“I agreed that the arts and crafts houses in Winterset were nice.”

He nodded. “And you agreed that some houses in Willard Park weren’t worth keeping.”

“I didn’t mean everything built before 1980 should be bulldozed!”

“It’s not a bulldozer, Mrs. Miller. It’s a compact excavator.”

Allison wasn’t playing. “Let me rephrase that: I didn’t mean we should compact-excavate everything built before 1980.”

“God you’re sexy when you’re mad.”

“Be quiet,” she said. Were people watching them? Were they going to report that they’d had a heated conversation and come up with damning theories? “And I’m not,” she protested. She wasn’t sexy. She was cold, and her nose was probably bright red, and she was mad.

He smiled again. God, that smile. “What is up with your eyes?”

“Nothing . . . They’re just eyes.”

“They were green a minute ago.”

She blushed, gently waving his words away.

“You are a witch. You’ve bewitched me.”

She pushed at his shoulder again, but not as hard. “Don’t try to butter me up.”

“Ooooh,” he said. “That sounds fun.”

“Don’t.” She tried to refuel her anger, to ready it to lob back at him. He was a monster. He was ruining their town. What was wrong with Allison to be sleeping with him? She was sleeping with him now. They’d slept together twice, both times at the Sawyers’ when she was allegedly walking the dog.

“There they go again,” he said, gazing into her eyes. “Now they’re blue. How do you do that?”

It was all she could do not to tear off his clothes and sit on his lap right in the middle of the Davenport-Gardners’ lawn, peering eyes be damned. Had she flipped her lid? “I hate you!” she said, stepping out of hands and face reach. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!”

“Ten o’clock?” he said.

“No!” she said, then, remembering how good it had felt, how otherworldly after so many months without intimacy, cried, “Yes! God damn you!”

He laughed and pointed his little compact excavator toward home.

She was a horrible person. There was no way around it. Cheating on poor Ted! She rarely thought of him without the adjective “poor” these days. It wasn’t a good adjective to associate with your husband. Your poor husband.

On the other hand, Ted didn’t want to have sex anymore, and that was kind of a marital right. She’d suffered through more than five months of sexual drought before succumbing. Five months was a long time. And Ted had given her no indication about when that might let up. She might agree to an indefinite hiatus if he let her have sex with Nick to fulfill that need.