The Turnaround Treasure Shop by Jennie Jones Page B

Nick had only been physically in-situ with her for about six difficult months where she nagged about his abrupt deployments, time away from home and pretty much made him feel like an also-ran. He’d been glad to agree to the separation when he and the boys had been sent to Iraq.
    â€˜I don’t have kids. Didn’t get the chance,’ he told Lily. ‘I’ve always been sorry about that.’
    â€˜It’s the one perfect thing I’ve done in my life.’
    â€˜Can’t be the only two perfect things,’ he told her, reminding her there were two great kids in her life. ‘You’re successful.’
    She slapped a hand to her chest. ‘Me?’
    Yeah, you , Nick thought. More than you know . Although he wasn’t sure if it was a case of her not knowing or a case of her denying herself — both the accolades and the finer things for herself.
    â€˜I’m divorced, Nick. That’s not a success story.’
    â€˜You’re not in any different a situation to many others. Sometimes marriages don’t work.’
    Nick had done his best to right the wrong of marrying a woman he didn’t love but the struggle was over when she served divorce papers on him after he’d returned from Iraq. Relief had hit him fast. But the marriage debacle had also taught him he wasn’t the marrying kind. Not then anyway, not with his type of career. And now?
    He knew how he’d handle a marriage now, or rather, he had a fair idea of what he expected of himself within a marriage. If he was going to take a relationship anywhere with Lily, ‘anywhere’ would have to lead to the full deal. Marriage. A lifetime. He wouldn’t have it any other way. It wouldn’t be fair on Lily to dip into her life now and then and he knew if he got a taste of her he’d want her forever, regardless of whatever settling-down worries were sitting in his gut. Surely he wouldn’t love her and leave her? Not now. He’d been out of the Navy for over two years. He’d settled, hadn’t he?
    He turned to the boxes and began opening them. How could he chase Lily and ask her and her kids to become his impossible dream if he couldn’t answer that important question?
    ***
    Lily flipped a page in her notebook and jotted down the box numbers as Nick hefted more, slitting them open and then stacking them in number order against a wall. He carried two boxes at a time. He’d also just taken his jumper off which meant she was on the receiving end of an eye-full of Nick Barton in military-green cargo pants and black T-shirt.
    She’d been right about the muscles. His T-shirt was packed with them. They spread across the breadth of his shoulders and down his back. The front view tantalised her starved senses even more. He owned one of those chests that made a woman — a single woman with an intent to take up knitting as soon as possible — want to lean against it. Run the palms of her hands up and over it. Lily thought herself tall at five-eight; Nick was almost a head taller. If she rested her cheek on a firm pectoral muscle in order to listen to his heartbeat, her face would nestle at that most perfect place. The place where protection lived.
    Not that she needed protecting, or comforting come to that. But when a man put his arms around a woman with intent to safeguard, it meant the woman could also slip her arms around the man in her life and show him a little comfort — and maybe security too, if at times he needed it. A real partnership deal. Care and provide, love and protect. Together forever.
    Heat filtered through her body and with it an awakening awareness that this was a small room and she was practically locked in it with a very attractive man. She moved to the window to undo the old-fashioned lock on the sash. It wouldn’t open. It had been painted over at some point but she put her shoulder into trying to prise open the latch. It wasn’t only the