Free Four Times the Trouble by Tara Taylor Quinn

down on the sofa. There was something soothing about being in the living room. There were no expectations there. But it wasn’t working this time.
    She turned over, closed her eyes and tried to will herself to sleep, but a restless energy hummed through her. Her traitorous mind replayed the scene that had taken place hours earlier in this very room. She could still feel Jacob’s arms around her, pulling her against him.
    She reached for the picture on the end table, gazing at Brian’s likeness in the moonlight. Not that she needed the picture to remember every line of his face, every expression, every smile. She didn’t need to see his laughing green eyes to imagine them gazing at her lovingly.
    But how could she continue just existing like this? Brian had been gone for so long…
    Rolling over, she hugged Brian’s picture to her chest. Tonight Jacob had been warm and solid—real. He was more than just a memory. She remembered the compassion she’d seen in his eyes when she told him about the baby she’d lost. She had a feeling that underneath his irreverent facade was a deeply caring man.
    But none of that gave her the right to be unfaithful to her husband. She’d rather die than take the chance that Brian might come home to find that she’d given her heart to another man.
    * * *
    J ACOB COULD THINK of a lot of things he’d rather be doing at one in the morning than looking through cookbooks. Like going to bed, for instance.
    Sugar cookies. That sounded doable. He had sugar. He looked at the picture in the book and figured he could cut out a pretty mean heart with a paring knife. Then scanned the list of ingredients, hoping he wasn’t going to find something like chocolate squares or coconut. He didn’t stock many baking supplies. Flour, salt, butter. Check. Biscuit and pancake material. Vanilla he had for when he and the girls, mostly he, cranked out homemade ice cream. And baking soda. Jacob opened his refrigerator—yes, he still had that open box of baking soda Nonnie had told him to put there when he’d forgotten to throw away the bologna before leaving on vacation last summer. He was set.
    He dumped the ingredients into his biggest bowl, determined to make the best cookies Lomen Elementary had ever had. Maybe then his little girls could just go about living their lives like the happy kids they should be. He’d bet there weren’t too many mothers who’d stay up half the night baking cookies simply because their daughters had forgotten to say they needed them. Unless of course that mother were Michelle. He had a feeling she’d stay up all night to bake cookies if she had to.
    Not that he had any business thinking about Michelle. Nope. He was going to make life easier on himself and keep thoughts of Michelle strictly off-limits. There would be no more spurts of jealousy, no more hormonal reactions. She wasn’t the type of woman a guy had a casual relationship with. And casual relationships were all Jacob had.
    Besides, he didn’t have a chance with Michelle, casual or otherwise, even if he chose to, which he wouldn’t. Brian’s hold on Michelle went much deeper than the loyalty of young love Jacob had originally thought it was. She’d made a pact with fate to hold on until Brian returned. Just hold on. She wasn’t really living at all, just existing. It sounded as if she hadn’t even yet begun to grieve for the baby she’d lost. She was waiting for that, too.
    Jacob cracked an egg on the side of the bowl. After what he’d witnessed and heard that evening, he didn’t think Michelle was ever going to get on with life until she had her answers—one way or another. And by the sounds of things, those answers might never be found.
    He spent the next few minutes picking eggshell out of his cookie dough.

CHAPTER FIVE
    “J ACOB , CALL FOR YOU on line six.” Bob Chaney, their producer, poked his head into the sound room during a commercial break Friday morning.
    Michelle pushed a button on the