She had to ask about him too.
So they just chatted. Over one drink, then two, then a plate of nachos.
Maybe dating apps were a horror, but this wasn’t. This made her feel…attractive. Interesting. More like a woman, and not a wife, a mom, a volunteer. All the things people in her immediate community considered her first and foremost.
He had two kids, and had been married fifteen years before it had dissolved. She didn’t ask for his messy details and he didn’t ask for hers.
“Want to dance?” he asked.
“I don’t think I know how to dance,” she said.
She wasn’t going to tell this stranger she’d gotten married at a church that hadn’t allowed alcohol or dancing at weddings (or anything else for that matter, and that even though they’d shifted their stances on things over the years, they hadn’t suddenly become big fans of going out dancing).
“I’m bad at it, so that’s just fine.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
He extended his hand and she accepted it, and she felt that same sort of giddiness she had when she’d realized she was in the hotel room alone.
Freedom.
This was her decision.
Her evening.
He led her to the dance floor, holding the one hand still, his other arm wrapped around her waist. It didn’t electrify her, though it was strange to let a man she didn’t know hold on to her like this.
But there was no one here who knew them to judge her, and there was a kind of freedom in that too.
She was ashamed to admit—in the glorious music-filled moment—that a lot of her issue with what Will wanted was knowing how people in their town would react.
Even worse, if they didn’t get back together.
That’s Samantha Parker. She’s divorced.
The visceral image of any one of the town’s church ladies whispering behind their hands to someone else in the grocery store…
She pushed all that away, and let the rhythm move her, even if she wasn’t moving very well. Jonathan didn’t seem to mind. He seemed to be having as good of a time as she was. It made her feel lighter. Less cynical. She could only hope he didn’t transform into a creep at the end of the evening, because if he just wanted the same thing she did—a minute to feel like maybe she was interesting, desirable even, to a random person—a little while to have some fun…well, that was nice.
“I think it’s my turn.”
The low, masculine voice that cut through the music and the sound of the crowd, without even needing to be raised, stopped both her and Jonathan.
“Logan…”
Jonathan looked at him, and then at her. “I thought you said you were separated?”
“I did,” she said. “This is…my friend.”
“And her friend would like this dance,” Logan said.
Logan was a good five inches taller than Jonathan, and a lot more muscular, and even if he weren’t, she had just met the guy. He was hardly going to get into an altercation over her—a woman who had made it pretty clear she wasn’t sleeping with him, that he’d just met.
“Sure thing. Hey, your drinks and nachos were on me,” Jonathan said, touching her arm. “Thank you for the evening.”
Before she could say anything more, Logan had taken her hand, wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her against him.
She felt like a cat being forced into a scalding tub of water. She wanted to scratch and scramble against him, her heart beating in a way that was like panic. And why? She’d been in the arms of that stranger and it hadn’t been anything like…
