Second Chances: Love Nibbles by Bonnie Dee Page A

I’ve been doing this job a while. There are only a few reasons a person moves. New job, lost job, break up or death. Which is yours?”
    Camilla would have resented his blunt multiple choice question if it weren’t for the kindness in his eyes and his sympathetic tone.
    “My husband is dead.”
    It was the first time she’d actually said the words aloud. She hadn’t needed to inform anyone. The news spread quickly through the university grapevine, and Sam had no family members she’d needed to call. Now each syllable dropped from her mouth like a cold, hard pebble. My. Husband. Is. Dead.
    Should she break down? Should she burst into tears? It nearly made her weep that she felt no natural impulse to cry.
    “I’m sorry.” The way the young man said it seemed like more than the perfunctory response people offered a grieving widow. “What happened?”
    “Cancer. He went quickly.” She drew a breath and added. “He died about ten months ago. I thought...It seemed like it was time to move someplace new.”
    Ryan nodded and slipped the tape gun back into his belt. “They tell you it gets easier with time. I don’t know about that. It just evolves into something different.”
    She noted the furrow between his eyebrows. “Who did you lose?”
    “My brother, when I was a kid. I remember how I felt right after it happened and for a long time after that. Now it’s a quieter loss. Like an amputation you get used to.”
    He tapped a finger on the tape dispenser before sliding it back into its holster. “Also, a few years ago the woman I lived with left me. Not the same as death, but having the person you love tell you she simply doesn’t want you anymore, that you’ve become irrelevant to her…” He paused. “That can be pretty wrenching, too.”
    Camilla abruptly felt the pain of his loss so sharply, it hurt more than her own. She could feel the poking angles of those barbed emotions.
    “I’m sorry,” she murmured, knowing those words were never sufficient in the face of heart break. But what else could she say?
    “So I understand how hard it is to let go of stuff,” Ryan continued. “She left some things behind, and I carried those boxes of her crap with me from one apartment to another before I finally threw them out.”
    Camilla looked at the sealed box in front of her. “Do you have a marker?”
    He gave her a Sharpie from his tool belt.
    She uncapped it and labeled the box, Sam’s Crap—Storage Unit.
    In the end, wasn’t that what awards and plaques and trophies amounted to?
    “Please keep all the storage boxes near the back of the truck so you can drop them off on the way. It’s Peerson’s U-Lock-It. I’ll meet you there with the key to the unit.” She smiled slightly at Ryan as she handed him the marker.
    “Yes, ma’am.” He touched her hand, the heat from his lighting up her skin. “It does get easier just like they say.”
    Camilla had experienced both sympathy and pity over the past months. Ryan’s compassionate eyes peering through a fringe of sandy hair offered empathy. They also contained something she hadn’t seen in a man’s gaze in a long while—interest in her as a woman. His gaze flicked to her chest for a microsecond before refocusing on her face.
    His frank assessment made her twitchy. Parts of her that had lain dormant for much longer than Sam had been dead stirred to life. Excited and embarrassed and a little frightened, she drew her hand away from his and folded her arms over her breasts.
    “I assume you’ll start with the furniture and then the boxes?”
    “Yeah. My partner should be right behind me. Show me what you want done.”
    As she led him from room to room, talking a little too fast and high as she pointed out items that would need special care, Camilla felt as if she were recovering after walking on shifting sand. The unexpected stab of lust had shaken her, but she could regain control. She’d controlled her emotions for quite a long time. She was a master