by Leigh Riker
“The business isn’t growing any longer, and there are several other places in town that do household organization. One of them may want to expand.”
“I want to expand,” she said, finally turning to face him.
“Apparently that’s not happening, Emma.”
She glanced away. He’d never shared her enthusiasm for the store, especially after Owen was born. They had a young child who needed her attention—he’d said that how many times? Why be surprised that he wouldn’t support her need to keep on with her business? After all, the accident had happened while Emma was on a call with a client.
Still, Christian was partly to blame, too. “You expect me to sell my business—when you won’t even discuss selling the General? And that horse is just standing around in his stall, eating up money every single day—after what he did to my family? No, Christian.”
His mouth tightened, but it seemed he knew better than to pursue that subject.
“In any case, while I look for new space,” she said, “I may have to start packing up downtown, bringing a few files home—”
“No.”
Her tone hardened to match his. “What do you mean, no?”
But he’d already turned his back and was leaving the room.
* * *
LATER THAT NIGHT, Christian gazed out the bedroom window and thought—as he did, over and over—of the accident that had taken his son’s life. He could only guess how that loss had affected Emma.
He shouldn’t blame her for wanting to repair her business, but he did. Just as he resented her for that remark about the General. He shouldn’t blame her for not wanting to talk about anything more meaningful than the day’s happenings—which, today, had been critical for her.
With an arm braced against the window frame, he envisioned Emma months ago when everything had still been good between them. In his mind he saw her rushing around after work to fix dinner. He watched her hand Owen another green pepper stick so he wouldn’t get too hungry before their meal was ready. He saw her face light up as it used to do whenever he’d walked in the door to find her waiting for his light kiss.
But he’d had plenty of practice in reading her new body language. He saw her back stiffen every time he used the shortened version of her name, as if they were now two different people—which he guessed they were—and he had no right to even that small, familiar intimacy. Em. He was the only one who’d ever called her that.
He hated the rift between them. It had become as deep and wide as the Chesney Rim, which, farther up their road, carved Sequoia Mountain into two distinct halves.
You’d think by now he would have developed better tools to cope, as their once-upon-a-time counselor had advised. He’d tried. But, always, there was the memory of Owen.
He felt helpless, unable to understand that loss or how to reach Emma. He kept wanting to do something, make something good, or at least better, come from their tragedy so it wouldn’t seem so senseless. But what had he done tonight? He’d made her feel worse than she already did.
“Christian,” she said into the darkness, as if they hadn’t quarreled earlier and this was just like any other night. “Come to bed.”
He didn’t answer. How did she manage to shut out the remembered sounds of baby steps, a first complete sentence, the joyous shout of a toddler’s laughter?
His mother never hesitated to move on. She still managed her life as she always had—with crisp efficiency. She’d promptly packed away every sign of her only grandson, or for all Christian knew she’d donated everything to one of her charities. Not a picture remained on the mantel in her home in Lookout Mountain. Where the oil painting of Owen had once hung in the hall—his mother called it the gallery—there was only a glaring white rectangle. He’d grown up in that house, where only pleasant conversation was allowed, and he didn’t want that in his own marriage.
“Be right there,” he told Emma. Bob was already on the bed, lightly snoring on top of the covers. Like the sofa, their bed had once been strictly taboo. But that rule was from the days when the dog slept with Owen, the two of them tangled together in the covers.
“I’m falling asleep,” Emma murmured. “Before I do, a couple of things—first, don’t forget we have that reception tomorrow night at Coolidge Park.”
He wanted to groan. Tomorrow was shaping up to be just too much fun. And there it was, the subject he’d hoped to avoid, another slot in a schedule. Another lockstep appearance he didn’t want to make, like going in to work every morning.
“We have to go?” He didn’t wait for the answer he knew would come. “Let me guess. My mother is the chairperson. It’s not one of those monkey-suit things, is it?”
“You’ll be fine. Or wear your charcoal-gray suit instead.”
“I didn’t know I owned a charcoal-gray suit.”
“And a black one.” He knew exactly when he’d worn that one. Her voice trembled so he guessed Emma didn’t need the reminder, either. “If you keep moving, Frankie might not notice it isn’t a tuxedo.”
Like that would ever happen. His mother had eyes like an eagle. He turned to see Emma propped on an elbow in bed. In the dim light of the moon her blond hair looked darker and so did her ocean-blue eyes, almost black. She seemed like a total stranger.
Christian sent her a grim smile. “I’ll give Mom one hour. Write a check for the cause, whatever. Make conversation with all those ‘important people’ she hangs out with—even take part in another of those endless silent auctions—then we’re out of there.”
Her tone was light. “You sound like an eighth grader at a grown-up party.”
“Thanks,” Christian said drily.
He allowed himself a brief moment of pretending this was just any night, not even a year ago, their quiet time together at the end of a busy day. Maybe Emma was pretending, too.
“You’re already squirming,” she said with a little smile in her voice, “but you know we have to do this.”
“My mother...”
But that was tomorrow. He’d have time to prepare himself for the usual prying questions, the intolerable sympathy from people he barely knew. And, somehow worse, from those he did. The words never sounded genuine.
“...speaking of Frankie,” Emma murmured. “My second issue. Christian, I had a call today from your father. It’s their anniversary soon and he’d like to throw a big party. He wants me to do the planning—”
“Trust me. Mom doesn’t want a party.” Neither did he.
“Could you talk to her?”
For another few seconds he peered into the darkness, at the patch of driveway in front of the garage doors. “I can try,” he finally said when what he really wanted was for the whole world to stop.
No, he wanted time to move backward like a videotape running in reverse until the accident hadn’t happened at all. Until they were still a happy family with a grown daughter and a sweet little boy. The child Christian had yearned for yet, after his divorce, never expected to have until he met Emma.
At last he crossed the room to slip between the sheets. Bob was twitching in her sleep and one rear leg jabbed him in his side, but Emma had said no more and neither would he. Instead, he lay there thinking about tomorrow’s fund-raiser at Coolidge Park. The certain run-in with his mother about the anniversary party. The shattered moments of his and Emma’s lives.
CHAPTER TWO
“I THOUGHT YOU’D be here sooner.”
Emma had just stepped into Coolidge Park’s Walker Pavilion when Frankie—wearing an ivory gown and pearls—spotted her. On a drift of Chanel perfume, she gave Emma an air kiss on each cheek. “I wondered if you’d decided not to come.”
Ah, but your wish is my command.
Emma was wearing a sparkly, floor-length bronze dress for tonight’s fund-raiser. She’d even had her ha
ir done today, sandwiching the appointment between a trip to Signal Mountain to begin redoing Mrs. Belkin’s closet, another tense phone call with her landlord and a quick dash home to shower then change.
“Business,” she told Frankie. “Sorry.”
Instantly Emma wished she’d said something else. Work was never a valid excuse for Frankie, whose daily life centered on her charitable activities.
Despite Emma’s insistence that she and Christian come tonight, the event set her teeth on edge. This part of the city’s North Shore was now the place to see and be seen. That wasn’t a factor for Emma, who had few social pretensions. But she’d spent many afternoons here at the nearby carousel with Owen and didn’t need the reminder of happier times.
“Is Christian here yet?” she asked.
Frankie tilted her head toward a group of men, including her husband, in the far corner of the crowded pavilion. Emma easily picked out Christian. He stood taller than the rest, his dark hair, gray suit and white shirt like the beacon of a familiar lighthouse in some stormy harbor. He and Lanier were talking, but Christian looked tense. Emma recognized his I’m-with-my-father-and-I’m-not-myself-at-the-moment laugh.
Frankie sensed trouble. “You didn’t drive in together? I assumed you were in the ladies’ room to freshen up.”
Emma bit back a sigh. “Christian was tied up at the office all day. We missed each other at home. I had no choice but to drive my own car—being already late,” she couldn’t help adding. “He looks trapped. Excuse me.” With Frankie’s gaze following her, she crossed the room on high-heeled sandals.
“Hey, good-looking,” she said, reaching Christian’s side, then flushed. The teasing words had come without thinking, as they might have less than a year ago. After their quarrel last night they sounded false.
Yet his eyes warmed for a second. He turned to his father and the other men in the group, his tone a shade too hearty. “Am I a lucky man, or what?”
Southern gentlemen to the core, they all politely agreed. She gave her father-in-law a quick kiss on the cheek, then slid her hand into Christian’s. “We need to circulate.”
“Emma,” Lanier called her back. “We’ll talk about the party.”
“Whenever you like,” she said.
She and Christian continued across the room, greeting people here and there until an older woman swooped down on them in a flash of blue organza. Emma couldn’t remember her name, but she was one of Frankie’s charity friends.
She hugged Christian, then cast a glance at Emma’s dress. “Lovely, my dear,” she said. “And how brave of you to come.” She patted Emma’s bare shoulder. “In your place I wouldn’t be able to leave the house.”
Christian squeezed Emma’s hand. “We’re doing fine,” he said, then kept walking until another woman stopped them.
“Emma. Frankie said you’d be here but I wasn’t sure...”
“We wouldn’t miss it,” she murmured, her throat closing on the words.
Grateful for his solid presence, Emma gripped Christian’s hand as he led her away. She spied Grace and Rafael Ramirez standing by the bar. Grace had married the barn’s trainer this past summer, much to Christian’s dismay. He still thought Grace, at twenty, was too young, and she’d quit college, rather than choose a major and then finish her degree, to become Rafe’s wife.
Emma waved at them but they seemed to be in a deep discussion and didn’t respond. She glanced away—and there was Max Barrett. Her pulse skipped a beat. Later she’d have to apologize to him about the carousel horse. I don’t know what else to do except to start charging that poor pony rent.
“Quite a gauntlet, hmm?” Christian said in her ear. “Thanks for rescuing me earlier. I was surrounded back there.”
“I could tell. Lanier’s friends giving you a hard time?”
Christian nodded. “It was a setup, I’m sure. All of them gave me the same advice. And Ed Wrigley actually offered me a job. Said if I wasn’t happy with Dad at Mallory Trucking he’d make it worth my while to leave the company.”
Emma knew he’d become dissatisfied with his job in the front office, but why would anyone single him out in public?
“The stockbroker?”
“Yep. ‘Keep him in a suit,’ he said, ‘and we’ll make a real success of him yet.’ Or words to that effect.” He shrugged. “To make matters worse, his friends have some notion I should join them for a hunting trip. It’d be good for Bob, too, Dad said. More than once.”
“Bob?” Emma couldn’t help but smile. “That dog has no idea of the life she was bred for. Chase after a bird? Stick feathers in her mouth?” She laughed. “The first time she saw a rifle she’d probably have a panic attack. She’d hate hunting.”
“We’re two of a kind, then,” Christian said. “I put Dad off about a date, but every time I get near him lately I seem to end up frustrated or angry.”
Perhaps, after last night, that applied to her, too. Emma laid a brief hand on his arm. “He only wants the best for you.”
“Then why doesn’t he get off my back? I’m not some nineteen-year-old kid. He can’t tell me what to do with my wife—”
He closed his eyes for a moment and Emma stared at him in shock. She’d always thought she and Lanier had a good relationship. He was trusting her to plan the anniversary party—not the sort of thing at which Emma normally excelled. Still, she hadn’t wanted to refuse.
“I meant life,” Christian muttered.
Emma looked away. “I know what you meant,” she said. “I’d better go help your mother with whatever she needs while you write our donation check. That’s why we came, isn’t it?”
Separately, as Frankie had pointed out. Emma couldn’t remember the last time she and Christian had been together in a car. For a long moment he didn’t speak. Then he said, “Sorry. Guess I’m feeling raw tonight.” And still edgy after he and Emma had argued? He steered her toward the center of the room but she barely acknowledged the rest of the people they met.
As they reached the other side of the pavilion, they walked right into a conversation between Frankie and Melanie Simmons, Christian’s ex-wife. The two were obviously sharing a moment, which reminded Emma of an oil painting in Frankie’s stairway of Melanie, Grace and Christian. It was still on the wall—the happy first family.
Christian bent to kiss his ex-wife’s cheek. Melanie was slim, almost willowy, with light brown hair and amber-brown eyes. Her long black dress, worn with diamonds, couldn’t be called anything but tasteful. And it was obviously expensive. “You look lovely tonight,” he said.
“Thank you, that’s sweet.”
Having delivered Emma to them, Christian excused himself to continue working the crowd—or to escape what he’d claimed was a slip of the tongue?
“Emma.” Frankie turned to her, a hand on Melanie’s arm. “Join us.”
Emma hesitated. She was already trying not to mind the brief kiss her husband had exchanged with Melanie. She’d seen that before. There was no reason to feel jealous but...
“Melanie and I were just talking about you,” Frankie said.
Oh, I’m sure.
She and her mother-in-law had gotten along well enough before the accident, but Emma had never cared for the regular updates Frankie gave her about Melanie’s charmed life. She’d always wondered if Melanie got the same reports about her. Not long after she and Christian divorced, Melanie had remarried. She and her husband, a respected judge in Chattanooga Criminal Court, had four children.
“I have a problem,” Melanie said, “and I need help. My twins are leaving the toddler stage, becoming little girls, and their room needs a total reorganization.”
Emma had nothing against her—she didn’t know her well, though it was hard to avoid her in such a small social group. Melanie’s smile was a bit wry, as if she recognized their awkward sit
uation. She seemed hopeful, and maybe a bit desperate.
But then, so was Emma. She needed all the new business she could get.
“I’m sure we can give you exactly what you want, Melanie. I’d be happy to take a look at your space,” she said. “That first consultation is free.”
“Could we meet tomorrow? I’m eager to get started.”
They made arrangements for the next morning, then Emma asked Frankie if she needed help tonight. But Frankie shook her head.
“Melanie has already offered,” she said.
They went off together, arm in arm. Emma stared after them for a moment.
She glanced around the pavilion, which was packed with guests in gowns and tuxedoes and an army of waiters with trays of extravagant hors d’oeuvres.
Emma couldn’t eat a thing. She turned and headed for the nearest exit.
* * *
EMMA HURRIED ALONG the path that wound through the park. The cool evening air soothed her heated cheeks, and she forced herself to slow her pace. A few moments alone might restore her inner balance.
He can’t tell me what to do with my wife. Had he and Lanier been discussing another divorce?
She didn’t notice where the path had taken her until she was near the park’s merry-go-round, its painted horses and wild animals still gleaming in the darkness.
“I’ve been trying to catch your eye all evening, Emma.”
Her pulse beat faster, but she forced herself to stay still.
“Finally had to follow your glow. You’re like a firefly tonight.” She turned and Max Barrett gestured at her bronze gown.
“Max, I meant to return your call—”
“That would be calls,” he said with a rueful smile.
She gazed at the horses frozen in midgallop. And remembered Owen on his favorite pony—because he looks like Daddy’s horse—the other children’s laughter, the music playing. She stared at the now-silent Wurlitzer calliope in the center.
“Christian thinks it’s awful I haven’t made some arrangement with you.”