Free Unintended Love: A contemporary romantic novella by Harley O'Riley Page B

he came to her, leaned over and gave her a soft kiss.
    “Thank you for breakfast...and lunch, and everything else. I’ll call you in the morning. Would you come to my place and I’ll fix you lunch? Then we can go do something if you’d like.”
    “I’d like that.” She started to get up but he pushed her back down with a hard kiss.
    “No. Don’t get up. I’ll let myself out.” 
    Melanie, feeling drowsy and content was glad to stay in bed. She heard the front door close, but when she listened for the sound of Alex’s car door, she didn’t hear it. What she did hear, the loud revving sounds of a motorcycle, made her cringe with a sudden sadness and pain.
    Images of Sam came un-beckoned to her mind. Memories of him on his bike looking so cool and proud and memories of him lying broken in the hospital after the accident. Then lying depressed in the hospital bed they had put next to the very one she lay in now. And then the darkest memory. The one she usually was able to push quickly away. Sam, as he looked lying in his coffin, the very last time she saw him. 
    “Shit!” she threw the pillow that lay next to her across the room. “I can’t. I can’t. NO!”
    Then she rolled out of bed. She was no longer sleepy and had a lot of thinking to do.

CHAPTER 12
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    S he was up hours before his call the next morning. Her night had been a restless one, and when the clock on her nightstand read six o’clock she’d given up the thought of trying to get a decent night’s sleep. She’d gone to her favorite spot on her couch with a book she been meaning to read, and Angel had curled up next to her.
    Her thoughts kept drifting away from the words on the page though, until she put the book aside. She sat, scratching behind Angel’s ears distractedly and listening to the quiet sounds of her house. There was the hum of her refrigerator, the birds outside, a breeze blowing the blinds through her open door wall so they tapped together.
    Her home had been her sanctuary for almost a year and a half, since Sam’s death. She had just a few friends anymore because after the accident her entire life seemed to be taken up with Sam’s care. The people who were true friends had stuck around, but a sifting process had taken place. So it was her books, her home, and her cat, that had carried her through.
    Then Martin had come into her life, and with him some hope for a different future. Being with him had reminded her that as old as she’d been feeling, she was only twenty-four. She could still have a normal life filled with love, and maybe even children someday.
    Martin himself had not been the right man, but she owed him some thanks for showing her that the possibility was still there.
    Now there was Alex, and what was she going to do about him? She was already falling for him. And falling hard. Soon, she would be in too deep to walk away. Flying planes and riding motorcycles, it seemed inevitable to Melanie that someday he would get hurt, or even killed, and she couldn’t go through that ever again. It was too much to ask.
    She had to end it now before it really began, and she would have to tell him why. There would be no more keeping things from Alex. She owed him that much. Melanie felt her anxiety ease some after coming to this decision about Alex.
    She was dozing when the phone rang, and her voice was full of sleep when she picked the up phone from its cradle on the side table next to the couch.
    “Hello?”
    “Hi. I didn’t wake you, did I?
    “Oh, no..., I mean yes. I was dozing on the couch. I had a rough night.”
    “Are you all right?”
    This was her chance to tell him she didn’t want to see him, but it didn’t feel right to tell him over the phone. It was strange how different she felt than not much more than a week before when she’d told Martin the same thing. Then she’d felt bad but clear that it was the only thing to do. But with Alex, she felt wretched and completely torn. She took