Back in Service. Isabel Sharpe

could lose his job. They’d stay away from each other.

      They couldn’t stay away from each other.

      For the next six months they’d tried to break up, gotten back together, then did both again. All those agonies of longing and pain followed by the joys of giving in to temptation, the guilt, the fear—by the time Clarisse caught on and set her sights on Chris, Matty was frankly exhausted. When she’d caught them together, along with the pain there had been relief. Finally it was truly over. No more temptation. Because Matty understood what he was and how foolish she’d been.

      Chris had come after her, he’d explained. He’d laid the blame on Clarisse. It wasn’t what it looked like, he’d sworn to her...

      Please. It was always what it looked like.

      Three weeks later, Clarisse took enough sleeping pills to look ill, but not really threaten her life, and Matty had known it was over for them, too. She’d waited, even telling herself she shouldn’t, but Chris hadn’t come looking for her again.

      On the pier now, arms wrapped around herself, squinting into the wind, Matty thought about how she’d come such a long way since then. She’d built a good, rich life for herself. Dated a couple of guys seriously, though none who took her over the way Chris had.

      Yes, she was comparing. She’d always been comparing.

      But unfairly. Her feelings in college had been intensified by her youth and inexperience, by the lure of the forbidden, by the perfect bubble in which their encounters took place. She hadn’t met his friends, he hadn’t interacted with hers. They’d had no problems to cope with but the drama of their own taboo passion.

      A tear made its way down her cheek. She flung it forward into the sea, sniffed angrily and turned to go home.

      Enough. She’d done what she’d come here to do. Brooded. Remembered. Cried one beautiful tear. The actress side of her had been fed.

      Now she’d do her father proud, march home, get up at 0700 hours and take on the next day of her life.