Free Divine Temptation by Nicki Elson Page B

scenario played at the back of Maggie’s mind—the four of them going home together, her tucking the kids into bed and then falling asleep next to Carl, listening to him snore and knowing he’d be there the next morning and every morning after that. She envisioned the reunited family packing up the car and taking the trip out West that they’d been planning right before everything had fallen apart. She’d been so focused on proving to herself that she didn’t need Carl, she hadn’t considered until now whether or not she wanted him—and after the other night, she couldn’t deny that she did.
    She finally understood that it wasn’t conviction that had kept her from working on her marriage. It was fear. Even the other night when she’d lain naked in his arms, she hadn’t been able to tell him how she felt. She’d only gone so far as to press him to open up. And when he hadn’t given her the answer she’d wanted, her first instinct had been self-preservation; she didn’t dare expose her heart the way she’d exposed her body. As she watched Carl across the booth, laughing with the kids and stealing glances at her, she wondered if he might reconsider “just sex” if she told him everything. But opening up to Carl would mean taking a big risk, and Maggie wasn’t sure she could do it.
    “You know, your mother had a nose ring when we first met.” Carl looked sideways at Maggie and winked. Liam scrunched his face skeptically and Kirsten rolled her eyes. “She did! But I told her it was either the nose ring or me.”
    Now Maggie rolled her eyes.
    “Well, maybe she should’ve kept the nose ring.” Kirsten laughed. “You know, ’cause of how things turned out.” She took a large bite of pizza, and glanced at her parents. Her smile faded upon seeing their fallen expressions.
    Maggie and Carl hadn’t told their children the whole story behind the breakup, just that they’d been struggling to get along for a while, that it had nothing to do with the children, and that they thought everyone would be happier if they separated—although Maggie knew it had taken a long time before Kirsten and Liam had seen either one of their parents happy again.
    “Sorry,” Kirsten mumbled through her food.
    Maggie forced a smile back on her face. “Nah, if I’d have kept the nose ring, we wouldn’t have had you two and that would’ve been a terrible shame.”
    “Wait a minute,” Liam said. “Did you really have a nose ring?”
    Carl and Maggie both laughed. “No, sweetie,” Maggie answered. Perhaps, she thought, if not for her own sake, for the kids she could muster her courage and bare her soul to Carl.
    When they left Emilio’s, Carl held the door for his family, allowing Liam and Kirsten to race out first. As Maggie stepped past him, his hand found her waist, causing her to pause. “That was fun,” he said.
    “Yeah.” She looked up at him and paused in the doorway. He was so close, and his almost possessive touch at her waist felt too natural, too good. She decided their talk better be long distance or she might end up in the same position she’d landed in the other night.
    “Will you be up for a while?” she asked.
    He raised a flirtatious eyebrow. “What did you have in mind?”
    “A phone call,” she said firmly, hoping to put any naughty thoughts out of his head.
    “That works too.” His smile was dirty, and Maggie shoved him lightly in the chest before joining the kids at her car.

    “So what’s on your mind?” Carl asked after the kids were in bed and Maggie had called him.
    “I think you probably know.”
    “Yeah, probably.” He sounded less than enthusiastic, but Maggie forced herself to stop analyzing his every intonation and pressed forward.
    “I want to continue the conversation we started the other night. About us. I understand everything you were saying, and I agree with it, but…” She hesitated.
    When the silence had gone on too long, Carl asked, “But what?”
    She clamped her