chairs, was the product of hours of research on quality and brand names.
She’d said as little as possible about the foster homes she’d grown up in, from age ten to seventeen after Grammie died, and she’d never, ever, ever even hinted at the desperate straits she’d been in when he’d walked into her restaurant that first morning and given her the eye.
It wasn’t going to happen. It just wasn’t.
MJ’s first sizzling state of shock switched quickly to anger and an absolute refusal to accept his marriage was over. He found some chicken nuggets and oven fries in the freezer and nuked them in the microwave. While they were heating, he went into the bedroom and threw a couple of days’ worth of clothing into an overnight bag. The microwave pinged and he ate directly from the plastic dish, while he got on the phone and called his junior attending surgeon.
“Raj, something’s come up, and I won’t be available tomorrow.”
“I’m sorry, Dr. McKinley. I hope nothing’s wrong.” The deep and slightly accented voice at the other end of the line strove to find the midpoint between professional distance and courteous concern.
“Everything’s fine. Family stuff. But let me catch you up on the schedule.” He switched quickly to the common language of their profession—the medical jargon and shorthand that safely took away any sense of the personal. In a couple of minutes, he covered from memory and electronic notes on his phone every patient going in for surgery tomorrow, as well as hitting the major points on several more cases that were either pre- or post-op. “Call me from the O.R. if you have any trouble with the Parker girl, because she’s going to be tricky,” he instructed. “You have the scans and the X-rays. But call me.”
He hated delegating. He was a better surgeon than most of the orthopedic specialists he knew, and that wasn’t arrogance; it was simply a fact.
Okay, correction: it was arrogance and fact.
He shoved the phone in his pocket, debating making another call or two—his office manager first, and then Oliver Marks, because they had a lunch plan in the works—but he could call later, or text. He wasn’t texting Alicia. She’d given no warning. He’d do the same. It would be midnight or later by the time he arrived, but too bad. When your whole world turned upside down, time ceased to count.
By seven-twenty he was down in the building’s underground parking garage, with his overnight bag in the trunk and his engine warming.
His marriage was not going to end with an arid little note from Alicia and divorce lawyers blazing their legal guns at fifty paces. He needed to confront her face-to-face, find out what was behind this, make her see.
See what?
His gut churned as he gunned the car in Reverse and squealed the tires on the echoing concrete.
See that this was impossible. Wrong. Just … impossible.
He seemed to have no other words for it than those two. Impossible and wrong. After almost five hours driving, with clenched hands aching on the wheel and jaw wired tight, he pulled into one of the twin driveways of his brother Andy’s elegant and cleverly subdivided Victorian house in Radford, Vermont, with no more idea of what he wanted to say to his wife than he’d had when he started.
The hammering on the door wrenched Alicia out of her restless, unhappy sleep. For about ten seconds, her heart thumped so hard in her chest that it interfered with her breathing and her skin prickled and stung with fear, but then she knew what was happening.
MJ.
Of course.
Why hadn’t she thought that he would race up here for a confrontation the moment he read her note? He had a highly developed need to win in any situation he encountered, and the prospect of a divorce was no exception.
She looked at the clock. Five minutes to midnight. It seemed appropriate. He must have gotten home from the hospital early tonight. Either that or he’d driven up here way too fast.
Probably both.
She felt sick at the thought of the imminent clash between them, and was only glad that Andy and Claudia were in New York City for a few days and weren’t around to hear anything through the walls.
She had called them to ask if she and the children could use the rental apartment, “just to get away for a short break and see the fall colors,” and they’d said of course she could, given her some practical instructions and told her where she could find the key. She dreaded their return four days from now, when she would have to tell them the truth.
She dreaded the next few minutes far more.
MJ hammered at the door again. Much more of it and he would wake the children, and that was the last thing she wanted. She rolled out of bed, grabbed a robe from where she’d left it on a chair in the corner of the room and hurried down, her bare feet chilling quickly on the wooden stairs and her whole body aching with reluctance and dread.
She snatched the door open just as he was about to batter his fist against it once more, so she caught him with it raised in the air, then saw the strong surgeon’s fingers slowly uncurl and drop back to his side.
He hadn’t showered or changed after his day’s work. He was still wearing the dark suit pants and one of the crisp white business shirts he favored whenever he wasn’t wearing scrubs. There was a bright moon in the sky and it picked out the white of the shirt and made it glow against the darker matte of his skin.
He’d taken off his tie and opened the shirt at the top for comfort, and his hair was windblown from driving with the car window cracked open. He liked to drive that way in all weather except the dead of winter, said it was bracing. His shirtsleeves were rolled to the elbow and the shirttail had come untucked at one side, so for once—unusually—there was something rakish about him.
His breathing was heavier than usual and ragged at the edges. His high, square brow was pleated in a tight frown, and there was an odd, numb look to his mouth, even in the low light spilling onto his face from inside the house.
He looked a mess.
He opened his mouth to speak, but then nothing came out and Alicia didn’t have the words for this situation, either, so they just stared at each other, helpless and hostile and so painfully far apart.
In the end, they both spoke in the same moment.
“I’m not inviting you in.”
“You can’t do this, Alicia.”
They went silent again. Despite what she’d just said, she almost moved aside to let him across the threshold. The patterns of seven years were hard to kick. She expected him to force the issue, simply barge past her with or without her consent, but he didn’t.
He actually stepped back, spread his hands a little and conceded her victory. “All right, if you don’t want me in the house, then that’s your right and your choice.”
“Thank you. Yes.”
“But I hate that you’re doing this. That you left a note.”
“You wanted us to talk about it in front of Abby and Tyler?”
“You’ve
