him...she needed to never know the truth about the man she’d loved so purely.
His need to get to work, and hers to serve their guests’ breakfast, precluded any conversation that morning. But Pierce came home Tuesday night prepared to do a better job of communicating with his wife before he laid his head down to sleep again. He had to be responsible about the nightmares, stay diligent. To protect her.
And he knew exactly from whence this one had come.
They’d had a third check-in to the inn that day. A woman who was writing a piece of fiction that would feature the B and B. In exchange, Eliza had given her free room and board. She’d been so excited about the opportunity when the author had first contacted her.
Seemed like ages ago now. More than a month before she’d auditioned for, and won, her spot on Family Secrets.
If nothing else, the television show was giving her more publicity than she could ever have hoped. The inn was already booked through the summer but was starting to fill up through the fall and into Christmas.
“I just got my first booking for next summer,” Eliza told him as she met him at the back kitchen door when he came in from work on Tuesday. She was grinning.
He could feel her joy.
And see the sadness lurking in her eyes, too.
“Can we talk?” he asked, setting in stone the decision he’d made that morning. Several times throughout the day. And again that evening on his way home. “Tonight? After we’re through out there?” He nodded toward the door that led into the portion of their home that was open to the public.
He didn’t like the way she studied him, eye to eye, but he withstood it.
“Of course,” she said. And then she kissed him. Obliterating the world for just a moment in the way only she could. Giving him a different kind of mental blip. One that he could gladly succumb to for the rest of his life.
Life with Eliza required much from him. He’d give everything and more to be with her.
So he socialized with their guests, thankful to be able to look across the room and see her beautiful smile. He carried a box of the author’s files up to her room for her. Cleared empty dishes and ran the vacuum in the parlor after the crowd had dissipated. He even stopped by the library to chat with one of the businessmen who liked to spend an hour or two in the evenings sitting in one of the antique leather wing chairs, reading from the collection Eliza’s grandmother had amassed.
And when the house had settled, he joined his wife in the kitchen. Eliza was putting finishing touches on breakfast and preparing hors d’oeuvres for the two nights she’d be gone over the upcoming weekend. She’d given Margie a couple of days off to make up for working all weekend, and had spent her day cleaning and refreshing.
“Can I help?”
He couldn’t blame her for the surprised look on her face. Pierce’s kitchen skills were nil. Boiling water was debatable.
“I can chop,” he told her, meeting her gaze head-on. She’d barely slept the night before. He could tell by the shadows under her eyes.
And so, with her careful instruction, he took up knife and onion and set to work, slicing it into precise cubes. And then celery.
He’d come in to have their talk.
They worked in total silence.
But it was a peaceful silence, he told himself. Companionable.
Silence was right up his alley. But it wasn’t like Eliza not to fill in his gaps.
Words ran through his mind. Slowly at first. And then more rapidly. What to say? How much to say? When to say it?
He owed her. So much. For the previous night. For the past. And for the happily-ever-after he probably wouldn’t be able to give her.
“I did marry Bonita because I thought I could be the father her son clearly needed.” Celery stalks, cut into thin strips, took turns beneath his blade. Quick. Precise. Sharp cuts that left no strings.
He’d had some asinine plan back then that it would be his way of atoning for his sins. That he could give back some of what he’d taken. As Eliza had stated the night before, he had, at one time, thought that he’d make a great dad. Had wanted kids of his own almost as badly as he’d wanted Eliza.
Standing at the stove across the counter from him, she’d been stirring. Her hand still on the big metal spoon, she seemed to freeze, her spoon standing upright in the pan.
Pierce had more to say. He just wasn’t sure what. He chopped. And eventually she started to stir again, too.
They finished their preparation, classical music playing softly in the background. Did the dishes side by side. And went into their room.
He brushed his teeth while she washed her face. But when she was about to undress and get ready for bed, Pierce took her hand, led her over to the chintz-covered stool at her antique dressing table. He lit candles. Put on Beethoven. Turned off the lights.
And drew her a lavender-scented bath.
Tonight wasn’t about him. It was about making it up to her—all of the things she’d lost because of him, the things she continued to sacrifice.
It was about showing her the things he couldn’t say.
As his lovely wife sat on the edge of the tub, still in her robe, waiting for the bubble bath he’d started for her to fill, he slipped out to pour two glasses of iced lemon water. Placing them on one of her silver serving trays, he added a small dish of milk chocolate shavings—Eliza’s favorite indulgence—and, for himself, a couple of her chocolate cream cookies.
She looked up when he returned, tray in hand, fully dressed in his dark blue pants, shirt and slip-on boat shoes.
“You’ll stay with me?” she asked. Even now, she welcomed him.
Pierce swallowed. Shook his head. Set down the tray and handed her a water and the plate of chocolate.
“I wish you’d at least get comfortable,” she said, testing the water in the tub with a frown.
He was scaring her. The last thing he’d meant to do.
So he went to change into the blue chenille robe she’d bought him for Christmas, and sank to the floor of the bathroom, his back against the wall.
That was Pierce. Always with his back to the wall. Or against a wall.
Still in her robe, she’d turned off the water, but he knew she wouldn’t get in until he’d said what he had to say.
“Two things,” he said, keeping his voice low as he invaded the peace with which he’d purposely surrounded her. “First, it took less than a year of marriage for me to know that the man I am today, the man I became in the Middle East, could not ever be a father.”
Her chocolate sat untouched on the side of the double-wide cast iron tub—a luxury he suspected had been built in more modern times to emulate a tub of old. It had been holding court in the largely decorated with
