Sophie's Secret. Tara Taylor Quinn

or accept the answers the world accepts. I get turned on by how you look at me…”

      Sophie’s words drifted off. She was making it harder for him to walk away. And if he couldn’t stay without convincing, she didn’t want him here.

      But then, in spite of admonitions to herself, she added, “All of those things will still be there when you’re eighty.”

      “You’re telling me you’re in love with me.”

      Was she? She loved him. But was she in love with him? Was she ready for something so consuming? “I’m telling you that I’m not going to turn to some other man when you’re fifty-seven and I’m thirty-nine.”

      Still studying her, he nodded. “Okay.”

      Okay.

      She’d parried. Offered a way out of a conversation that had gotten more personal than either one of them could handle.

      And he’d accepted.

      Then she remembered the bulimia. She couldn’t keep doing this. Couldn’t keep running. If she didn’t face whatever was scaring her back into a physical disease she’d thought gone forever, she could end up dead.

      But she wanted to lie back down. To pull Duane down with her. To cuddle up to his chest and know that she’d be safe there forever. Or at least until daylight took the sting of darkness away.

      She sucked in as deep a breath as she could manage. “Now, let’s hear worry number two.”