Chapters (51)
- Cover
- Praise for A Season for Second Chances
- Also by Jenny Bayliss
- Dedication
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Forty-one
- Forty-two
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgments
- Discussion Guide
- About the Author
- What’s next onyour reading list?
Nory wiggled out into the hall and along to the downstairs bathrooms; something was going to have to give, and it was going to be her Spanx. She had just reached the door when a warm hand touched her shoulder. She spun around to find Guy smiling down at her. His face was relaxed by excessive amounts of alcohol, and he looked puffy around the eyes, as if the champagne had nowhere left to go and had decided to fill up his eye bags.
“Hey,” he said, in what Nory assumed was his smooth jazz voice. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Nory craned her neck to look around him.
“Relax,” he said, rubbing his hand up and down her arm.
“Where’s your wife?” asked Nory, shaking his hand off.
“She’s talking renovations with Pippa; Christ knows how much that’s going to cost me.”
“I doubt it’ll cost you anything; from what I understand, Camille outearns you by quite a bit. I don’t know why you keep trying to pass her off as the little woman.”
Guy smiled sheepishly. One of his eyelids was drooping. “You always could see through my bullshit, Nory.”
“Not always,” Nory hissed pointedly through gritted teeth.
“Hey, I never lied to you,” he said.
“No, you just omitted the teeny fact that you were married with children!”
“You can’t deny that we were hot together,” he whispered, moving closer.
“Your wife is here, you pig!”
“Thrilling, isn’t it?”
Nory’s indignation was making her Spanx feel even tighter. She suddenly knew exactly how Augustus Gloop felt when he was stuck in the tube in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. She pushed past Guy, shoving him hard as she did so, the alcohol making his reflexes slow, so that he stumbled into the wall, then slid down it to the floor.
But Nory wasn’t taking any chances; she didn’t want him catching up with her. She walked, as fast as she reasonably could in a dress that prevented her legs from moving, toward the French doors at the other end of the hall, then pushed through them onto a veranda, down the steps, and out into the night.
Seven
The frigid air hit her at once, and she imagined the sweat on her skin instantly turning to a sheen of ice. She shivered and considered turning back, but she wasn’t ready for another run-in with Guy. The lights from the castle spilled out across the lawn, crisp underfoot with frost, and where their reach ended, little lights tucked into the earth illuminated the flower beds.