But as a thirtysomething who’d been around the proverbial block a few times, she knew better.
He gave and gave and gave...everything but his heart. That part of his anatomy was walled off so solidly, she hadn’t managed to breach the outer layer. And if she noticed the distance between them—her besotted, and him casually comfortable—so would his family, eventually. And so would their daughter.
Pen had made a lot of decisions recently—big, sweeping life decisions—and the number-one decision she’d made was to put her daughter first.
She would sacrifice anything—her job, her home, her very lifestyle—to give her daughter what she needed. She’d even sacrifice what she had with Zach. And that was saying something as it was the first time she’d truly been in love.
In the quiet, dark corners of her mind lay a flickering hope that Zach might come around. That he might open up and learn to love her. The optimist in her thought he might, but the realist in her couldn’t risk what it meant if he never did.
She wasn’t waiting around for him to decide to love her. Not with their daughter watching. And that was why she also couldn’t let the engagement continue. Sure, there’d be a stir of interest and a touch of gossip, but she could spin their interest toward their daughter. She was the reason for the relationship anyway. Most of it.
Some of it, Pen sadly corrected.
Regardless, percentages didn’t matter. Penelope didn’t want her love for Zach to grow bitter and stale after years of not being returned. More important, she didn’t want her daughter to witness her mother’s feelings for her father crumbling into dust.
Their daughter would have a mother and a father who cared about one another, who respected one another. Who loved her with all their hearts. And that was going to have to be enough. For all of them.
Zach must’ve escaped the clutches of his grandparents’ friends, because he now stood at the balcony door with Chase. They were talking, looking very much like brothers with the same strong lines of their backs and hands buried in pants pockets.
Zach chose that moment to look over and catch her eye. He didn’t smile, but held her gaze with a smoldering one of his own. His longish hair was tickling the collar of his shirt, his full mouth flinching in displeasure.
As magnanimous as she’d sounded in her own ears moments ago, Pen’s heart throbbed with the need to satisfy her own desires rather than her daughter’s.
She only wished loving Zach satisfied both.