so no one would see how shaky and scared she was feeling inside.

“Who was that on the phone?” he asked.

She took a deep, steadying breath and prepared to dodge the question. After all, it was none of his business. She hardly knew this man; she certainly didn’t owe him any explanations.

But when she looked up at him, she realized he wasn’t trying to pry or interfere. He’d asked the question because he knew she was upset, and he was concerned. In the past eighteen months, she’d withdrawn into herself. She’d been let down by people she’d counted on, disappointed by friends who hadn’t been there for her. Except for her almost daily phone calls to Claire, she’d been on her own. She’d learned to rely on herself, to need no one else.

After only a few days in this small town, she knew that was one of the reasons she’d come here—because she didn’t want to live the rest of her life alone. She wanted—needed—friends to care about and who would care about her.

So she took what she hoped was the first step in that direction and answered his question honestly.

“That was my husband.”

Chapter Three

Husband?

Mason’s head reeled. Zoe’s announcement had caught him completely unaware. And delivered as it was, in that soft, sexy voice, the punch was even more unexpected.

It took a minute for his brain to absorb this startling bit of information that—at least for him—changed the whole equation.

Zoe was married.

He couldn’t have said why her revelation surprised him so much, or why it left him feeling oddly disappointed. He only knew that he needed to stop thinking of this woman as his sexy new neighbor and focus on the fact that she was someone’s wife.

Damn.

Zoe might not be his usual type, but he found himself drawn to her regardless. There was just something about her that intrigued him—enough so that, in the brief time between their first meeting that morning and his return for their scheduled appointment, he’d found himself looking forward to spending time with her, getting to know her. And maybe, eventually, moving toward a more intimate and personal relationship with her.

Of course, that was all before he’d learned she was married.

It was his own fault for letting his fantasies get ahead of him, and he silently cursed himself for that now. His hand dropped away and he took a step back.

She gazed at him uncertainly as she folded her arms over her chest. Her cell phone was still clutched in her hand—her left hand. He noted that fact along with the absence of any rings on her fingers.

“You don’t wear a wedding band,” he noted.

Of course he knew that not everyone did. But he sensed that she was the type who would, that if she’d made a commitment to someone, she would display the evidence of that commitment. Then again, he’d been wrong about assuming she was uninvolved, so maybe he was wrong about this, too.

She shook her head and moved back to the dining room, returning to the chair she’d vacated to answer the call. “No, I don’t wear a ring. Not anymore. Not since…that is, I’m—I mean we’re—getting a divorce.”

“Oh,” he said, as he absorbed this second unexpected—but more welcome—revelation. And then he felt like a heel, because he was relieved to know that her marriage had fallen apart so that he didn’t need to feel guilty for fantasizing about a married woman.

“We’re just waiting for the final papers to come through,” she admitted.

“I’m sorry,” he said lamely.

She shrugged. “It happens.”

Yeah, he knew that it did. He also knew that a break-up was never as easy as she implied, even if it was the right choice.

“How long were you married?” he asked.

“Almost nine years.”

He stared at the woman who didn’t look like she was twenty-five. “Did you get married while you were still in high school?”

She smiled at that. “Fresh out of college.”

“How old were you when you went to college?”

“I’m twenty-nine,” she told him.

And he was thirty-seven—which meant there weren’t as many years between them as he’d originally suspected, but there was still the barrier of her marriage. And even if her divorce papers came through tomorrow, she was obviously still hung up on her husband. Her evident distress over his phone call was proof of that.

“What did your soon-to-be-ex-husband want?” he asked. “Did you take off with his coffeemaker or something like that?”

“No, nothing like that. We actually had a very civilized settlement.”

“Then why was he calling you now?”

“He heard from a friend of mine that I bought a house and wanted to tell me he thought it was a mistake.”

“Did you tell him it was none of his business?”

“Yes,” she said. “But after nine years of marriage—and not just living together, but working together, too—some habits are hard to break.”

“Is he a photographer, too?”

“No. He’s the senior fashion editor at Images.”

“Is that why you left Manhattan?”

She shook her head. “It’s a big enough city that I could have stayed, found a new apartment, a new job, and probably have never seen him again if I didn’t want to. But everything just seemed so inexplicably woven together there. I needed to get away from all of it, to make a fresh start somewhere else.”