Adore (Spiral of Bliss #4)

by Nina Lane

  She whirls around to pin me with a glare. “And you weren’t answering your stupid phone.”

  “Oh, Allie.” Tears flood my eyes, and I sink onto a chair. “I am so goddamned sorry.”

  “I don’t get it, Liv!” She spreads her arms out. “What happened? Where were you?”

  Embarrassment scorches my face.

  “I was with Dean,” I admit.

  Allie blinks in bafflement. “With Dean?”

  “Sort of a date night. Or day. Whatever. We haven’t spent much time together since Nicholas was born, and he took me out and… well, I usually have every other Saturday off and I completely forgot about the party.”

  “I’m not begrudging you a date night with your husband,” Allie says. “But it’s so unlike you to be so irresponsible.”

  The word hits me like the tail end of a whip. I’ve spent my life trying to prove I’m anything but irresponsible.

  “You were the one who pushed for us to have this party,” Allie continues sharply, “and not because you knew we could handle it, but because you were trying to do some tit-for-tat kind of thing with Edison. But you know that’s not what the Wonderland Café is about.”

  “What can I do?” I ask, shame filling my chest. “How can I fix it?”

  “I have no idea. I already gave Monica her deposit back. The band is upset because this hurts their reputation for making kids happy, and now we’re on record as having been fined. Plus we had to turn regular customers away because we were too busy, and now there are at least three grandmothers out there pissed off because we couldn’t provide the high tea they had promised their granddaughters. That’s going to mess with our business too, as if our grand opening disaster wasn’t enough of a hurdle to overcome.”

  With that parting shot, she stalks out of room and down the stairs. I stare at a cracked crystal ball, feeling as if Allie just slapped me. Or as if I just tripped on my own feet and face-planted on a concrete floor. I rest my head in my hands and indulge in a good crying jag.

  Of course it was all too good to be true. I finally have everything I’ve been working for—an incredible husband, a beautiful son, a successful business, a good reputation—and when the final piece of my marriage gets put back into place, all the other balls I’m juggling come crashing down.

  I wipe my eyes on a napkin, my insides suddenly aching with longing to see Nicholas. I text Dean that I have to “finish up” some things at the café, then I get back to work cleaning up the mess and trying to patch up the damage I’ve done.

  Allie doesn’t talk to me for the rest of the afternoon, and by the time we close the café I’m starting to wonder if I’ve permanently damaged both our friendship and our business partnership.

  “Allie, I don’t know what else to say or do,” I tell her, as we turn off the lights and lock up.

  “Nothing right now, Liv.” She turns away from me, her back stiff. “I’ll see you Monday.”

  I watch her walk away, guilt simmering like acid inside me. I get into my car and head back to the Butterfly House.

  I leave my purse in the foyer and go into the sunroom, where Dean and Nicholas are building an intricate, towering structure with the blocks Dean brought back from Tuscany. Twilight shines through the picture windows. The song “All Around the Kitchen” drifts from the speakers, loud enough that neither of them glances up from their task.

  For a moment, I stop and look at them—Nicholas in a blue sweatshirt with his hair a mess and dried jam on his cheek, and an unshaven Dean, wearing an old T-shirt and jeans, his reading glasses on as he studies what appears to be a diagram of the tower they’re constructing. He makes a notation on the picture and hands a triangular block to Nicholas, who places it carefully on top of a stack.

  “Mama!”

  Nicholas pushes to his feet and waddles toward me, his arms outstretched. I drop my bag on the kitchen island and crouch to pull him against me, inhaling his toddler smells of baby shampoo, sour milk, and strawberry jam.

  “Hey, you get everything done?” Dean approaches, rubbing his hand over Nicholas’s head as he bends to kiss me.

  “Yes.” I lift Nicholas into my arms and straighten, not yet wanting to tell Dean about my egregious mistake.

  I lean closer to him, squishing Nicholas between us in a group hug as I breathe them both in. The scents of my husband fill my nose—coffee, laundry detergent, and chocolate mint.

  “You found my secret stash of peppermint patties,” I remark, rubbing my cheek against his chest.

  “You need to work on your hiding skills, lady,” he replies. “Did you really think I wouldn’t find them behind Nicholas’s yogurt bites?”

  “Next time I’ll hide them behind the organic kale chips.”

  A chuckle rumbles through his chest. “Well, I guarantee I won’t bother to look there.”

  “Tower!” Nicholas shouts, squirming in my arms.

  I lower him to the floor, and he hurries back to the unfinished tower. Dean reaches out to twist his hands around the ends of the purple silk scarf, which I’d forgotten I’m still wearing around my neck. He tugs on the scarf, pulling me to him for another kiss.

  “I missed you,” he remarks. “I had more plans, you know. Dirty ones.”

  “Oh, I know.” I slide my arms around his waist and squeeze, loving so much the solid strength and heat of his body. “Sorry I had to leave so suddenly.”

  “S’okay.” He rubs my back. “Just gives me more reason to whisk you away again for another night of debauchery.”

  If only it were that easy…

  “Mama, tower!” Nicholas calls.

  I pull away from Dean, and we join our son on the carpet. We spend the next hour building, reading picture books, listening to music, and refereeing a toddler fuss that is soothed with a sippy cup of milk.

  Our evening routine is a striking contrast to last night, but comfortably familiar—after a dinner of leftover tacos, I get Nicholas ready for bed while Dean cleans the kitchen.

  After I return downstairs, I shuffle through the day’s mail. There’s another postcard from my friend North, this time from Cambodia:

  Liv,

  Sandcastle temples, sugar palms, monks in saffron robes, crowded markets with pungent scents of grilled seafood and fried insects, brutal scars of the past and yet, when you look, evidence of a bright, serene awakening.

  My adventure continues.

  North

  I join Dean on the sofa, where he’s sprawled out watching the news. He extends an arm and I snuggle against his side, letting the warmth of him ease away the lingering tightness in my chest.

  “Postcard from North.” I hold the card out to him.

  “Cambodia, huh?” He reads the card and turns it over to look at the printed photo of the elaborate Angkor Wat temple complex. “I went to grad school with a guy who specialized in Southeast Asian architecture. He spent a year in Cambodia studying Angkor Wat. He invited me to visit any time, but I never made it over there.”

  For some reason, I don’t like the idea of Dean not having done something. I stroke my hand under his T-shirt to touch the flat, hard ridges of his abdomen.

  “Hey, you okay?” Dean pats my hip.

  “Yeah, I just forgot I was supposed to do something at the café, and it sort of screwed things up. I’ll straighten it out, though.”

  “What happened?”

  I know he’ll find out sooner or later, so I take a deep breath and confess my colossal fuck-up. He listens in silence, his brow creasing with concern.

  By the time I’m finished, the tension in my shoulders has eased somewhat. Sharing my burdens with Dean has always made things easier, and I fully expect him to reassure me everything will work out.

  “Liv.” His expression is somber, his mouth turning into a frown. “I think the universe is trying to tell you something.”

  I blink. “Like what?”

  “Like you’ve been trying to do too much for too long. Sooner or later, something was going to give.�
�

  Though that’s exactly what I just told myself, it hurts extra hard hearing it from Dean—especially considering the reason I forgot about Becky’s party.

  “You wouldn’t have said that when we were getting busy in the hotel room,” I mutter, pushing away from him and getting to my feet.

  His frown deepens. “I won’t apologize for wanting you all to myself for one damned night. You’ve had every other Saturday off at the café for the past year, and you had it written on the calendar that today was your day off. I’d never have made plans if I’d known you had other commitments, but I can’t even remember the last time we were alone together for an entire night. I’m not apologizing for it.”

  “I’m not asking you to apologize,” I retort, tossing North’s postcard on a table. “I know I fucked up. But I don’t need you making me feel worse.”

  Remorse flashes in his eyes, but his jaw tightens. “I don’t want to make you feel worse. I want you to stop thinking you have to do everything. You don’t have to tackle every single project on your own just because people ask you to or because you feel you have to. You don’t have to prove you can do it all, Liv. Everyone knows you can.”

  My insides twist. Why don’t I know that by now too? Why don’t I believe it?

  “Look, I know some people over at Edison Power,” Dean continues as he stands and approaches me. “So does Kelsey. Let me call them and—”

  I hold up my hand to stop him. I know—I know—the easiest way to deal with this mess is to turn everything over to my husband. Just like the night when he effortlessly rescued me and Nicholas from chaos, he would do the same thing now. He’d smooth all the rough edges, negotiate the conflicts, make everything right. He would fix it.

  But why shouldn’t I be responsible for cleaning up my own messes? I’m the one who wanted to do it all, so I’m the one who has to fix it. Yes, it’s a rotten leftover of life with my mother—who never took responsibility for a fucking thing, including her own daughter—but that doesn’t give me a free pass. I won’t make excuses for myself.

  “No.” I shake my head. “I’ll figure it out.”

  Dean exhales a sigh of frustration. “Liv, it’s okay to ask for help. To accept help when it’s offered. It doesn’t make you weak or irresponsible.”

  “I don’t think it does.”

  “Then let me help you, dammit.”

  I look up at the hard note in his voice. He’s standing with his arms folded across his chest, his mouth tight and eyes dark.

  I suddenly wonder what it has cost him over the years to stand back and not intervene in my problems when there is nothing he wants to do more. Being passive, especially in regards to his family, goes against the very core of who Dean West is. He’s always been the one to make things happen—to win the game, save the day, find the treasure, lead the battle.

  But for me, because I asked him to, he has put himself on the sidelines and watched me try, fail, and try again. He’s forced himself not to jump in and rescue me, and because of his restraint, I’ve grown and changed in ways I’d once never imagined I could.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “For what?”

  “For letting me make mistakes. For not trying to fix things, even though I know you always want to.”

  He’s still frowning. “That sounds like you’re going to turn me down again.”

  “No, I’m not turning you down. I just need to figure out what the fallout of all this is going to be and talk to Allie. Give me a day or two. I promise I’ll tell you if I need you.”

  Dean looks at me for a long moment, his expression shuttered. He reaches over to brush a lock of hair away from my forehead.

  “I thought you always needed me,” he says.

  My heart stutters at the idea he would ever think otherwise.

  “Of course I do.”

  A faint, resigned smile tugs at his mouth. He turns away, picking up a stack of papers from the kitchen counter before he goes upstairs to his tower office.

  I have a sudden, sharp longing to return to the hot intimacy we’d had in the hotel room. I want cherry pie and champagne again. I want lacy lingerie, silk blindfolds, the burn of lust. I want to feel Dean’s hands sweeping over my naked body. I want to hear his deep voice whispering commands in my ear. I want to close the door and shut the world out so we can focus on each other again.

  But even if we could, it wouldn’t be the same. All our efforts, both mine and Dean’s, to find that place again have either failed or created a disaster.

  Maybe because that place no longer exists. Maybe we’ve been trying to recreate something that can’t be recreated because it belongs to the past. Maybe it’s now just a memory. And if not even Dean can bring it back to stay…

  My heart aches. I’m tempted to follow him to his tower and curl up on his lap. The sensation of my husband’s strong arms tightening around me in a warm, secure circle is, perhaps, the only thing in the world that can banish my sense of hopelessness.

  Instead, I turn in the opposite direction, walk up the stairs, and crawl into bed alone.

  PART III

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  ‡

  OLIVIA

  The tension between me and Dean persists over the next day. I know he’s frustrated not only by the derailing of our intimacy—again—but also by the fact that he can’t jump in to help fix the café’s latest disaster.

  And though I try to explain I’m not being stubborn—because I’m actually quite willing to let him make calls on my behalf—he doesn’t see the point of me wanting to wait for the dust to settle first.

  And yet I can’t focus entirely on Dean right now, since Allie is the one I betrayed and the one with whom I first need to make amends. She isn’t at Wonderland when I arrive on Monday morning, and after getting the café opened, I return to the office and plunge into work.

  I leave a message for Monica Harrison with a profuse apology and request to please return my call. I open my email and, with a sinking sense of dread, click on a message from Mike Harrison at Edison Power.

  Liv,

  It looks like things won’t work out for Edison Power to sponsor the Mirror Lake Bicentennial Festival. However, we’re happy to donate two tickets to the Freefall Water Park for the auction. I’ll put them in the mail today.

  Best of luck with the festival and your future events.

  Mike Harrison

  My chest constricts. Though I’d been expecting this, I’d also secretly been hoping I still had a chance. I pick up the phone to call Mike Harrison.

  “I want to apologize for what happened at Becky’s party,” I tell him after introducing myself. “It’s entirely my fault. We’ve had so many successful parties at the café that—”

  “I’m sorry, Liv, we can’t change our decision,” he says. “I understand that things go wrong, but at this stage we don’t think a partnership between you and Edison is a good idea.”

  “The festival is a different venture from the café,” I continue. “The city council asked me to plan it when the previous director moved away, but—”

  “Liv, I’m sorry. We won’t be able to sponsor the festival. And we’re contracting another restaurant to cater our company picnic in August. We have the sense it might be too much for you to handle, and we need to have complete confidence that the people we hire will be equal to the task.”

  And that’s not you.

  The unspoken words ricochet like a bullet inside me.

  I manage to mumble a plea about “reaching out to us in the future” and wanting to do something to make up for my mistake. Mike Harrison is polite and gracious, though I can hear the door slamming shut when he hangs up the phone.

  I rest my head in my hands. I’d thought we could do everything in one fell swoop—earn enough money for our truck and secure a major sponsor for the festival. Now both of those things are gone because I dropped the ball.

  If I didn’t know it would put the city council in a terrible bind, I’d r
esign from the festival director position right now because at the rate I’m going, Mirror Lake’s two-hundredth birthday will consist of some balloons and maybe a few grilled burgers from the Boxcar Deli.

  And if we don’t get enough people to come out to the festival, then the Chair Fair auction will fail, which means I’ll also be letting down the Historical Society and the railroad project—

  Despair roils in the pit of my stomach. I have a sudden urge to run away.

  “Liv.”

  I lift my head to look at Allie, who has stopped in the office doorway. She doesn’t look as angry as she did on Saturday, but she’s not exactly her usual cheerful self either.

  “Edison turned us down to cater the picnic,” I tell her. “And they declined to sponsor the festival, though considering what happened I can’t say I’m surprised. I’m so sorry, Allie.”

  “Me too.” She pushes a chair away from the desk and sits down, crossing her arms over her chest. “It might be time for you to take a break, Liv.”

  I blink. “A break?”

  “You’re clearly running yourself ragged,” she says. “And honestly, you’ve been overriding me at every turn this past year. We’re supposed to be partners, but you’ve been wanting to do everything yourself. I think we both need to take a step back and reassess how our partnership is working.”

  Pain tightens my throat. “Oh my God, Allie, have I been that bad?”

  “Not bad, Liv, but honestly since you had Nicholas, you’ve become a serious control freak. And when you steamroll decisions for our business, it feels like you don’t trust me either as a friend or a partner.”

  I don’t even know what to say to that. But a small, raw corner of my soul knows Allie is right—in my efforts to ensure my son’s life, and my life, are nothing like my shaky, uncertain childhood, I’ve totally overcompensated.