Melanie,” Cade said, his voice the same deep baritone she’d known for more than half her life. Once upon a time, that sound had made her heart sing. “Is it okay if I stay here for a bit?” he said. “I’ve got some time to kill before a meeting.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Melanie said. And promptly dropped the spatula. It landed on the vinyl floor with a soft clatter.
“Oh, great!” Jeannie cried. “I’ll see you a week from Friday then!” She giggled. “You and Cade. It’ll be the best speech ever. You guys always did have a way with words. And a lot more.” She let out another laugh, then hung up.
“No! I meant to say no!” Melanie yelled into the phone, scrambling for the spatula, but Jeannie was already gone, off for some French tips.
The yes had been for Cade, not Jeannie. Somehow, the sight of him after so much time apart had knocked her off-kilter. As it had in the early days, before their “way with words” became more about flinging them around the living room in arguments that went nowhere.
Emmie tossed her mother a grin, then turned away and started sliding the cookies onto the cooling rack. Melanie tossed the spatula into the sink, all thumbs and as consternated as a chicken in a fox den.
She grabbed a warm chocolate chip cookie off the wire cooling rack and stuffed it in her mouth before she could make the same mistake twice—
Say yes when she really meant to say no.
CHAPTER TWO
AS HIS DAUGHTER HANDED him a cup of coffee, Cade watched the woman he’d once thought he knew better than himself hurry between the espresso machine and the bakery case, greeting customers by name, laughing at their jokes, dispensing coffee with a happy, friendly cheer—and wondered for the thousandth time when they had slipped off their common track.
Somewhere between “I do” and “I don’t,” something had gone wrong in his marriage. He was a corporate lawyer. His specialty was fixing tangled legal messes. Why couldn’t he fix the one in his own house?
He’d tried, Lord knew he’d tried, but Melanie had thrown up a wall and refused to remove a single chink in the brick.
God, he missed her. Every morning, he woke up to an empty space in his bed and an ache in his chest that no painkiller could soothe. At night, the talking heads on TV kept him company instead of the soft tones of Melanie, telling him about her day, about something Emmie had said or done.
He took a seat at one of the tables, watching his wife’s lithe, fluid movements. She was still as beautiful as the day he’d married her. A little heavier, but over the years he’d found he liked the extra weight on her hips and waist, the fullness in her breasts. The womanly curves had always held a magical comfort, soothing him at the end of a stressful day.
Always, Melanie had been there, supporting him in those early days when it seemed he’d never rise above the minion position of law clerk.
He poured sugar into his cup. It dissolved as easily as the bonds of his marriage.
Still, he’d put off signing the papers that would file their divorce. He had hope, damn it, that this could be fixed. That he could broker a mutually satisfactory agreement, a return to business as usual, something he had done a thousand times between warring corporations.
Every time he looked at Melanie, a constant smile curved across her face as she chatted and poured, the ache in his chest quadrupled. Need for her—not just sexual need, but an indefinable, untouchable need that ran bone-deep—stirred in his gut, rushing through his veins. He wanted to take her in his arms, hold her to his chest and kiss her until he made this past year go away.
But deep in his heart he knew they’d gone way beyond the point where a simple kiss could solve anything.
“Dad,” Emmie said, coming over to him. Now a college sophomore, Emmie had the same heart-shaped face and delicate features as her mother, except now her hair was spiked, her lips painted a dark crimson.
“Sit at the counter. It’s way more comfortable.”
Before he could protest, his daughter had taken his cup of Kenyan roast and put it on the laminate surface. Three feet from Melanie. He and Melanie exchanged a quick, knowing glance.
Obviously she knew Emmie was trying to bring them together. Why shouldn’t she? Emmie hadn’t asked for the divorce and she’d made it clear she didn’t like alternating between her two parents’ homes for weekly dinners and occasional laundry stops, like a perpetual ping-pong game.
Cade sure as hell wasn’t happy watching his marriage whittle away, either.
He rose and crossed to the wooden bar, settling onto one of the cushioned stools. “You’ve created a nice place here.”
He hadn’t seen his wife in a year and that was the best he could come up with? This is nice?
After this, he was heading to the bookstore to see if there was a Resurrecting Your Marriage for Dummies. Because clearly this dummy was failing at Wooing Back a Wife 101.
“Thanks,” Melanie said. She wiped off the steamer spout, then tossed the dirty cloth into a bucket of laundry inside the kitchen. She washed her hands and picked up the rack of freshly baked cookies and began loading them into the glass case, arranging them as carefully as she used to arrange the pillows in their living room.
“Is it going well?” Cade asked. “From what I’ve seen, this place is as popular as an elf at Christmas.”
She laughed. “Things are going much better than expected.”
He heard the undertones of their last fight in those two sentences. Cade was smart enough to back away from that. “I’m happy for you, Melanie.”
Emmie brushed by him, giving him an elbow hint. “Say something, Dad,” she whispered.
Cade held up his hands and looked to Emmie for help. She gave him the duh look she’d perfected by her sixteenth birthday. Oh, yeah, he was the dad. He was supposed to have all the answers.
He did—all but this one.
Cade shifted on the stool. “Are you going to tease your hair and unearth that Kiss concert T-shirt for Friday night?”
She chuckled. “Oh gosh, that was a thousand years ago. I don’t think I saved the shirt.”
“You did. Bottom drawer, on the right.” He knew, because he’d been in their dresser after she’d left, looking for something, and come across the worn image of Gene Simmons. For a moment, Cade had been back there, in the thirtieth row, rocking along with Melanie as they held up a lighter during a ballad and sang along until their voices cracked.
“I remember that night,” she said softly, then shook her head and got busy with the cookies again. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter because I’m not going to the reunion. I’ll have to save the Aqua Net for another night.”
She’d tried to pass it off as a joke, but Cade wasn’t laughing. “Didn’t you just tell Jeannie you would go?” He gestured toward the phone. “I couldn’t help but overhear. Jeannie’s voice is like a bullhorn.”
“I
