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They’d been wrong.
“Uh, Mom?” Emmie said, her voice now an urgent whisper as she put on a pair of oven mitts and switched out baked cookies for her loaded sheet of dough. “When I needed a ride to work, the only person available was—”
The door to the kitchen swung open and for the second time in five minutes, Melanie drew in a sharp breath that became a block in her windpipe.
Cade.
He entered the small kitchen, seeming to take up half the space without even trying. Melanie swallowed hard, surprised by the instantaneous, explosive gut reaction to her husband.
Correction: almost ex-husband.
Apparently her hormones hadn’t received the separation papers, nor read over the draft of the divorce agreement, because they were still screaming attraction.
And why wouldn’t they? Cade hadn’t changed at all in the year they’d been apart. A few more crinkles around his blue eyes, the perpetual worry line above his dark brows etched a little deeper, but overall he was as handsome as he had been when she’d still loved him. He may be a bit disheveled by the stress of his day, but he was still sexy.
Really sexy. Familiar desire rose inside her, coupled with the longing to touch his face, run a hand down his chest, feel the security of his long, lean body against hers. The temperature in the room seemed to multiply. Melanie pulled at the neck of her T-shirt and checked the air conditioner. Nothing broken there—
Except for her resolve.
Attraction, though, had never been their problem. Marriages weren’t based solely on the swirling, tangling pulses of estrogen and testosterone. They needed communication, understanding, give and take.
And a man who wanted more for his wife than perfecting her baked Alaska and diaper changing.
Cade still sported the same athletic physique—trim, broad-shouldered, a chest of hard, tight planes. It had never been solely his body that had attracted Melanie, though she hadn’t minded the nice physical package that had wrapped around Cade.
It had been his eyes. And his smile.
Right now, the smile was absent, but those eyes—the same big blue eyes that had drawn her attention that first day in freshman year, standing in the hall outside Mrs. Owen’s art class—they now riveted her attention for a brief, taut second, before she remembered the man may have incredible eyes, but horrible husband skills. He’d never listened to her, not really, never heard her when she talked about her dreams, her goals. He’d been as focused as a horse with blinders, seeing only one road ahead—for both of them.
And when it had really mattered, Cade hadn’t been there at all.
The oven timer dinged. Cookies. She needed to tend to the cookies. Melanie grabbed a spatula and a pot holder, but her attention was still all on Cade, not the hot pan she withdrew from the oven.
“Melanie?” Jeannie asked, her voice concerned, seeming to come from a thousand miles away. “I really have to get to the salon, but I wanted to be sure you and Cade can do me this eensy weensy favor. You will do it, right?”
“Hi, Melanie,” Cade said, his voice the same deep baritone she’d known for more than half her life. Once upon a time, that sound had made her heart sing. “Is it okay if I stay here for a bit?” he said. “I’ve got some time to kill before a meeting.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Melanie said. And promptly dropped the spatula. It landed on the vinyl floor with a soft clatter.
“Oh, great!” Jeannie cried. “I’ll see you a week from Friday then!” She giggled. “You and Cade. It’ll be the best speech ever. You guys always did have a way with words. And a lot more.” She let out another laugh, then hung up.
“No! I meant to say no!” Melanie yelled into the phone, scrambling for the spatula, but Jeannie was already gone, off for some French tips.
The yes had been for Cade, not Jeannie. Somehow, the sight of him after so much time apart had knocked her off-kilter. As it had in the early days, before their “way with words” became more about flinging them around the living room in arguments that went nowhere.
Emmie tossed her mother a grin, then turned away and started sliding the cookies onto the cooling rack. Melanie tossed the spatula into the sink, all thumbs and as consternated as a chicken in a fox den.
She grabbed a warm chocolate chip cookie off the wire cooling rack and stuffed it in her mouth before she could make the same mistake twice—
Say yes when she really meant to say no.
CHAPTER TWO
AS HIS DAUGHTER HANDED him a cup of coffee, Cade watched the woman he’d once thought he knew better than himself hurry between the espresso machine and the bakery case, greeting customers by name, laughing at their jokes, dispensing coffee with a happy, friendly cheer—and wondered for the thousandth time when they had slipped off their common track.
Somewhere between “I do” and “I don’t,” something had gone wrong in his marriage. He was a corporate lawyer. His specialty was fixing tangled legal messes. Why couldn’t he fix the one in his own house?
He’d tried, Lord knew he’d tried, but Melanie had thrown up a wall and refused to remove a single chink in the brick.
God, he missed her. Every morning, he woke up to an empty space in his bed and an ache in his chest that no painkiller could soothe. At night, the talking heads on TV kept him company instead of the soft tones of Melanie, telling him about her day, about something Emmie had said or done.
He took a seat at one of the tables, watching his wife’s lithe, fluid movements. She was still as beautiful as the day he’d married her. A little heavier, but over the years he’d found he liked the extra weight on her hips and waist, the fullness in her breasts. The womanly curves had always held a magical comfort, soothing him at the end of a stressful day.
Always, Melanie had been there, supporting him in those early days when it seemed he’d never rise above the minion position of law clerk.
He poured sugar into his cup. It dissolved as easily as the bonds of his marriage.
Still, he’d put off signing the papers that would file their divorce. He had hope, damn it, that this could be fixed. That he could broker a mutually satisfactory agreement, a return to business as usual, something he had done a thousand times between warring corporations.
Every time he looked at Melanie, a constant smile curved across her face as she chatted and poured, the ache in his chest quadrupled. Need for her—not just sexual need, but an indefinable, untouchable need that ran bone-deep—stirred in his gut, rushing through his veins. He wanted to take her in his arms, hold her to his chest and kiss her until he made this past year go away.
But deep in his heart he knew they’d gone way beyond the point where a simple kiss could solve anything.
“Dad,” Emmie said, coming over to him. Now a college sophomore, Emmie had the same heart-shaped face and delicate features as her mother, except now her hair was spiked, her lips painted a dark crimson.
“Sit at the counter. It’s way more comfortable.”
Before he could protest, his daughter had taken his cup of Kenyan roast and put it on the laminate surface. Three feet from Melanie. He and Melanie exchanged a quick, knowing glance.
Obviously she knew Emmie was trying to bring them together. Why shouldn’t she? Emmie hadn’t asked for the divorce and she’d made it clear she didn’t like alternating between her two parents’ homes for weekly dinners and occasional laundry stops, like a perpetual ping-pong game.
Cade sure as hell wasn’t happy watching his marriage whittle away, either.
He rose and crossed to the wooden bar, settling onto one of the cushioned stools. “You’ve created a nice place here.”
He hadn’t seen his wife in a year and that was the best he could come up with? This is nice?
After this, he was heading to the bookstore to see if there was a Resurrecting Your Marriage for Dummies. Because clearly this dummy was failing at Wooing Back a Wife 101.
“Thanks,” Melanie said. She wiped off the steamer spout, then tossed the dirty cloth into a bucket of laundry inside the kitchen. She washed her hands and picked up the rack of freshly baked cookies and began loading them into the glass case, arranging them as carefully as she used to arrange the pillows in their living room.
“Is it going well?” Cade asked. “From what I’ve seen, this place is as popular as an elf at Christmas.”
She laughed. “Things are going much better than expected.”
He heard the undertones of their last fight in those two sentences. Cade was smart enough to back away from that. “I’m happy for you, Melanie.”
Emmie brushed by him, giving him an elbow hint. “Say something, Dad,” she whispered.
Cade held up his hands and looked to Emmie for help. She gave him the duh look she’d perfected by her sixteenth birthday. Oh, yeah, he was the dad. He was supposed to have all the answers.
He did—all but this one.
Cade shifted on the stool. “Are you going to tease your hair and unearth that Kiss concert T-shirt for Friday night?”
She chuckled. “Oh gosh, that was a thousand years ago. I don’t think I saved the shirt.”
“You did. Bottom drawer, on the right.” He knew, because he’d been in their dresser after she’d left, looking for something, and come across the worn image of Gene Simmons. For a moment, Cade had been back there, in the thirtieth row, rocking along with Melanie as they held up a lighter during a ballad and sang along until their voices cracked.
“I remember that night,” she said softly, then shook her head and got busy with the cookies again. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter because I’m not going to the reunion. I’ll have to save the Aqua Net for another night.”
She’d tried to pass it off as a joke, but Cade wasn’t laughing. “Didn’t you just tell Jeannie you would go?” He gestured toward the phone. “I couldn’t help but overhear. Jeannie’s voice is like a bullhorn.”
“I only said yes to—”
“Get her off your back?” He chuckled, reaching for that light, easy feeling again. It seemed to flit in and out, as ungraspable as a moth. “I know the feeling. It’s why I said yes, too.”
Emmie headed into the back of the shop, to get supplies or something, Cade supposed. As soon as their daughter was out of earshot, Melanie stopped working on the cookies, leaned an arm over the glass case and glared at him. “Why did you tell Jeannie we were still together?”
“I think there’s still a chance to work this out. You don’t throw nineteen years away on a whim.”
“You think this was a whim?” She shook her head, then lowered her voice. “It was the hardest decision I have ever made.”
Hurt stabbed at his chest, thinking of how quickly she’d been gone, how fast she’d escaped her half of their life. “I doubt that.”
She let out a gust of frustration. “Sign the papers, Cade. It’s over.”
“No.” He slipped off the stool and came around to the back of the glass case. “I’m done catwalking around the issue, biding my time. Thinking all you needed was a little space. I want answers, Mel, a solution.” He drew within inches of her. “Tell me what went wrong so I can change it.”
She threw up her hands. “Our marriage isn’t a clock, Cade. You can’t replace a couple gears and call it good as new.”
“And you can’t just throw it out because you wanted a better model.”
“That isn’t why I left.” Melanie circled the counter and began wiping down the case’s glass with an ammonia-scented cleaner and a white cotton cloth. An old man snored lightly on the sofa across the room, the paper on his torso fluttering as his chest rose up and down. “We made a mistake,” she said under her breath. “Why can’t you just let it go?”
“Because I still love you.” The words tore from his throat, contained in his chest for so long, fenced in by a hope that grew dimmer with every day Melanie refused his calls, ignored his e-mails, refused his requests to talk.
She shook her head and when she did, he saw the glimmer of tears in her eyes. “You don’t even know me.”
I would if you’d give me a chance, he wanted to scream. Let me try again. Don’t take away the one rock I’ve always stood on.
Before he could say anything, the bell rang and a woman in a business suit strode into the small shop and up to the register. Emmie came out of the back, headed to the register and greeted the woman, but her attention, Cade knew, was half on her parents.
Melanie took out some of her frustrations on the glass case, scrubbing it until it gleamed like silver. As her left hand rose up to swipe away a smear, a glint caught Cade’s eye.
Her wedding ring.
The same plain gold band he’d slipped on her finger in the county courthouse nearly twenty years ago.
A wave of hope rose within him, but he held it back. Cade was nothing if not a practical man. His wife may still be wearing her ring, but she’d gone back to using her maiden name and hadn’t slept in his bed for over a year. A piece of jewelry didn’t mean anything.
And yet, he hoped like hell it did.
“Mellie,” he said, slipping into the habit of her nickname. He grabbed her hand, stopping her from cleaning the glass into oblivion. He lowered his voice and turned so that the customer—and Emmie—couldn’t see or overhear them. “Go with me to the reunion. Wear that T-shirt and that bright pink lipstick you used to love. Go back in time with me, for one night. We could go out to dinner first, talk—”
“About what, Cade?” A glimmer washed over the deep thunderstorm of green in her eyes. Behind them, Emmie watched out of the corner of her eye, her movements quiet and small as she finished the customer’s latte and poured the steamed milk into a paper cup emblazoned with the bright crimson Cuppa Life logo.
Melanie noticed their daughter’s interest and led Cade into the small kitchen space, letting the door shut behind them. The close quarters only quadrupled Cade’s awareness of Melanie, of the way her chest rose and fell with each breath, the silky blond tendrils drifting about her shoulders, the jeans hugging her hips.
He wanted to kiss her, to close the gap between them. If only a simple meeting of their bodies would be enough to bridge the chasm. But even Cade knew it wasn’t that simple.
“Talk about what?” she repeated. “About how I failed you?” she said. “As a wife, a mother? About how you were at work—always at work—even when I needed you most?”
Regret slammed into his gut. He didn’t want to think about that day. Ever.
It was the one tape he couldn’t rewind. Couldn’t delete. Couldn’t do over. “Melanie, I’ve said I was sorry a hundred times.”
She sighed. “It’s not about being sorry, Cade, it’s about changing what got us there in the first place.”
“That doesn’t work if only one of us is trying,” he countered. “And I’m trying damn it. Go with me, Mel. For one night be my wife again.”
“I can’t put on that show anymore.” She held her ground, arms crossed over her chest. “Besides, did Jeannie tell you she wanted us to make a speech?”
“Isn’t that supposed to be the class president’s thing?”
“She thought it would be…” Her voice trailed off.
“Be what?” Cade asked, leaning closer, inhaling the scent of her skin, the sweetness of fresh-baked cookies, of the woman he’d lived with more than half his life. “Would be what, Melanie?” Cade whispered, his mouth so close to hers, all it would take was a few inches of movement to kiss her. To have her in his arms, against his heart.
“Romantic,” she said after a minute, expelling a disgusted sigh on the word. “The whole Prom King and Queen still together thing.”
He moved back a step. “But we aren’t, are we?”
She shook her head, resolute. “No, we’re not.”
The need for her smoldered inside him, a wildfire ready to erupt. He still loved her, damn it, and refused to let her quit so easily.
His gaze traveled down, to her lips, her jaw, the delicate arch of her throat. The old attraction that had simmered between them for more than twenty years ignited anew in his chest, the embers never really extinguished.
He wanted her, Lord, did he want her. He wanted to sweep her off her feet, carry her out of this shop and back to their bed. Every fiber in his being ached to feel her familiar, sweet body beneath his, to lose himself inside her, to find that connection he’d never found anywhere else.
A slight flush crept into Melanie’s cheeks, warming them to cotton-candy-pink. She opened her mouth, shut it again, then reached for a spoon, succeeding only in knocking it along the counter. It skittered under a display stand of teas. Was she thinking the same thing?
Then it was gone, and she was back to all business. “The idea of going together and pretending we’re still together is—”
“Insane,” he finished.
Melanie reached for a towel, folding, then unfolding and refolding it, a nervous habit he recognized—and also a sign of hope. Maybe not much, but he’d take whatever he could get.
