own dishes, a million miles away from the wealthy, driven CEO. “You’re not having a maid do them?”
“It’s not like I cook a gourmet meal every night,” Cole said. “I usually have one plate, one cup and a fork to wash. No need to pay the maid to do that.”
“Yeah, me, too.” She’d let the household help go, too, after their separation. She’d seen no sense in paying people to clean up after one person. Plus doing her own housework kept her busy instead of focusing on how Cole’s absence made the house echo in ways it never had before.
“Nothing drives home the fact that you’re alone like washing your dishes.” Cole took the clean dishes from the strainer, swiped them dry with a towel and put them in the cabinets. “I guess that’s when it finally hit me.”
“What did?” Emily stowed the leftovers in the fridge.
Cole put his back to the sink and crossed his arms over his chest, the pink-and-white-striped towel a strange juxtaposition in his muscular hands. “That this wasn’t a fight we’d get over in a couple days. That this separation could be permanent. I’d come home from work and look at that plate and cup and fork in the sink and think...” He let out a gust and shook his head. “I’d think how sad they looked.”
“Really?” Over the years, Cole had rarely opened up about his feelings. She’d asked him what he was thinking, but most of the time, he’d withdrawn and in the end, she’d be left feeling cold, alone. This was the most he’d shared in a long, long time.
“All those years we lived together, I don’t think I ever noticed if we had five plates or fifty,” he went on. “I couldn’t tell you what the pattern was on our silverware if you paid me. But I notice the plates now. I notice when there’s one.” He nodded toward the sink. “Or more than one.”
Her heart softened. She put the empty serving dishes in the soapy water, then picked up one of the plates and started washing it, instead of falling into that vulnerable look on Cole’s face and in his voice. “I notice now, too,” she said quietly. “It’s like the plate and cup are lonely.”
“Maybe I should buy a whole set.” Cole grinned. “Or just bring mine back home so they’d be together again. Happy. Complete.”
The thought of him returning, of the two of them being happy and complete, together again, caused her heart to race and her throat to close. Hope warred with caution. She concentrated on getting the plate clean, watching the bubbles circle and circle the rim. “We’ve tried that before, Cole. It didn’t work.”
“What’s that saying about success? That it’s about not giving up?”
She could see the saying now, one of those kitschy posters that she had hung in her college dorm, then again in their run-down first apartment because it was the only wall decor they could afford. By the time they moved to the big house, the poster had been relegated to a landfill. But the saying and the image of a determined competitor in a tough tug-of-war had stuck with Emily. “‘Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.’ William Feather said it,” she said.
“I’m hanging on, Emily,” Cole said softly. “I really am.”
She placed the clean plate in the strainer, then picked up the next one. “Why?”
“Because we had something once. And I think we can have it again. And because I’m ready for change.”
How she wanted to believe him. Her brain reminded her heart that he had said all this before, and gone back to his workaholic ways as soon as the crisis passed. How could she know this time would be any different?
Another clean plate in the strainer. She tackled the third one. The only sound in the room was the running water and the soft clanging of dishes. “Change how?”
“Working less. More vacations. More time for you and me to get back to where we were.”
She’d heard all these words before. Dozens of times over the years, and every time, she had believed them, only to be hurt in the end. Granted, the time he had spent working on the repairs to the inn was the most time he’d ever taken off work before, and maybe that meant something. Maybe it meant he had changed. Hope kept a stubborn hold on her heart, but she refused to give it space and room.
Not until she’d asked the most important question.
She rinsed the last plate, put it in the strainer, then tackled a pan, keeping her gaze away from Cole’s. “And what about a family?”
He let out a nervous laugh. “Family? Emily, we’re far from ready for kids.”
It’s what he’d said a thousand times over the years. Every time she’d brought up kids, he’d said it wasn’t the right time, or that they’d talk about it later. She pulled the plug, let the soapy water drain, and placed her hands on the rim of the sink. All that silly, foolish hope in her chest drained away, too.
“When do you think we’ll be ready? When we get a bigger house or the company reaches another sales goal or we have another million saved in retirement?” She snorted and turned away from him. “It’s never the right time, Cole.”
“We’re a few pieces of paper away from being divorced, Emily. I’d say that’s the worst possible time to have a child.”
Emily sighed. “Yeah, Cole, it is.” Then she left the kitchen and headed up to her room, where the pillow would muffle her hurt.
COLE SLEPT THROUGH his alarm. Slept through the buzzing of his phone. Slept through the sunrise. He’d slept in the best hotel rooms in the world, owned a mattress that cost more than a small car, and yet he had never slept as soundly or as well as he had in the double bed in the pale blue room on the second floor of the Gingerbread Inn.
He rolled over, blinked a bleary eye at his phone and decided whoever was calling him could wait a little longer. This...decadence filled him with a peace he had never felt before. Whatever was happening at work would be there later, while Cole just...was. Right here, right now, in a cozy bedroom across the hall from Emily, in a quaint inn in Massachusetts. He lay in the bed, watching the sun dance on the floor, while birds chirped a song above the faint sounds of a distant lawn mower.
Then he heard the soft melody of a woman’s voice, singing along with the radio. It took him a moment to realize it was Emily’s voice. He hadn’t heard her singing in...
Hell, ten years. At least.
He pulled on his jeans and padded barefoot out of his room and across the hall. Her door stood ajar, the bed made, the room neat and clean. When had Emily become a neatnik? She’d always been the messier one in their relationship, something that had driven him crazy when they were together. Then, when he was on his own, he’d missed seeing her makeup on the bathroom counter, her coat tossed over the dining room chair, her shoes kicked off on the bedroom carpet. He’d tried leaving his own things out but it wasn’t the same. He hesitated only a moment, then took a single step inside the room. “Em?”
The bedroom was empty. Light and steam spilled out of the attached bathroom. The shower was running, and Cole could see the familiar outline of his wife’s curves behind the translucent
