When Valentines Collide

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A child.

The white lines of the road blurred at the sudden sting of tears. Why couldn’t Matt just let it go? Not every couple had children. Not everyone was meant to be parents.

But in the last six years her husband had grown obsessed. From endless tests to new and innovative positions, Matthew was determined to have a child. Making love had become sex and sex had become a dull, emotionless act that had left her feeling more empty and dissatisfied than when they started.

Matt never noticed. After all, to a man, an orgasm was an orgasm.

Chanté reached the point that she didn’t even bother faking it anymore. And if she wasn’t enjoying it, then why do it?

Still, the other night, an old familiar spark had flared between them. Or had she imagined it? She mulled the question over a moment, but in the end was no closer to an answer than she was that night.

But I wanted to make love to him.

That was an inescapable fact.

After a marathon of hot and sweaty sex, Edie and Seth curled into a nice spoon while they waited to catch their next wind.

“God, you’re beautiful,” Seth panted, peppering his wife’s back with butterfly kisses.

“You just make sure you don’t forget it,” Edie purred and wiggled her rump against his growing erection.

Seth laughed but reached over and snatched a white Kleenex, a surrender flag, from the nightstand and waved it in front of his wife. “I give up. I can’t go on without the aid of a medic.”

Edie groaned and then inched out of their beloved spoon to roll over and face him. “You know if you keep conking out on me, I just might have to get myself a younger man.”

“Then I’ll just have to get myself an older woman. Someone who knows how to roll over and go to sleep after four rounds.”

“Better not.” Edie giggled before she laid another long, hot kiss on him. When she pulled away, she gazed deep into his eyes. “Promise me that we’ll always be like this.”

“I promise that we’ll always be like this.”

“Even when I grow old and my skin gets all wrinkly?”

“Even then.”

“Even when my hair turns all gray and I’ll have to put my teeth in a glass next to the bed?”

“Ooh, no teeth, huh? That could come in handy.”

Edie popped him on the arm. “Promise.”

Seth chuckled and drew her soft body close. “I promise to love you until my dying breath.” He kissed her upturned nose.

Edie released a long sigh and tried to relax against him.

“Something else is on your mind. Out with it.”

“Oh,” she said disconsolately. “It’s nothing.”

“It sure doesn’t sound like nothing.”

She hesitated a moment, kissed his firm chest, and then tilted her head back so that she met his gaze in the dimly lit room. “Did you talk to Matthew today?”

It was Seth’s turn to sigh wearily. “Yeah, I guess you can say that.”

“I take it you ran into the same brick wall I did with Chanté?”

“Unfortunately.” He rolled onto his back, but kept Edie locked in his arm. “I think they’re worse off than I originally thought.”

“What do you mean?”

Seth relayed his suspicions about Matt’s potentially straying eye and waited for the eruptions he knew that would follow. Edie and Chanté were best friends, after all. Jumping to her girl’s defense was only natural.

But she said nothing.

In a way, the quiet was more unsettling than any explosion.

“Baby?”

“Do you think he’ll have an affair?”

Seth drew in a deep breath while he replayed what he’d seen in Matt’s dressing room and what he knew of his friend’s character. He wanted to say “no, absolutely not,” but something kept the words from falling from his lips.

Edie sat up. When their eyes met again, Seth read the sadness she felt for her friend. It had nothing to do with book sales or public image.

“We have to try harder,” she whispered. “Everyone knows they’re soul mates.”

“That doesn’t mean anything, if they don’t know they’re soul mates,” he reasoned, caressing her arm. “We can lead deer to water, but we can’t make them drink.”

With a slow nod, she turned toward the window. As she gazed out at the full moon, Seth watched as a smile crept across her face.

“We’re going to have to do more than just lead them to the water,” she said.

Seth frowned, lost on her meaning.