Free Candlelight Conspiracy by Dana Volney Page B

anywhere to go or any money to use to rebuild.
    She flattened the black dress she still wore from this afternoon, and he watched her hands run over her thighs. He remembered those thighs and had to literally shake his head to vanquish steamy images that flashed across his mind. They’d been good together, very good, in bed.
    “Wine?” He asked and pulled out a bottle he had chilled for them.
    “Of course.” She smiled at the bottle of Malbec. “My favorite.”
    He nodded. He figured the night would be better with a glass of wine—they’d both be less uptight.
    “Shall we?” He motioned to the dining room, and she followed him to a corner booth in the back of the room by the kitchen. “How are your sisters?” He poured two glasses of a plum Argentine Malbec.
    “They are doing well. Fern got a new job at a marketing company managing social media, Fallon is still happy running the books for Dad by day and acting at the local community theatre by night, and Faith is getting married.” Her eyes diverted to her glass at her last sentence, and she drank.
    Is this all about jealousy?
None of her sisters were married. Felicia would’ve been the first.
    “Robbie finally popped the question, huh? Good for them. Send them my best.”
    “You can do that yourself if you come back home with me.”
    His turn to focus on his glass of wine. “You don’t like my new place?”
    “It’s great. But it’s like two states away from home.”
    “Yeah. Kind of the point.”
    He could close down and go back to Tacoma, and this would all become some funny story he told fifty years from now about the three months he lived in Wyoming. He could, but the thought alone made him grumpy. The story might be funny in five decades, but today it would feel like failure.
    “You had to move this far away?”
    “I researched a lot of states. Wyoming has many perks for small businesses, low cost of living, and I like all four seasons. It’s like Tacoma but with no humidity and a higher elevation.”
    She reached out her hand and caught his. “Marc.”
    He started at Felicia’s soft hand lying on his. It would be so easy to fall back into his old life.
    “Felicia.”
    She looked at him with big, pensive eyes. Damn. He’d always been a sucker when she looked at him all sad, like he was the only one who possessed the ability to make her happy.
Yep, this is how we never broke up and why I proposed.
    “What do you want me to say, Felicia?” Irritation filtered into his voice.
    “I don’t know, that you’ve been thinking of me too and want to work things out. That you still love me.”
    “You can’t just show up out of the blue with no contact for five months and, and”—he looked past her to the front door with his last name etched on the glass—“think we’re going to automatically work things out.”
    “At least I’m trying.”
    She had a point. Did he even have cause to be mad? He was so confused at this point, he wasn’t sure what he should and should not feel.
    “I’ve started over. I like it here,” he said in a quieter tone.
    “I could move here with you. Help you out or find a job at a salon.” There wasn’t a trace of sadness on her face, only a smile and resolute eyes.
    He shook his head. “Listen. I feel really badly about how our relationship ended. I know it was my fault, and I don’t blame you. I’m sorry you had to do what you did. But it happened for a reason. We weren’t good together anymore.”
    There. He was going to lay it all on the line—be honest about what he wanted instead of trying to give her everything she wanted.
    “At one time we were.”
    “That hadn’t been for a while.”
    “Think of all the good times. There were a lot of them.” She sing-songed her last sentence.
    He had to hand it to her—the woman had always been determined and rarely gave up when she’d made up her mind. Usually she was very persuasive, but tonight he didn’t feel like giving in—he didn’t feel like