“A book would be good.” Sebastian followed. “What do you think of a new fishing pole?”

“I wasn’t aware that he fished these days.” Clare set the glasses and bottle on the granite island in the middle of the kitchen.

“He and I pulled a few trout out of the reservoir this afternoon.” He leaned back against the counter and folded his arms across his chest. “His gear is fairly dated, so I thought I’d get him a newer setup.”

“With him, you have to pay attention to brands.”

“That’s why I thought you could help me out. I wrote down what we’ll need.”

She stopped and slowly turned toward him. “We’ll?”

He shrugged. “Sure. You’ll go along. Right?”

Something wasn’t quite right. He wasn’t looking her in the eyes and…She sucked in a breath and the real reason for his unannounced visit became crystal clear. “There’s no ‘we’ll,’ is there? You came here to talk me into getting your father a fishing pole. By myself.”

He looked at her then and gave her his most charming smile. “Honey, I don’t know where the sporting goods stores are in this town. And really, there’s no point in both of us going.”

“Don’t honey me.” She was such a fool. She’d given him the benefit of the doubt, felt bad for misjudging him, and here he was, standing in her kitchen attempting a bait and switch. She folded her arms across her chest. “No.”

“Why not?” He dropped his hands to his sides. “Women love to shop.”

“For shoes. Not fishing poles. Duh!” She groaned inwardly and closed her eyes. Had she just said Duh? Like she was ten again?

Clearly amused, Sebastian laughed. “Duh? What’s next? Are you going to call me a numb nut?”

She took a deep breath and opened her eyes. “Good-bye, Sebastian,” she said as she moved to the kitchen doorway. She stopped and pointed to the front of her house. “You are on your own.”

He pushed away from the counter and moved toward her. Slow and easy, as if he wasn’t in a big hurry to comply to her demand. “Your friends are right, you know.”

Good God! Had he overheard the heft conversation?

As he walked past her, he paused and said next to her ear, “You might not have been the cutest little girl in patent leather shoes, but you’ve grown into a beautiful woman. Especially when you’re all worked up.”

He smelled good, and if she turned her face just a little she could bury her nose in his neck. The desire to do so alarmed her, and she kept as still as possible. “Forget it. I’m not doing your shopping for you.”

“Please?”

“Not a chance.”

“What if I get lost?”

“Get a map.”

“Don’t need one. The Land Cruiser has a navigation system.” He chuckled and pulled back. “You were more fun as a kid.”

“I was more gullible. I’m not a little girl now and you can’t trick me, Sebastian.”

“Clare, you wanted me to trick you.” He smiled and moved to the front door. “You still do,” he said, and was gone before she could argue or utter a good-bye or good riddance.

She walked back into the kitchen, reached for the champagne glasses, and set them next to the sink. Ridiculous. She hadn’t wanted to be tricked. She’d just wanted him to like her. She turned on the faucet and added a few drops of lemon fresh Joy. She’d just wanted him to like her. She supposed that was the story of her life. Sad and a little pathetic, but true.

The water ran for a few moments before she turned off the faucet and placed the glasses in the warm soapy water. If she were honest and took a good hard look at her past, she could see the same destructive patterns in her life. If she were honest, the kind of honest that was painful to look at, she’d admit that she was letting her childhood influence her adult life.

Admitting that really did bite the big one, but it was too obvious to ignore. She’d absolutely refused to consider it for so long because it was such a cliché, and she hated clichés. She hated to write them, but more than that, she hated being one.

In college she’d taken sociology classes and read the studies conducted on children raised in single parent homes. She had thought she’d escaped the statistics, which found that girls raised without fathers were more likely to engage in greater and earlier sexual activities and were at a greater risk of suicide and criminality. She’d never had one single thought of suicide, never been arrested, and was a freshman in college when she’d lost her virginity. Her friends from two-parent homes had lost theirs in high school. Therefore, she’d convinced herself that she did not have the classic “daddy issues.”

No, she hadn’t been sexually promiscuous. Just emotionally hollow and subconsciously seeking male approval to fill the empty places inside. And she didn’t have to look very hard at her life to discover why she always searched for male attention to make herself feel whole.

Clare washed the glasses and set them on a towel to dry. For all intents and purposes, she’d been raised without a father. On those occasions when she visited her dad, he always had a beautiful woman living with him. A different beautiful woman. To a little girl with thick glasses and a wide mouth that didn’t fit her face, all those beautiful women had made her feel even more unattractive and insecure. It hadn’t been their fault. Most of the women were kind to her. Nor had it been her fault. She’d been a child-it was just life, her life-and she was still letting those old insecurities influence her relationships with men. After all these years.

Clare reached into a drawer and pulled out a towel. As she dried her hands, she came to a painful realization. She’d settled for men unworthy of her because, deep inside, she’d felt lucky to have them. It wasn’t exactly the bing-bing moment she’d been waiting for to explain her relationship with Lonny. It didn’t answer why she hadn’t seen what had been so obvious to everyone else, but it did explain why she’d settled for a man who could never love her the way any woman deserved to be loved by the man in her life.

The telephone sitting next to the porcelain canisters rang, and she glanced at the caller ID. It was Lonny. He’d been calling every day since she’d kicked him out. She never picked up, and he never left a message. This time she decided to answer. “Yes.”

“Oh, you’re there.”

“Yes.”

“How are you?”

Hearing his voice made all the hollow places ache. “Fine.”

“I thought maybe we could get together and talk.”

“No. There’s nothing to say.” She closed her eyes and pushed past all the pain. The pain of loss, and of loving a man that did not exist. “It’s best if we both just move on.”

“I never meant to hurt you.”

She opened her eyes. “I’ve never understood what that means.” She laughed without humor. “You dated me, made love to me, and asked me to marry you, but you weren’t physically attracted to me. Exactly what part of that wasn’t meant to hurt me?”

He was silent for several long moments. “You’re being sarcastic.”

“No. I sincerely want to know how you could lie to me for two years, then claim you never meant to hurt me.”

“It’s true. I’m not gay,” he said, lying to her and probably himself. “I’ve always wanted a wife and kids and the house with the picket fence. I still do. That makes me a normal man.”

She almost felt sorry for him. He was even more confused than she was. “That makes you trying to pass for something you’re not.”

“What does it matter anyway? Gay or straight, men are unfaithful all the time.”

“That doesn’t make it right, Lonny. It makes them just as guilty of lying and cheating as you.”

When she hung up, she knew she was saying good-bye to him for the last time. He would not phone again, and there was a piece of her that missed him. That still loved him. Not only had he been her fiancé, he’d been one of the best male friends she’d ever had, and she would miss that friendship for a very long time.

She dried the glasses and placed them in the china hutch in the dining room. Her thoughts turned to Sebastian and his irritating sneaky ways. And of the pheromones that rolled off him like heat waves tumbling across the Mojave Desert. Those pheromones had stunned Maddie and Adele and left them both dazed. And no matter how much she hated to admit it, there was no denying that she was very aware of him too. The way he looked and smelled, and the touch of his hand on hers.

What was wrong with her? She’d just ended a serious relationship, and was already thinking about the touch of another man. But now that she thought about it for a rational moment, she realized that her reaction to Sebastian probably had more to do with not having good-quality sex in ages rather than the man himself.

He wants you, Maddie had said, and Adele had added, You need a rebound man. But they were wrong. Both of them. The last thing she needed, rebound or permanent, no matter how long it had been since she’d had good sex, was a man. No, she needed to be okay by herself before she even considered allowing a man in her life.

By the time she crawled into bed that night, Clare was certain that her reaction to Sebastian had been purely physical. It was the reaction of any woman to a handsome man. That was all. Normal. Natural. And it would pass.

She turned off the bedside light and chuckled into the darkness. He’d thought he’d come over to her house and sucker her into doing his shopping for him. Charm her just like he had in the past.

“Who’s the sucker now?” she whispered. For the first time in her life, she hadn’t been tricked by Sebastian.

But the next morning, while her coffee brewed, she opened the front door to get her newspaper and a fishing pole fell into the house. A note written on the back of a Burger King napkin was stuck in one of the eyes of the pole. It read: