by Nina Lane
“We’re staying in a lakeside suite at the Edgewater,” she says, showing me the page. “I have dinner reservations at the White Rose and tickets to a show at the Overture Center. We can go to the zoo, the botanical gardens, the farmer’s market, and I booked our favorite cabin in Door County for the last night. We’ll do all the things we did during our first year together.”
For a second, I can’t even speak. The idea of having my wife all to myself for several days, reliving those months when I was falling for her so hard, so fast…
Liv smiles. “Okay?”
“Yeah.” I clear my throat. “More than okay.”
“Since the festival is in the summer, I planned it for Memorial Day weekend,” Liv says. “Sheryl said she would cover my Friday shift, so we can leave early in the morning and be in Madison by noon, which means we’ll have all afternoon and evening.”
My heart begins a slow, heavy descent to the pit of my stomach.
“Memorial Day weekend?” I repeat.
“Yes, since we’ll both have Monday off, that gives us a whole extra day.”
Now I can’t speak for a different reason. Liv looks up, faint confusion furrowing her brow.
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
“I… uh, Liv, I have to leave town the Thursday before Memorial Day. I just found out this morning. The United Nations Assembly agreed to vote on our proposal, if we can get it to them by the end of the month. I have to go back to Tuscany, and then Paris. I’ll be gone for about ten days.”
She blinks. “Oh.”
Shit. Shit. Shit.
“Simon called this morning,” I say in a rush. “I was going to tell you at the café. If the Assembly votes to put the Altopascio site on their protected list, we’ll be able to raise more money for the repairs, increase the size of the team, even get enough funding for the third phase of the project. There’s a few dozen people who are counting on this, not to mention the whole town. I’m so sorry.”
Liv shakes her head. A petal falls from her hair onto the floor. She starts putting all the Wisconsin gifts back into the box.
“It’s okay, Dean. I shouldn’t have made all the plans without checking your schedule first.”
“No, it’s not… I mean, it’s… there’s nothing I want more than to be alone with you.”
Curses blister my brain. I can’t fucking stand the look on her face. The disappointment she can’t hide.
“Liv…”
“Dean.” She puts her hand on my wrist, giving it a gentle squeeze. “Really, it’s okay. I know how hard you’ve been working for this, especially after the earthquake. It’s great that the Assembly has agreed to vote on it.”
“It’s just… we thought we’d missed the deadline, but they gave us an extension.”
“I know. It’s okay.”
But it’s not okay. It’s not fucking okay that my wife planned an anniversary trip that we have to cancel because my work is taking me out of the country again. It’s not okay that we haven’t been alone together in weeks. It’s not okay that having everything means we’re losing sight of each other.
And it’s a goddamned disaster that I can’t figure out how to fix it.
“Forget it.” I grab Liv’s arms, pulling her toward me so she tumbles onto my lap in a rush of sweet, flower scents and warmth. “I’ll tell Simon I can’t make it. We’re going on our trip.”
“Dean—”
“It doesn’t matter, Liv. They can do the work without me.”
“No, they can’t. You’ve been working on the site for years now, and there’s no way you can insult the WHC by not showing up. What if you need them in the future?”
“I’ll figure it out.”
“Dean, love of my life.” Liv puts her hands on my cheeks and turns my face to look at her. Her brown eyes are warm with love and understanding. “You’re going to do this. You’re going to give your proposal to the UN because it’s what you’ve been working toward. Because there is no way you can risk losing the site completely. We’ll just postpone our trip until we can figure out a time that works for both of us. Maybe even on our actual anniversary.”
My chest is tight. I hate the unease simmering in my blood, the disquiet that started the second I heard I had to leave again. I take a breath and reach up to pluck a flower from Liv’s hair, crushing the fragrant petals between my fingers.
Not only do I remember every last detail of our wedding day, our honeymoon is imprinted on my mind like a painting. Liv sitting on the balcony of our rented apartment, her body clad in a flowered sundress that flowed over her bare legs, her head bent over a Paris travel guide.
My wife… my wife… laughing at a comedian street performer, gazing at Vermeer’s The Lacemaker, stopping to look at the old books in one of the stalls along the Seine. Her long hair falling across the side of her face, the movement of her arm as she reached up to push it back.
That was poetry. Right there. Poetry.
Determination fills me in a hard rush. No way am I letting my wife’s plans be postponed.
“Come with me,” I tell her.
She blinks. “What?”
“Come with me to Europe,” I say. “Instead of reliving our first year, we’ll relive our honeymoon in Paris. We’ll go to the same restaurants, visit the museums and that little café where you couldn’t get enough of their macaroons. I’ll bore you to tears telling you all the architectural details of Notre Dame. We’ll go to—”
“Dean.” Liv touches my hand to stop my barrage of words. “I can’t go with you. We can’t do all that.”
“Why not?”
“I can’t leave the café for more than a couple of days,” Liv says. “We’re too busy right now. And the week after Memorial Day, I’m swamped with meetings about the festival. Besides, you’ll be so focused on work we wouldn’t have time to do all those things together anyway.”
Frustration fills my throat. Liv presses a kiss against my lips and eases away from me.
“We’ll figure it out, Dean, I promise,” she says. “It’ll take some adjusting, but we’ve been doing that for awhile now.”
I don’t want to adjust. I want to grab things and force them to work the way I want them to. The way they should.
“I’ll go make us a quick dinner.” Liv glances at the clock. “Archer is dropping Nicholas off at seven, so I’ll call and see if he wants to eat with us too.”
I watch her go, my gaze sliding over the straight line of her back, her legs and round hips, the thick, dark hair falling like a curtain over her shoulders.
My beauty. It feels like a weight is pressing on my chest. I can’t figure out why I’m so knotted up, but then it hits me.
My wife gave me the chance to make her completely mine again. Just for a few days. And I have to say no.
CHAPTER EIGHT
OLIVIA
I’D LAUNCH PLAN B, EXCEPT I only had Plan A. I look at our wall calendar in the kitchen, which is filled with color-coded details about our daily activities and schedules. With Dean leaving again and the festival scheduled for the second week in July, there’s no way we can have a romantic weekend getaway anytime soon.
Maybe we could go somewhere after the festival. Except then we’re getting into the end of July and August, and summer is always a busy time for the café, especially if we end up catering the Edison company picnic. But I might be able to get away for a few days.
Unless Dean suddenly discovers he has to go to Siberia to excavate a wooly mammoth.
Now, Liv, stop it.
I give myself a mental kick and get a sippy cup of milk for Nicholas, who is occupied with a toy toolkit on the sunroom floor. I open my laptop and pull up my Liv in Wonderland blog. I’m half-tempted to write a blog post about the trials and tribulations of a busy married couple trying to get away together, but that isn’t something I wa
nt others to know about.
Instead I write about the multiple preschool and kindergarten options available for children today and title the post “Finger-painting en route to MIT.”
After I publish the essay, I turn to my Pinterest boards. Started as a source of inspiration, the boards have now become the bane of my existence.
My Sexy Ideas board mocks me with pictures of lithe, gorgeous couples locked in passionate embraces that will never be interrupted by waking toddlers or mommy guilt. My Recipes board is filled with photos of polenta fries, beef Wellington, and “toddler-friendly” snacks of roasted chickpeas and vegetable risotto balls that I have yet to actually make.
And my Parenting Ideas board taunts me with images of crafts that I planned for rainy Sundays after Nicholas and I make whole-wheat pancakes while listening to Mozart. Melted crayon art, homemade play dough, an airport made out of a pizza box with landing lights that work.
While many rainy Sundays have passed since I created the board, my son and I have spent them lounging around in our pajamas, watching cartoons and eating microwaved popcorn rather than being creative and healthy.
Maybe if I hadn’t been working so much lately, I’d have had time to make tissue-paper suncatchers with Nicholas before preparing a healthy, gourmet dinner and then rocking my husband’s world in the bedroom.
I close the Pinterest boards and give myself a mental shake. Don’t be so hard on yourself. The Moms tell each other that all the time, since we all seem prone to self-doubt and criticism.
I shut off all my internal mutterings, tell myself I’m doing great, and go to get Nicholas ready for the day. After leaving him at daycare, I head to the café for the morning shift.
“Hey, Liv.” Allie pushes through the kitchen doors. “If you still want to deal with the birthday party for the Edison Power guy’s daughter, you need to call her mother.”
I straighten from refilling the tray of éclairs in the cold case. “Why?”
“She heard that Slice of Pie is headlining at the children’s stage during the Bicentennial Festival.” Allie waves a piece of paper at me. “Apparently they’re little Becky’s favorite band, and now her mother wants them to play all their hit songs at her party.”
“Seriously?” I take the paper from her, my heart sinking. “Slice of Pie isn’t even confirmed for the festival yet. I need Edison’s sponsorship before we can afford to pay them. And I don’t know if they do birthday parties.”
“According to their website, they do, but they’re expensive.”
“Well, I’ll tell Monica she’ll have to pay for it, if they’re even available.”
“Liv, we don’t have the capacity for a band!” Allie says. “Especially one that big.”
“We’ll put them out in the garden.” I wave to the window. “The kids can use the terrace as a dance floor.”
“I thought we were using the terrace for lunch and cake,” she says. “Besides, don’t we need some sort of permit for that kind of entertainment?”
“I’ll call the city and find out,” I promise, reaching for the phone. “Or maybe the band can just send the Pieman and his guitar.”
“Good luck telling Monica Harrison to scale back her kid’s party,” Allie mutters. “She already put in an order for a three-tiered Wizard of Oz cake. Can you imagine what she’ll do when her daughter gets married? Mother of Bridezilla.”
I suppress the urge to remind Allie that her parents went all out for birthday parties when she was a girl, including the big Alice in Wonderland tenth birthday party that eventually sparked the idea for our café.
Maybe Monica Harrison is going over the top, but I can appreciate a mother who is trying to give her daughter everything she wants. Frankly I’d have loved this kind of birthday party when I turned five. I don’t think my mother even remembered my fifth birthday. I barely remember it myself.
“I’ll handle it, Allie,” I say. “Remember, if this works out, we get to cater Edison’s company picnic, which will help us buy the birthday party truck.”
“The Airstream would be awesome.” Allie looks somewhat mollified. “But you have to make sure we have enough staff and organization.”
“I will, I promise.”
After Allie leaves, I look at the lists spread out on my desk. Despite my encouraging words, I’m in more of a time crunch than I’d anticipated. I haven’t even thought about what would happen if I don’t come up with a festival sponsor. I can’t think about that.
Which is why I’m going to make it work, if it kills me. I study the spreadsheet of festival details, trying to ignore the simmering worry about whether or not I can pull it off. The city council approached me because they knew I would do a good job—and if I fail, I’ll not only hurt my personal reputation, but also my reputation as a business owner. And that would be bad for the café, our marketing efforts, even Allie…
I shake off the growing fear. I’ll work things out with Edison, get all the events scheduled, host the birthday party, run the auction, and ensure the Mirror Lake Bicentennial Festival is a success. It’s sort of like Dean’s and my sex life—when things are on track, it will be perfect.
It has to be.
“Hey, Liv, have you seen my extra shaving soap?” Dean calls from upstairs.
I set the pot I’d been washing into the dish drainer and push a damp tendril of hair away from my forehead.
“It should be in the bathroom cabinet,” I call back.
“It’s not. I checked.”
Check again, I think somewhat peevishly, when an expectant silence indicates he’s waiting for me to come upstairs. I look in on Nicholas, who is banging on a xylophone in the sunroom. I trudge upstairs to the bedroom, where Dean has his suitcase open and half-packed. Suit jackets, ties, and pants are strewn over the bed.
He’s standing in the bathroom doorway, holding a package of Nicholas’s pull-ups.
“I keep my shaving supplies in the bottom cabinet, but this was there instead,” he says.
“Oh, since Nicholas has been sleeping in our bed so much, I put those in our bathroom in case he needs changing in the middle of the night,” I explain. “I had to rearrange a few things.”
“So what did you do with my shaving soap?”
Since I can’t remember, I go into the bathroom and search the cabinets. I finally find Dean’s shaving soap pushed to the back behind a box of tampons.
“Sorry.” I hold a wrapped disk out to him. “I’ll rearrange everything again so you can have a cabinet just for your stuff.”
“Please don’t rearrange again,” he replies, pressing a kiss against my temple. “I’ll just hereby designate the bottom shelf of the left-hand cabinet as the exclusive zone for Dean West’s Stuff.”
“I dunno.” I shoot a dubious look at the cabinet. “I don’t see how I’m ever going to fit in there.”
He grins. “Well, you are my best stuff. Maybe you should have a drawer all to yourself.”
“Oh, a whole drawer?” I pat his very fine ass as I walk past him to the bedroom door. “Thank you so much, kind sir. You’re so generous.”
He grabs me around the waist and hauls me against him for a hot, hard kiss that sweeps a tingle clear down to my toes.
“Oh, I’m generous,” he murmurs against my lips. “If you’re lucky, you’ll find out later tonight just how generous.”
I smile and squeeze him around the waist, any lingering irritation fading at the thought of indulging in a sexy night before he leaves for Italy again tomorrow morning. Absence has never made our hearts grow fonder—because they couldn’t possibly be filled with more fondness—but maybe we can use the separation as a way to keep things hot and tense.
Yes! Redirection, like I do with Nicholas when he’s on the verge of a tantrum. Look, here’s your shiny train set, why don’t we make the tracks go around the kitchen table, isn’t this fun�
�
Whoa. Redirecting myself back to the anticipation of a sexy night, I press up against Dean and kiss him again.
“I’m already lucky,” I tell him, rubbing my breasts against his chest. “You just need to show me how lucky.”
We indulge in another kiss that makes my tingles tingle. It’s so easy to fall into the pleasure of us that at times like this, I can’t figure out how we ever disconnected in the first place.
Dean spreads his hands through my hair, angling my mouth so he can kiss me more deeply. My blood heats, my nipples stiffening against the planes of his chest. Only when I start to hazily think I could quite happily fall into bed with him right this second do I ease reluctantly away.
“Later,” I promise, nipping at his lower lip.
“Damn right later,” he mutters, giving my breasts a quick groping as I back away from him toward the door.
Happy anticipation rises in me as I head downstairs. It’s not the romantic weekend I’d planned, but sending my husband off with a much-needed hot night will be a reminder of just how good we are together. And it will set the stage for his return.
I head back to the kitchen and check on Nicholas, who has lost interest in the xylophone and moved on to his toy fire station. Dusk is falling outside, the picture windows revealing the garden and trees thrown into shadows. I put a pot of water on the stove to boil and preheat the oven for the roasted cauliflower dish I plan to serve with crispy chicken.
I’m halfway through dinner preparations when a chill breaks over my skin. I go to check the thermostat when I realize the sliding glass door in the sunroom is open, letting cold evening air into the house.
My heart stutters. “Nicholas?”
I glance around the sunroom. His toys and books are strewn over the floor, but my son is nowhere to be seen.
“Nicholas?” I shove my feet into my shoes and hurry out to the garden. “Nicholas!”
Birds squawk and a light wind rustles the trees. I squint into the growing darkness, telling myself to be calm. It wasn’t that long—I don’t think it was that long, at least, but I was focused on the stupid chicken—so he can’t be far.