The Solitude of Passion (33 page)

“You’re so beautiful.” I pull her down and press my lips over hers. We indulge in another mouthwatering kiss and somehow manage to forget the world for the next few seconds. I can lose entire decades just listening to the small moans of pleasure that escape her throat when we’re together like this.

The front door rattles then slams.

“Honey, I’m
home!
” Mitch shouts up the stairwell with an all too jovial tone.

“Perfect.” I twist my lips.

Lee blesses me with another quick kiss. Somehow that small gesture assures me I’ve still got an in, that I’ve got more than a foot in the door and perhaps a body to lie next to at night.

“Hey”—she whispers, scratching at my chest—“how’d you think it went today?”

“Better than expected.” The fact I didn’t have to yank out my intestines and strangle Mitch with them was a major plus. “But I’m not going to lie, it makes me insane that you feel like you’re married to two people.” I swallow down the tennis ball forming in my throat. “But I get it.”

“Max.” She gives a peaceable smile that quells me far more than words could ever do. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m here for you, I swear it—and for our marriage. I just need help wrapping my head around the fact Mitch is alive. That’s all, I promise.”

This time I don’t fight it. My eyes brim with tears, and I blink into her several times. “You’re not leaving?”

“No.” She answers so quick—so sure, I’m stunned by this.

“I love you so much it hurts.” I pull her in and kiss her, deep and wide as the unknowable ocean. Lee just spilt an entire sea of assurances.

I have my wife back.

I’m not losing her to Mitch Townsend, not to anyone.

I handle dinner with Mitch just fine. I offer to do the dishes and even manage to whistle while I work to prove I’m not worried about any “date” he’s taking her on tomorrow night. Lee helps Stella with her homework at the table, and I can’t stop stealing glances at her, smiling like an idiot. Of course, I’m not going to rub the conversation I had earlier in Mitch’s face even though it takes everything in me not to. Nope. It’s definitely good enough watching him writhe in all my glory.

He eyes me like a vulture once I tell the kids to get upstairs and brush their teeth.

I get Stella and Eli to bed in record time, promising them both a lollipop if they stay put for the night.

I head into the bedroom where, contrary to Mitch’s greatest wish, I’m still allowed to reside.

Lee comes out of the bathroom, showered with her hair still damp on the ends. She’s wearing the purple silk nightie I bought for her birthday, and I take it as a green light of good things to come—namely me. I don’t need a hand-written invitation. I replace the pillow behind the headboard in an effort to secure the covert opts that are about to take place beneath the sheets. Sorry Mitch, the peanut gallery is closed tonight.

I turn out the lights and pull her in as she crawls beside me.

“Hey,” she bleats.

“Hey.” I lash my tongue up the side of her face as a preview of the many things I have in store for her.

“No, I mean,
hey
.” She tries to sink my hands off her hips, but I spring right back up again.

I’m aware women are complex creatures. Lee is of their species, so technically I shouldn’t be stunned by her somewhat polarizing reaction, but still. She turns her back to me, so I start in on a slow massage.

“Thank you,” she moans.

I pepper soft kisses over her spine. The taste of her shower sweet skin drives me insane. I would do anything to make love to Lee, for her to show me she still wants me, wants us. It takes another five minutes before I move my massaging techniques south of the border. Lee was never one to let a potential orgasm go to waste. My hand slips into the warmth between her thighs. She’s so wet it takes every ounce of strength in me not to plunge inside her. I plan on keeping my hard-on away from the party. I want this to be all about her.

Lee turns around and crashes over my lips with a searing kiss. I brush my thumb over her face and feel the hot river of tears covering her face. This is killing her just as much as it’s killing me.

She closes her fingers around my erection and guides me in until I give an involuntary groan. I could die happy like this with Lee. I’d keep our love making a dirty little secret from the moron downstairs for the rest of our lives if that’s what it took to keep Lee in my life. Hell, I’d house Mitch in the downstairs doghouse for as long as she liked, so long as we could end every day in this same manner.

I push into her slow and determined. I don’t think that since our wedding night it’s felt this fragile, this amazingly fucking glorious to bury myself inside her. Lee is the only woman I’ve ever wanted, the only woman I’ve ever enjoyed. There’s no losing her. My entire world would evaporate without her in it.

“Lee,” I groan into her ear.

She pushes me in by the small of my back, and I clasp onto her wrists as I thrust into her with wild abandon.

We test out the pillow wedged behind the headboard for the next several hours. Every inch of her flesh is new again. It was as if almost losing one another brought us closer as we knit together in sorrow. Mitch and his wonderful midlife resurrection backfired—thank God almighty for the biggest miracle of all.

“Shit,” I give it in a heated whisper as my body trembles over hers. Lee lets out a heated cry, her breathing erratic in my ear, letting me know she enjoyed the hell out of the moment, too. Her legs clench around my body, and I hold her there like that.

“I’m changing all of the labels in the morning,” I tease through a sea of heated kisses.

Lee looks up at me with her pale, glowing eyes.

“What’s the label going to say?” she whispers.

“It’s going to say
a good year
next to the date.” I pull my lips across her cheek in a sweet line. “We’re going to survive this, Lee. I know we will.”

“A good year,” she parrots back.

“The best.”

“Wake up.” Lee rattles my shoulders, and I startle to attention. She lands a series of soft slaps across my cheek as I blink to life.

“What?” I spike up in bed. The alarm reads three-thirty.

“Something’s happening downstairs.” She draws the sheets to her chin. “I hear voices.”

I pull on my sweats and throw on a T-shirt as I hit the stairwell. A heavy stream of light pours in through the shutters—it beacons through the window at the top of the door as if it were trying to direct a ship at sea.

“What the?” I pull the front door open to find an entire Hollywood back-lot set up on the street. Three news vans and an entire slew of people mill around as if they belonged there. “And there he is,” I whisper. Mitch is firmly seated in a director’s chair with a camera pointed in his face.

I storm out on the lawn just as a man with an earpiece strapped to his head stops me cold. “We’ll be done in about ten minutes.”

“What’s going on?”

“Interview. East Coast is live.”

“What network?”

“WKLA, the Breakfast Show. Then FNX news.”

The
Breakfast
Show? FNX? That’s national coverage. I head back in and herd Lee toward the family room. I flip on the TV, and son of a fucking bitch…

“Right now we’re trying to work things out.” Mitch stretches a smile across his face. There he is in full Technicolor gaping back at me as if he’s got all of the cards in his favor. It’s all starting to feel like a bad dream.

“And what about the company your father built?” The woman interviewing him nods as though anybody cared. “Have you recovered your footing? Are you taking over once again?”

“I can assure you I have an entire legal team helping me navigate my way back to the helm. I ran that company six years after my dad died, and I intend to run it until the day
I
die.”

“Run it into the ground,” I quip, and Lee jabs me in the ribs.

“So tell us about your daughter. How did she handle the news?” The reporter folds her hands into her lap like it was no big deal because it’s not her life she’s fucking with.

“Can’t Mitch see she’s a wolf waiting to devour Stella’s privacy?” I’m shocked he would let her go there.

“She’s beautiful—intelligent beyond her years.” Mitch’s teeth glitter unnaturally. “She’s perfectly happy. My wife kept my picture at her bedside, and she recognized me right out the gate.”

“My
wife
?” I glance over at Lee.

The talking head beams with delight. “My producer tells me you’re in negotiations for movie and book rights, any truth to those rumors?”

“My attorney is fielding all requests. I really haven’t discussed any of this with my wife as of yet.”

“Twice he’s called you his wife,” I say, pinching my lower lip.

“I don’t think he knows what else to call me.”

“And her marriage to Maxwell Shepherd—how is that being handled?” She inquires.

“Handled?” My agitation grows by the minute.

“I’d rather not comment”—Mitch shoots a glance toward the house—“but I will say, we’re working with a great psychologist.”

“Thank you so much for your time, Mitch. We’re all so glad you’re back home where you belong, safe and with your family. It’s been a pleasure.” She extends her hand to him before returning her attention to the camera. “Fascinating story. We’ll be back in just a moment.”

“Nice.” I sag into the sofa and close my eyes. “You think he ever once considered what this might do to our already skittish investors? And you can kiss the European market goodbye.”

Lee bites her lower lip as if she knows it’s probably worse than the rosy outlook I’ve painted.

“It was just one interview.” She gets up and heads into the kitchen.

I turn the television to FNX, and low and behold Mitch magically appears.

“
Lee
.”

Lee

In the gloom of an overcast afternoon, Mono disappears in a fogbank that swallows us whole and regurgitates us back into the bitter day like vomit.

Kat and I sit across from one another in the nail salon with our fingers fanned out under the bright lights of a drying machine. I watch as Stella giggles her way through a pedicure. It’s her favorite thing in the world, but you’d think she was being tortured to death the way she shrieks and screams.

“Max wasn’t too thrilled with me coming today,” I say. Last night swirls through my mind like a secret perfume. Max is an artist beneath the sheets. I love Max. A part of me thinks I always have.

“He wasn’t thrilled with you coming
here
?” Kat points to the floor, perplexed by the concept.

“He thinks I’m doing it for Mitch. I’m afraid there’ll never be enough assurances for Max.” I bite down on my lip. “He’s used to winning, and winning rarely involves sharing.”

“Are you doing this for Mitch?” She makes a face as if it hardly makes sense.

“Please, I’ve had this booked for weeks.”

“Are you excited about tonight?” Her affect softens. Kat’s face is filling in as she gains her baby weight at record speed. Her lips look perfectly full in a brilliant shade of ruby. “Just the two of you. Lee and Mitch just like old times. So where you going? Got another hotel in the works?”