She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed him until she saw him in her doorway. She felt almost light-headed with pleasure and happiness as she looked at him sitting across the table from her in their favourite restaurant, his dark, expressive eyes intent upon her face as he listened to her. Jackson was still boyishly handsome at forty-six, his thick, unruly black hair in perpetual disarray. He didn’t look like a successful businessman, with his messy hair and five o’clock shadow, wearing jeans, t-shirt and sneakers, but Rebecca thought he looked delicious, and more precious than gold. Even after all this time, she couldn’t quite believe they were still together. Jackson was an old friend of Max’s and had met Rebecca after he’d separated from his wife and found himself in the market for a new house for himself and his two young children, of whom he had sole custody. The rest, as Rebecca was fond of saying, was history. She sometimes thought that many of her former lovers would be shocked to find her dating such an unpolished man. She’d been shocked the first time he asked her out, and she’d found herself agreeing, when she’d fully intended to gently refuse. She later told Daisy and Manny that she couldn’t say no to his eyes, large, dark and vulnerable, fringed by thick black lashes she would have killed for, and looking as hopeful as a puppy in a window. Over the last two years, those eyes often intently watched her, like she was one of those computer programs he was paid big money to create or fix.
