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Her Secret Yearning After All These Years
The first time I noticed was at a pool party in the summer of 2010. I was eighteen, freshly graduated, and my best friend Mark’s backyard was a monument to suburban success.
Secret Sunlight in the Pool House
The first time I noticed him watching me, I was trying to untangle a knot in the strap of my swimsuit top. The sun was a hammer on the back of my neck, and I’d given up on decorum, twisting my arm...
Healing Her Heart With Younger Passion
The folding chair was digging into my thigh. I shifted, trying to find a comfortable position, but there wasn’t one.
The Lens and the Lingerie
The studio smelled like vanilla and old wood, a combination that always hit me somewhere low in the stomach when I stepped through the door. I adjusted the light stands for the third time, though ...
Charity's Unexpected Lessons
The house had become a museum of echoes. I wandered through rooms that once pulsed with slammed doors, giggling phone calls, the microwave pinging at two a.
Midnight Melodies and Power Ties
The amber glow of the hotel bar wrapped itself around everything like expensive whiskey, and Diana Vandenberg felt it warm her skin as she settled onto the leather stool. Outside, Denver's financi...
What Remains in the Darkness
The ballroom of the Crowne Plaza was a sea of forced nostalgia and cheap polyester. A banner over the DJ booth declared “Riverview High 20-Year Reunion – Where Are They Now?
A Late Bloom at the Garden Gate
The jasmine was blooming again, its sweet, cloying scent drifting over the redwood fence. Arthur felt its arrival like a calendar page turned, another marker in the solitary rhythm of his days.
The Dance of a Second Chance
The mirror caught me off guard again. Fifty years old and newly divorced, trying to find something—anything—that didn't remind me of the life I'd lost.
Unwritten Pages in the Dim Light
The familiar weight of the hardcover in my hands should have been comforting, but instead it vibrated with possibility, like a tuning wire struck by an unseen hand. I’d carried *Velvet Midnight* t...
She's fifty-two and hasn't been...
The first time I walked into the gym, I felt like an exhibit in a museum of youthful vitality. The air smelled of disinfectant, rubber, and the faint, salty tang of sweat.
Therapy of a Tempting Touch
The scent of eucalyptus and sandalwood wraps around me the moment I step through the frosted glass door. *Tranquility Bodyworks*.
A Lesson in Seductive Scholarship
I’d spent the last two years of my doctoral program in a state of perpetual, low-grade awe of Dr. Evelyn Thorne.
Salt and Sugar The Compass of Her Desire Beneath the Deck Lights Retirement's Uncharted Waters
The sea was a sheet of hammered silver beneath the endless sky, and I felt just as flat, just as empty. Retirement, they’d said, was a reward.
The Unspoken Arrangement
The church smelled like lilies and furniture polish, the kind of scent that tried too hard to mask grief. I stood at the back, hands shoved in the pockets of the suit I’d bought yesterday because ...