Wild in the Moonlight by Jennifer Greene Page A

asleep?” he asked, his tone warmly ebullient.
    â€œMe? Heavens, no.” Why tell the truth? He wasn’t worth it.
    â€œGood. Because I didn’t want to wake you. I just couldn’t seem to resist calling. Vi, Livie had the baby.”
    As if someone slapped her, Violet instinctively braced against the headboard. “Congratulations.”
    â€œA son this time. We’re going to name him John Edward, but Livie wants to call him Ed, after me.”
    â€œYou got your son,” she said.
    â€œYeah.” Pride colored his booming baritone—pride that he’d never felt for her. Or with her. “Almost nine pounds. Twenty-two inches.”
    â€œHe’ll be playing football before you know it.”
    â€œYeah, in fact—”
    â€œI hope Livie’s okay, and I’m happy you’ve got a son, Ed.” She hung up, plunking down the receiver before he had a chance to continue the conversation.
    For a second she had the oddest trouble catching her breath. The east window was open, letting in cool, rain-freshed air. Outside, nothing stirred in the pre-dawn light. Even the bugs were still snoozing. The sky was paler than smoke, the sunrise nothing more than a promise this early, but last night’s violent storm had completely washed away.
    Remembering the storm made her also remember how soundly she’d been dreaming until the telephonecall. The dream pictures were still vivid in her mind…images of tumultuous kisses from a Scotsman named Lachlan, backdropped by Scottish lakes and moors and mist, her running naked and uninhibited through a moss-carpeted forest and Lachlan catching her.
    The call from her ex-husband had certainly wilted that dream.
    She pushed away the sheet and stood up, not awake yet—or wanting to be—but knowing she didn’t have a prayer of going back to sleep. Not after that call. She tiptoed around the room, gathering clothes, not turning on a light, not wanting to wake Cameron down the hall.
    It wasn’t hard to navigate, even in the darkness. Unlike the rest of the house, which she’d jam-packed with girl stuff, she’d redone two of the upstairs bedrooms completely differently. One she’d turned into an office. For the other, her childhood bedroom, she’d bought a Shaker bed and dresser, painted the walls a virgin white, bought a plush white carpet, and called it quits.
    Family and friends would find the decorating strange, she knew. All her life she’d gone for lots of color and oddball style and “stuff,” yet, especially right after the divorce, the barren room suited her in ways she’d never tried to explain—not to friends, not even to family.
    Now, though, the point was that she could easilyfind her way around the room even in the dark…at least, if it wasn’t for the cats tripping her. On the rare occasions she woke up this early, the cats usually ignored her and continued sleeping, but maybe they sensed how suddenly rattled she felt—possibly because of remembering Cameron’s totally unexpected and very real kisses the night before. Possibly because of her ex-husband’s call.
    Ed hadn’t called out of meanness. Violet had figured out a long time ago that Ed was far too unimaginative to be deliberately mean. He undoubtedly believed she’d want to know that his second child had been born, the son he’d wanted so much. No one knew more than Violet how much he’d wanted a son.
    Downstairs, lights were on all over the place—she’d forgotten about losing power the night before. Forgotten almost everything when that sassy upstart Scotsman had pulled her into his arms.
    She pulled on mud boots, a patchwork light jacket over her long denim skirt. Her hair was hanging in a wild heap down her back, but she didn’t care. She needed…something. Air. A slap of morning. Some way, somehow, to catch her breath. She hadn’t been all that upset about