Page 3 of The Professor's Wife

Still, I had to congratulate myself. I had done something I had never done before. Instead of locking myself away for days, waiting for the pain to dull enough that I might accept things and continue as though nothing had happened, I had felt something snap inside me.

And I had followed it out of the life I knew.

Now, here I was.

I wasn’t sure how long I had been sitting there, staring at the minutes ticking across the clock on the wall, when footstepsapproached nearby. I didn’t look up, but I caught a trace of clean cologne drifting my way.

A voice sounded, too close to ignore.

“You look lost.”

I snapped to attention and turned.

Blue jeans. White shirt. Blond hair dusting corded, thick arms. A large, callused hand settled on the bar beside my drink. No ring. No watch. A guitar pick moved between two of his fingers, tapping lightly against the bar as his body angled toward mine.

My cheeks burned when I looked up into stunning blue eyes.

My heart stuttered.

We held each other’s gaze for a moment, and my first thought was, Wow, he is gorgeous.

Then, just as quickly: How old is he?

Because suddenly I felt old. Not in years, but in contrast. He looked somewhere in his twenties, clearly a grown man, but there was still a youthfulness in him that clashed with my weariness. I felt it in the brightness of his eyes and in the easy way he carried himself. I imagined this was nothing more than friendly chatter from a young man who had noticed a woman sitting alone, nervously watching the room.

“Purposely lost,” I finally said with a smile.

He smiled back, glancing briefly at my mouth. “That’s my favorite kind of lost.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s usually when the best stories start.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that. My mind darted to the large house I had walked out of with nothing but the clothes on my back.

“That’s one way of looking at it.”

He glanced at the empty stool next to mine. “Do you mind if I sit?”

I shook my head. “No.”

He sat, and suddenly the air felt tight in my lungs. My spine straightened. I tried not to fall into that awkward habit of letting silence swell until I had no choice but to smile unbearably through it.

Luckily, he didn’t seem bothered.

He turned toward me, and his knee gently brushed mine.

A strange feeling shot through me as I glanced down at the denim grazing my bare skin. There should have been resistance in me. Alarm bells should have been ringing loudly and clearly in my mind.

They weren’t.

That frightened me almost as much as it soothed me.

When he glanced toward the bartender, I looked down at my flowered dress, checking that everything remained perfectly in place.

How strange to worry about such things.

I almost didn’t recognize myself.