Fighting Fair

by Anne Calhoun

  Right now he wasn’t sure Natalie would cross the street with him. The therapist appointment had unnerved him. Natalie didn’t bring in mediators. Making an appointment with a third party was a step he never thought she’d take. “Thanks for the offer. I’ll touch base with my wife and let you know.”

  Half an hour later Shane shared out the last round of shots with the crowd and stepped into the cool night air. Despite his worries testosterone surged through his veins, elevating his heart rate, heightening his senses. In the twenty-first century the hunt and kill were after intangibles like signing a big deal, or making partner by thirty-five, but the effects on the male physiology were the same as his ancestors after a battle.

  He wanted sex.

  He wanted his wife. Fairchilds was right. This victory wasn’t his alone. It was, or should have been, theirs. The concerned look in Reese’s eye when he’d asked after Natalie burned in Shane’s gut. Reese’s second wife hosted the firm’s Fourth of July party. Rumor had it his first marriage had disintegrated under the burden of a massive expansion effort a decade earlier.

  Oh yeah, he saw it plain as day...now. When it might be too late, because his wife, who used to answer his calls on the first ring, who used to text him little love notes at odd hours, was ignoring his calls and texts. The logical first step was to find Nat and tell her the good news, then apologize. But while Nat was calmly practical in her professional life, in her personal life she was passionate, emotional, loyal unto death unless she was wronged. Then she held a grudge like it was the only thing between her and a short drop into a pit of snakes.

  They needed to clear the air, but with Natalie incommunicado, it wouldn’t be easy to do.

  A tap of the calendar icon on his phone brought up the online calendar he shared with Natalie for her big Italian family’s never-ending schedule of activities; maybe she was at a birthday or anniversary party, with her phone in her purse. The only entry for tonight was drinks with Chris at Lannisters.

  Chris...Chris...well, fuck, which Chris? Shane rubbed his forehead with his thumbnail and tried to concentrate. She had at least a dozen friends named Chris, both male and female, any one of whom she’d get drinks with any night of the week, and another five or six casual acquaintances from work she’d meet for networking or professional purposes. But Lannisters was only a few blocks north and east of McFarlands, closer to Penn Station. He headed up Sixth Avenue, hands in his pockets as the cold fall air channeling through the canyons whipped at his trench coat and the Manhattan Portage bag slung across his body.

  Lannisters was across the street, but he could clearly see Natalie sitting at the table in the window, wearing her favorite black suit with a white blouse underneath, and black patent leather high heels. The blouse gapped open a little, revealing the upper swell of one full breast, and the diamond pendant he bought her last Christmas hung halfway between her collarbone and the open shirt placket. She sat with a man, tall and thin with an angular face. He sprawled in his chair, one foot braced on the bottom rung of Natalie’s seat, with an empty glass in his hand, all his attention focused on her. Hands in his pockets, Shane stood on the corner, waiting for the light to change, and watched Natalie’s old buddy from B-school, professional downsizer Chris Holstead watch his wife as if no one else in the world existed.

  No. No fucking way was Natalie exposing the fault lines in their marriage to Chris Holstead. Except, based on the frown lines between her eyebrows, that’s exactly what she was doing. All her considerable energy was directed at another man.

  You helped make this mess, hotshot-partner. You’d better fucking clean it up.

  When the light changed he crossed the street, hauled open the bar’s door and shouldered his way through the crowd to the table by the front window. Natalie’s words crystallized as he approached.

  “It’s hopeless. I’ve tried everything I can think of to save—Shane?” She blinked up at him. “What are you doing here?”

  Surprise, not guilt, infused her tone, which registered as odd in the rational part of his brain. The more primitive back brain kept him on his feet, looming over them. “Looking for my wife,” he said.

  Chris’s dark eyebrows lifted, but he didn’t get up. “Hey. How’ve you been?”

  “Fine,” Shane said shortly.

  The waitress arrived with a fresh drink for Chris and a hot pot of coffee. “Want a top-up, love?” she said in a British accent.

  “Yes, thank you,” Natalie said pointedly.

  Coffee meant she wanted a clear head for the conversation, which meant it was probably professional, but in that moment he realized he had no idea what was going on for her at work. Awareness stung like a reprimand shouted across the trading floor. “She’s done,” Shane said to the waitress, who took one good look at him and turned on her heel and left.

  Nat glared at him. “You have no right,” she started icily.

  “I left work early to go home with my wife,” Shane said. Energy seethed under his skin, combative and growling. Coffee or not, he bared his teeth at Chris in what could pass for a smile, if the other man was an idiot.

  The corner of Chris’s mouth lifted in a wry smile. “Looks like you’re done, Nat,” he said easily. “Call me over the weekend if you want to keep talking.”

  “You don’t have to leave, Chris,” she protested.

  “I’m not leaving,” he said as he picked up his glass and looked around the bar. “You are, unless you want to make a big scene in Lannisters.”

  Shane wasn’t risking life or limb to help her with her coat. Nat tugged on the ankle-length wool coat with jerky, angry movements, then buttoned it all the way to the fur collar. On the street she made him wait while she wrapped her scarf around her neck, trapping the long fall of her dark brown hair inside the blue fabric, then set off in the direction of Penn Station.

  Silence. She was utterly silent on the way to the station, her fury almost as cold as the wind slapping at their faces while he walked and she stalked, her heels hitting the cement like hammers. Once inside the station she wouldn’t even look at him while they waited for the train, merely sat on one of the benches and pulled out her BlackBerry. Cold hung around her like damp drifts of snow. He stood off to the side, watching her thumb away at the little keypad, and wondered what had become of the fiery, passionate woman he fell in love with before he could even talk to her about anything other than Medieval history.

  He wanted her back. He wanted their marriage back, but she was freezing him out, and an ice cold, brittle Natalie wasn’t in the right frame of mind to clear the air. Inside the nearly empty train car she plunked down in a window seat next to a middle-aged woman immersed in an e-reader, forcing him into the seat across from her. Mildly amused, he sat down, braced his foot on her footrest. His calf rested against her bare leg, and she cut him another glare.

  “Don’t you want to know why I was calling?” he asked with a glance at the BlackBerry.

  “No,” she said, and went back to the BlackBerry.

  He slouched in the seat and watched her. The women in her family all ruled their roosts. Big tempestuous discussions broke out at every holiday gathering and most family meals, too. She was so beautiful, with dark brown hair, dark eyes that snapped fire, and a lush mouth. With her chin nestled in the fur collar she oozed sensuality, and his cock stirred as he watched her studiously ignore him.

  For now, words like blame and fault were irrelevant. Yes, she’d known what making partner involved, but he’d taken her sacrifices for granted. It was time to go back to basics. He closed his eyes against the distraction presented by her flushed cheeks and the way she nibbled at her lower lip as she answered emails, and began planning his strategy.

  Chapter Three

  Shane fell asleep on the fifty-minute ride to Summit. Covertly Natalie watched him drift, then doze, his blond lashes visible against the dark shadows under his eyes. His leg grew warmer, heavier against hers as he slipped into sleep, and while she resented his heavy-handed deme
anor in Lannisters, a tendril of long-buried tenderness unfurled inside her. He worked almost obscenely long hours. She was in the office from eight until six but had time to meet people for drinks, or go to the theater or evening hours at a museum once or twice a week. Shane caught a show once or twice a year, and the last time they went to the ballet he fell asleep before intermission.

  They’d agreed to the job, the hours, but she’d had no concept of what it would do to him, and to their marriage. Living in the same house and sharing the same bed wasn’t enough. They had to grow together, or they would by default grow apart. But if his idea of reconnecting as a couple included what happened at Lannisters, they were doomed.

  When the train jerked to a halt in the station he didn’t wake, not even when the heavyset woman next to her rose and jostled them both with her bags. The inattentiveness was completely unlike him. She reached down and patted the knee pressing into her thigh. His eyes flew open, and for a brief instant she saw the old Shane, brilliant, edgy, and just a bit dangerous, in the dark blue irises. Then he came fully awake, and his gaze went assessing, guarded.

  “We’re here,” she said. But where? On the map of their lives together, where were they?

  They walked in silence to the parking garage. Shane’s hours made Natalie’s driving herself to and from the station a necessity. Inside her car she switched the radio from the day’s business news to NPR, and drove home. Their neighborhood was comprised of large, single-family homes on big lots, with stone facades and wrought iron fences enclosing the properties. The house was designed for the family they intended to have, but the two of them tended to get separated inside, reducing them to using the intercom system to find each other. She left her keys and briefcase in the mudroom off the garage and headed upstairs.

  Usually Shane went from his car to his office on the main floor, checking in on the overseas markets before changing his clothes. Tonight he’d not only reached the bedroom before her but also swapped the glasses, suit, and crisp white shirt with cufflinks that transformed him into a corporate raider for Levis 501s and a soft, dark blue t-shirt. She stepped toward the closet, but something made her hesitate to undress—maybe the fact that he looked purposeful and intent as he crouched to light the fire she’d prepared before she left for work that morning.

  Something was up. The dim pools of light from the lamp on her side of the bed and beside the chaise lounge left the rest of the big bedroom in darkness. Decorated in sage green and navy with gold accents, the room was as big as the entire downstairs of her parents’ house in Hoboken. Even with a king-sized bed, two tall nightstands, a chest of drawers, a dresser, a chaise, an end table, and a small bookshelf creating a reading nook by the fireplace, it still felt empty. Like her marriage.

  His mouth set in a firm line, he turned to look at her. “What were you discussing so earnestly with Holstead?”

  Something must have happened at work today, but he wasn’t volunteering details. As usual, she’d have to pull the information out of him. Whatever tenderness she felt watching him sleep died under the fury surging in her veins. If he’d come home early to fight, she’d give him exactly what he wanted.

  She put her hands on her hips and snapped, “You should know.”

  He should. In a week she was flying to Tampa and Columbus to supervise yet another round of layoffs. Destroying the livelihoods and financial futures of thirty-eight hard-working people was taking an emotional toll, and she’d called Chris, a professional downsizer, for advice on coping. Her husband should know what was going on in her professional life. He didn’t.

  “Answer the question.”

  “You think I’m sneaking around with Chris? He’s been on the calendar for a week. Our shared calendar. Of course, you don’t look at the shared calendar, so I could put Fuck Chris Holstead in all caps on it and you’d never notice.”

  “Were you talking to him about our problems?” he said, his voice loud enough to reverberate in the bedroom.

  “You said we don’t have any problems,” she taunted.

  “Until tonight, I didn’t think we did. Jesus, Natalie. Chris would fuck anything that lay down long enough for him to get off!”

  The comment, so uncharacteristically shocking and frankly unfair, jarred her past argument into full-on battle mode. Screaming fury swamped her, white and hot enough to obliterate her vision, and before she came to her senses the glass jar of moisturizer flew from her hand at Shane’s head. “You jerk!”

  Cursing, he ducked. The jar shattered against the wall, and white cream sprayed the dresser and carpet.

  “Is that what you think of me? That I’d tell Chris that we don’t talk and we don’t have sex, and then I’d go to bed with him?”

  Momentum powered her into the grip of a full-fledged temper tantrum. Searching wildly for another missile, she found a tall plastic container of body lotion, and this time she aimed for his torso.

  “I am not—”

  He twisted and caught the container on his shoulder, but the full canister of extra hold hair spray took him directly in the chest.

  “—fucking Chris Holstead!”

  In a split second he switched to offense, surging across the room to grab her around the waist and spin her face-first into the wall. One arm braced by her head, the other holding her tight as she squirmed, he bent to her ear. “Fuck, Natalie! What do you want from me?”

  Genuine frustration roughened the growled words. So did aggravation, and the implication that their problems were all hers. Fury seared every nerve as she planted both hands on the wall at face height and squirmed, then shoved back into his body. He didn’t move. There wasn’t room for air between their bodies, and the struggle tugged her blouse from her skirt and rubbed her ass against his pelvis.

  “All I’ve ever wanted was your attention,” she said, furious. In their early years, when he was in the Ph. D program, he’d made time for her, taught her to crave his attention, to luxuriate in it. When had it become too much to ask?

  A quick inhale from the hard-bodied man behind her, then the arm at her waist shifted lower, to her hips. He tightened his grip and stepped into her at the same time, rocking his pelvis against her ass and pressing her between his body and the wall. The predatory, erotic position rushed hot and primitive through her. She quivered in his grip, her body going soft and expectant before she got her wits about her and stiffened in his arms.

  He was too quick to miss the split second of female surrender. He bent to her ear and murmured, “You’ve got my attention, sweetheart.”

  This time the words were provocative, aroused, fully aware that he had her pinned and helpless when she wanted to be neither. “After that scene tonight I don’t want anything from you ever again,” she said.

  “Liar.” His free hand lifted from the wall. She took the brunt of his weight as he bent and found the hem of her skirt. His intention became clear when his fingertips scraped against the long muscles in her legs, gathering material as they crept up. The movement revealed her leg past the top of her stocking and memories long buried under the weight of work and home.

  “Don’t you dare,” she sputtered. Her heart expanded hard against her ribs, and when his fingertips found the elastic at the leg of her panties she got enough leverage to jab her elbow in his abdomen with some force. He grunted and she squirmed free.

  “Forget it, Shane. We aren’t fighting.”

  His gaze swept the room, the cream-spattered wall, the toiletries on the floor. “Looks like a fight. Sounds like a fight,” he taunted softly, bracing a shoulder against the doorframe. “Smells like a fight, like sweat and turned on woman. Oh, we’re fighting all right.”

  Heat seared her cheekbones. “The hell we are, Shane. I remember where fights used to go, and sex isn’t a solution. Not tonight.”

  The scimitar smile flashed on again, and stayed on. “Then let’s talk. Let’s talk about tonight, and Dr. Lindstrom and anything else that’s on your mind.”

  “After what you did
tonight, no way,” she said rashly. The dam had broken when she hurled an eighty-five dollar jar of anti-aging cream at the wall; she was responding irrationally, saying no out of spite and cattiness, provoking him just to see what he’d do.

  A brow quirked up. “Then let’s play a game.”

  Once again, heat washed through her. When they were first married they’d spent their honeymoon year staying in to watch movies and play games. The games frequently turned sexual, with complex, shifting rules. Points scored in Scrabble led to kisses, and oral sex for triple point words turned into hours of foreplay. Timed hide-and-seek where the hider had to strip off clothing if he or she was found within the time limit. With Shane, losing had been as much fun as winning.

  “Not up for a little competition?” he said when she didn’t respond.

  “You said we weren’t college students anymore,” she snapped.

  “We’re not. We’re husband and wife. Pretend this is our date. It’s not all that different from some of our early dates,” he added with a flash of humor that disappeared as quickly as it came.

  This was true. She’d been young, tempestuous, testing the boundaries of almost every rule she came across. She looked at him, her competitive streak flaring in the dark bedroom air. He wore jeans, a t-shirt, and boxer briefs. She was still dressed for work in a jacket and skirt, blouse, stockings, bra and panties, and the house was huge, with dozens of places to hide. She’d have him naked in a couple of rounds, and then they’d talk.

  “I won’t forget what we’re fighting about,” she said.

  He shrugged, a smile lifting the corners of his mouth. The air in the room thickened, heated, as she remembered the reason for his interest in Medieval history. His family traced their roots to the Viking marauders who’d settled in Normandy a thousand years ago. In the flickering firelight she had no difficulty imagining him perusing the captives the hold of a raiding ship, choosing the woman who would warm his bed on the long voyage home.