She bit her bottom lip. “Well, I was just thinking if you had your heart set on having children someday, maybe you’d want to be with someone younger.”

Aidan walked over to put his hands on her shoulders. “I have my heart set on you,” he said, kissing her lightly.

“But if you changed your mind about having kids—”

“I’m not going to. I could never stand to go through that again.”

“It wouldn’t be like that again, Aidan. You have to know that.”

“I don’t want kids. I want you. If all I ever had was you and your girls, I’d be perfectly satisfied.”

“I have to go home to Rhode Island before much longer, you know.”

“I know.”

“What’ll we do then?”

“Why don’t we take it a day at a time and see what happens?”

She nodded, and they sat down to eat.

“Can I ask you something?” Aidan said.

“Of course.”

“What was your husband like?”

Clare hadn’t expected that question. She put her fork down and sat back in her chair. “He’s a good guy. I think you’d like him, actually. I know he’d like you. Jill looks just like him.”

“I remember you saying that once before. What does he do?”

“He’s an architect who’d totally love this house.”

“How’d you meet him?”

“I was working on Block Island as a bartender. He came in one night, we started talking, and one thing led to another. We spent a week together while he was there on vacation. We were pretty much together from that point on, and we were married six months later.”

Aidan looked amused. “I’m trying to picture you as a bartender.”

Clare grinned. “Only in the summer. The rest of the year I taught third grade in Mystic, Connecticut, but I gave up teaching when I moved to Boston to live with Jack. When Maggie went to school, I became a Realtor.”

“That I can see, definitely.”

“I don’t do that anymore,” Clare said and was relieved when he didn’t ask why.

“Was he successful as an architect?”

“Very. He started out working for Neil Booth in Boston.”

“Wow.”

“Neil’s son Jamie was Jack’s best friend at Berkeley. They worked for Neil for seven years, and then they started their own business in Newport. The firm was more successful than we ever imagined it would be.”

“I’ll bet you have a fabulous house of your own, don’t you?”

“I do. He built it as a surprise for me. It sits right on the coast. When I first got to Stowe, it took me a couple of weeks to get used to sleeping without the roar of the ocean.”

“He sounds like a hell of a guy.”

“He is.”

“So what happened? How’d you end up divorced?”