Her Favorite Mistake
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Brenda Harlen
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16.4K
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22
Prologue
When Natalya Vasilek received the invitation to her coworker’s wedding, her initial instinct was to RSVP with regrets. But she genuinely liked Matt Hutchinson and his fiancée, Carrie Morgan, and so she decided to put on a happy face for the blissful couple and try to forget about the fact that her own marriage had imploded not so long ago.
She suspected it wouldn’t be easy, but she felt strongly that it was an important part of the healing process. A necessary step to prove—if only to herself—that she’d moved on.
And, for the most part, she’d succeeded. Throughout the day, she said and did all the right things, making no awkward steps that might have clued any of her colleagues in to the fact that the event might be just a tiny bit painful for her.
It helped that she’d decided to bring a plus-one to the event. She’d met Austin Manning, another local charter pilot, when she’d moved to Haven, Nevada, fourteen months earlier. He was interesting and fun and incredibly good-looking, and they’d spent a lot of downtime together over the past year. Early on, though, Nat had made it clear that she wasn’t interested in any more than a flirtation—which might explain why her date was currently shaking and shimmying with another woman on the dance floor.
“...we could go dance.”
Nat turned to Kevin Dawson, another one of her colleagues at Adventure Village. Managing the family-friendly recreational park was a big change from flying missions for the navy, but she couldn’t deny that she’d been sleeping better at night since her career change. “What did you say?”
A smile tugged at the corners of Kevin’s mouth, making his already too-handsome face even more appealing. “I’m asking you to dance with me.”
Warning bells clanged inside her head.
Because Kevin wasn’t just a coworker, he was also a friend. And despite the almost daily reminders to herself that he was a coworker and a friend, being around the man never failed to remind her that she was still a woman, with a woman’s wants and needs.
“Where’s your date?” she asked.
They’d been seated at the same table, so she knew that he’d brought one to the wedding. Of course, it seemed to her that Kevin was always with a woman—and not usually the same one on Saturday that he’d been with on Friday.
“Dancing with yours,” he told her.
Her gaze shifted back to Austin and...Sydney, she remembered now.
“So why should we be left out?” Kevin said.
There were so many valid answers to that question, she didn’t know that she could list them all. Even if the music and the wine made her want to feel like her old self again, if only for three and a half minutes, she knew that the smart thing to do would be to decline his invitation.
Instead, she found herself accepting his proffered hand.
Of course, by the time they joined the crowd on the dance floor, the last notes of “Shut Up and Dance” had faded away to be replaced by the opening bars of an Ed Sheeran ballad.
When Kevin drew her into his arms, her whole body started to hum with an unexpected—and unwelcome—awareness. And in that moment, Nat knew RSVPing “yes” to the wedding invitation had been a mistake.
And that she was about to make an even bigger one.
