Read Beginning Again: Book 1 in the Second Chances series (Crimson Romance) for Free Online

finally acknowledged her it was to give her his advice on how to make her business better — even though he’d never been in her as-yet-unfinished gallery.
    He wrapped up his list with a suggestion that she feature a woman he knew who did some kind of glass art — Liz was convinced it was collapsing wine bottles in a kiln to make cheese plates — and promised that he’d allow some of her artists to display in his restaurant once she’d proven herself a success. She listened politely, grinding down her molars a bit and trying not to spit at the man. When he left to bother other patrons, Collins, whose sly smile suggested he’d been enjoying the exchange, poured the wine from his glass into hers, saying she needed it more than he did.
    Local politics absorbed their attention through their entrees, but when dessert was served, Collins brought the conversation back to something more personal.
    “So, you’ve been married?” he asked.
    “Yes.”
    “Want to tell me about it?”
    “Why would I?” She squirmed in her seat.
    “So we get to know each other better.”
    “I thought we were finished with that experiment.”
    He leaned across the table and held out a forkful of his chocolate cake for her to taste. “You said we were finished with it. I’m not ready to give up on it yet.”
    Licking the icing off her mouth, she said, “I’m still eating. Why don’t you go first? Have you been married?”
    “Not even close. I decided a long time ago that marriage wasn’t likely to be in my future. The reasons people get married seem to be to have live-in company, kids, or both. I’m a workaholic who likes being alone when I’m not working, and the responsibility of raising a child to be a decent human being scares the bejesus out of me.”
    She was amazed at how easily he talked about something so personal. He didn’t even need prodding to continue.
    “I’ve had a couple long-term relationships, one in my twenties and one in my early thirties. Both ended when the women wanted what I couldn’t give them — the house with the white picket fence, the 2.3 kids, the golden retriever named Honey. So we parted friends. Sort of. When I want company, I can usually find someone to go to dinner with me. Or whatever. And I know lots of people with ideas about who to fix me up with if I can’t find someone on my own.” He sat back in his chair and sipped his coffee. “That’s my story. What’s yours?”
    “It takes a bit longer.”
    “We have the rest of the night.”
    She hesitated, not sure exactly what to tell him. Then the thought occurred that the truth might be what she needed to take control over what the hell was happening between them. So, he’d get the truth. The whole truth.
    “When you were eleven and I was nineteen … ” She ignored the interruption of a raised eyebrow and a theatrical cough and plowed ahead. “When I was nineteen, I married one of my college professors. He was forty-three. I was this hick kid from the Central Valley in California and he was the most sophisticated man I’d ever met. I thought he loved me.” She sighed. “Turned out, he was looking for a research project not a wife.”
    “He was Henry Higgins and you were Eliza Doolittle?”
    “Except, unlike in My Fair Lady , he never got emotionally attached. We married just before his sabbatical year and I dropped out of school to travel with him. He tutored me in art at some of the most famous museums in the world. Those places I talked about visiting at dinner last night? Roger took me to most of them.”
    “What happened to him?
    “Fast forward about five years of my struggling — not always successfully — to be a good faculty wife. I hear a strange noise in the bathroom one morning when he was shaving. He’d collapsed. Didn’t survive the ride to the ER. Massive heart attack.”
    “No kids?”
    “He had two sons from his first marriage, both older than me. He didn’t want more. Each of his children — and he