Free Sooner or Later by Debbie Macomber Page B

met only one such candidate. Johnny.
    She was crazy about him the minute she laid eyes on him in the Pour House, a local bar. Her mistake, she realized, was sleeping with him too soon. Way too soon.
    He’d gone home with her on some phony excuse and, against her better judgment, stayed the night. Hard as she tried, Marcie couldn’t make herself regret it. Sex with Johnny had been incredible. Probably the best of her entire life.
    The following morning, after he’d left her, Marcie feared she’d never hear from him again. She’d nearly wept tears of joy when he showed up on her doorstep a month later. She’d already decided that, if given a second chance with him, she wouldn’t make the same mistake. She’d been waiting all her life for a man like Johnny, and come hell or high water she was going to find a way to marry him.
    Unfortunately Johnny made her weak, and before she’d realized what was happening, they were back in the bedroom again. This time he stayed the entire weekend. Nothing interrupted them. Not televised football. Not phone calls. Nothing. He didn’t even want her to cook, had insisted on ordering out and paying for it himself. When he left her that time, Marcie was so completely exhausted she’d had to stay home from work for two days.
    If ever there was a man capable of keeping her happy, it was Johnny. It went without saying that if she wanted to marry him, she’d need to play her cards right, and that meant careful planning.
    She was well aware that becoming intimate before forging an emotional bond was a tactical error. Johnny had to want her for more than her body. Marcie knew it, yet she’d allowed herself to be manipulated right back into bed. Mainly because he was such an incredible lover.
    As time progressed he stopped by more and more often, but rarely for longer than two or three days. Sometimes he’d show up unexpectedly at the shop and every now and again at her apartment. He wouldn’t believe it if she told him, so she never did, but she hadn’t been to bed with another man since they’d met.
    In their times together, she noted that he rarely spoke about himself. But then they seldom talked other than superficially, which was fine. The trust would come in time. If she had to pick up snatches of his life here and there, that was okay with her, too. She was a patient woman.
    What made Johnny special was that he proved to be an unselfish lover, inventive and generous. A fair portion of her previous lovers had been sexual brontosauruses. The type who considered lovemaking to consist of ripping off her clothes, throwing her down on the bed, completing the act while grunting as though in the midst of a cardiac arrest, then rolling over and promptly falling asleep.
    The men Marcie had loved generally knew little about foreplay. This was where Johnny excelled. No one needed to tell her he was a rare breed. She’d been around long enough to appreciate a lover with a slow touch. One who titillated her verbally, whoseduced her with words before he so much as kissed her.
    It amazed Marcie how well he read her moods. There were times when she was too desperate for him to wade through the long, slow process of being undressed and adored as he stripped away each piece of clothing.
    Johnny gauged her mood without her having to say a word. He’d smile, his mouth soft and sexy, then quickly dispense with the preliminaries. Before long he had her pinned against the wall, her skirt up around her waist. By the time he finished she was breathless and limp with satisfaction.
    After she’d been seeing him fairly frequently, there’d been a lull. Several months passed without a word. At first she suspected he might be married. But having fallen into that trap before, she’d come to recognize the signs. Not Johnny. He was a free spirit, a salesman whose job often took him away for weeks on end.
    It killed her not to question him, but if he wasn’t willing to tell her of his own volition, then she