Sun-Kissed by Laura Florand Page B

except now he was leftover. Both his daughters had found someone else.
    He nodded at Anne, shoving his hands into his pockets, and kind of wished, for a second, that he hadn’t gone so over the line last night. Because what if she—what if he couldn’t talk to her this morning? What if she shut him out? Could you break a friendship like this, by being too offensive? God knew, despite all the perverse fantasies he’d had about Anne, she’d never shown much sign of being a sexual being.
    He just kind of felt like he could change that for her.
    And, damn , but he had missed her, when she was in prison. He’d felt as if he’d been broken into a million pieces. It made him frantic to put himself all back together again, and fuse her tight into him as he was melding those pieces back, so no one could ever get her away from him again. It wasn’t how life worked—they’d gotten to her despite everything he could do the first time—but it was how he felt.
    Anne nodded to him, too, her hands also in her pockets, and they fell into step, the dog bouncing along beside them from time to time to bring back the stick, Mack throwing it forward. In the morning, Anne always looked like his. No make-up artist polishing her up, whether for a public appearance or on call in the “powder room” she had set up last night so the female guests could stop in for a touch-up. No, in the morning, it was just her skin, dewy from a shower and presumably moisturizer, and some clear, glossy thing she put on her lips. Anne was one of those women who could easily pass for mid-thirties, if she ever managed to carry herself with a little less power and experience. Maybe a Triple AAA personality, sleep-deprived, thirty-something mother of twins some days, but she had these beautiful, elegant strong lines to her bones that were part of the reason she’d done so well on television, and she’d taken good care of her skin and her body. He’d fought the good fight against Botox, when she was tempted in her forties, and won, thank God. Jesus, woman, why would you want to mess with something that gorgeous?
    Besides, he had a lot of memories held in those fine lines at the corners of her eyes. All those squinting looks across a sun rising over the sea. All those sidelong, minatory glances at something he said. All those times her eyes crinkled in suppressed amusement, laughter dancing in that elusive green. And those newer, tiny vertical lines that tension had left at the corners of her lips—well, he hadn’t put them there, but he figured they were his, just the same. He’d liked the way they looked last night, when she was staring up at him on her porch, after he’d given that mouth something better to do with itself than be tense.
    They walked in silence, as they often did. Seagulls scattered away as Lex dashed after the stick, with a Lab or an Aussie’s energy, although God knew what the dog actually was. Like most of their pets, Lex had appeared on their doorstep in Corey one day, although both the girls had been off to college by the time this particular dog showed up, so Mack had no one to blame for cracking but himself. Brindle brown fur but retriever-shaped, the dog was delirious to be let out now that the bulk of the guests and their no-paw-prints-please reception clothes were gone.
    He wondered if Anne had felt like that, when she stepped out of prison. She’d come straight here. Mack had been at the prison with a limo at her release, of course, but she’d been so grim-faced and clearly unwilling to talk yet that he’d left her alone afterward. He knew Anne. It had still pissed him off when he woke up the next morning to find she’d flown off to the Hamptons without even texting him to come with, though. He had flown in after her immediately, to find her already in the ocean. Swimming and swimming in the waves for hours, as if she was going to swim across the Atlantic. Mack had sat on the beach keeping an eye on her, the Coast Guard’s