The crunch of tires on gravel gets my attention, and I go to the front to look out the screen door. I freeze immediately when I see Charles’s silver sedan pull up in the driveway. He parks behind my car and gets out, stopping to hitch his pants up as he stretches. Gran was right. He doesn’t have much of an ass.
But then the passenger door of his car opens, and she gets out too. He had the nerve to bring Sandra to my lake house? He brought her to my refuge? He brought her here, when he knows what this place means to me?
She looks around, her face curious as she says something to Charles. He walks around the car to stand next to her. He points toward the Jacobsons’ house, and then he stops to tell her something. She smiles like she’s enjoying getting the history of the place.
I open the screen door, step through it, and let it slam hard behind me. Gran would shoot me if she heard that door hit the frame like that. But it’s enough to get their attention. They both turn in my direction. Sandra’s lips lift in an unsteady smile of greeting, and Charles just looks resigned to whatever task he has assigned to himself.
“Why are you here?” I ask without preamble. I march down the steps toward them. Sandra takes a step back and covers her bump with her hand. Like I would do something to hurt an unborn child.
Charles holds up a hand. “Wait,” he says. He steps between me and Sandra, holding his palm up and out in my direction, like he can push me back with sheer will alone. I’d have to care about them being together before I would want to expend any energy pushing them back to get rid of them. And even now I can’t bring myself to care. Instead, I am extremely annoyed that they are here, in my safe haven. “We just came to talk,” he rushes on to say.
“About?” I cross my arms and glare at him. I don’t even waste an inch of eyesight on her. Instead, I stare at the man who is still technically my husband.
“Sandra felt like we should finalize some things, particularly now that my parents know about the baby.” He actually looks a little chagrined. But then I realize that, no…that’s annoyance on his face. “Your grandmother could have minded her own business,” he says quietly but still a bit petulantly.
“Oh, she could, could she?” I reply. “Well, you could have kept your dick in your pants, couldn’t you?”
He stiffens. “You don’t have to get nasty—”
“Nasty?” I sneer. “Is that the word for a woman who isn’t afraid to share her opinions?” If so, I will wear that word with pride.
Sandra looks from me to him and back. “We really didn’t come here to cause any problems.” Her voice is quiet and shaky, and I can see that she’s actually unsettled by this.
I pinch my nose between my thumb and forefinger and blow out a breath. “So why are you here?”
“I wanted to apologize,” Sandra says quietly. She begins to wring her hands together. “I didn’t mean for it to happen like this. And I’m sorry it did.”
“Are you done? If so, you can go.” I turn and march back up my steps to stand by the porch rail. I use it as a barricade between me and them.
“Can you forgive me?” she calls out.
I close my eyes and count to ten silently.
“You see,” she continues, “his mother is really angry, and she isn’t in favor of our relationship.”
“Thanks to your grandmother’s meddling,” Charles reminds me.
“So, you’re blaming this on Gran?” I bite back a snort. Almost.
“If she’d just minded her own business—”
But then I see him. Ethan arrives like an angel sent from heaven. His steps are heavy, his stride purposeful as he walks toward me.
As he walks past Charles, his little duck pecks at Charles’s pant leg, and Charles jumps in place, trying to get away. “What the…!” Charles says, his voice panicked a little.
I’ve never been quite as happy to see anyone as I am in that moment.
“Is that him?” Ethan asks, and he has a wicked glint in his eyes.
“That’s him,” I reply as he marches straight up my steps and bends his head to kiss my cheek. He presses a small bouquet of flowers into my hands. “And her,” I add, nodding my head in her direction.
“He picked her over you?” he says with a snicker close to my ear. “I can’t see why.”
As I compare the two of them, Ethan and Charles… I can’t. I simply can’t. There is no comparison. They are as different as night and day, or light and dark. As different as any opposites that ever presented themselves, that’s the difference between Charles and Ethan.
I lift his little nosegay and inhale. The wildflowers smell like outdoors and happiness. They smell like him. “They’re beautiful,” I say.
“So are you,” he replies softly, and he lifts his hand to rest on the center of my back. I melt a little when he lifts the bottom edge of my t-shirt so that his hot palm touches my skin.