Promises to Keep (7 page)

The stewardess walks past, flashing him a flirtatious look. “Champagne? Orange juice? Sparkling water?”

“Champagne, please.” What a shame it is, he thinks, that such a pretty woman has ruined herself, for she has clearly done a significant amount of work to her face in a bid to retain her youthful looks, and now her lips are too full, her skin too tanned, her eyebrows too arched, and when she smiles the folds from her nose to her mouth look decidedly . . . odd.

“I’m Sally,” she says. “Let me know if you need anything. Anything at all.” It is not flirting, exactly, but there is a flirtatious lilt, although Reece is used to this, traveling as much as he does.

It is almost amusing, he thinks, how some stewardesses will respond delightedly to a man traveling alone, their hopeful looks swiftly disappearing, replaced with a bored look of resignation as they offer the same drinks to the woman sitting behind.

 

He would never admit this out loud to Callie, although she secretly knows it, but he loves traveling. It was the one thing that scared him when he met Callie and knew, very quickly, that she was the woman he would be spending the rest of his life with: what if she made him change?

He loves his career, climbing the ranks in his small advertising agency to creative director, and then switching over to directing for a large agency. The Creative Advertising Awards he has won for this agency line the glass shelves in his office.

He loves that he has worked his way up to a sleek, modern office the size of a small basketball court, with all the toys and accoutrements that creative people are supposed to have. There is, in fact, a basketball hoop. A pool table. A black leather and chrome Mies van der Rohe sofa, and a corner bar for those late-night brainstorming sessions.

He loves that, as his career progresses, he gets to go to more and more exotic locales to film the commercials, meet interesting people, eat unusual food, stay up late with the crew in assorted bars and nightclubs.

Before Callie, traveling also meant women. Lots of them. From models and actresses appearing in the ads to, occasionally, women he met in bars. He is a tall, sporty American, with a winning grin and a wicked charm.

It isn’t that Reece is the best-looking in the room, but he has a way of focusing his full attention on you, male or female, that always makes you feel you are the most interesting person he has ever met.

Almost everyone who has a conversation of longer than five minutes with Reece falls a little bit in love with him. It helps that he is six foot one, with tousled dirty-blond hair, and looks great in a pair of old jeans.

That is one of the things that first attracted Callie. That he looks equally good in a Brooks Brothers suit as in a polo shirt and jeans, with sneakers and a faded baseball cap.

He always shied away from marriage, in fact from commitment of any kind, thinking that commitment meant change. But when he met Callie, it wasn’t so much that she didn’t want him to change—which she didn’t—but that he wanted to.

Reece found he was no longer interested in the leggy model types who starred in his shoots, wasn’t swayed by a plunging neck-line or a sultry look in the way he had been in the past.

In the early days, he hated being away from Callie; a couple of times he even cut his trips short to run back home. Then, when Eliza was born, he fell madly in love, but started to welcome the nights away, the luxury hotels, the nights of unbroken sleep. And then came Jack, and with it a chaos that he still isn’t entirely sure he is used to.

Now, Callie, Eliza and Jack manage perfectly well without him, and while he misses them, he is grateful that he gets not only to have some peace and quiet, but also that he gets to have a semblance of the freedom of a single man again.

Not that he’s taking advantage of the women—never that—but he gets to stay up until late, drinking with the boys. He gets to have some downtime, lie by swimming pools with the papers and some great music playing through his earplugs—with no small people tugging on his arm, demanding he play a game, or throw a ball, or just give them some attention, any kind of attention,
please
.

Of late, though, he has found that while he still looks forward to the trips he’s getting a little too old for the late nights and the drinking. The past couple of trips he has been the first to leave dinner, sometimes before dessert, yawning and excusing himself to go up to his hotel room and crash in front of the TV.

The will to party may still be there, or at least the idea of it, but the reality is something else entirely.

It’s a bit like the year he stopped running, doing any kind of working out. He’d lie in bed every night and decide that in the morning he would go for a run. There would be no decision making involved; he would set the alarm forty-five minutes earlier, then get up, pull on shorts and sneakers and be out through the door before even the kids woke up.

Every morning, without fail, the alarm would go off, he’d groan, reach out a hand to bang it off and fall back to sleep.

The
idea
of running was so much more appealing than the
actual
running, which is exactly how the work trips are beginning to feel. God, is he happy to be coming home.

 

Reece sips his champagne and leans his head back, closing his eyes as the last stray passengers file down the aisle.

“I’m sorry.” His arm is bumped and he opens his eyes to see a woman standing over him, her bag resting on his arm while she steps back and attempts to lift what is obviously a very heavy carry-on case into the overhead locker.

“Let me help.” Reece’s good manners take over and he jumps up and pushes the case in for her.

“Wow! Thank you.” She smiles and, naturally, sits beside him. “I’m Alison.”

“Reece,” he says, thinking: Oh God. Please, no. Not a Chatty Cathy. It’s a night flight, and the last thing he wants is someone who’s going to yammer away all night long, even if she is, well, rather attractive.

On his flight over there were two businessmen sitting in front of him who got drunk and didn’t shut up all night. Reece was furious. Tonight he just wants to sleep.

Please don’t ask me what I’ve been doing in South Africa, he thinks, smiling tightly and wondering how to convey that he really doesn’t want to talk, without being rude.

“Do you mind if I . . .” She gestures to her own iPod.

He smiles again, and this time it is with genuine gratitude. “I’m planning on doing the same,” he says, and they both laugh.

 

Reece wakes up, sweating. He had turned his seat into a bed, wrapped himself up in a blanket and slept most of the way.

He pushes the blanket off and eases the bed up, seeing that the cabin is still dark, an eerie glow coming from one or two seats as people watch a movie.

He pulls out the toothbrush and gingerly climbs over the sleeping form of—what was her name? Alison?—and makes his way to the bathroom where he brushes his teeth and swirls the mouthwash around until he starts to feel vaguely human.

“Could I get some coffee, please?” he asks the stewardess when he walks out, and she smiles as he makes his way back to the seat.

Slowly people are starting to wake up, others moving blearily toward the washroom, beds turning back into seats, people stretching and yawning blankly in that slightly childlike, discombobulated way.

Alison stirs, pushes the mask off her face and sits bolt upright. She looks around, disoriented, then sinks back down, pressing the button until her bed is half elevated.

She catches Reece’s eye. “Did you sleep?”

“The whole time. I just woke up.”

“So you didn’t hear me snore?” She grins. She is just as pretty, even now, with sleepy eyes and tousled hair.

“I did not, but I’m sure mine would have been louder.”

“So are you on your way home?”

Reece nods.

“You?” He doesn’t really want to know, but it’s only polite.

“Yup. I was in Cape Town for a vacation. Old boyfriend.”

“Sounds like fun.” Reece doesn’t quite know what to say.

“Not so much. Turns out there was a reason it didn’t work out the first time.” She sighs, and Reece knows she is trying to let him know she is single. Oh the signs that are so obvious, and so wrong.

“Navigating those relationship minefields are tough,” he offers with a smile, pulling out a magazine, hoping to put her off.

“Tell me about it.” She sighs again. “How about you? You have a girlfriend?”

At this, Reece laughs. “No,” he says, quickly adding, “A wife. And two kids. This is the only chance I get to have a bit of peace and quiet.”

“Lucky you,” Alison says, disappointed, picking up her headphones and plugging herself in.

 

 

C
allie feels silly that she should still be this excited to see her husband after over ten years of marriage, but she is still this excited, and when he phones to say he is turning off the highway she feels her heart lift in anticipation.

Pouring herself a glass of wine, she perches at the kitchen counter so she can have a bird’s-eye view of Reece’s headlights when he turns in the driveway, and as soon as she sees them she runs out of the house and over to the car to open his door.

“Loki!” she murmurs into his shoulder, burying her nose in his jacket, smelling his familiar smell. He nuzzles her hair and wonders how it is that he never quite realizes how much he misses her until she is in his arms again.

“Hey.” He pulls back and smiles down at her, lit up for a moment in the full beams of the hired limo as it crunches a lazy swing to make its way back to the city. “Did you miss me?”

“So much.” She winds an arm around his waist as they head into the house.

 

“Daddy!” Eliza, fast asleep, wakes up and gives him a sleepy smile, throwing her arms around his neck as he bends down to hold her.

“Hi, baby,” he whispers. “Mommy said I needed to wake you up. I’m home now. I love you.”

“I love you, Daddy,” she says, her eyes already closing as she turns on her side and clutches her rabbit close to her chest.

Reece tiptoes next door, to Jack’s room. He is upside down on his bed, one leg flung over the side, pajamas pushed up past his knees, blanket on the floor. Reece stands in the doorway for a moment, gazing at his son, filled with love as he walks over, picks Jack up under the shoulders and lays him back down with his head on the pillow.

He is hoping Jack will wake up, just a love-filled smile, perhaps an “I love you” too, but Jack is dead to the world, and after tucking him in Reece leans forward and kisses him on the forehead, pausing for a moment outside their bedroom doors to watch their little sleeping bodies rise and fall.

I love them, he thinks. All of them. His children. His wife. His life. He loves this house, this antique farmhouse that they both fell in love with the minute they pulled into the driveway. He loves the dry-stone stacked walls that enclose the clipped boxwood balls in the front, and the heavy oak-paneled walls that make him feel safe.

He loves the wide corridor he is walking down, nursing his drink, wheeling his bag behind him—the corridor, lined with original built-ins and window seats covered in a pale gray chintz, that leads from the children’s rooms to the master suite, a corridor they decided to carpet two years ago, to try to muffle the noise of the children stampeding like a herd of small elephants along the wooden floor.

He loves their bedroom, the soft blues and whites, the antique Swedish bureau and Gustavian side tables in rough painted grays, the canopy above the bed, a four-poster, the pretty fleur-de-lys curtains hanging down at all four corners, behind which he can just make out the curve of a naked leg.

Reece grins, leaves the case by the door, slides the glass onto his bedside table, and climbs on the bed, advancing toward Callie, who is lying there with her best come-hither smile, clad in her Lands’ End cotton nightie.

“Grrrr,” he says and laughs. “Someone really is happy to see me.” And he kisses her softly, then she yelps as he collapses on top of her.

“Can’t. Breathe,” she gasps, but he doesn’t believe her and she is laughing when he eventually lifts himself off, resting on the palms of his hands as he lowers his head and kisses her again.

“I love you, wife,” he says.

“I love you, husband,” she says, and soon they don’t say anything at all.

 

In the middle of the night, Callie wakes up, soaking. Damn night sweats, she curses, getting up and going to the wardrobe, pulling off her nightie and sliding her head through one of Reece’s oversized T-shirts.

She climbs back into bed, smiling as she snuggles against Reece’s shoulder. She knows so many couples who just don’t seem that happy. People who have children together and would never think of leaving each other, but don’t seem to make their partner happy.

I am so lucky, she thinks, turning her head to plant a gentle kiss on Reece’s neck. Reece isn’t the man I married
.
He is so very much more. He is a greater husband, father and friend than I could ever have imagined. He is strong, and supportive, and loving.

As the years have gone by he has become more attractive, sexier, softer.

I am the luckiest girl in the world, she thinks, turning over and closing her eyes as sleep comes to take her away.