Tantra Goddess. Caroline Muir

stood beside me. I looked up into a pair of piercing blue eyes gazing invitingly into mine.

      “I’m Ron,” he said, offering a hand. Crow’s feet crinkled the corners of his captivating eyes.

      I introduced myself.

      “Kern?!” The name seemed to get stuck in his mouth on its way out. “Are you sure? That doesn’t sound like the name for such a beautiful woman.”

      I laughed. “My name is Carolyn. I’ve always hated it.” I told him I was named for my great-grandmother, Caroline, and I had thought for some time of changing my name to hers.

      He tasted the name like a connoisseur tasting fine wine. “Caroline.” Spoken in his magnetic, mellifluous voice, that name suddenly sounded like the most beautiful name I had ever heard. From that night forward, I would be Caroline. Everyone who knew me as Kern or Kernie would have to adapt to my new, beautiful name. That night, too, I decided to give up Arnie’s last name and Rick’s last name, and claim my middle name as my surname: Graham. It was my grandfather’s surname.

      Ron sat down beside me, set his drink on the coffee table so he could face me with all of his attention, and we talked with ease. He was divorced, a TV actor with his own series, a river guide, and a tree surgeon. I was impressed by all the ways he made a living. I also liked the soft way he spoke of his three grown children and how much he shared with them. He was fifty-one, older than any man I’d considered being with before (to a thirty-six-year-old twice-divorced woman, fifty-one was much older).

      I searched for something to say. I wanted to be as interesting to him as he was to me. “I live in Ojai,” I told him, “And I do yoga and professional massage. I’ve lived in Kansas, Florida, New York, Colorado, and California. I’ve sailed from England to Spain, and I rode horseback for a month in the Rocky Mountains with my former cowboy husband.”