Free All of My Love by Francis Ray Page B

belongings and put them in storage until she could send for them. She hadn’t wanted Faith or Paul to have to deal with getting rid of her things.
    Things . She’d been worried about things when she should have been worried about her family. However, by then she’d become so entangled in Trevor’s smooth-talking web, she believed every word.
    One thing she hadn’t done was be intimate with him. With the way Duncan’s first wife had cheated on him, Cameron’s fiancée leaving him at the altar, not to mention wanting Faith and her sons to still respect her, she’d been able to say no to Trevor and mean it.
    Now she could allow herself to admit that she’d never been as sexually attracted to Trevor as she was to Paul. Intimacy was all right with Trevor, but she’d never felt cherished or loved during or afterward. Even though she and Paul had drifted apart, when they made love she’d felt like it mattered to him. Sadly, those times became further and further apart.
    She jumped at the knock on her window. “Paul!”
    “I stopped to get a cup of coffee. Pop the trunk.” A paper coffee cup in his hand, he went to the trunk.
    Stella did as he asked. He removed the cooler and went up the walk.
    He hadn’t greeted her. She wasn’t going to jump to conclusions as to the reason why. Since their talk on Tuesday, there had been times he reverted to the old Paul and ignored her, but with each day he seemed to be more willing to try and be friends.
    She grabbed her purse and got out of the car. Inside, she found him in the kitchen as usual. Only instead of working, he sipped his coffee.
    “We accomplished a lot,” she said. The tile on the floor was gone and so were the countertops, the front doors of the cabinets, the sinks. The rest of the house—except the master bedroom, which hadn’t been touched—was just as bare. They’d elected to remove the carpet and not wait until after they painted. They’d sanded, polished, and stained the floors as well. “You did a fantastic job on the dining room hardwood floors. They shine like new.”
    “If only it was that easy to bring back the luster to other things,” he said.
    Her brow lifted. So not greeting her had been intentional. “No one would agree with you more. But you had the children.”
    “And they saw their father turn into a drunk.” He slammed the cup on the wooden edge of the counter. “They saw me turn into a weakling. I blamed you for that, but it was my choice.”
    She’d heard and ached for him and the children. Stella realized that she wasn’t over Paul once she left, but it was too late. “I’m sorry.”
    “As they say, sorry don’t cut it.” He picked up the cup, squeezed. Coffee spilled over the sides. “Damn!”
    She rushed to his side, taking his hand and turning the water on. “Hold still,” she demanded when he tried to move his hand away from the gushing water. “Be thankful I thought of bringing a bucket or we’d have to mop up water.” She snatched a paper towel and blotted his hand dry and inspected it. “I don’t see any redness. I have a package of mustard. I’ll rub it on.”
    “No need.”
    She frowned up at him. “There’s every need. You were burned.”
    He glanced away. “It wasn’t hot.”
    She opened her mouth, closed it, then kissed his hand. He snatched it away and stumbled back. “I’m sorry. No, that’s a lie. I’m not sorry,” she said.
    Paul glanced from his hand to her. “Why did you do that?”
    “Because I wanted to and I’m tired of holding back when I want to touch you,” she said boldly. “It felt good being that close to you, taking care of you.”
    He stared at her. She felt like sighing, instead she glanced around the kitchen again. “I called the appliance specialty store yesterday. The range hood is in, and so is the island. We can pick up everything we need to install them. Both can be delivered today and we can leave the bedroom for later.”
    “We can’t install the range hood by