Worth the Weight by Mara Jacobs Read Free Book Online Page B

didn’t say a word about anything other than business. Surely there’s some personal life stuff to tell after all these years?”
    “What do you mean?” she asked. She took just a second to bask in how matter-of-fact he was about her being successful. Like there was never any doubt in his mind.
    “Well, you said the other night that you never married. Were you engaged? Do you have children? Live-in boyfriend? Tell me something about you .”
    How could she possibly explain to him what the last fifteen years had been for her? The feelings of shame that putting weight on had brought her. Blocking out feelings. That opening her own business had been a distraction of sorts so that she wouldn’t have to deal with anything personal. How do you relate the stuff that took you the last three years to figure out, over a bottle of Bud?
    You don’t. She’d just tell him something smooth and be done with it. He had no more interest in knowing about her foibles and triumphs in the past than she did of knowing his.
    But she was interested in Finn ’s past. Why he married at twenty-three? Why he was divorced? And what had happened to his horses?
    But that wasn’t what this was about. This was purely a means to an end. The end of celibacy. The beginning of the future.
    Instead of trying to explain the unexplainable, she answered, “Uh, that would be a no on all of the above.”
    He waited for her to go on, and she sighed, knowing there was no choice. “Never met the right guy. Too busy with work. You know, the usual reasons a woman my age is still single.” She rambled the words out, as if she knew them by rote. And she did. People she met asked her that question a lot in the last three years.
    She’d never been asked it before.
    “Yeah, okay, I guess.” He let it go, but only for now. There was a look in his eyes that made her think he didn’t buy her simplistic explanation.
    Eager to get him off the subject of her personal life, or lack thereof, she asked, “You said you were divorced seven years ago? So, only married that once, then?”
    “Believe me, once is enough.” There was a bitterness in his expression that she thought looked foreign on him . Or at least the Finn she used to know. She guessed a bad marriage could do that to you.
    Come to think of it, he did look…harder. Of course, a seventeen -year span would age a person, but the Finn she’d known, though saddled at a young age with much responsibility, was still full of dreams. The man in front of her had definitely seen many tough days and they showed on his face.
    He still looked good to her .
    It wasn’t a classically handsome face, though he possessed the chiseled cheekbones of a male model. His nose was crooked from a fight in eighth grade. There was a tiny scar through his eyebrow that he’d received when trying to take a whiskey bottle away from his mother at seventeen. Both experiences he’d told her about on a blanket at the beach, one with laughs, the other with tears.
    His blue eyes, now serious and knowing, were light and teasing years ago. His mouth was firm and drawn tight, like he grimaced frequently, but his lips were still full, and tempting.
    He looked as though the years of a hard life had caught up with him.
    She didn’t care. For her purposes she need only to be attracted to him, not to understand him. And she was absolutely attracted to him.
    Sitting across from him, sparring with him like they used to, she knew she’d made the right choice. Finn was the one to bring her out of hibernation. He was sexy. He wanted her. She knew she’d enjoy their time together. And most importantly, she’d be able to walk away from him.
    “So, no plans to remarry ?” she teased. He’d made it perfectly clear in his tone that one would be his limit.
    “No way. What about you, ever think about it?”
    She shrugged. “Sure, I’m open to it. Actually, I’ve become more open to the idea in the last few years. My business is in a good place,