Her Kind of Man: Navy Husband / A Man Apart / Second-Chance Hero

“I’m so sorry,” Ali said.

The last thing Shana wanted was Ali’s sympathy. “Don’t worry, I’ve rebounded. Everything’s great. My life is fabulous, or it will be in short order. I’ve got everything under control.” Shana said all of this without taking a breath. If she said it often enough, she might actually start to believe it.

“When Mom told me that you’d decided to leave Portland and move to Seattle, I thought it was jobrelated at first. You never said a word.” She paused. “Did you move all those plants, too? You must have about a thousand.”

Shana laughed. “Hardly. But yes, I did. Moving was…a spontaneous decision.” That was putting it mildly. One weekend Shana had driven to Seattle to get away and to consider her relationship with Brad. She’d finally realized that it wasn’t going anywhere. For five years they’d been talking marriage. Wrong. She’d been talking marriage. Brad had managed to string her along with just enough interest to placate her. And she’d let him until…

Unexpectedly, Shana had stumbled on Brad having lunch with a business associate. This so-called associate just happened to be a willowy blonde with a figure that would stop a freight train. It was a business lunch, he’d claimed later, when Shana confronted him.

Yeah, sure—monkey business. Shana could be dense at times but she wasn’t blind, and she recognized this so-called associate as someone Brad had once introduced as Sylvia, an old flame. Apparently those embers were still very much alive and growing hotter by the minute, because as Shana watched, they’d exchanged a lengthy kiss in the parking lot and drove off together. She was embarrassed to admit she’d followed them. It didn’t take her long to see where they were headed. Brad’s town house—and she didn’t think they were there to discuss contracts or fire codes.

Even when confronted, Brad insisted his lunch date was a client. Any resemblance his associate had to Sylvia was purely coincidental. The more he defended himself, the more defensive he got, complaining that Shana was acting like a jealous shrew. He’d been outraged that she’d question his faithfulness when she was the one so often away, working as a sales rep for a large pharmaceutical company. He’d been so convincing that—just for a moment—she’d wondered if she might’ve been wrong. Only when she mentioned that she’d followed them to his town house did Brad show any hint of guilt or regret.

He’d glanced away then, and the righteous indignation had been replaced by a look of such sadness she had to resist the urge to comfort him. He was sorry, he’d said, so sorry. It had been a fling; it meant nothing. He couldn’t lose her. Shana was his life, the woman he intended to marry, the mother of his unborn children.

For a few days, he’d actually swayed her. Needing to sort out her feelings, Shana had driven to Seattle the next weekend. After five years with Brad she felt she knew him, but it now seemed quite clear that she didn’t. He wanted her back, he told her over and over. He was willing to do whatever it took to reconcile, to make this up to her. He suggested counseling, agreed to therapy, anything but losing her.

That weekend, Shana had engaged in some painful self-examination. She desperately wanted to believe the afternoon rendezvous with Sylvia was a onetime thing, but her head told her it wasn’t and that they’d been involved for months—or more.

It was while she sat in Lincoln Park in West Seattle, analyzing the last five years, that she concluded there was no going back. Her trust had been destroyed. She couldn’t build a life with Brad after this. In truth, their relationship had dead-ended three years ago. Maybe sooner; she could no longer tell. What Shana did recognize was that she’d been so caught up in loving Brad that she’d refused to see the signs.

“I was feeling pretty miserable,” Shana admitted to her sister. Wretched was a more accurate description, but she didn’t want to sound melodramatic. “I sat in that park in West Seattle, thinking.”

“In West Seattle? How’d you get there?”

Shana sighed loudly. “I took a wrong turn when I was trying to find the freeway.”

Ali laughed. “I should have guessed.”

“I ended up on this bridge and there wasn’t anyplace to turn around, so I followed the road, which led to a wonderful waterfront park.”

“The ice-cream parlor’s in the park?”

“No, it’s across the street. You know me and maplenut ice cream. It’s the ultimate comfort food.” She tried to make a joke of it, but at the time she’d felt there wasn’t enough maple-nut ice cream in the world to see her through this misery.

“Brad drove you to maple nut?”

Shana snickered at Ali’s exaggerated horror. After her decision to break off the relationship, she’d grown angry. Okay, furious. She wanted out of this relationship, completely out, and living in the same city made that difficult.

“Actually,West Seattle is a charming little community. The ice-cream parlor had a For Sale sign in the window and I got to talking to the owners. They’re an older couple, sweet as can be and planning to retire. As I sat there, I thought it must be a nice place to work. How could anyone be unhappy surrounded by ice cream and pizza?”

“So you bought it? Shana, for heaven’s sake, what do you know about running any kind of restaurant?”

“Not much,” she said, “but I’ve worked in sales and with people all these years. I was ready for a break, and this seemed practically fated.”

“But how could you afford to buy an established business?”

Shana had an answer for that, too. “I had a chunk of cash in savings.” The money had originally been set aside for her wedding. Saving a hundred dollars a month and investing it carefully, she’d managed to double her money. Just then, she couldn’t think of a better way to spend it. Buying this business was impulsive and irrational but despite everything, it felt…right.

That Sunday in the park she’d admitted there would be no wedding, no honeymoon with Brad. Shana drew in her breath. She refused to think about it anymore. She’d entered a new phase of her life.

“It’s a cute place. You’ll like it,” she murmured. She had lots of ideas for fixing it up, making it hers. The Olsens had promised to help transfer ownership as seamlessly as possible.

“You rented a house?”

“That very same Sunday.” Once she’d made her decision, Shana had been on a mission and there was no stopping her. As luck would have it, there was a house two streets over that had just been vacated. The owner had recently painted it and installed new carpeting. Shana had taken one look around the 1950s-style bungalow with its small front porch and brick fireplace and declared it perfect. She’d given the rental agent a check immediately. Then she drove home, wrote a letter resigning her job—and phoned Brad. That conversation had been short, sweet and utterly satisfying.

“Making a move like this couldn’t have been easy,” Ali commiserated.

“You wouldn’t believe how easy it was,” Shana said gleefully. “I suppose you’re curious about what Brad had to say.” She was dying to tell her.

“Well…”

“I called him,” Shana said without waiting for Ali to respond, “and naturally he wanted to know where I’d been all weekend.”

“You told him?”

Shana grinned. “I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. He was pretty upset. He told me how worried he was, and how he’d spent the entire weekend calling me. He was afraid of what I might’ve done. As if I’d do something lethal over him,” she scoffed. Shana suspected that his concern was all for show, but none of that mattered now. “When he cooled down, I calmly explained that I’d gone for a drive.”

“A three-day drive,” Ali inserted.

“Right. Well, he got huffy, saying the least I could’ve done was let him know I’d made plans.” What came next was the best part. “So I told him I’d made plans for the rest of my life and they didn’t include him.”

Ali giggled and it sounded exactly the way it had when they were girls, sharing a bedroom. “What did he say then?”

“I don’t know. I hung up and started packing stuff in my apartment.”

“Didn’t he try to phone you back?”

“Not for the first couple of days. He e-mailed me on the third day and I immediately put a block on his name.” That must have infuriated him—not that Shana cared. Well, she did, a little. Okay, more than a little. Unfortunately she didn’t have the satisfaction of knowing what his reaction had been. In the past, she’d always been the one who patched any rift. That was her problem; she couldn’t stand conflict, so she’d done all the compromising and conciliating. Over the course of their relationship, Brad had come to expect her to make the first move. Well, no longer. She was finished. Brad Moore was history.

Instead of kicking herself for taking so long to see the light, she was moving ahead, starting over…and, to be on the safe side, giving up on men and relationships. At twenty-eight, she’d had her fill. Men weren’t worth the effort and the grief.

“I never was that fond of Brad,” Ali confessed.

“You might’ve said something.” Shana realized her tone was a little annoyed. In the five years she’d dated Brad, there’d certainly been opportunities for Ali to share her opinion.

“How could I? We just met once, and you seemed so keen on him.”

“If you’d stayed in one place longer, we might’ve gotten together more often.”

Ali’s sigh drifted over the phone. “That’s what happens when you’re in the Navy. They own your life. Now honestly, are you all right?”

Shana paused to consider the question. A second later, she gave Ali her answer. “Honestly? I feel great, and that’s the truth. Yes, this breakup hurt, but mostly I was angry with myself for not waking up sooner. I feel fabulous. It’s as if I’ve been released from a spell. I’ve got a whole new attitude toward men.”

Her sister didn’t say anything for a moment. “You might think you’re fine, but there’s a chance you’re not totally over Brad.”

“What do you mean?”