There’s no hesitation in his voice, yet I squint my eyes, try to imagine him, to see what he’s doing right now. All I can see is him sitting on some lounge chair with the new flavor of the week.

My insides cramp. I take a quick breath, hating myself, hating that I’m romantic and foolish and so obviously needy.

Because I do need him. I need to feel again how he made me feel.

Beautiful. Smart. Sexy. Young.

Young.

He didn’t care about the stretch marks on my belly, the slope of my breasts courtesy of pregnancy weight gain and subsequent breast-feeding, the dimple dashes on the backs of my thighs, cellulite created by thirty-some years of living, or the creases at my eyes and the deepening lines near my mouth. He never pointed out any of the things I see in the mirror every time I strip naked or step from the shower.

His touch made me feel like new again, shiny gift-wrapped, a gift to be opened.

I’ve missed that feeling. It’s been, well… forever… since I’ve felt this way. And thinking back, back to the years when Daniel and I had just met, first started dating, I wonder: Did I feel all shiny and pretty and new then?

I suppose I did, but I don’t really remember, because I’d forgotten this feeling, forgotten the butterflies and chemistry, that intense wanting, the way the body craves skin, satisfaction, the way the mind won’t forget, much less let go.

I can’t let go. “Are you sure? It wouldn’t be a problem?”

“No. When are you coming out?” he asks, and his voice goes inside me, fills me, and my pulse leaps. This is so dangerous and so seductive at the same time.

“The kids’ winter break from school.” I pause. “They’ll be with their dad in Palm Springs.” And the moment the words are out of my mouth, I feel like a Bad Woman, one of those ladies on the evening television soap operas, Dallas meets Desperate Housewives twenty years later. But I’m not a Bad Woman. I’m a very average woman except for the fact that I’ve got my kids in a different house from their father’s and I’m having to figure out how to live the rest of my life in a way I never thought I’d live it.

And maybe doing a younger man makes me a Bad Woman, too.

That and the fact that he’s sinfully beautiful and shockingly good in bed.

“Just tell me the dates, and if I’m not working, I’ll pick you up at the airport,” Kai says now, and I suddenly wonder, If little girls grow up to be dissatisfied housewives, what do little boys grow up to be?

“It wouldn’t be an inconvenience?” I persist.