Overheard on Their Anniversary

1. Danica

— ? —

Danica

The Mediterranean stretched out like liquid sapphire, impossibly blue, and I still couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that I was here.

Six hours ago, I was in our kitchen in New York, half-asleep over my coffee, mumbling something about craving oysters. Not just any oysters. Mediterranean oysters. The kind we had on our honeymoon, briny, eaten on a terrace overlooking the water while Stefan fed them to me one by one.

I mentioned it the way you mention anything at seven in the morning. Wistfully. Absently. The way you say “I could really go for pizza” without actually expecting someone to fly you to Naples.

But Stefan Salvatore doesn’t do anything by half measures.

“Come on,” he said, setting down his coffee. “Get dressed.”

“For what?”

“Oysters.”

And now here I was, barefoot on the deck of a yacht off the coast of Monaco, watching the sun melt into the horizon like spilled honey, wearing a white sundress and drinking champagne.

My husband stood at the railing, phone pressed to his ear, his profile sharp against the fading light.

Even from here, even after almost three years of marriage, the sight of him made something flutter low in my stomach.

Dark hair pushed back from his face, shoulders broad enough to block out the sun.

He was wearing a linen shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and I could see the muscles in his forearms shift as he gripped the railing.

Stefan Salvatore. Old money billionaire. Pediatric heart surgeon who ran the family business anyway. The man who flew me across an ocean because I mentioned oysters at breakfast.

Sometimes I still felt like I was living in someone else’s life.

He ended his call and turned, catching me staring. One corner of his mouth lifted.

“See something you like?”

“Maybe.” I took another sip of champagne, trying to play it cool. “The view is nice.”

“The view is spectacular.” But he wasn’t looking at the water. He was looking at me, and the heat in his gaze made my cheeks warm.

He crossed the deck in three long strides and pulled me against him, one hand splayed across the small of my back. I could feel the warmth of his palm through the thin fabric of my dress.

“This is excessive,” I said, even as I leaned into him. “You know that, right? This whole thing is insane.”

“You said you were craving Mediterranean oysters. So we’re here.” He said it like it was the most logical thing in the world. “It’s only logical.”

“But I just mentioned it this morning and we hopped on your jet like it was an Uber.”

His laugh rumbled through his chest. “I wanted to do this before the morning calls changed my mind.”

And there it was. Morning calls.

I tried not to let my smile falter, but something cold flickered in my chest. For the past six months, Stefan had been practically living at the hospital.

Board meetings, investor calls, the seventh hospital closing and the eighth breaking ground.

He still operated when a case was impossible enough, but those were the nights I understood.

The rest of them, he was in a conference room.

I couldn’t remember the last time we’d had dinner together without his phone buzzing every five minutes.

This was actually our first real date in half a year. Our first conversation that lasted longer than “good morning” and “don’t wait up.” The first time I’d really laughed since my mother’s funeral a few months ago.

But I pushed that thought aside. He was here now. He planned this himself. That had to mean something.

“Well,” I said, running my fingers along his collar, “I’m glad the morning calls lost this round.”

“They never stood a chance.” He caught my hand and pressed a kiss to my palm. “Not against you.”

God, this man.

A crew member appeared with impeccable timing, carrying a silver tray laden with oysters on ice. They were gorgeous, glistening in their shells, exactly what I’d been craving. Stefan guided me to the table that had been set up on the deck, draped in white linen, candles flickering in glass holders.

“You really went all out,” I said as he pulled out my chair.

“You deserve all out.” He sat across from me, close enough that our knees touched under the table. “You deserve everything, Dani.”

The nickname made my heart squeeze. He’d called me that since the beginning, since the night we met, and it still got me every time.

We ate oysters. We laughed. We flirted like we did when we first started dating, back when every touch felt electric and every glance felt loaded with possibility. Stefan reached across the table to wipe a drop of mignonette from my lip, and his thumb lingered there for just a second too long.

His phone buzzed against the table, face down, the vibration rattling the silverware.

Stefan’s eyes flicked toward it. Just for a second. Just long enough for me to notice.

“You can get that,” I said, keeping my voice light. “If you need to.”

“I don’t need to.” He pushed the phone further away, his attention returning to me. “Tonight is about you.”

But the phone buzzed again. And again. Three times in quick succession, like whatever was on the other end wouldn’t take no for an answer.

I pretended not to notice. I’d gotten good at that over the past six months.

His hand drifting toward his pocket during dinner, his eyes going distant when a message came through, the quiet understanding that being married to a man who ran seven hospitals meant the seven hospitals would always come first. I’d learned to look past all of it.

Stefan flipped the phone over just long enough to glance at the screen, then silenced it and turned it face down again.

“Sorry,” he said, reaching across the table for my hand. “Where were we?”

“Somewhere better than that phone.”

“Then let’s go back there.”

I wanted to believe him. I wanted this trip to mean things were changing, that he saw how lonely I’d been, how much I’d needed him during the worst months of my life.

Mom’s death had hollowed me out, and Stefan had been there for the funeral but not for the aftermath.

Not for the nights I couldn’t sleep, or the mornings I couldn’t get out of bed, or the moments when grief hit me like a truck and I just needed someone to hold me.

“Stop those stares,” I said.

“I’m admiring.”

“Same thing.”

“Not even close.” His voice dropped, that low rumble that always made my pulse jump. “Staring is passive. Admiring is active. When I look at you, Danica, there is nothing passive about it.”

Heat pooled in my belly. “Is that so?”

“That is very much so.”

His hand found my thigh under the table, and I forgot how to breathe.

“Stefan.”

“Yes?”

“We’re in public.”

He glanced around at the empty deck, the crew conspicuously absent, nothing but open water and setting sun. “Are we?”

I laughed despite myself. “The crew is like thirty feet away.”

“The crew is extremely well-paid and extremely discreet.” His hand slid higher. “And I’ve been thinking about touching you since we got on this plane.”

“That was six hours ago.”

“Exactly.” His fingers traced slow circles on my inner thigh. “Six hours of torture. I think I’ve been patient enough.”

The sensible thing would have been to stop him and insist we go below deck like civilized people.

But the champagne was buzzing in my veins, and the sunset was painting everything gold, and my husband was looking at me like I was the only woman on the planet.

I felt like the version of me that existed before everything went gray.

“Then stop being patient,” I said.

That was all the invitation he needed.

Stefan stood so fast his chair scraped the deck. In one motion he swept the shells aside and lifted me onto the table, stepping between my thighs before I could catch my breath. The linen was warm under me. His hands were warmer.

He kissed me slowly, salt and champagne and the particular hunger that was only ever his. I fisted his shirt and dragged him closer, legs locking around his waist. He groaned into my mouth like the sound had been waiting all day.

“I missed you,” he murmured. “Not the idea of you. You. The way you open for me. The way you say my name when you stop being polite.”

Heat rushed through me so fast I felt dizzy. “Stefan.”

“That’s the one.” His mouth found my jaw, then the spot behind my ear that always undid me.

“Someone might see.”

“Then they can envy me.” His voice went rough, almost reverent. “I don’t care who hears how badly I want my wife.”

The straps of my sundress slid down my shoulders under his fingers, slow enough to make me ache. Evening air kissed bare skin. He followed it with his mouth, unhurried, like he had all the time the last six months had stolen from us.

“You are so beautiful it makes me stupid,” he said against my collarbone. “Do you know that? I save hearts for a living and you still undo mine just by breathing.”

I laughed, shaky, and it broke into a gasp when his hand slid up my thigh and found how ready I already was.

“Stefan.”

“I’ve got you.” His forehead rested against mine. His fingers stroked me through thin lace, and my hips chased him without permission. “There she is. My greedy girl. Tell me you want this. Tell me you want me.”

“I want you.” The words came out wrecked. “I want you inside me. I have wanted you for months and you keep leaving before I can say it.”

Something in his face cracked open. Starving.

“Then I’m not leaving,” he said. “Not tonight. Not until you come apart for me and I feel it.”

He pushed the lace aside and touched me properly, two fingers sinking in, his thumb circling until my head tipped back and the sky went soft at the edges. I clutched his shoulders. He kissed me through it, muffling every sound against his lips.

“That’s it,” he breathed. “Let me have it. You feel like heaven. Warm and wet and mine.”

“Please.”

“Please what, Dani?”

“Please stop teasing me and fuck me.”

He made a low, ruined sound that went straight through me. “Since you asked so sweetly.”

My dress bunched at my waist. His belt, his zipper, the brief shock of skin against skin. Then he was there, pressing in with a care that felt like worship and a need that didn’t. I wrapped my arms around his neck and held on as he filled me, slow, until there was nowhere left to go.

“Christ,” he whispered, forehead to my temple. “You feel like coming home. I forgot how perfect you are around me. How could I forget this?”

“Don’t,” I managed. “Don’t forget again.”

“I won’t.” He drew back and thrust in again, deeper, and the table creaked under us. “I won’t. You have me. All of me. Take it.”

We found a rhythm that was not gentle and not cruel. His hand stayed between us, working me in time with every stroke, and his mouth kept finding mine between broken praise. The Mediterranean went dark around us. Candles trembled. I stopped caring who might be thirty feet away.

“Stefan, I’m close.”

“Good.” His voice shook. “Come for me. I want to feel you. I want to hear my name when you do.”

It hit hard, my whole body tightening around him as I cried out. He caught the sound with his mouth and followed a heartbeat later, burying himself deep, my name a rough prayer against my lips while he spilled inside me and held me like the sea might take me if he let go.

Afterward he stayed there, breathing hard against my neck, one hand spread over my ribs like he was counting them back to calm. My dress was a lost cause. His shirt ended up around my shoulders. The candles had burned low. The champagne had gone flat. I didn’t care.

“I love you,” he said into my hair.

“I love you too.”

For the first time in months, everything felt okay. We were finally getting back to us, and all those missed dinners and midnight conference calls were just bumps in the road, not signs of something worse.

Then Stefan shifted against me, and I felt him take a breath. The kind of breath people take before they say something they’ve been putting off.

“Oh, by the way,” he said, way too casually. “We’re moving to Los Angeles in two weeks. The board wants me to oversee the new wing at the LA hospital.”

I sat up.

“Los Angeles.”

“It’s a great opportunity.” He might as well have been telling me about the weather. “The pediatric cardiac wing they’re building is state of the art, and they want me to run it.”

“Two weeks. When did you find this out?”

“Tuesday.”

It was Saturday. He’d known for four days. Four days of coffee in the same kitchen, and it hadn’t come up until after the oysters and the champagne and the sex.

“Huh,” I said. “So were you planning to tell me before or after the movers showed up?”

I said it lightly. Like a joke. He took it as one.

“Dani, come on.” He reached for my hand, thumb sliding over my knuckles. “I wanted to tell you in person, somewhere special. Not between phone calls.”

I nodded like that made sense. And part of me got it. He had been drowning in work, and he’d chosen a sunset over a text message. There were worse ways to hear news.

And it wasn’t the move. We had a house in LA already, one of the many properties scattered across Stefan’s empire.

I’d been there a dozen times for galas and board meetings and long weekends when Stefan needed to check on the West Coast hospitals.

I could fly to New York any time I wanted.

Mom’s grave wasn’t going anywhere, my friends were a phone call away, and the gala would come with us the way everything did. I wasn’t losing anything real.

It was the shape of what he’d said. The board wants me. They want me to run it. Not once had the word we come up. He hadn’t asked what I thought about Los Angeles because it hadn’t occurred to him that I’d have a thought. The decision was already made. I was being told about it.

Stefan kissed my forehead, like that settled everything. Like geography was just a minor detail.

“I’m telling you now,” he said. “And it’s going to be amazing. Just you and me.”

Just us. Except it was never just us anymore. It was him and his career, and me trailing along behind.

I could have said that. The words were right there.

Instead, I looked at his face, at the hope in his eyes, at the man who flew me across an ocean because I mentioned oysters, and I let it go.

“Okay,” I said. I even managed a smile. “Los Angeles it is.”

Stefan beamed and pulled me close again, already talking about finally using the Bel Air house full-time, about how the light there was better, how much I was going to love waking up to the hills every morning.

I leaned into him and stared out at the dark water, and something cold settled in my chest. Not anger. Something quieter than that. The feeling of being an afterthought in my own marriage.

But I told myself it was fine. He loved me. He flew me to Monaco for oysters. That had to count for something.

Right?