Cupcakes & Chardonnay (13 page)

Inside, she found a sleek and chic little cupcake shop. Very big city, she thought. Large black and white photos of skyscrapers—some of Chicago's, she was guessing—adorned the walls. Bluesy jazz wafted down from discreet stereo speakers. No seating, just a grab and go.

She surveyed the flavors. Just a little innocent corporate espionage, she told herself. Mostly Mojito, Aye Carumba Caramel, Strawberry Sensation, Lake Shore Lime. They all looked delish with their fluffy poufs of icing. She bought four, to share with Daryle. Maybe, she smiled as she carried the small white bakery box back onto the street. If they lasted that long.

After lunch, Suzanne found herself staring up at a rather fearsome set of white teeth.

"This is Sue," Daryle said.

"Sue? It has a name?"
             

Daryle turned to her and mussed her hair, casually, almost absentmindedly. Her scalp tingled at his touch. It was just a friendly gesture, she told herself. How many times had she done that to Brent? There had been no sign so far on this trip that Daryle wanted any amorous encores. That was a relief. They needed to keep their separate boundaries, their own personal space.

"Sue is the most complete T. Rex skeleton ever discovered," Daryle explained. "She's quite the celebrity among paleontologists."

"I didn't realize you hung out with paleontologists."

Daryle had suggested a post-lunch excursion to the Field Museum on Chicago's famed Lake Shore Drive. Suzanne had no particular interest in natural history—she preferred art museums, herself—but neither did she have any particular reason to simply sit inside the hotel all afternoon. They were going to be cooped up in the hotel for the rest of the week, starting bright and early tomorrow morning. No reason to spend today there, too.

The museum was crowded, groups of children clustered everywhere in their matching summer camp shirts. Red group here, blue group over there. Their harried chaperones struggled to keep them all together, an impossible mission, Suzanne thought. There were so many big and wondrous things in a museum to distract a child and pull their attention away.

Suzanne was having a hard time pulling her own eyes away from those big dinosaur teeth, herself.

"I'm trying to think if I've ever seen a dinosaur skeleton before," she said.

"Really? Not in a museum?" Daryle asked.

She shook her head. "I don't think I've ever been to a natural history museum before. My school field trips were always to farms or Civil War battlefields. And my mother never had time to take me. I take it you've been to lots of museums?"

Daryle smiled sheepishly. "Whenever we traveled to these wine shows, Alanna and I always got to choose one fun thing to do on the off day. She always chose shopping with mother. I always made my father take me to a museum."

Suzanne tried to picture a young Daryle, tugging at his father's hand, urging him on to the next fossil, the next display case. She didn't really know much about Daryle's childhood, she realized with a bit of surprise. They had never talked much about their pasts when they had been a couple before. Hadn't talked much about their futures either. Daryle had been all action. Now here they were, their futures both entwined and separate at the same time.

Their childhoods had been polar opposites. Their families, too. The Cattertons had been wealthy, yes, but they were also a close-knit family. Daryle was close to Iris and his sister. Suzanne got the impression he'd been close to his father when he was alive, as well. Daryle was going to be devastated when Iris was gone. He hadn't spoken to Suzanne about it much; Daryle played his emotions close to the vest. It was curious, she thought, that such a close family had produced two avowedly single children. Alanna had never married either. She struck Suzanne as someone who was as dedicated to her art career as Daryle was to his playboy lifestyle.

Suzanne's childhood, on the other hand, could not have been more different. Her father had disappeared when she was a toddler. She had no memories of him, couldn't even begin to describe what he looked like. Her mother had worked multiple jobs to support the two of them. Suzanne and her mother had been close, but there had been neither the time nor the money to take vacations or travel. Pleasure had not been a factor in her formative years. Sometimes even Suzanne wondered whether she was simply incapable of having fun. She worked. Working made her feel secure. She knew that inability to let go and enjoy herself had contributed to the demise of her relationship with Daryle. He had been her experiment in pleasure. The experiment had failed, miserably. She was all work, he was all play. Sometimes two people just don't line up. She and Daryle did not line up.

Daryle touched her arm. "There are more dinosaurs upstairs."

Suzanne struggled to keep up with him as he deftly threaded his way through the crowds. In another, different, circumstance, she might have reached out and grabbed his hand, let him pull her along. If it were a different man she were trying not to lose in the crowd. By the time they got to the dinosaur exhibit hall, she was out of breath. She stopped a few yards outside the main exhibit area, to let her breathing return to normal. Daryle was already standing in front of two giant skeletons, looking more than a little like a paleontologist in his brown cargo shorts and loose, white linen shirt. Below his shorts, his long calves were tanned from hours spent outside in the vineyards, the light smattering of hair bleached to a shimmering golden blonde. Admiring Daryle's legs was not slowing Suzanne's breathing.

He turned and gestured, inviting her to join him.

"How can you tell the difference between this one and that one?" she asked, looking up at the two formidable skeletons. They both looked identical to her. Large bodies and thigh bones, powerful looking tails and, judging by the dagger-like teeth, both carnivores.

"T. rex has two claws," Daryle pointed to the creature on the left. "Allosaurus has three."

Suzanne laughed. "I never knew
you were such a dinosaur geek."

"Well, maybe there are things you still don't know about me," he said.
Like how

badly I want you in my bed again.
She was wearing a light blue linen dress, sleeveless to expose her perfectly toned arms. He didn't know much—well, anything at all, really—about dressmaking but it was impossible to miss the way the dress fabric skimmed her curves and draped and redraped every time she shifted her weight from one foot to the other. He wanted nothing more than to take her back to the hotel, slip that dress over her shoulders and just admire the sexy body he knew was underneath.

"When I can't sleep at night, I watch all the science channels. It's been highly educational," he said.
And I can't sleep a lot these days.
Not since the morning he woke up in Suzanne's apartment.

He'd been entirely unsuccessful at putting that morning out of his mind. How soft and warm Suzanne's lips had been ... the taste of her breasts ... how perfectly her hips still fit against his ... like adjoining pieces of a puzzle. Something had changed that morning. For him, at least. If their lovemaking had meant anything to her, she wasn't letting on, he thought. Suzanne was as business-like as ever toward him. But things were different now for him. He'd never been the sort to invest sex with any more significance than it needed. He'd slept with his share of women but, when he left their beds, whatever had happened there stayed there. He didn't think about it for days afterward, didn't replay it in slow motion while lying in bed by himself.

But Suzanne ... those memories refused to stay down. He'd notice the way light slanted into his office and it reminded him of the way the early morning sun had brushed over her cheeks. A shadow among the vines would recall to him the hollow between her full, round breasts. A breeze through some trees and suddenly he was hearing the sharp intake of her breath as he had touched some new place on her skin.

He hadn't really needed her to come on this trip with him. Oh, his mother certainly thought it necessary but Daryle didn't always share his mother's certainties. It was true that everyone in the industry regarded Iris Vineyards as a family-run business but people also knew about his mother's health and that he was taking over. Things were changing.

In reality, he had just wanted to spend some time with Suzanne, time uninterrupted by her punishing schedule at her shop. She'd tear him limb from limb if she ever learned that her presence at the conference had not been strictly necessary—if she discovered that he had pulled her away from her business for his own purely selfish motives.

He had another reason for bringing her along, too. He wanted to see if Suzanne could relax and enjoy herself for a week. She was a classic Type A personality. Workaholic. Driven. Perfectionist. All qualities that had served her well, but had also come between them in the past. He was more grounded now, to be sure, and working like a madman most of the time just like her. But he still needed to kick back, relax, have fun. Even at the winery, he was motivated by pleasure, by his pleasure walking through the fields, in seeing a visitor experience a new wine, in taking that first taste of a new vintage. He knew Suzanne had the same capacity for pleasure in her—anyone who baked for a living did. What he wasn't sure of was whether she could let it out.

He turned his attention back to the T. rex and Allosaurus looming over him. But Suzanne was gone. He looked around frantically, then breathed a sigh of relief when he saw her on the outskirts of a tour group, listening raptly to the young docent. She's always in the present, he thought. That was one of her strengths. Wherever she was, she was there a hundred percent. Not like he had been, always thinking about the next adventure, the next night out. What had he been thinking back then? All those years down the drain.

He meandered down the line of exhibits, stopping at a display about Deinonychus, a partial fossilized skeleton next to an illustrated scene of several Deinonychus surrounding a larger Tenontosaurus. A young boy—probably seven or eight years old, Daryle estimated—was peppering his mother with questions.

"Why are those dinosaurs so small?"

"I don't know. Let's read the —"

"Is that big dinosaur going to eat the smaller ones?"

The mother sighed. "I'm not sure. What does the sign say—"

Daryle kneeled down next to the boy. "This is Deinonychus. One of my favorite dinosaurs, actually. They weren't very big. Not all dinosaurs were," he explained patiently. "But Deinonychus was one fierce creature."

The boy looked up at him with raw admiration in his eyes. His mother's eyes were filled with gratitude. Daryle smiled at her. She was an attractive woman, with long blonde hair held back by big dark sunglasses. Her figure was slender in cropped white jeans and a tight-fitting blue tee shirt. He waited for that rush of adrenaline to hit him the way it usually did when he encountered an attractive woman.

Still waiting.

He smiled at her. She and her son had the same beachy hair and sunny blue eyes. She smiled back. Still nothing.

"Who's going to eat who?" the boy asked, tugging at Daryle's arm.

"Well, actually, that big dinosaur in the middle is about to be lunch. Deinonychus made up for its size by hunting in packs with other Deinonychus. They would attack a bigger dinosaur and slash it with their claws until it was weakened. Then they'd just sit back and wait for it to bleed to death."

"Eeew," the boy's mother said.

Daryle and the boy laughed. "It's a guy thing," Daryle said, standing up.

"Thanks for explaining this to him," she said. "I'm a little lost when it comes to dinosaurs."

Daryle was about to say something when the boy darted off toward the next exhibit. His mother hurried to catch up. "Sorry! Thanks again."

Daryle looked around for Suzanne. He headed toward the tour group and circled its perimeter. No Suzanne. He walked quickly through the dinosaur hall, his head swiveling right and left, scanning every cluster of people, looking for her. Where could she have gone? Had she left the museum entirely? I bet she saw me talking to that boy's mother. Suzanne had always gotten jealous easily. She denied it but he knew it was true. She'd been jealous at Alanna's reception when Noelle showed up. He knew she believed he'd invited Noelle. He hadn't. In fact, even Alanna had read him the riot act over Noelle showing up. Can't a man change? he thought.

Ah, there she is! Suzanne was talking to a security guard at the other end of the hall. A little girl in auburn pigtail braids and a navy and white striped dress was clutching Suzanne's hand. He watched as Suzanne knelt down to speak to the girl, gently wiping away the tears on her cheeks. They looked so much alike, anyone would have thought they were mother and daughter. A smile crept over his face.

The security guard was on her radio now. Daryle began to weave his way through the hall, in their direction. He was halfway there when a man rushed up to Suzanne and the little girl. The girl released Suzanne's hand and rushed into the man's arms. The man was sharply-dressed in a pinstriped suit and gleaming black wingtips, his dark hair slicked back behind his ears. Taking his daughter out over lunch? For a moment, it reminded Daryle of childhood dinners with his father, just the two of them. He had always felt so grownup, walking into a fancy restaurant behind his bespoke suited father, ordering a Shirley Temple from the bar, the way his father seemed to know everyone no matter what city they were in.