Read Online Warm Winter Love by Constance Walker - Free Book Online Page A

and family and she wanted them all together, under the same roof, every night, every day. It wasn’t the same, seeing him only on weekends. At least not for her. As for me, I had my friends, but Mother wanted more than friends. She needed a husband’s companionship and she wasn’t able to get it from my father. It was just the circumstances. Just the way it was. She figured that she was married and entitled to have someone to rely on, for whatever reasons. She wanted her husband home with her.” She looked up at Sam. “We’re a lot alike on that score.”
    He signaled the waiter for more coffee, and they were silent while the cups were refilled. He took a sip of the hot brew and closed his eyes slightly. His mouth worked for a few seconds before he spoke. “So that’s why you said we could never. . . .”
    She nodded. “You’re so much like my father. He would have loved you.”
    “I wish that you would.” He said it simply and directly and she felt a shiver run through her body. How could she say she didn’t love him? She was telling him things she had never told anyone, not even Jason. It was just so easy to talk to Sam, to tell him about her life and her hurts. No, she could never deny to herself that she loved him—she did very much—although she had known him less than a week. Only this was a no-win situation. Hadn’t she seen her mother hurt? Surely she had learned something from her mother’s experience.
    “Did you get to see your father often?” He was probing now, seeking information that might reconcile their situations.
    “Yes, on almost every weekend. Our time together was limited. He still told me stories and sent me postcards but I gradually saw the change in him. It was like the spark had gone out of him. And I began to hate the traveling he did and the cards he sent me.” She stared at the near-empty dining room. “It was terrible, Sam. I started to realize that if he had a job like the other fathers in my neighborhood—well, then I would have had a father too. But I also knew that to force him to take a job nearer home would only cage him and I didn’t want that, either. I loved him too much to ask him to do that.” She touched his hand. “I don’t want that to happen to me again, Sam. I don’t want to be lonely in my adult life too. Can you understand?”
    He slumped in his chair for a few moments and then sat up again. “What makes you think we’d have the same kind of marriage? It doesn’t have to be that way, you know.”
    “Are you asking me to give up my career?”
    “No, but with your job and mine, the weekends that we spend together and the vacations, too, will only be better for us. We’ll have emails and texts and phone calls once, twice, or more a day. We’d constantly be in touch. We’ll appreciate each other more. Your mother didn’t have a job—that’s why she was so lonely. We’d handle our lives differently.”
    “Uh-uh.” She shook her head and folded her hands in front of her. “That would last for only a few years—two or three at the most—and then what? No, Sam, I meant it. It just wouldn’t work with us.”
    “Would it work with your . . . ?” He let the sentence be unfinished but she knew he meant Jason and she replied quietly.
    “Yes.”
    “He’s steady?”
    “Very.”
    “And he’s always there?”
    “Always.”
    As he wrinkled his brow, it seemed to her that he was trying to fit into place all the pieces of a difficult puzzle. “But, Katie, the most important ingredient in any relationship is love.”
    “There are all kinds of love and sometimes even more is needed in a marriage.” She was on the defensive. His questions were ones she had asked herself these past nights and she had no answers yet. She had to prove to Sam, and to herself, that Jason was the man she should marry.
    “Name some other things. What else is important?”
    “Mutual respect, for one.” Suddenly her voice was louder.
    “I certainly respect you! And I