Abide With Me (The Barn Church Series Book 3)

by Shellie Arnold

  She looked up to check the ceiling. All clear.

  She peered under the range hood, just to be sure. Again, all clear.

  Nicholas opened the top oven.

  “Nothing could have gotten in there,” she said. “I boiled the eggs on the stovetop.”

  “I think it’s in here.”

  “No. These are clean and empty.” She slammed the top oven shut and opened the lower one. She shut it quickly. “Oh, my goodness!”

  They both backed away, hands over their noses.

  “What is in there?” Nick asked.

  “The eggs couldn’t have dripped down inside, they simply couldn’t have. I haven’t even opened the lower oven since Christmas.”

  She stared at the lower oven.

  To go with the spiral cut ham they’d purchased, she’d baked potatoes in the top oven. Between the timer and Nick being home, she knew she couldn’t mess up baked potatoes.

  But she’d also prepared baked beans. A surprise for Nick, because he loved them. She’d cooked them in the lower oven on a lower temperature.

  And forgot about them.

  Nick had helped her carry the food to the table. He’d probably turned off the ovens without realizing the second one was on.

  “It’s baked beans. From Christmas,” she said.

  “We didn’t have baked beans at Christmas.”

  She explained what had happened, wet a dishcloth, and held it over her nose. “I’m fairly certain they’ve grown a rare fungus.”

  “We should throw the whole dish away. Where do you keep the garbage bags?”

  “I can wash it.”

  “Not without that smell permeating our apartment. I don’t know how you’re going to clean the second oven.”

  “It’s not that bad.”

  “It smells like something’s dead in there.”

  “Then go take a walk, let me clean up and take care of the smell. I’ll light another candle. You’ll never know.”

  He huffed. “Angie. Lavender-scented rot still smells like rot. Spray a disinfectant and antibacterial in there.”

  “Don’t tell me how to do something better.” She clenched and unclenched her jaw. “I’m getting tired of you treating me like one of your clients who needs improvement. You’re supposed to come home to spend time with me. To live life with me. Not correct me.”

  “When I do come home, all we do is fight! You act like you don’t want me here. You won’t even open the gifts I bring.”

  “I don’t want consolation prizes.” She faced him. “You only give gifts to try to appease me. You started your own company so we could spend more time together. Attend church together on Sundays. I don’t want jewelry, I want you.”

  “I can’t win with you, can I? I never do anything right. I’ve worked to support you, to provide a lifestyle like you were used to having. One like I never had, like my father never gave my mother. Do you know when I was growing up, she sometimes worked three jobs, did without things she needed, and still she managed to be my biggest cheerleader?”

  “She wasn’t married to you,” Angelina whispered and immediately wished she could take back the words.

  He looked at her. “I think I will take that walk.”

  “You do that.”

  “When you act like this, you make me not even want to come home.” He walked away.

  She held her breath to keep from saying something else she’d regret and exhaled after she heard the door slam. She waited long enough for the elevator to return, and while he was gone unloaded her car.

  ***

  Nicholas couldn’t sleep. Not because he was working late on a productivity problem or finishing a proposal for a client. Not even because of the sulfuric scent still hanging in the apartment.

  He couldn’t sleep because he was alone in his and Angie’s bed.

  He couldn’t figure it out. When he traveled, sleep never eluded him. Staying in a hotel or even a short-term efficiency apartment seemed to switch something in his brain. He knew he was alone. He knew he’d sleep alone, and he had no difficulty with it.

  But tonight, when she should have been beside him, she wasn’t here, indulging in her favorite pastime of sleep.

  He threw aside the duvet. Walked through the living room and found the canvases gone and the bags of art supplies also gone.

  She hadn’t left; he would’ve heard her leave.

  He checked her studio. The door was closed but unlocked. He knocked and opened it.

  She wore an old T-shirt over frayed cut-offs. She’d tossed aside her shoes. She’d pulled her hair back into a ponytail and was slashing paint onto the canvas as if she were gutting it.

  He watched silently from the doorway, feeling like a voyeur, as she feverishly mixed colors on her palette. Her eyes were dull, her movements full of desperation as if her life depended on creating a specific shade.

  Was she punishing him? Did she not care about how much time they had together before he traveled to see his next client?

  What could he do to reach her? What else could he possibly try?

  He wanted to tell her about the newest property he’d acquired in Montgomery. A small strip mall of eight units, all of which were occupied and flourishing. His lawyer had told him about the opportunity and helped him with a plan to hold, then resell in three short years, as values in the area were expected to double in that time. Surely she could be happy with him about that.

  He walked away, located his briefcase on the dining table. Removed a Valentine’s Day card and noted the date. Two days early, what could it hurt?

  He walked again to where she worked.

  “I want to give you this.” He laid the envelope on the table holding her paints and brushes and cloths.

  “Why?” She shifted her brush to the hand that held the palette. “Why do you want to give me this? Why do you want me to open it?”

  “I came home for our anniversary. I didn’t forget. I bought you a card, and I came home.”

  “You want me to open it two days early? What, are you leaving again tomorrow?”

  He turned away. Swung at an invisible foe and clenched his fists. He turned back.

  “No. Unless you really don’t care that I’m here. I feel like you don’t care that I’m here. Did you stop loving me?” He grabbed her shoulders. “Why do we do this almost every time I come home? How do we hurt each other? Say all the wrong things? Do all the wrong things?”

  “I don’t know! But it scares me worse than I’ve ever been scared before.”

  “It scares me, too,” he said.

  “I read some articles—no, you’ll think I’m stupid.”

  “I won’t. Tell me.”

  She looked at him, and he felt a twinge rather than the jolt he used to feel when their eyes met. If he looked closely enough, would he still see himself in her eyes?

  “Some experts say marriages go through phases, almost like seasons. Looking back, I think we’ve been in sync maybe three times: when we first married, when we met Daniel and Kay, and before you bought your first properties. The rest of the time? I don’t know.”

  “Don’t say that!”

  She flinched, and he let her go.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t yelling at you.”

  She trembled, and a tear ran down her face.

  “And now I’ve made you cry. I can’t stand it when you cry.” He paused. Thought. “Do you cry when I’m not here?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Because?”

  She shrugged. “Because I’m lonely. I miss you. Don’t you miss me, even a little?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  Her mouth firmed. “Until you forget about me.”

  “It’s not like that. When I’m on the road, I’m in a time warp. I’m gone for a while, then I come back. I guess I expect to pick up where we left off.”

  “Your time warp has lasted almost seven years; meanwhile, my life goes on. I’m almost finished with school. We’ve aged. You
don’t notice, I know, but other than a shared address and our wedding rings, there’s almost no evidence we’re married. I don’t even have to walk around your dirty socks on the floor. I live alone, and once in a while, my husband visits me. I don’t have pictures of us. No silly trinkets we picked up somewhere.”

  “Trinkets?” He felt his blood pressure rise. “Like all the things packed in your car today? All the stuff you stuff into this apartment? You spend money faster than I can make it.”

  “Money is all I get from you! The last time you came home, we didn’t even make love.”

  “Yes, we did. You wore a frilly white thing.”

  “I wore it, all right. Your phone rang, you took the call, and I went to sleep alone, as usual.”

  He’d thought he’d always want her. Thought he’d never get enough of loving her. Looking at her now, he felt little of the attraction and none of the craving that had consumed him when they married.

  “Do you keep a list of everything I do wrong? To clients, I’m a genius. At home, I never do anything right.” No wonder when he came home, they always derailed.

  That’s not what she’s saying. Listen to the loneliness—you feel it, too. Look at her face. She’s desperate to be loved.

  But how could he love a woman who held every past transgression against him?

  Cut back your work. Sell some assets. Give her you.

  The solution hit him in the usual way, with a thought that gently knocked him back. A whoosh through his mind, as the perfect, illuminating idea bloomed. Immediately, he saw the next steps backward and forward and knew he’d figured this one out.

  “We always talked about moving back to Rowe City. What if, after you graduate, we do it? Buy a house.”

  “A real home? For a family?” Her face shone with hesitant hope. “We’ll be near Daniel and Kay.”

  “And The Barn Church.”

  She dabbed her brush back into the paint. “I’ll go when you go, but I’m not going alone anymore.”

  “We’ll go together, I promise.”

  “Like we went to Paris a few years ago?”

  He felt it—the temper threatening to rise over yet another way he’d supposedly failed her. The resulting push to busy himself in work.

  “I really can’t win with you, no matter what I give you. I think I’ll pack and go early to my next job. We can use the extra money to buy the house.”

  He waited, hoping she’d ask him to stay as she had earlier in their marriage.

  He wanted to touch her, just one caress or kiss before he left. But rejection had spurs. He was tired of being stabbed.

  Reach for her. Reach for Me. I’ll help you both.

  No. When Angelina got like this, she wouldn’t listen.

  Don’t go. Stay. Try. Love her like I love the church.

  “I’ll call when I get to Rome.”

  PART II

  CHAPTER TEN

  Present day, Las Vegas, Nevada

  The handsome usher offered a white handkerchief from his pocket. Angelina accepted and dabbed at her ruined makeup—a lost battle. Was it too much to ask to feel connected to someone in this world? To a husband after almost ten years of marriage? To God, after years of attending church?

  “I’m not sure what I need,” she said.

  He commented, but she couldn’t understand him amidst the din of ringing slot machines and nearby conversations.

  She sniffed. “Pardon me?”

  He stepped closer. “Maybe some quiet, yes?”

  She nodded.

  With a gentle hand, he guided her farther around the corridor, away from the fray of anxious gamblers and clanking glasses. Within moments, they strolled down a long, bricked hallway of restaurants and storefronts, decorated to mimic a quaint European street.

  She held out the handkerchief to return it, but her eyes continued leaking. She reconsidered and dabbed again at her face.

  “By the way, I’m Angelina, and I never cry in front of others. And you are?”

  “Lorenzo.”

  “How do you know Rita?”

  “Thomas and I are—how do you say?—step-brothers.” He smiled. “His mother married my father last year before Thomas met Rita.”

  They continued walking. He seemed perfectly content to do so.

  “I don’t know why I can’t stop crying.”

  He didn’t seem embarrassed by her emotional display. What would it be like to have someone wipe her tears instead of expecting her to squelch them? What would it be like not to cry alone?

  They traversed half the length of the hotel and arrived at an isolated bank of elevators on the same wing as her suite.

  He caught her hand in both of his. “It hurts to be lonely, no?”

  She looked into his dark, European eyes. Yes, it hurt. She always hurt. How did he know what she felt?

  He took the cloth from her. Turned it over, found a clean side, and blotted her tears with such tenderness she almost leaned into him.

  He bent to her ear. “Maybe we can fix that.”

  If only that were true. Could it be?

  She let her head rest back against the wall and looked at his sweet smile. Tonight, just for tonight, she could feel something besides loneliness. And what happens in Vegas …

  “Will you take me to my room?” she asked.

  “Of course.”

  They rode the elevator in silence, his hand at her elbow as if he knew she needed to compose herself. Angelina watched the digital numbers above the door, a countdown in reverse.

  “You’re shaking,” he said.

  “What?” She dropped her evening bag. “I’m such a klutz.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  With fluid grace, he retrieved her bag and offered it to her. His deep brown eyes—so like her husband’s—locked onto hers. Then, she couldn’t help looking at his mouth. The corner rose slightly, and he winked at her again.

  There were reasons she shouldn’t be doing this. Like breaking God’s laws. Breaking her marriage vows. And breaking Nick’s heart.

  Who was she kidding? Nick’s heart had been wrapped in Teflon- coated Armani for years. When he kissed her, his body went through the motions, but his mind and heart were absent. On the rare occasions they made love, he barely looked at her. She could have been any woman, any body there with him. After, Nick always quickly went to his home office to “check his email,” leaving her to stare at the dark and fall asleep alone.

  She took her bag and dropped her gaze to the marble tiled floor. “Thank you.”

  If hooking up with another was so easy, maybe Nick had been unfaithful to her for all these years on all his trips. Maybe that’s why he’d never wanted her to accompany him to Rome, to Japan, to Milan, or Paris, or any of the other dozens of cities he frequented.

  The elevator stopped smoothly, the brass-plated doors opened without a sound. Her heels were silent on the thick, royal blue carpet. Still, she was certain her companion could hear her heart pounding and the tight gulps in her throat.

  But this man, Lorenzo, had reached for her. Pursued her. If the attraction and feelings between two people were instant and mutual, if they needed each other, if they connected …

  They stopped at the door to her suite. She reached into her evening bag and retrieved her key.

  “You’re missing the rest of the ceremony because of me,” she said.

  He took the key from her hand. “But I prefer to be here with you.”

  They stepped inside. The door closed behind them with a decisive click, shutting out the world. His fingers barely grazed her skin as he helped her remove the organza wrap. He was maintaining a respectful distance. Giving her time.

  Oh, to be pursued by a sensitive, patient man. Wouldn’t that satisfy the need for companionship clawing inside her?

  He strode to the full kitchen and lifted a glass in her direction. “Would you like something to drink?”

  She was about to say she didn’t drink alcohol when he shook his head.

&n
bsp; “No. You’re right. Wine is not the answer. Water.” He grabbed a bottle from the fridge, set it on the breakfast bar. “Are you fighting a headache?”

  “What?” She hadn’t noticed her right temple was throbbing, but now that she thought about it, yes, she was. “How did you—”

  “It is in your eyes. If you don’t have something for it, I will call the concierge.”

  So this was what an instant connection with someone felt like. The other person simply read your mind, knew your needs, and met each one.

  Maybe she could have a close relationship with someone, just not with Nicholas.

  She stepped toward him, placed her hand near his on the counter. Her heart raced as she measured the last ten years against the few inches separating their fingers.

  “I’d rather stay here than go to the reception,” she said. “Will you stay with me?”

  “If that is what you want.”

  A delicious tingle traveled down her spine.

  “Yes, Lorenzo, I think that is indeed what I want.”

  Her cell phone chimed from inside her purse. The caller ID showed Unavailable. When she looked back at him, he held her gaze.

  “Should you answer?”

  “It’s not important.”

  Nothing was as important as the way he was looking at her, scanning her face, her hair, her shape.

  “You are very beautiful,” he said.

  She smiled at him, unable to hide her pleasure. “Thank you.”

  She eased her right hand beside his. Her heart sputtered, and for a moment, she couldn’t breathe. Was she really going to do this?

  The phone finally stopped ringing, but her wedding rings seemed to pulse on her left hand. Lorenzo had already discarded his jacket, left the unhooked bow tie hanging over an open collar. Would he remove the pins from her hair, watch it fall to her waist, and run his hands through it?

  Being focused on by a man would feel so good.

  She watched his rich brown eyes sparkle as he raised her trembling hand to his lips. Warmth—wonderful, delicious warmth swam up her arm.

  If his lips on her hand made that one limb feel this good …

  Angelina laughed and stepped around the bar to stand directly in front of him. She’d not felt this happy—no, optimistic—since, well, she didn’t remember. Being desired felt so good.