November 2018
Hello, all, Jory Harcourt here. I meant to answer more questions this time, but we got new neighbors, and Sam and I were invited to a cocktail party, and just…
I had one of those eye-opening experiences that I don’t have all the time.
It used to happen to me on almost a daily basis.
Something would go sideways that I never expected, but not so much anymore.
So the fact that I was forced to stop and think was a surprise.
Anyway, the Takashimas, who lived across the street to the right of us, when their youngest went off to college—they have six kids in all—sold their house and bought a condo in Lincoln Park.
I couldn’t very well blame them; they were centrally located, and it was just the two of them.
But for months we wondered—my daughter, Hannah, and I because Sam and Kola couldn’t be bothered—who would move in.
We were finally rewarded with Mr. and Mrs. Prentiss, who had two teenage daughters who were away at boarding school.
She was a curator at one of the many art galleries downtown, and he was a corporate tax attorney.
I found that out when I took over a vegetarian lasagna the first night and she gushed all over me but turned down my offer of food.
“Who doesn’t like lasagna?” I asked Sam when I brought it back home.
“It’s because there’s no meat in it,” he assured me.
“You don’t like it either, do you,” I accused him.
“I like it when you put meat in it,” he said gamely.
But whatever the reason, she did pop over on a cold, wet, rainy Thursday to invite Sam and me to a cocktail party on Saturday. Since that seemed nice, I informed my husband that we were going.
“But I hate that kinda crap,” he grumbled as he got out of the shower. Sam had become a two-shower-a-day guy over the last few years: a super-fast one in the morning to wake himself up, and the long, hot one at night to ease his muscles from whatever happened during the day.
“You’re going,” I insisted and gave him a look, and he rolled his eyes and agreed.
As things happened, though, there was an emergency at work, so he had to go in for a bit, and so that Saturday, even waiting an hour past when the party started, I was alone as I crossed the street with a bottle of wine that my brother had recommended. It was expensive; that was all I knew.
Inside, the house was lovely, full of things that made it look more like a cross between a Williams Sonoma and a Pier 1 than a real home.
When I found the hostess, she thanked me for the wine, seemed impressed with the label, and put her French-manicured hand on my bicep.
“And where is your handsome husband tonight?”
People always put handsome in front of husband when they were talking about Sam. “He’s coming. He was just stuck at work for a bit.”
She smiled, a press of her lips together, and then moved me over to the bar where her husband was mixing. “Tell James what you’d like, Joey, and he’ll make it for you.”
“Okay,” I said, not correcting her flub on my name because why would I?
He was talking to other people, not really focused on me, but he did ask what I wanted, and I had bourbon neat, because that way I could sip it and not need anything else.
The last time I had some with Aaron and Duncan, I had good bourbon.
Whatever Mr. Prentiss was pouring didn’t taste the same, but I took it and walked away, thinking I would just leave the glass by the door and wander right back out.
“He’s smoking again,” a woman whispered to the other two women standing with her. “He promised he wouldn’t and he is.”
“It’s just a party, Steph. I’m sure he won’t have any more than the one cigarette.”
“But he told me even if he drank, he wouldn’t smoke.”
“It’s just one,” the other woman chimed in. “You shouldn’t come to parties if you don’t want him to have any at all.”
Moving on, there were two men next to a window looking out in the backyard where a group of women were clustered next to one of the many heaters.
“She’s still sleeping with him.”
“No,” the taller man assured his buddy, hand on his shoulder. “You told me it was over two months ago.”
“Her phone is password protected, and she’s taking two showers a day suddenly. All her life, only one, but suddenly now…and there’s lots of new lingerie I never see.”
“Then for crissakes, Tim, do something about it.”
“I don’t want to lose her.”
I walked on before I butted in.
“We don’t agree on where to send the girls,” Mrs. Prentiss was saying to three other women. “James wants them to stay abroad, and I want them at Exeter. At least they’d be in the same country. I miss them terribly.”
The other women touched her gently and offered her another drink.
I walked toward the kitchen.
“So he’s having an affair, then?” one woman asked another.
“No,” a blond answered her, shaking her head. “I could deal with that. I could ask him to stop that, but this is…she’s his support. She’s the one he talks to and tells things to. He’s with her right now, at work, mind you—and just called to say that he’s stuck there.”
“Maybe he––”
“No,” she said sharply. “I called his friend Eddie, and he said they were done with the brief hours ago. He had no idea why Nicky would still be there.”
Her friend put her arm around her shoulder to offer comfort.
Turning, I was almost to the kitchen.
“He’s going to drive her away by not even listening about how important this girl is.”
“You don’t think she won’t come home for Christmas, do you?”
“I don’t––she’s in love, I know she is, and he thinks it’s going to pass, that it’s a phase, but I’m telling you, my daughter loves her, and he won’t have it in his house.”
“Well, you don’t like it either.”
“No, but—she’s my daughter, I care more about that.”
Walking on, because they both glanced at me, and when I smiled, they both did, awkwardly. When I reached the kitchen, I dropped off the highball glass on the counter and was about to move toward the front door when a woman stepped into my path.
“Hi there,” she greeted me timidly, biting her bottom lip.
“Hi,” I returned.
She leaned in close to me, and I realized then, from the way she clutched at me, unsteady on her feet, how drunk she was. “I just had to tell you that your husband jogs by my house every morning, and he’s simply…” She searched for a word.
“Stunning?” I offered, smiling at her.
“Stunning,” she repeated. “Yes. Or even breathtaking. Another good word.”
Yes, it was a good word. And yes, my husband was breathtaking as well.
“If you ever think about unloading him, please let me know.”
“Absolutely,” I said, smiling as she turned and made her way back to her friends. I bolted for the door then and opened it, only to find my husband on the porch with his fist raised to knock.
“Oh, hey,” he said, grinning at me.
He was in a gray turtleneck sweater with black slacks and a pair of his dark brown dress shoes.
I was certain that because he’d only been darting across the street was the reason for not bringing a coat, just as it had been for me.
As I looked up at his face, noting the square line of his jaw and the slight stubble there, I reached up and put a hand on his cheek.
Instantly, he covered my hand with his own, scowled, brows furrowing and everything, and I watched his whole posture sort of bristle. Instantly he was ready to defend me and annihilate the threat. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I promised, putting my other hand on his side, loving the feel, as always, of the hard body under my palm. “I’m just ready to go.”
“And why is that?”
“I would just rather go to dinner with you.”
The smile came fast. “Oh, good idea,” he told me, taking my hand, tugging me gently down the few steps to the sidewalk before looking both ways as we jogged back home.
Inside, I noticed the pronounced quiet.
“Where are your children?”
He walked toward the coat closet to grab a jacket. “Uh, let’s see, Kola is at Jake’s house with Harper, of course, and Hannah is with Aaron and Duncan at that fundraiser for otters or wild horses or something. I wasn’t really listening.”
Moving up in front of him, I put my hands on his sides and stared up at him. “I just got a reality check tonight, and I’m sort of reeling.”
He took my face in his hands. “Tell me what happened.”
I tipped my head up for the kiss I wanted, and he smiled, bemused, before he bent and gave me what I was after. When I opened, I felt the tremor go through him before his tongue was there, rubbing over mine as I coiled my arms around his neck and held on.
He lifted me up into his arms, and I wrapped my legs around his hips and clung, kissing him deeply, pushing against the solid wall of muscle he was, writhing in his hands.
“Honey,” he gasped, breaking the kiss to gulp for air, staring down at me with molten eyes, just as turned on as I was. “Not that I’m not into this because I’m always fuckin’ into this, but please tell me what the hell happened.”
“I will,” I whispered, kissing along his jaw. “After.”
“After is good,” he teased, carrying me up the stairs, not needing to set me down.
In our room he put me on the bed, and I lay there and watched him peel off the sweater and toss it aside and then toe off his shoes and then start on his pants.
Miles of smooth skin and the chest hair that now had a few silver strands in it and the carved abdomen that had never been anything but a work of art.
“You need to be getting naked,” he commanded, and I heard how deep and gruff his voice was getting as he stared at me.
It was always a revelation, that he looked at me and saw that which he craved. I was not only the love of Sam Kage’s life, but his one desire. The tears came before I even realized what was happening.
“Oh, what the hell,” he rumbled, and I was driven down onto the bed under him and then rolled to my side, into his arms, crushed to his massive chest. “Talk now.”
I took a breath. “I’m sure there were lots of people at that party who were happy, but I didn’t hear any. They were worried about affairs and a work wife, and they didn’t agree about where their kids should be or who they should be dating or––”
“And this has what to do with you?” he asked, stroking my back, my hair, the cuddling almost hotter than the kiss.
“I just—I’m so lucky, and I think I don’t tell you often enough, and sometimes it’s good to have a reality check and––”
“Has it occurred to you that people have hard times at different places in their lives?"
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that we had all our crap at the beginning. We didn’t have the storybook beginning where we fell in love and things were great.
We had misunderstandings and a tangled-up mess, and we were apart and then back together, and things were up and down for a long time until somewhere in there, after I was promoted and you got your business on solid ground, everything just sort of settled. ”
“Settled?” I said miserably.
“Not like I settled, or you settled, but like things got calm and went from pretty good to great to even better to how they are now, which is fuckin’ fantastic.”
“Yeah? You think your life is fantastic?”
“My life is amazing because of you and my kids. I have everything I could ever want.”
I cried a bit, and he laughed into my hair, and his hand slid down over my ass, and I realized that I was about to be comforted in other ways.
As I stripped out of my clothes, and he ditched his pants and underwear, we both slid under the covers together.
“My life is so perfect, Sam. What if you get bored because it never goes off the rails?”
He grunted as he kissed down the side of my neck, parting my thighs to settle between them. “You’re never boring,” he rumbled as he slid his length along mine.
I arched up off the bed, the gasp tearing out of my throat.
“And besides, I’m sure there’ll be something. Thanksgiving is coming, always lots of family drama then.”
He was not wrong.
“But for now…let’s just be thankful that we have each other.”
“I am.”
“I know you are, baby,” he said before he kissed me.
That’s it for this month; see you in December.