Free In Your Arms: A Small Town Love Story (Safe Haven Book 1) by Erin Sloane Page B

quickly, but with Marlo he saw an intense need to protect her feelings. What a delicate play, that seesaw rocking of sharing private thoughts. Each person tried to balance the tipped scales, so that no one person gave up too much, nor did the other hold too much back.
    It looked as though he’d have to blink first . He kept his voice calm, level. “Yes, Marlo, I guess I am married, in a sense. My wife, Emma, was killed, and I don’t know when, or how, to become unmarried. I’ve spent the past four years since her death trying to haul myself out of something akin to limbo. Recently I’ve begun to feel a degree of success.” Very recently.
    He took a step toward her, but she backed up. Alarm flashed across her face. She sure was uneasy around him.Jesus. He raised his hands as if in surrender and stepped out of her space. It would be good to get her away from the Sanctuary. Here, she was emotionally locked down, functioning perfectly in her work environment, but she’d made sure there was only room for one within the walls she’d built.
    “Come on, have dinner with me. There’s an Italian place in town I’ve heard good things about. What say I pick you up at seven?”
    “I’m not sure.”
    “You don’t like Italian?”
    A tiny smile pulled at her lips, softening her eyes. “I love Italian,” she answered slowly.
    “Brilliant. I’ll pick you up at seven.” His cell phone rang and he went outside to take the call. He was back in minutes. “I’ve got to get back to town. Seven o’clock, okay?”
    Once in his car, he hesitated before putting his key in the ignition. What the hell had happened to the resolve he’d mustered in the pool the other night? He was meant to be shutting down these emotions, not badgering her for a dinner date.
    Not a date, just a dinner.
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    M arlo bent forward , as she looked into the mirror. Why had she allowed Sally and that shop assistant to bully her breasts into a bra like this? Perhaps the shoestring straps of the dress would draw eyes upwards, to her shoulders.
    Look at me all the way out of my comfort zone.
    She reached up and pulled the clasp from her hair, shaking it free. It fell about her shoulders and damn, it didn’t conceal that cleavage one bit. Her conservative self was knocking at the changing room door, trying to get her to go back to her comfortable, strap-em-down sports bra.
    The voice in her head kept up the chatter: You answer the door like that, girl, and it’ll be all, ‘Hi, Adam, meet my breasts.’ Is that what you want?
    She turned and rummaged in her makeup bag for a lipstick. Yes, Miss Prude, maybe that’s exactly what I want. Facing the mirror again, her confidence fled as she took the cap off the lipstick. She placed it on the vanity and reached behind for her dress zipper. She tugged it down and shrugged out of the dress. As she reached for the bra hooks, Sally’s voice rang in her ears. For heaven’s sake, girl, on behalf of the flat-chested women of the world, let those puppies out.
    Courage.
    She retrieved the dress from the bathroom floor and stepped back into it. She pulled her shoulders back and smiled. She looked like a woman.
    In her late childhood, when her mother’s drug dependency meant the diner jobs no longer paid enough, Marlo had watched her get ready to go out to work at night. Her dress and preparation served one purpose…to attract men. Men who would pay. Low-cut tops so constricting that her breasts spilled over the top. Short, tight skirts showing way too much of her tired, abused thighs, and enough makeup to cover her desperation in the dim light that barely illuminated her street corner workplace. And where had attracting men got her?
    It puts your food on the table, her mother used to say.
    But not until it’s fed your drug habit , Marlo would think when she got older. Often the table was bare.
    She thought of her mother’s pimp, shuddered and pushed away the memory. Nobody from the past was going to taint her evening