Free If I'd Never Known Your Love by Georgia Bockoven

tell anyone."
    "But he'll know. "You lowered your head, hiding your face with a waterfall of black hair. "Everything will change. It always does when people find out bad things about you. They might want to forget, but they can't."
    "My dad's not like that. He'll help you."
    "No one can help me, Julia. I did it. Nothing anyone can say or do can change that."
    That was when I did something I wanted to do since the day we met. I leaned over and kissed you. It wasn't a good kiss, landing more on your cheek than your lips, but you got the idea. I could see you struggling with what to do next. Then, with a deep moan that was like some kind of magnet that reached all the way to my heart, you pulled me into your arms and kissed me back.
    I will remember that kiss until the day I die, Evan. Things melted in me that I never knew existed. It didn't matter that the gearshift was stuck in my ribs or that my body was twisted in ways it wasn't meant to twist; all I could think about, all I cared about, was finding a way to keep your lips from leaving mine.

    C H A P T E R 5
    Julia poured another cup of coffee and headed back upstairs to finish packing.

    Shaking off a foolish, lingering unease over the phone call, she mentally recited the list of things she still had to do before Harold arrived.
    At the landing she absently stopped to pick a piece of lint off the threadbare carpet.
    The night before Evan left for Colombia, he'd joked that their Christmas presents to each other that year would be five gallons of paint, their birthday presents new carpeting and for Valentine's Day a new stove.
    At first she'd put off the major changes and repairs they'd talked about, waiting until he could be there
    to do them with her. Finally, one by one she'd gone ahead, convincing herself it was all right, that Evan wouldn't be coming home to a house he didn't recognize but to one with the changes they'd planned together. She'd finished the work two years ago, everything but the carpeting and the new stove. Those, for some unfathomable reason, she couldn't bring herself to do without him.
    She'd instantly fallen in love with the house the Realtor had generously called a fixer-upper. Evan hadn't caught her enthusiasm until he saw the backyard. After sitting at the kitchen table at their old house, listing all the things they would have to do to make the new house livable and how much it would add to the cost, Julia accepted, reluctantly, that it was beyond their means. She continued to look at other houses in the area, bringing Evan into search whenever she found something with potential, but it was like having a passion for French fries and being offered potato chips.
    Nothing gave her the same emotional connection. It was something she couldn't explain. Through the tattered, garish wallpaper, the pink tile in the bathrooms, the ancient appliances in the kitchen, she saw the warmth in the exposed beam ceiling in the family room, the shine of refinished oak floors, the joy of friends and family gathered under the limbs of the hundred-year-old heritage oak in the backyard.
    She had been ready to tell the Realtor to expand the search, moving from Carmichael to Fair Oaks, when Evan called one morning and told her to meet him for lunch at Venita Rhea's, their favorite restaurant in Rocklin and only five minutes from Stephens Engineering.
    He'd phoned ahead and asked Randy to reserve their special table next to the mural, the one with the baby duck swimming in the canal. Evan said the expansive painting represented the French countryside; Julia said it had to be Italy. They could have settled the ongoing argument by asking Lisa, one of the owners, but that would have been too easy.
    During dessert—an obscenely large and incredible bread pudding, which Evan had insisted they order in lieu of champagne—-he'd handed her an exquisitely wrapped package. Inside was an offer on the house, lacking only her signature.
    They visited the vacant house a dozen times in