“Must have been a tough decision to make.”
“It was,” she admitted. “Because I loved—I love—Keith. I think I always will. This past year has been harder than I expected, but lately...” She stopped just short of admitting that she’d been questioning her decision a hell of a lot less since those dances with him.
Porter let her statement drop unfinished. She suspected it was because he knew what she’d been about to say, but she wasn’t sure if he let her off the hook simply because of that or because he didn’t want to hear her say it aloud.
They both fell silent for a few minutes. Adele wasn’t sure what was going through Porter’s mind, but as for herself, she was pleased to discover she wasn’t sad about Keith anymore.
Her heart was no longer broken.
Hell, it didn’t even feel cracked.
“For what it’s worth,” he said at last, “I think you made the right decision.”
She smiled. “So do I,” she admitted. “And now, it’s your turn.”
Porter gave her a crooked grin. “Got the idea the other night that there wasn’t too much you didn’t already know about my past relationships. Magic tongue, rope, and all that.”
She rolled her eyes. “That’s sex. Not feelings.”
“I don’t know. Feels pretty good to me,” he teased.
“Stop deflecting and get ready to spend a few minutes on the hot seat. How come you never got married?”
“Never wanted to.”
It was a simple, straightforward answer. And maybe Porter believed that was the truth. But there’d been a flicker in his eyes as he’d responded that told her there was something more there.
“Why not?” she countered.
Porter lifted one shoulder casually. “I don’t think that me staying single was a conscious decision as much as something that just happened. Coop and I have been best friends since the cradle, and I watched him fall in love and get married at twenty-two. I remember thinking back then that he was a fool to settle down that young. That he’d thrown away some of his best years, tying himself to just one woman.”
“Spoken like a true manwhore,” she said, winking at him.
“That description fit pretty good when I was in my twenties, early thirties. I wasn’t much better than those yahoos I just helped Belinda toss out of here. But then…”
Porter paused for a moment and Adele remained quiet, trying to figure out if he was resistant to finish what he started or simply looking for the words. Obviously, he was having a deep thought, his smile fading, replaced by a sadness she’d never seen in his eyes.
“But then,” he started at last, “Coop’s wife, Sharon, got cancer.”
“The two of you were close,” Adele said.
“Yeah.” He nodded. “She and Coop were my best friends, my family.” Porter’s gaze locked with hers, his expression too serious. “Sometimes…the three of us…Coop and me…we shared her.”
Adele’s eyes widened. “You slept together? The three of you?”
He frowned. “It’s not exactly unheard of. I mean your cousins Jeannette and Tyson—”
Adele cut him off. “I didn’t mean that in a judgmental way. Honestly. I’m just…surprised. I…” She smirked. “I truly believed there were no secrets in Maris.”
“Everybody’s got secrets, Addie. Even in a town as small as Maris. The trick to keeping them is not to tell your dad.”
“Touché,” she said, agreeing with him completely. TJ Sparks was the root of the Maris grapevine.
Porter’s expression lightened, but he didn’t smile. She wished he would. Instead, he continued his explanation. “I don’t want you to get the wrong impression about what was going on with us. Coop and Sharon were the couple. They were married and in love and their relationship was rock solid. It was just…every now and then…Sharon needed both of us.”
“Were you in love with her?” Adele asked, though the question cost her something. What was happening between them would be a lot simpler if she could paint Porter as a womanizer, someone incapable of love and commitment. Discovering he had this softer, sweeter side was just going to make it that much harder to walk away from him. And she had to walk away. Because there was no doubt in her mind he would. If she wanted to come out of this relatively unscathed, she needed to be the first to step away come morning.
“Not in love,” he clarified. “But I did love her. Her death ripped a hole in my heart.”
Adele studied his face, her own heart aching as she considered his loss. “I get that. It was the same for Macie when her best friend, Johnnie, died. She was devastated when he passed away. So…” She wondered if she should admit to knowing another one of his secrets. Finally, she decided she liked being this open, this honest with him. It was a refreshing change after spending the last year playing dating games with losers. “So I guess it makes sense that you and Macie turned to each other.”
Porter reared back, clearly shocked. “You know I slept with Macie?”
Adele grinned and rolled her eyes. “We’re sisters. We tell each other everything. I knew the two of you had slept together ten minutes after you left her place. And it probably only took that long because she couldn’t find her phone to call me sooner.”
“She always loses her phone.” Porter shook his head, rubbing his jaw, drawing her attention to his five-o’clock shadow. “It was just one night, Addie. And there was a lot of whiskey involved.”
“Macie told me, though I think she used the word shitfaced. I’m glad the two of you were there for each other.”
Porter reached across the table, grasping her hand in his. “You sure you’re okay with it?”
Adele nodded because it was the truth. She couldn’t explain why she suffered some pretty serious jealousy when it came to every single one of Porter’s one-night-stand women, but with Macie, she felt none of that.
Maybe it was because she’d been there after Johnnie died and she had hated seeing her sister so torn apart. Adele recalled actually feeling some gratitude to Porter at the time because Macie had turned a corner after that, had started the healing process.
Or maybe it was because she knew that what Macie and Porter had shared had been about grief and loneliness, and not about romantic feelings. Macie was one million percent in love with her husband, Coop, and not a threat where Porter was concerned.
As soon as Adele thought that, she pushed it away.
No one should feel like a threat to her because she and Porter weren’t dating, and despite his joke about her being his girlfriend, they both knew that after they slept together, things would return to the status quo. This wasn’t going to last more than one night…maybe tonight if this date ended the way she hoped.
She had too much pride, too much practicality, to let herself get swept up in him like every other woman he’d shared a bed with, believing she could be the one to change his bachelor status.
What she needed to do was look at sleeping with him as an early Christmas present to herself. She’d treat herself to a night of amazing sex with a man who knew his way around the bedroom and then, come morning, she’d put herself back out there in hopes of finding a man like Keith, one who wasn’t allergic to relationships and marriage.