by Cara Colter
“Very swanky,” she said. “Kind of like living at a hotel.”
“Exactly. That is probably why this place,” Kade said, “has never felt like home.”
Jessica felt the shock of that ripple through her. This beautiful, perfect space did not feel like home to him?
“I’ve missed this pizza,” he said.
“Me, too,” she said. But she knew neither of them was talking about pizza. They sat out on his deck and watched the light change on the river as the sun went down behind them. The silence was comfortable between them.
“I should go,” she finally said. “I have to make some phone calls. It’s probably getting late to call a friend for tonight. I’ll go to a hotel and arrange something for the rest of the week.”
“You shouldn’t bother. It sounds as if it’s going to be a lot of hassle. There is lots of room here. There’s a guest room.”
Logically, Jessica knew she could not stay. But it felt so good to be here. It felt oddly like home to her, even if it didn’t to Kade. Maybe it was because she was aware that, for the very first time since she had been attacked in her business, she felt safe.
And so tired. And relaxed.
Maybe for her, home was where Kade was, which was all the more reason to go, really.
“Okay,” she heard herself saying, without nearly enough fight. “Maybe just for one night.”
The logical part of her tried to kick in. “I should have packed a bag. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it.”
“I told you,” Kade said with an indulgent smile, “you don’t think well when you’re hungry. I thought of it, but then I wondered if your stuff was going to smell like that burning sander. Don’t worry. Like I said, the place is set up for visiting execs. The bathrooms are all stocked up with toothbrushes and toothpaste and shampoo and stuff. And you don’t need pajamas.”
She could feel her eyebrows shoot up into her hairline.
He laughed. “The guest bedroom has its own en suite, not that I was suggesting you sleep naked. You can borrow one of my shirts.”
Good grief, he was her husband. Why would she blush like a schoolgirl when the word naked fell, with such aggravating ease, from his gorgeous lips?
CHAPTER TWELVE
“AND WHAT SHOULD I do for clothes tomorrow?” Jessica asked. Her voice felt stiff with tension.
But Kade did not seem tense at all. He just shrugged, and then said, his tone teasing, “We will figure something out. It’s not as though we could do worse than what you have on.”
We.
She ordered herself not to give in to this. It was a weakness to let him look after her. It was an illusion to feel safe with him.
But she did. And she was suddenly aware she had not really slept or even eaten properly since the break-in. Exhaustion settled over her.
“One night,” she decided. “My place will probably be aired out by tomorrow.”
“Probably,” he said insincerely.
“I think I have to go to bed now.”
“All right. I’ll show you the way, and find you a shirt to wear for pajamas.”
“I’ll put away the dishes.”
“No, I’ll do it. I’ve gotten better at picking up behind myself.”
Was that true, or would the maid come and pick up after them tomorrow? She found she just didn’t care. She was giving herself over to the luxurious feeling of being looked after. Just for one night, though!
And then she found herself led down a wide hallway and tucked inside a bedroom that was an opulent symphony of grays. She went into the attached bathroom. Her mouth fell open. There was a beautiful bathtub shaped like an egg in here. And double sinks and granite, and a walk-in shower. And this was the guest room.
Why did she feel such comfort that he didn’t feel as at home here as he had in the humble little wreck of a house they had shared?
Just tired, she told herself. As promised, there was everything she needed there, from toothbrushes to fresh towels.
When she went out of the bathroom, she saw he had left a shirt on the bed for her. Unable to stop herself, she buried her face in it, and inhaled the deep and wonderful scent of her husband. She managed to get the oversize buttons undone on the dress and get it off.
She pulled his shirt on. His buttons weren’t quite so easy to do up, but she managed. When she noticed they were done up crooked, she didn’t have the energy to change them. She tumbled into the deep luxury of that bed, looked out the window at the lights of the city reflecting in the dark waters of the river and felt her eyes grow heavy.
She realized, for the first time since her shop had been broken into and she had been injured in her ill-advised scuffle with the perpetrator, she was going to get to sleep easily. She suspected she would sleep deeply.
Only it wasn’t really the first time in a week.
It was the first time in a year.
* * *
Kade was so aware that Jessica was right down the hallway from him. He wished he would not have made that crack about her sleeping naked.
Because a man did not want to be having naked thoughts about the wife he still missed and mourned.
But he had developed ways of getting by all these painful feelings. He looked at his watch. Despite the fact Jessica was in bed—she had always handled stress poorly, and he suspected she was exhausted—it was still early.
And he had his balm.
He had work. Plus, he had nearly wrecked her house today. He needed to look after that. He liked the sense of having a mission. This time, though, he decided to call the guy who had fixed her shop door, at least for the floors.
Jake, like all good carpenters and handymen in the supercharged economy of Calgary, was busy.
But willing to put a different project on hold when he heard Jessica’s situation, and that Jessica’s furniture was currently residing on the lawn.
His attitude inspired confidence, and Kade found himself sharing the whole repair list with him. Jake promised to look at it first thing in the morning, even though it was Sunday, and get back to him with a cost estimate and a time frame.
“Can she stay out of the house for a couple of days? The floor sanding and refinishing causes a real mess. It’s actually kind of a hazardous environment. Even the best floor sander can’t contain all the dust, and it’s full of chemicals. Plus it’ll be easier for me to work if she’s not there.”
“Oh, sure,” Kade said, thinking of Jessica staying here a few days. She probably wouldn’t. She would probably insist on getting a hotel.
But for a little while longer, anyway, he was still her husband. And he liked having her here, under his roof. He liked how protective he felt of her, and how he felt as if he could fix her world.
So he gave Jake the go-ahead.
As he disconnected his phone, Kade realized he needed to remember, when it came to larger issues, there was a lot he could not fix. This sense of having her under his protection was largely an illusion. They had tried it over the fire of real life, and they had been scorched.
Tomorrow, he would get up superearly and be gone before she even opened her eyes. He would solve all the helpless ambivalence she made him feel in the way he always had.
He would go to work.
He would, a little voice inside him said, abandon his wife. The same as always.
But it didn’t quite work out that way. Because in the night, he was awakened to the sound of screaming.
Kade bolted from his bed and down the hall to her door. He paused outside it for a minute, aware, suddenly, he was in his underwear.
He heard a strangled sob, and the hesitation was over. He opened her door, and raced to her side. The bedside lamp was a touch lamp, and he brushed it with his hand.
Jessica was illuminated in the soft light. She was thrashing around, her hair a sweaty tangle, her eyes clenched tightly shut. When the light came on, she sat up abruptly, and the jolt to her arm woke her up.
She looked up at him, terrified, and t
hen the terror melted into a look he could have lived for.
Had lived for, once upon a time, when he still believed in once upon a time.
“Are you okay?” he asked softly.
“Just a dream,” she said, her voice hoarse.
He went into the adjoining bathroom and found a glass wrapped in plastic that crinkled when he stripped it off. Again, he was reminded this place was more like a hotel and not a home. He filled the glass and brought it to her.
She was sitting up now, with her back against the headboard, her eyes shut. “Sorry,” she said.
“No, no, it’s okay.” He handed her the water. “How long have you been having the nightmares?”
“Since the break-in.” She took a long drink of water. “I dream that someone is breaking into my house. My bedroom. That I wake up and—” She shuddered.
Kade felt a helpless anger at the burglar who had caused all this.
“Are you in your underwear?” she whispered.
“Yeah.” He wanted to say it was nothing she had never seen before, but she looked suddenly shy, and it was adorable.
“You know I don’t own a pair of pajamas,” he reminded her.
He sat down on the bed beside her. Everything about her was adorable. She looked cute and very vulnerable in his too-large shirt with the buttons done up crooked. Her hair was sticking up on one side, and he had to resist the temptation to smooth it down with his hand. He noticed her eyes skittered everywhere but to his bare legs.
Sheesh. How long had they been married?
She seemed as if she might protest him getting in the bed, but instead, after a moment’s thought, she scooted over, and he slid his legs up on the mattress beside her. He felt the soft familiar curve of her shoulder touching his, let the scent of her fill up his nose.
“I’m sorry about the nightmares,” he said.
“It’s silly,” she said. “I think I’m getting post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s shameful to get it for a very minor event.”
“Hey, stop that. You were the victim here. The person who should be ashamed is whoever did this. Jessica, do these people not have any kind of conscience? Decency? Can they not know how these stupid things they do for piddling sums of money reverberate outward in a circle of pain and distress for their victims?”
He felt her relax, snuggle against him. “I feel sorry for him.”
He snorted. “You would.”
“I don’t think you or I have ever known that kind of desperation, Kade.”
Except that was not true. When she had wanted to have that baby, he had been desperate to make her happy. Desperate. And her own desperation had filled him with the most horrifying sense of helplessness.
He reached over and snapped off the light. His hand found her head, and he pulled it onto his shoulder, and stroked her hair.
“Go to sleep,” he said softly. “I’ll just stay with you until you do. You’re safe. I’ll take care of you. Why don’t you lie back down.”
“In a minute,” she said huskily. “You know what this reminds me of, Kade?
“Hmm?”
“Remember when we first met, how I was terrified of thunderstorms?”
“Yeah,” he said gruffly, “I remember.”
“And then that one night, a huge electrical storm was moving over the city, and you came and got me out of the bathroom where I was hiding.”
“Under the sink,” he recalled.
“And you led me outside, and you had the whole front step set up. You had a blanket out there, and a bottle of wine, and two glasses, and we sat on the step.
“At first I was terrified. I was quivering, I was so scared. I wanted to bolt. The clouds were so black. And the lightning was ripping open the heavens. I felt like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, as if I could be swept away.
“And then you put your hand on my shoulder, as if to hold me to the earth. You told me to count the seconds between the lightning bolt and the thunder hitting and I would know how far away the lightning strike was.”
He remembered it all, especially her body trembling against his as the storm had intensified all around them.
“It kept getting closer and closer. Finally, there was no pause between the lightning strike and the thunder, there was not even time to count to one. The whole house shook. I could feel the rumble of the thunder ripple through you and through me and through the stairs and through the whole world. The tree in the front yard shook.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“The whole night lit up in a flash, and I looked at you, and your face was illuminated by the lightning. You weren’t even a little bit afraid. I could tell you loved it. You loved the fury and intensity of the storm. And suddenly, just like that, I wasn’t afraid anymore. I loved it, too. Sitting out on the front steps with you, we sipped that wine, and cuddled under that blanket, and got soaked when the rain came.”
She was silent for a long time.
“And after that,” he said gently, “every time there was a storm, you were the first one out on that step.”
“It’s funny, isn’t it? It cost nothing to go sit on those steps and storm watch. They came from nowhere. We couldn’t plan it or expect it. And yet those moments?”
“I know, Jessica,” he said softly. “The best. Those moments were the best.”
“And today,” she said, her voice slightly slurred with sleep, “today was a good day, like that.”
“I nearly burned your house down.”
“Our house,” she corrected him. “You made me laugh. That made it worth it.”
It made him realize how much pain was between them, and how much of it he had caused. He had a sense of wanting, somehow, to make it right between them. It bothered him, her casual admittance that she did not laugh much anymore. It bothered him, and he accepted responsibility for it.
So it could be a clean goodbye between him and Jessica. They could get a divorce without acrimony and without regret. So they could remember times like that, sitting in the thunderstorm, and know they had been made better for them. Not temporarily. But permanently.
He was a better man because of her.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
PERHAPS, KADE THOUGHT, he was not the man he had wished to be or hoped to be, but still, he was better than he had been. Because of her, and because of the love they had shared.
Was there a way to honor that before they said goodbye? What if tomorrow, Sunday, he wasn’t going to go to work after all?
Kade could tell something had shifted. Her head fell against his chest heavily, and he heard her breathing change.
And he knew he should get up and move, but there was something about this moment, this unexpected gift of his wife trusting him and being with him, that felt like one of those best moments ever, a moment just like sitting on the front step with her watching thunderstorms.
And so he accepted that he was reluctant to leave it. And eventually he fell asleep, sitting up, with Jessica’s sweet weight nestled into him and the feel of the silk of her hair beneath his fingers.
* * *
Jessica woke to the most luxurious feeling of having slept well. The sun was spilling in her bedroom window. When she sat up and stretched, she saw that through the enormous windows of the bedroom, she had a view of the river and people jogging down the paths beside it.
Had she dreamed Kade had come into her room and they had talked about thunderstorms? It seemed as if she must have, because things had not been that easy between them for a long, long time.
And yet, when she looked, she was pretty sure the bedding beside her had been crushed from the weight of another person.
Far off in that big apartment, she heard a familiar sound.
Kade was whistling.
She realized she was surprised he was still here in the apartment. She glanced at the bedside clock. It was after nine. Sunday was just another workday for Kade. Usually he was in the office by seven. But not only was he here, he sounded happy.
Lik
e the Kade of old.
There was a light tap on the door, and it swung open. Jessica pulled the covers up around her chin as if she was shy of him.
“I brought you a coffee.”
She was shy of him. She realized she had not dreamed last night, because she had a sudden and rather mouthwatering picture of him in his underwear. Thankfully, he was fully dressed now, though he was still off the sexiness scale this morning.
It was obvious that Kade was fresh out of the shower, his dark hair towel roughened, a single beautiful bead of water sliding down his cheek to his jaw. Dressed in jeans, he had a thick white towel looped around his neck, and his chest and feet were deliciously bare.
She could look at that particular sight all day: the deepness of his chest, the chiseled perfection of his muscles, the ridged abs narrowing and disappearing into the waistband of jeans that hung low on slender hips. Her mouth actually went dry looking at him standing there.
He came in and handed her the coffee. It smelled wonderful—though not as wonderful as his fresh-from-the-shower scent—and she reached out for it. Their fingers touched, and the intensity sizzled in the air between them.
She knew that no part of last night had been a dream. He had slipped onto the bed beside her, and they had talked of thunderstorms, and she had fallen asleep with his big shoulder under her head.
She took a steadying sip of the coffee. It was one of those unexpectedly perfect moments. Kade had always made the best coffee. He delighted in good coffee and was always experimenting with different beans, which he ground himself. It had just the right amount of cream and no sugar.
He remembered. Silly to feel so wonderful that he remembered how she liked her coffee. The luxury of the bed, the sun spilling in the window, the coffee, him delivering it bare chested—yes, an unexpectedly perfect moment.
“I just talked to Jake,” he said, taking a sip of his own coffee, and eyeing her over the rim of it.
“Who?”
“Jake. The contractor who fixed the door at your shop. He’s over at your house.”
“He’s at my house at, what is it, seven o’clock on Sunday morning? How do you get a contractor, especially a good one, to do that?”