give my dad your recipe for Garner’s.”
He laughed. “Gran would kill me. It’s a family secret.”
“We’re practically family,” she said, licking fried chicken spices off her fingers.
His brain stopped working for a moment. Talk first , he reminded himself. He took a swallow of wine and regrouped. “So tell me about husband number one and two.”
She waved her hand. “Not much to tell. Husband number one was freshman year of college. We were too young. It lasted two weeks.” She looked away, and he knew there was more to the story. “And husband number two was a friend. He died shortly after our marriage.”
Wow. A divorce and a death, and she was only thirty-three.
“What happened to the guy who died?” he asked. “Was he sick?”
She set her plate down and wiped her mouth with a napkin. “No. Tom was in the army about to ship off to Iraq. He wanted someone to come home to, something to cling to, to help get through that time. We shouldn’t have married. We were good friends. Best friends. But not in love.” She began to shred the napkin in her hand, lost in her memories.
He stilled her hand. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“No, I want to. He…his convoy was hit by a roadside bomb. I still miss him. He was a good guy.” She blinked away tears.
“Daze, I’m sorry. That’s rough.”
She gave him a watery smile that just about killed him. “I refused his death benefits. It just didn’t feel right. We were only married for a day before he shipped out.”
Not much of a honeymoon. He was glad and instantly guilty for thinking it.
“Well, you’re marriage number one for me,” he said with a grin. “You get to train me up on being a good husband. I already know toilet seat down.”
She relaxed and went back to eating. “That’s right. Don’t forget, doing the laundry gets you bonus points.”
“What do I get for bonus points?”
“I’ll leave that as a surprise.”
His mind immediately went to those luscious lips and what they could do to him. “I like laundry.”
She laughed. “Yeah? It’s all yours.”
Trav launched into his favorite story of Ry doing laundry way back when, with Shane’s clothes still covered in baking powder and flour from his latest baking experiment, and too much detergent. The soap bubbles exploded from the washer. Gran hadn’t been happy, but the look on Ry’s face when he skidded through bubbles and ran around like a chicken with the sky falling was classic comedy. Trav called him Chicken Little for a while.
He left out the part where Ry threatened to tell the next girl who called the house Trav’s nickname, Turtle, because he was so slow getting ready in the morning. The rumpled-hair look took time. Trav had been mortified that the girls might think he was a slow dork, when he wanted to come off as too cool to care about anything or anyone.
“Any dark secrets I should know?” he asked.
“Nope,” she answered right quick. “How about you?”
He raised his palms. “Open book.”
His past troubles with the law weren’t exactly secrets. Still, he didn’t want to talk about them. He was trying to get away from that image.
She tossed back some wine. “Yeah, me too.”
He wasn’t so sure.
After they’d finished dinner, Daisy stood. “I’ll clear the dishes.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
She glanced toward the kitchen, which was a mess of pots with a sink piled high with dishes. “Sure?”
“Positive.” Now comes the seduction part of our evening . “More wine?”
“Yes, please.” She sat down again and held out her glass. After he refilled it, she tucked a leg under her and leaned back on the sofa, looking relaxed. Her cheeks were rosy from the drink, her full lips parted slightly…What were they supposed to talk about again?
He set his wineglass down and turned to her. “Maybe you should fill me in on this blog of yours. What did you say about your husband and our married life?”
She perked up. “Well, I
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