“You couldn’t sound stupid if you tried. Attorney-client privilege doesn’t stop us discussing things in general terms like we just did. I never talked about work because I thought you weren’t interested.” And why exactly had he thought that?
The answer remained frustratingly out of reach, but he understood enough to fix this mistake. “The reason we got involved is that the client followed Marsha Henrikkson—” he named one of his newer associates “—when she switched to our firm. She’s a qualified patent attorney.”
Vicki beamed at him.
“What?” he asked, rocked by his own pleasure at having made his wife smile. Sunlight shimmered off the wooden counter and suddenly, bittersweet shards of memory cut into him. He remembered sanding this counter and looking up to find Vicki smiling at him from the other side. Back then he’d been full of hope for their future, still cocky enough to laughingly grab his wife and tumble her to the floor.
“Nothing.” Continuing to smile, she asked, “Do you want more toast?”
Memory and reality converged in her happiness. “No, this will hold me.” He took a last sip of coffee and stood, wishing he didn’t have an early appointment. The two of them hadn’t been this easy with each other for far too long. “I’ll call if I’m going to be late.”
“Fine.”
He caught the edge in her tone. “What does that mean?” If blunt questions were what it would take for him to get to know this intriguing woman who’d shown him more fire and passion in one day than she had during the rest of their marriage, he’d ask a thousand of them.
Her jaw firmed. “You’re always late, Caleb. I can’t remember the last time we had dinner together when it wasn’t a work function.”
He’d never thought she cared one way or the other if he was around. After all, she could hardly bear it when he reached for her and if he was with her, he wanted to touch her. Her dislike of intimacy with him had half destroyed him, but she was still the only woman he wanted as his wife. “You want me home for dinner?”
“Of course I want you home for dinner!” Frown lines marred her forehead. “You’re my husband.”
The decision was easy. “I’ll be home.”
Another unexpected smile lit up her features, erasing the frown. “Really?”
“Promise.” He wanted nothing more than to kiss her and taste the sunshine sparkling on her lips.
She stepped closer. “I’ll wait for you.”
He wished she’d touch him, hug him, anything. But Vicki had never taken that sort of action and eventually, he’d learned to withhold his own inherently physical nature, learned not to ask for things she could never give him.
Even if it shredded his soul.
Vicki watched Caleb get into his dark sedan and drive away. No matter how well she thought she knew him, he could always surprise her. The way he’d agreed to come home early without any hesitation had been a shock, given his dedication to his work.
She hated coming second to the law firm that was his life, hated it with a vengeance that could have turned her bitter if she hadn’t decided to do something about it. Caleb’s easy acquiescence to her request gave her hope that the battle might not be as impossible as it had always seemed. Maybe he was listening to her at long last.
But, she thought suddenly, was she listening to him? There had been something in his eyes as he’d looked at her in the kitchen—as if he’d wanted to say something, do something, but was restraining himself. She got that impression a lot around Caleb. Restraint. Emotions held captive.
He hadn’t started out that way. In the beginning, she’d almost drowned in the power of Caleb, a little frightened at the strength of his focus on her but delighting in it all the same. Then something had changed between them…been damaged.
If she’d walked over to fix his collar when they’d first married, no matter how angry they were with each other, he would have pulled her into his lap and kissed her until she begged for mercy. She’d touched him deliberately this morning as a test to see how much remained of that early passion. The answer had devastated her.
What had happened to the fire that had once raged between them? Had she destroyed it? She didn’t know what to think, experience warring with childhood lessons about acceptable behavior and the need to control her emotions. All she knew was that she’d die if she was never again as important to Caleb as she’d been at the start.
But why then did she get the impression that Caleb was constantly fighting to rein in his nature? Why could she almost feel the dark intensity of the emotions he kept locked up? And why could she never ask him what it was that he wanted to say but didn’t?
He was right. He hadn’t been the only one who’d made mistakes in their marriage.
Three
Caleb arrived home that evening to find Vicki in the living room staring at the phone. Dressed in a sleeveless black dress that faithfully hugged every curve, she looked tempting enough to eat. His gut clenched at the thought that she’d donned a sexy dress for dinner. What the hell was that supposed to mean?
“Anything the matter?” Dropping his briefcase on the couch, he stripped off his overcoat and suit jacket. Autumn was turning into winter and the breeze coming off the bay was increasingly crisp. But it was warm inside the house, the sunlight trapped by both the windows and the skylights.
“Your secretary just called from her apartment. She said she forgot to tell you she’d managed to reschedule with Mr. Johnson. The meeting is now at eight tomorrow morning.”
That was the appointment Caleb had cancelled in order to be home for dinner. “Thanks for taking the message. My mobile’s dead—I forgot to charge it.” Tugging off his tie, he dropped it on the sofa before undoing the top two buttons of his shirt and walking over to join her. “Why the look?” The urge to run his hands over the delicate softness of her bare arms was a physical ache.
“It wasn’t Miranda,” she blurted out, troubled eyes looking to him for explanation.
If there was one thing he didn’t want to discuss, it was his former secretary. “No. She’s been gone awhile.” Giving in to temptation, he curved one hand over the creamy skin of her shoulder. She shivered but didn’t move away. Then again, she never did. At least not until the end.
Victoria wanted to ask why Miranda had left but the courage that had pushed her this far deserted her in the face of the sickening thought that bloomed in her mind without warning. What if Miranda was no longer Caleb’s secretary because she was something else? Such arrangements weren’t unheard of in the circles in which she’d grown up—her own mother was a perfect example. And Caleb had been living away from her for two months. Maybe he’d gotten tired of waiting.
“Vicki?”
The reply she wanted to make kept slipping out of the turmoil in her mind. She stared at the floor in a desperate attempt to find her sense of balance but suddenly her world was spinning. “I need to sit…” And then it was too much effort to speak.
She heard him swear. Before
