Spiral of Bliss 02 Allure (3 page)

It’s a cold morning. I turn up the thermostat and look out the window. Puddles of light spill from the streetlamps lining Avalon Street. No new snow, but the promise of it clings to the air.

“Did you check under the tree for a present?” Dean is standing in the bedroom doorway, his chest bare and pajama bottoms slung low on his hips.

“Yes, but you weren’t under there.”

He grins. It’s the old, hint-of-wicked Dean grin that I haven’t seen in far too long, and it melts any wariness still threading my heart. I go to peer underneath the tree. A large box wrapped in blue paper and a red ribbon is pushed behind the tree and concealed by the branches. A smaller box sits on top of it.

“Dean, what…”

“Don’t lift them. They’re heavy.”

He nods toward the sofa for me to sit down, then picks up the boxes and puts them on the coffee table in front of me. The big red ribbons are perfectly tied.

“When did you get these?” I ask.

“About a week ago. Open them.”

I tug the ribbon and tape off the bigger box. Slowly I peel the paper away and stare at the contents. It’s a set of gorgeous, top-of-the-line, stainless-steel cookware—two frying pans, a sauté pan, two saucepans, and a stockpot.

“This… this must have cost a fortune.”

“If you’re going to cook well, you need the best equipment.”

Tears sting my eyes as I open the smaller box to reveal an eleven-piece set of exceptional Shun knives.

Cookware and culinary knives. Maybe not romantic to anyone else, but no other gift from my husband could say more. And he bought them a week ago, before our still-fragile reconciliation.

“Thank you.” I look up at him. “Thank you so much.”

He reaches out to tuck a lock of hair behind my ear. “Well, if you cook, I get to eat. It’s a win-win.”

“I didn’t get you a present.”

“Yeah, you did.” He bends to kiss my forehead.

Ah, lovely warmth. I wrap my arms around his waist and press my mouth against his hard, ridged torso. He tangles his fingers in my hair and laughs.

“Careful.”

“I love you.” I squeeze his very nice rear, then pull away to gather the torn wrapping paper. “Thank you.”

“Now you have to make me eggs and bacon for breakfast.”

I open the cookware box to take out a shiny frying pan. “Yes, sir.”

“Sir, huh?” He winks at me. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

It takes me an hour to get breakfast going because I have to read all the instructions on how to wash and care for the cookware and the knives. Since it almost seems like a shame to use such expensive equipment for a meal as mundane as scrambled eggs, I get out a flowered linen tablecloth and set the table with white plates and cloth napkins.

Then I fry the bacon and scramble the eggs with some parmesan cheese and dried basil. It’s unexpectedly sexy to be making breakfast for my husband while wearing only his shirt and nothing else.

I fill Dean’s mug with coffee, then take a pad of paper and draw:

I stick the note to the mug as Dean approaches the kitchen, sniffing the air.

“Wow,” he remarks. “Smells good in here.”

“You’ve done it now.” I hand him the mug. “You’ll never get me out of the kitchen.”

“I never want you out of the bedroom either, but I’m open to negotiation.” He reads the note and smiles, leaning over to kiss me. “Great drawing.”

I pat his cheek, then set our food on the table while Dean sits down. When I return to the table with a plate of toast, there’s a note beside my fork.

I laugh. “Lovely sentiment, but why did you draw a picture of a smiling butt?”

“A what?”

“A smiling butt.” I hold out the note.

“That’s a coffee bean.”

“Oh.” I squint at the picture. “Well, I guess I finally found something you can’t do very well.”

He frowns. “I’ll have you know I used to draw intricate comic books when I was a kid.”

“Of course you did.” I put the note on the table and sit down. “Superhero knights, right?”

“
Captain Lancelot Versus Dr. Mordred
was my most epic work.”

I smile. My white knight. Both tenderness and heat soften my heart as I look at him, all rumpled masculinity with stubble coating his jaw and his hair curling over his ears. He meets my gaze, a responding warmth filling his eyes.

I pick up my mug to take a sip of coffee. Dean reaches across the table to take the cup away from me.

“What…?”

“We’ll have to buy some decaf,” he says. “You’re not supposed to have caffeine when you’re pregnant.”

Crap. I forgot. There’s probably a lot of things I’m not supposed to do now that I’m pregnant.

I eye Dean with a touch of wariness. As unnerving as it is to admit, I know that neither of us is ready for a baby.

I started thinking about having a baby a few months ago, but then everything went to hell between me and Dean. I found out he’d kept a previous marriage a secret from me, one that involved three miscarriages and a bitter divorce.

Then in the midst of my own confusion and hurt, I made the mistake of kissing the man who was teaching a cooking class I’d enrolled in. Dean and I have barely gotten past all that, let alone figured out whether we want children.

Too late for that now.

We haven’t talked about the pregnancy since I discovered it only yesterday. I haven’t even processed the idea, and probably neither has Dean. Especially since just the subject of a baby caused conflict between us, not to mention that we hadn’t agreed to try…

My stomach knots with apprehension and guilt. I rub the scar on my left hand, the physical evidence of how wrong things went between me and my husband. Dean glances at the movement. His mouth tightens.

“So, um, how about that?” I pick up my fork. “I’m pregnant.”

“How do you feel?”

“Fine, actually. I only checked because I missed my period. I should make an appointment with Dr. Nolan, I guess. I know she handles prenatal care and delivery, in addition to family practice.” I can’t read Dean’s expression. I can’t make sense of the sudden jumble of emotions crowding my chest. “Will you go with me to the appointment?”

“Of course I’ll go with you.” A crease appears between his eyebrows. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

“I didn’t know.” I poke at the eggs with my fork. “I’ll call Dr. Nolan tomorrow, if the office is open.”

I sense his gaze on me and glance up at him. He puts his hand on my arm.

“I’ll take care of you, Liv,” he says. “No, we didn’t plan on having a baby right now. Yes, we’re still getting back on our feet. But I’ll do whatever it takes to make this easy for you. Whatever you need, whatever you want, I’ll do it. We’re going to be fine.”

His voice is a deep caress of certainty. Though I’m grateful for his assurance, I’m aware that I don’t share it. Yet.

“We’ll talk to the doctor first and go from there,” Dean says. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

I squeeze his hand and we finish eating our breakfast. We spend a quiet day together—we clean the kitchen, play Scrabble, make love again, watch a movie. Dean does some work in his office, and I wash and organize the rest of my new cooking equipment. I also open the present from the holiday party, which turns out to be a gift certificate for one of my favorite places in Mirror Lake—an old-fashioned tearoom called Matilda’s Teapot.

“Do you want to pick up the rest of your things from Kelsey’s?” Dean comes into the kitchen, looking scruffy and delicious in torn jeans and a faded T-shirt.

I close the cupboard door and turn to face him. I don’t want to ask the question, but I have to. “Do you think… do you think maybe it’s too soon?”

“No, I don’t think it’s too soon.” He frowns. “Do
you
think it’s too soon?”

“I don’t know,” I admit. “As much as I miss you, with this pregnancy now and… well, everything else...”

“I want you to come home, Liv.”

“I know. I want to come home, too.” I’m also scared to come home. Scared of what we have to deal with, scared of hurting each other again, scared that things won’t be the same as they once were.

Dean moves closer and tugs me into his arms. My whole body weakens as I press my forehead against his chest and breathe in his familiar scent. He puts his hand on the back of my neck and kneads the tense muscles.

“You need to come home,” he murmurs against my hair.

“Are you scared?”

“Not about us.” Dean pulls back to take my face in his hands. “Remember winter break of the first year we met?”

Desire uncoils in my blood as I look into his eyes. He is imprinted in my bones, my soul. He has marked me in ways more permanent than time.

“I remember,” I breathe. Two weeks that changed me forever.

“That’s what we’re going to do again.” Dean brushes his thumb across my lips. “You and I. No one else.”

We both want this so badly. I can feel it resonating between us like the hot pull of our first attraction, tangible and intense. We want our marriage to be a haven of warmth and pleasure again. We want our pure lustiness back, untainted by fear and mistrust. We want the unending spirals of bliss we can create only with each other. We want to shut the rest of the world out while locking ourselves in together. We want to be united in this pregnancy and impending parenthood.

As if he knows what I’m thinking, Dean slides his palm down to my belly. I put my hand over his.

“We’re going to have to read a lot of books,” I say.

“My life’s work involves reading books.”

“We’ll probably have to take some classes.”

“I’m at my best in a classroom.”

“And I hear we’ll need to buy a ton of stuff.”

“We can afford stuff.”

I look up into his chocolate-brown eyes.

“I just wish I knew where to start,” I whisper.

“Right here, beauty.” And he presses his lips to mine.

CHAPTER TWO

Dean

January 8

m a guy. When I first saw Liv five years ago, I didn’t think
I would really like to understand that woman.

I thought:
Damn, she’s pretty.

I thought:
I want to kiss her.

I thought:
What does she look like naked?

I would have stayed on that lusty train of thought if she hadn’t turned her brown eyes on me, and I realized she was on the verge of tears. Then my protective instinct kicked into high gear, and I thought:
I need to help her.

I ended up not doing a damn thing for her at the university registrar’s office where she had a problem with transfer credits, even though she thanked me afterward. I knew I wanted to see her again, but not because I was being chivalrous or useful or sensitive.

I wanted to see her again because when we stood there on the sidewalk, a few strands of hair swept across her face and clung to her cheeks. Because I noticed that her mouth had an indentation in the upper lip. Because I tracked my gaze to her breasts moving with her breath under a white T-shirt and ragged gray sweatshirt, and my blood got hot. She had rounded hips. Legs encased in faded jeans with a rip in the denim exposing a pale strip of thigh.

She was curved. Sexy. Alive.

My chest filled with heat when I looked at her. It had been a long time since I’d had that rush. I wanted to feel it again.

It hadn’t happened with the business administrator I’d dated a few times over the summer. Rebecca was my age, an attractive brunette with short hair and a serious face who could talk about finance systems and process analyses as if she were discussing what to make for dinner. She read books about the economy, power-walked every morning, and always looked like she was thinking about something important.

She reminded me too much of me. Never once did my heart pound harder when I saw her. We went our separate ways as soon as the semester started. Shortly before I met Liv.

Olivia. That was how I thought of her those first couple of weeks when we’d see each other at the coffeehouse where she worked.
Olivia R. Winter.
I wondered what the
R
stood for.

One day she stopped next to the table where I was sitting at Jitter Beans. I’d been pretending to work on my laptop while actually sneaking glances at her. I liked the way she moved, her long ponytail swinging every time she turned to fill a mug, the bend of her body as she reached to take something from the dessert case.

“Free sample,” she said. Her apron was tight across the front of her body, dusted with cocoa powder and streaks of chocolate. “Our new peanut-butter brownie. Would you like one?”

She held out a tray of tiny paper cups filled with squares of chocolate. A speck of chocolate clung to the corner of her lip.

She tries the free samples.
I tucked that bit of information away along with the other things I was learning about her.

She smiles at every customer.

She sits at the corner table during her breaks and reads one of the magazines.

She wears a pendant on a silver chain around her neck.

She’s older than most other undergrads, but no more than twenty-five.

She’s not a flirt.

She doesn’t notice when men look at her. Or she turns away from them.

She doesn’t turn away from me.

“Sure.” I reached out to take one of the paper cups. I wanted to ask her when her shift ended. Wanted to ask her to go somewhere with me.

I couldn’t yet. Though I knew the university’s policy about dating students, knew it was acceptable if the student wasn’t subject to the professor’s authority, I needed to make damn sure Olivia R. Winter and I wouldn’t cross academic paths for the rest of the year.

“Was it good?” I asked.

“What?”

I gestured to the crumb on her lip. Wished I could wipe it away. “Looks like you tried it.”

“Oh.” She rubbed her fingers across her mouth. “It’s delicious, sure. Peanut butter and chocolate—can’t go wrong. Right?”

She smiled. My heart thumped against my ribs.

It was a strange feeling, foreign, that anticipation making me feel like a teenager with his first crush. I couldn’t even remember my actual first crush. I’d been too busy training for the football team or burning my brain out studying for AP classes.

My girlfriends in high school and college had been the same way. They’d had to be. Ivy League universities, scholarships, the right classes and majors, junior years abroad, grad school, fellowships, published papers, guest lectures, prestigious jobs…

Driven. Focused. Serious. So freaking tedious.

Like me.

There was nothing tedious about this girl with the long hair and pretty smile who blushed when she met my gaze.

I thought:
I want to get you alone.

When I finally did, the night of a lecture I was giving at a local museum, I discovered there was something contradictory about her, a mixture of curiosity and wariness. Like she wanted to be brave but wasn’t sure what would happen if she dared to let herself. A mouse peering out of its hole, whiskers vibrating with the urge to dart out.

I’d never wanted to prove myself to anyone the way I did Liv. I liked her too much. Liked the way I didn’t feel cold inside when I was with her, the way I didn’t
think
about anything except her. I liked that she was a mystery. I liked the way she looked at me, as if she knew I would protect her. That I
could
.

Until… I couldn’t.

The admission still lodges like a blade inside me.

“Oh, look,
Pirates of Penzance
is playing at the Civic Center.” Liv’s voice breaks into my darkening thoughts. She’s sitting across from me at the kitchen table, peering at the local section of the newspaper. “Want to go?”

“Uh, sure.”

“Or
Cats
will be there this spring, if you’d rather see that,” she remarks.

“I’m not really a cat person.”

“More of a pirate person, huh?” She glances at me with amusement. “Okay, I’ll see if tickets are still available. I love that ‘Modern Major-General’ song.”

It’s a measure of how much I love my wife that I just agreed to sit through two hours of dancing, singing pirates.

This, at least, is where Liv belongs. Here in this apartment that she’s made into our home with her houseplants and decorating touches. She belongs across from me at the breakfast table, bundled in her ridiculous robe that has enough padding to keep her warm in a blizzard, her hair all messy around her shoulders.

Having her back at home, easing into the post-holiday routine of our daily lives, even things like breakfast—the familiarity of coffee, toast, the newspaper,
her
—I can almost forget the hellish past month.

Almost.

I can almost believe nothing has changed.

Almost.

Liv takes a sip of coffee and grimaces. “Not to be rude, Dean, but this tastes really bad.”

“It’s a different kind of decaf with no caffeine at all.”

“Figures.”

“Don’t want to take any chances when you’re pregnant.” I still feel like I’m speaking a foreign language I don’t understand.
You’re pregnant.

My wife is pregnant.

I watch her as she spreads jam on a piece of toast. She’s so pretty with her thick-lashed brown eyes, the sprinkle of freckles across her nose, her skin like cream. All that straight, brown hair that I wanted to touch the minute I first saw her. She looks the same as she did five years ago—still beautiful, sweet, glowing.

It hits me suddenly, the realization that she’s going to change. Physically, sure, but also in ways I might never even know.

“You still feel okay?” I ask.

“A little nauseous every now and then, but nothing horrible.” She licks a drop of jam off her thumb. “I heard back from Dr. Anderson, my therapist in Madison. She recommended a counselor in Rainwood who does both individual and marriage counseling.”

Liv glances at me, wary. I grab another piece of toast to avoid responding.

“Dean.”

“I said I’d go with you.” I sound irritated. Shit.

“I think I should go alone first,” Liv says.

“You want to go alone?”

“At first, yes.” Her throat ripples with a swallow. “Figure out some stuff on my own.”

My chest tightens—part frustration, part anger, part relief—but I know there’s only one response to this.

“Just tell me when you want me to be there,” I say.

I hate this. Hate that she’ll have to relive everything, spill her guts to a stranger. Hate that she’s going to cry and battle emotions I’ll never understand and can’t protect her from.

And I really fucking hate that I’m to blame for it all. Four months ago, when Liv brought up the idea of us having children, I finally confessed what I’d kept secret from her for five years—that I’d been married before when I was in my early twenties.

I hadn’t told her because it was a shitty part of my life that I wanted to forget. I haven’t seen my ex-wife since the divorce fifteen years ago, even though Helen is still friends with my sister and mother. And Liv has always had enough to contend with between both our families. She didn’t need to hear about my first marriage that crashed and burned like a fireball.

Finally, though, I had to tell Liv why I was reluctant to try for a baby. The revelation about my former marriage caused more trouble between us, which led to us separating for three of the worst weeks of my life.

Now Liv is home again. Pregnant. And I’ll fix this if it kills me.

“Can I at least have one tiny sip of your coffee?” she asks.

I hold out my cup of full-octane and watch as her mouth closes around the rim. Lust spears through me. I take the cup back and try to focus on the stock market page of the paper.

“Hey, I asked Kelsey if she wants to go to an early dinner with us next week, maybe one day after I get off work at the bookstore,” Liv says as she pours a bowl of granola. “She got back a couple of nights ago.”

“Fine.”

“Sounds like she had a good holiday visiting her mom.”

“Good to know.”

Liv tilts her head, regarding me. “So… Kelsey said she kissed you.”

I can feel a flush creep up my neck, which irritates me. “Uh… yeah.”

My embarrassment seems to amuse her.

“Kelsey is a spitfire, but she’s also a wise woman,” Liv says.

“I wouldn’t put it that way.”

She doesn’t say anything else, which makes me edgy on top of embarrassed. How am I supposed to tackle this one? What did Kelsey even say? When Liv and I were separated—I still hate that word—Kelsey decided to prove some stupid point about male-female attraction by kissing me.

I shove away from the table and go to refill my coffee.

“You’re blushing,” Liv remarks.

“I am not.”

“It’s cute.”

“It is not.”

“She said you’re a great kisser.” Liv arches an eyebrow.

“Yeah, so’s she.” I swallow some coffee. “If you like kissing pit vipers.”

Liv grins. I drum my fingers on the counter. She gets up and slides her bathrobe-padded arms around my waist. Her warm lips press against my neck.