Chapter 1
“You don’t touch me like you love me anymore, Connor.” The words felt like shards of glass in Amanda’s throat.
“That’s crazy.” Her husband jammed a hand through his thick auburn hair. Her palms tingled. Amanda ached to be the fingers in his hair, the lips on the neck he was rubbing, the voice whispering in his ear, asking him for more.
More like it used to be.
Not more of what they had now.
Enough of the arguments and the tension.
She wanted their crazy loving back.
The way it was before they tried to have a baby.
Across from the kitchen table, Connor was counting to ten. After nine years, she knew him that well. “Of course I love you, Amanda.”
“Doesn’t feel like it.” Maybe she should have counted to ten. He pulled in a deep breath that expanded the broad chest that once brought her comfort.
Not anymore.
Snow pelted the kitchen window and the wind moaned in the eaves. Her meatloaf cooled on their plates. Connor always took second helpings but not tonight. He’d hardly touched his meal. She loved him desperately but why couldn’t he understand?
“It doesn’t feel like you love me anymore, Connor,” she said quietly.
“Why would you say that?” His fist came down on the table. Plates jumped and so did she. “That is not true.”
But she wasn’t backing down. “Our marriage has become a duty. We make love on schedule.” That last was a whisper.
A muscle twitched in Connor’s cheek. His eyes never lifted from the table. There should be a law against men having lashes that long. Finally, he shoved back and picked up his plate.
“Aren’t you going to finish your dinner?”
“What? Now you’re my mother?” His plate landed on the counter behind them hard enough to shatter. But it didn’t.
With a frustrated growl, he crouched in front of her and scooped up her hands. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? Sweetheart, why are we arguing?” His thumbs brushed her knuckles.
Throat swelling, she shook her head. “Maybe we should see someone. A counselor.”
He blew out an exasperated breath. “Whoa. We can barely pay our medical bills now.”
“I can ask my dad…”
He dropped her hands and she curled them into her lap. “Amanda, that’s not right. Your folks are retired.”
“Do you think I enjoy asking them for help?” She hated it worse than Connor. But she’d give anything to save her marriage and they were in trouble. “For heaven’s sake, we have to do something. It’s Christmas, Connor.”
He sprang up with the grace learned on a basketball court, before he became a fireman.
Hands on slim hips, he walked to the window and peered into the darkness like it might hold some answers.
“We’re adopting a baby. I don’t understand why you can’t be happy about it.
We should go to my family’s baby shower Sunday and enjoy it.
Lord knows, we’ve waited long enough. You worry too much. ”
“We’ve been disappointed before.” Taking her fork, she began to break the meatloaf into pieces.
“But McKenna helped us with this. All systems are go.”
“Doesn’t matter if your sister’s involved. Adoptions don’t always go through. I want to be prepared for the worst.”
“You sound like your mother.”
Acid roiled in her stomach. Despite her mother’s cheerful exterior, she had terrible ulcers. The woman worried about everything. Amanda didn’t want to be like her, but her stomach had been bothering her lately. She edged the meatloaf into two separate piles.
Connor continued to pace. Her capable husband could make a shot from center court or put out a five-alarm fire.
But when it came to becoming a father, he was helpless.
Probably made him furious. “Even if the adoption would fall through, we still have the in-vitro. We’ve loaded the bases this month. ”
If only she could be that hopeful. “I know Dr. Castle’s procedure is different than the other ones we tried.
Trust me, when you’re the girl on the exam table, they all feel the same.
Humiliating. And then you find out it didn’t work.
” How well she knew the crushing disappointment and the desperation.
She could feel Connor studying her. “Don’t say it.”
“I won’t but…”
“I know. I sound like my mother.”
“Maybe we should just let nature take its course.”
“Isn’t that what we’ve done the past five years?”
“Yeah, but sometimes it just happens. Look at my baby sister Harper. Mom had Harper late in life.” Sliding back into the chair across from her, he tipped it back.
“She’d had six other children before Harper. Not the same thing at all.”
“Please give this a chance.”
“Trust me. Nothing’s the same.”
Later that night, she could have run a garden hose down the middle of their queen size bed. Connor was gone when she woke up the next morning. Scooting to his side of the bed, she nuzzled into the warmth.
Saturday and she had a big day ahead. The Kirkpatrick clan was having the baby shower, and she’d insisted on helping them set up.
Amanda reached deep for the excitement she should be feeling.
Nothing. Only caution. Trepidation. She needed a serious attitude adjustment.
A fun, rowdy group, Connor’s family would know something was wrong if she showed up in this mood.
“You don’t have to come,” her sister-in-law McKenna told her when she called later that morning. “It’s started to snow again.”
Taking a sip of her peach tea, Amanda glanced out the kitchen window. At least two inches of snow already coated the garage roof. “So what else is new? This is Chicago.”
“Harper’s here to help me. Really, don’t go out if it gets messy.”
“Oh, I can’t wait to see Harper.” Maybe it would be good to get out of this house. “I’ll be there this afternoon. Soon as I do the laundry.”
“Whatever. But if the snow gets too heavy, do not go out.”
“Right. Connor will kill me if I got stuck somewhere.”
McKenna chuckled. “Just stay on the main road.”
A Kirkpatrick rule.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”
Three hours later, Amanda wished she weren’t so stubborn.
The tires of her sedan spun on the hard- packed snow.
Where were the plows? Saturday before Christmas and shoppers were out in full force, clogging the streets and honking their horns.
Inching along Harlem Avenue, Amanda took a deep breath, the steely whirring of her tires fraying her nerves.
Maybe she should have taken McKenna’s advice and stayed home.
Squeaking across the windshield, her wiper blades were having trouble keeping up.
She meant to replace them last month but never got around to it, and Connor didn’t need one more thing on his to-do list. He’d been working such long shifts.
She blinked eyes dry from the heat blasting from the vents.
So darned hard to see and she didn’t want to clip the car in front of her.
When she first left the house, the Christmas carols on the radio had been good company.
Now “Jingle Bell Rock” grated on her nerves, and she snapped it off.
When she came to a side road, she sure was tempted, but Connor’s words rang in her ears, “If you get stuck on a main road, there are always people around to push you out.”
The stoplight at Lake Street changed to green.
Cars jolted forward, but the silver Grand Am in front of her stalled and spun sideways.
Two guys leapt from the back seat and pushed.
The car lurched forward and they jumped back in the car.
So hot in here and she ripped off her green stocking cap and tossed it onto the seat. Traffic inched along.
No side street could be worse than this. When Amanda came to a cross street, she jerked the wheel to the left, took advantage of a break in oncoming traffic and shot through. She could almost hear Connor’s disapproving sigh in her head. “Babe, you are so headstrong.”
McKenna and Harper were probably decorating and the Kirkpatricks always went full out. The house would smell of her mother-in-law’s cooking. Suddenly she wanted to be there more than anything else in the world. But she was late and headed east toward her in-laws’ house on Clinton.
This whole baby shower thing felt surreal. Amanda ran a hand over her flat stomach. Adoption wasn’t the same, not at all. But after five years trying to have a baby, she’d take a baby elephant. At least that was the joke she told in the teachers lounge.
The joke had stopped being funny.
The side street hadn’t been plowed. Amanda gripped the wheel so tight she could feel the hard ridges through her gloves.
Maybe leaving Harlem had been a mistake.
Was she getting anywhere? This was like churning through six inches of oatmeal.
On either side, of the street, cars were stuck in driveways.
Abandoned shovels stood upright in snow banks.
The only sound was the eerie ping of icy snow hitting the windshield.
Holiday lights cast a dull glow through the snow-covered bushes.
She passed a man digging his car out. Red-faced and panting, he didn’t look happy.
She opened her window. “Merry Christmas,” she called out above the scrape of his shovel.
Straightening, he pushed back his navy stocking cap. He was probably around their age, thirty or so. In the house behind him, a young woman stood watching, a swaddled infant in her arms. Yearning squeezed Amanda’s chest.
The man smiled. “Same to you. Don’t get stuck now. Don’t want to have to dig you out.”
“I’ll be careful. Watch it lifting all that snow.”
He waved and got back to work, broad-shouldered and invincible. Like Connor.
Sleety snow sifted through her open window and Amanda closed it.
The car crept along. Every time she stepped on the gas, the Malibu fishtailed. This had been a stupid idea. A sickening chill rolled over her. She would have been better off on the main street.
How would she ever explain this to Connor if she got stuck?