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“Nor, look at me. There are times you have to accept that some things are bigger than any one person. Bigger than any one relationship. Four months is nothing to us. A blip in our life.”
She shook her head and stepped out of his reach. “No, it’s four months this time. Then five months the next time. Then a year after that. It’s always going to be you needing to be on the ocean finding more and more data. Thinking you can prove that climate change is happening and suddenly everyone will listen to you.”
“Yes, Nor. The data I collect. It’s important. Not just for me but for everyone on this planet.”
“You have to make a choice. You have to choose. A life with me or a life on the ocean. But you can’t have both.”
He frowned. “Ultimatums? You’re sitting there, right now, issuing me an ultimatum. How crappy is that?”
Eleanor could feel tears welling up, but she worked hard to make sure her voice didn’t crack when she said it. “Max, do you love me?”
“With everything I am.”
She smiled sadly. Because it was true. It’s what she felt every day. But only when he was here. Only when he was with her. They had dated a mere seven months before he proposed. Before she accepted. Her mother had thought the proposal had come too soon. So much so that she refused to put together any kind of wedding until the two of them came to their senses and waited at least a year.
Giving Eleanor no option other than the obvious one. They’d eloped. To this day, almost three years later, her mother was still furious about it.
“We’ve been married nearly three years, and in that time we’ve only been together eighteen months. I can’t...I can’t...keep doing this.”
“Well, maybe it’s time you thought about your own passions.”
It felt like a slap of some kind. “What?”
“Look, I know it’s hard when I’m gone. It’s hard for me, too. You think I like spending my days with a bunch of other smelly scientists and rough sailors on the freezing cold Arctic Ocean? I like spending my days with you. I like spending my nights with my wife. I like screwing my wife. I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t think it was vitally important. So while I’m gone, maybe you need to find that thing, too. The thing you think is important.”
“I think you’re important,” Eleanor told him. Not sure why he was saying what he was saying.
“Nor, I can’t be the only thing in your life. That is not the woman I married. You’re not this clingy weak thing. You are Eleanor Gaffney. You’re the girl who shook off her small Nebraska town, who found a way to put herself through school. You were going to rule the world. What happened to that girl?”
You married her and took her to a research facility in northern Norway. Eleanor wanted to say those things, but it sounded pathetic in her own head. Then she did the only thing she could think of, the thing they had both talked about having.
“We talked about getting pregnant this year,” she said.
Another snort. “Really? You’re pulling the baby card?”
The sound of his disbelief made her furious. “A baby is not a card. It’s supposed to be about having family. It’s what we both talked about wanting. We talked about doing it this year!”
“Are you pregnant now?”
“No,” she told him.
“Then when I get back in four months, we’ll talk about this. But I mean it, Nor, you need to find out what you want to do with yourself, with your life. Because being my wife, and hell, being the mother to our future children, isn’t enough. You need something for you.”
“I studied business! What the hell am I supposed to do with that in Trondheim? Create an ice-selling business? Oh, I know! What about a new pickled herring recipe?”
He had the audacity to smile at her. “Are you going to kiss me goodbye? I’m running late as it is.”
Eleanor shook her head as it finally settled on her. The truth. He was leaving. He was leaving, and his answer to that was she needed to find a hobby that would occupy her time while he was away.
This was going to be her life. Watching him leave and waiting for him to come back. She hadn’t known that’s what it would be when she married him. She didn’t know that going in or she would have...
You would have married him anyway. Your mother was right. You’re too stubborn for your own good.
“I don’t think you understand what I’ve been trying to tell you. If you leave me, I’m leaving you.”
Eleanor watched as his whole body tensed.
Max shook his head. “You don’t mean it.”
“Look at me, Max.” Eleanor stood in front of him, and she knew in her heart she meant every word she said. It would take all her courage to leave him, but she would do it. “I love you. Like no one I’ve ever loved before. But I can’t spend my life doing this. Watching you leave. So it might break me, but if you leave, then I’m gone.”
“I’m not going to be brought to heel by my wife,” he snapped. “I’m not your damn dog.”
“I’m not trying to do that. I’m trying to save our marriage. You think love is enough.”
“It should be,” he shouted.
“It’s not. It’s about compromise and working together and finding a solution. It’s not about you telling me the day before, Sorry, babe, I need to leave for a while, and that while is four months.”
“The funding came though from Tom yesterday. I had no control over that. Or when the ship leaves. I told you that, too.”
“Max! You’re not listening to me.”
“Eleanor, I’m hearing you loud and clear. Now you’re not listening to me. I don’t do threats. I don’t do ultimatums. I have a real opportunity to collect meaningful data that might help people really see what’s happening to our planet. I’m sorry, but that’s more important than four months of our marriage.”
She swallowed as the words penetrated her skull. “No, Max,” she said sadly. “What you mean is that it’s more important than me.”
“Nor...”
She took a step away. “Stay safe.”
“I’ll see you in four months.”
She shook her head. “No. You won’t.”
He wrapped a hand around her neck and forced her to hold still for his kiss. Not that he ever had to force her to kiss him. Kissing Max Harper was her own particular addiction.
And this might be their last kiss.
Knowing that, she clung to him. Wrapped her arms around his neck and gave him everything that she was. Everything that she ever would be.
Until finally she couldn’t take it anymore and she pulled away.
When she did, she was crying. “I love you, Max Harper.”
“I know. Which is how I know I’ll see you in four months.”
Four months later
HE HADN’T BELIEVED HER. When she said she would leave him, he just couldn’t believe she would do it. They loved each other. Sometimes almost too much. It was a scary thing to know how vulnerable you were when you loved someone that much.
Which was why he hadn’t believed her when she said she would leave him.
Except the empty house told its own story. So did the people they were renting it from.
Mrs. Harper had left months ago. Right after he left on his trip.
The only thing waiting for him was a large brown envelope with the name of an attorney’s office in the upper left corner.
He wasn’t going to open it. He wasn’t going to see what she chose to throw away. He was going to do what he needed to do, then he was going after her.
He’d come home with a sick feeling of dread in his stomach. Not because he even entertained the idea that she would leave him. He looked at his life, his work as if he was at war. Against time, against the forces of nature and the forces of mankind. He was a soldier, and their marriage was like any other military marriage. One where he would need to be deployed from time to time.
So the feeling of dread he’d felt coming home was knowing he would have to tell her that he was turning around and heading out in a few weeks. The financing for yet another extension had come through.
He’d expected more shouting, more fighting. He’d thought he could power through all of that with some mind-blowing sex that would remind her of what they had. How incendiary they could be.
He’d thought wrong.
It didn’t matter. Max stared at the brown envelope with his name on it, then dumped it in the trash, unopened.
He would fix this. He would head out to sea for just a few more weeks, finish what he needed to finish, then he would go find her. Because there was no world he could live in where they weren’t together.
Nor was angry. She was hurt. He knew that. But he also knew he could fix both those things. One more trip, then they could move forward with their life together.
Three months later
“SELENA?” ELEANOR CALLED to her assistant. Selena had been the first official employee of Head to Toe, Eleanor’s start-up company. “The red or burgundy?”
Eleanor held the ties against the mannequin’s neck.
Selena assessed the outfit, then nodded. “The red.”
“I agree.”
The two were working in the space Eleanor had recently rented. It was an open loft area in downtown Denver that would be perfect as they continued to expand. Running Head to Toe out of her apartment just wasn’t practical anymore.
The business was a simple concept directed at busy single men. Head to Toe put together a complete outfit that would fit whatever need those men had. An outfit composed by women who knew what they were doing.
Don’t have a woman in your life who can tell you what tie to wear? What color looks best on you? That, no, that belt and those shoes don’t match. Try Head to Toe!
It had been the banner that ran along the top of the website, and, with the help of some targeted Facebook ads, orders had started to pour in. Business casual, formal, club scene and even the local bar look. They told Eleanor what they liked to wear, how they wanted to look, and Eleanor put together the perfect outfit for them. As the orders continued to come, she spent more time focusing on advertising. Now her market research was generating real results.
So much that, beyond the warehouse people she’d hired to handle shipping and Selena—whom she had hired a few months ago to help keep up with orders—Eleanor was now looking to expand further with a dedicated client service support team.
Which meant filling the loft with office furniture and computers.
A sign on the door.
Actually, she needed the door first.
It had become what felt like a 24/7 effort on her part, but she didn’t mind the work. Watching something grow under her efforts was one of the most satisfying things she’d ever done.
Beyond that, the constant workload stopped her from thinking about Max.
Most days.
She heard a hesitant knock on the doorframe, which outlined the entrance to the space. Eleanor assumed it was her next interview. She was looking for someone with experience who could help her grow both a design team as well as a customer service department.
While there were men out there who had no problem navigating the online site, some men had a harder time using the tools provided to get a sense of what their own personal style was.
They liked talking directly to Eleanor and Selena, but quite frankly, neither could keep up with the phone calls any longer.
Eleanor peeked around the mannequin, startled to find Harry. Her former father-in-law.
Or more accurately current father-in-law as Max had yet to sign the divorce papers. Eleanor assumed he was being stubborn, but she couldn’t imagine how that was supposed to be a strategy for him.
Any hope she’d had about their marriage had gone out the door when four months after she left him ticked by on her calendar and she hadn’t heard from him. Not even an irate call at some off hour because he’d be phoning her from Norway to tell her to go eff herself.
Instead, there had been only silence. Which hurt more than anything. Because it told her, more than all of his professions of love, that leaving her had been too easy for him. Where for her, if it hadn’t been for her idea for this business, she might have crawled into a hole and stayed there forever.
Maybe Harry had come as an envoy. With the papers. To put an end to the marriage finally.
Eleanor walked through the open loft to meet him. She’d seen both him and Sarah when she’d gotten back. She’d considered them her family, and it had been almost as devastating to tell them she was leaving as it had been actually leaving Max.
She knew they didn’t understand. She knew she’d hurt them. But Max had left her with no options.
“Hello, Harry.”
“Nor,” he said, using Max’s nickname for her. Max had always felt Eleanor was too regal, and since he was no damn king, he liked to call her by a name that was his and his alone.
It hurt, she thought. Even after all this time. Eleanor had lost her own father when she was just eighteen. Having Harry in her life had filled a hole that had been empty. Divorcing Max had brought back even that pain. The pain of not having that father figure in her world, who was always there with a ready hug to tell her everything was going to be okay.
“How is Sarah?”
He didn’t look good, Eleanor thought. He looked older than she remembered when it had been only a few months since she’d last seen him. Suddenly now, she was worried. Was someone sick?
“I don’t know how to tell you this,” he said gruffly. “So I’m just going to come out and say it. Max is...Max is gone.”
“Gone? What do you mean? Off on another assignment? I suppose I assumed that.”
Harry shook his head. “No. After he got back from the last assignment, he called us to tell us what happened with you two. We told him you had been by to see us and explain. He said they had gotten additional funding, and he was going to do another month at sea. That as soon as he got back he was going to come home to the States and fix things between you two. I told him he should do that now. I told him how serious you seemed about the whole thing. That you had said you wanted a divorce. But you know how stubborn he can be.”
She did. She knew exactly how stubborn he could be.
“The ship...it’s gone. They think it went down in a storm. They’ve been looking for weeks and weeks. But there is no communication and no sign of it on any radar. I just got a call from the university today. They told us at this point we have to assume there were no survivors.”
He stopped talking, and Eleanor took a second to process what he was saying.
