by Noelle Adams
“I don’t know if there’s anything we could do today.”
“Let’s check. Where is it?”
She told him it was in the drawer of the nightstand in her room, so he went to get it. He handed it to her when he returned and got onto the bed beside her again as she unfolded it.
They both stared down at the worn paper. Seven of the items were neatly crossed out.
Paul smiled as he read a few of the remaining items on the list.
“Don’t laugh,” Emily warned him. She’d perked up a little and was already looking more like herself, with her eyes ironically amused. “I was twelve when I wrote this.”
“It’s a very good list,” he murmured, suppressing a smile with impressive composure. “We can get up to Prince Edward Island sometime soon. Do we really have to go camping, though?”
“That’s what’s on the list,” Emily said with a quirk of her mouth. “I’d been reading a lot of the Anne of Green Gables books and thought that Prince Edward Island must be the most beautiful place in the world. Camping was the way I thought I could commune with nature the most.”
“All right," Paul relented, cringing inwardly as he thought about how cool it might be there at night this time of year. "I'll work on the arrangements. Maybe we can do that after your birthday.”
She nodded as if she thought it was a good plan.
“What about this?” Paul suggested, pointing to one of the other lines on her list. “We could do the ice skating today.”
“Really?” she asked. “I thought you’d have to work all day to catch up.”
“I’ve already done most of what I needed to do while you were lazing about in bed. It shouldn’t be hard to get that one today.”
“It might be harder than you think. I’ve never ice skated before. I was going to try to practice some, before…But I never had the chance.”
“I can help you,” Paul said, pleased that she was cheering up. “You’ll pick it up quickly. But do we have to skate to that cheesy song?”
Emily actually snickered. “I was twelve. I saw a scene with that song in a TV movie, and I thought it was the most romantic thing ever.”
Paul gave a resigned sigh. “Fine. Ice-skating hand-in-hand to that insufferable power ballad it is.”
Emily laughed out loud, her lovely, uninhibited laugh that he hadn't heard in several days. Then she reached over and gave him a little hug. “You’re the best husband in the world!”
He wondered if she might really think that was true. “As long as you appreciate my sacrifice.”
* * *
Emily wasn’t a very good ice skater. And she wasn’t a very fast learner.
Paul didn’t really mind. He’d been ice-skating for years, since he’d played a lot of ice hockey when he was a teenager, and it wasn’t particularly painful to teach Emily.
But she was getting more and more frustrated by her clumsiness.
After about an hour, after she’d fallen yet again and Paul had hauled her up, she groaned. “Oh, forget it. I’m never going to make it all the way around without falling.”
“Sure you will. You’re just getting too uptight about it. Try to relax.”
She made a guttural sound in her throat and slanted him a malevolent glare.
He chuckled. “What was that for?”
“Do you have any idea how annoying it is to hear someone who can skate like a pro telling me to just relax? Maybe you can just relax on cue, but I can’t.”
“Right,” he said, trying to hide a smile at her indignant face. “Sorry about that. Shall we try again?”
She took a breath, squared her shoulders, and propelled herself into a slide. She made it several feet before her ankle wobbled dangerously.
Paul had been gliding next to her and was able to catch her with one arm around her waist before she took another tumble.
“Damn it!” Emily bit out. “Why can’t I do this? I’m usually good at things.” She watched in outrage as a boy and girl of about ten skated by them with smooth ease. Her cheeks were bright red, her hair was slipping out of her ponytail, and her eyes looked very blue above the blue sweater that zipped up the front in the light of the large indoor ice rink. Despite her grumpy expression, she looked scrumptious enough to eat.
“You’re doing fine. It’s not necessarily something you pick up in one day. Some people take lessons for weeks before they feel competent.”
“I don’t have weeks to take lessons,” she said, her expression relaxing into a frown.
“I know,” he said softly, feeling that pang in his chest that was distracting him more and more. “We’re doing fine. We’ve got all afternoon.”
He reached for her hand and gently pulled her into another glide.
It took another hour, but eventually she was steady enough on the skates to do what she wanted to do.
The rink had been playing popular music on the overhead speakers as an accompaniment to the free skate hours. But, when Paul was satisfied that Emily could make it around the rink without falling, he pulled out his cell phone and made a quick call.
In just a moment, the song that had been playing was cut off abruptly and the opening piano strains of a familiar power ballad filled the rink.
Emily had been resting and leaning against a rail, but she straightened up when she heard the familiar music begin.
Paul glided over so he was directly in front of her. Then he arched one eyebrow and extended his hand to her, his lips tightening slightly with irony he couldn’t suppress.
What had happened to his life in the last two months that ice skating hand-in-hand to a saccharine song was something he was willing to do?
Emily was grinning as she took his hand, her eyes sparkling with a matching irony. Then they started to skate.
The rink wasn’t very crowded at this time in the afternoon, and the other skaters didn’t get in their way. Paul and Emily skated smoothly as the ballad grew in volume and intensity, with Emily clinging to his hand very tightly.
Paul would never admit it to anyone, but he actually enjoyed it. Just like that night when he’d driven her to Lake Collins for skinny-dipping, her transparent pleasure and excitement over something so simple was infectious. Although she still had to concentrate on skating, she was smiling radiantly, glowing, as they circled the rink.
This meant something to her—this fulfillment of a silly, childhood dream. She was brimming over with it, and she kept catching his eyes as if she wanted to share it with him. Paul couldn’t help but respond.
They’d made it twice around the rink when the song finally reached its climax. Emily slowed down a little and looked up at him. “Here comes the best part,” she murmured, speaking for the first time since the song began.
Then she sang the line along with the music, holding his eyes and the extended note as her voice faded out.
Paul laughed as the song ended, still holding her hand, feeling warm and amused and oddly touched.
Emily threw herself against him in a fierce hug. “Thank you, Paul,” she said, her voice muffled by his shirt. “It was wonderful!”
He hugged her back tightly, although he had to do some foot work to balance both himself and her on the ice.
There was a tear on Emily’s cheek as she pulled away, but she was still glowing with emotion. Unfortunately, she’d gotten distracted from keeping her balance and her ankles buckled dramatically as he released her.
She squealed as she started to fall, and Paul reached out instinctively to catch her, almost going down himself in the process.
“I've got you,” he said thickly, as he grabbed her waist and pulled her against him, the only way he could manage to keep them both upright. “I’ve got you.”
Emily had started to giggle as they scuffled into a stable position, and she was still giggling as she gazed up at his face. But, as he spoke the final words, her expression transformed from gleeful amusement to something even warmer, even softer.
Paul’s breath caught in his thr
oat as he stared down at her, trapped by the sweetness, the fondness, the absolute trust on her face.
He couldn’t remember seeing anyone look at him that way before. Ever.
He had no idea what happened next, but they were suddenly kissing.
After the first light press of their lips, Paul felt a surge of hot feeling and possessiveness rise up inside him. Emily’s mouth was eager and willing, and she opened immediately to the advance of his tongue. He held onto her tightly, both of his arms wrapped around her, and his mind glazed over with pleasure and need as he felt her respond to his lips, his tongue, his deep hunger.
She made a little moan in the back of her throat that caused his body to clench in desire. She was clutching at his shirt, and Paul had never felt anyone so warm, so vibrant, so passionate, so alive, as Emily felt in his arms.
The sound of someone skating by them alerted him to the fact that they were in a very public place. And he shouldn’t be kissing Emily anyway.
He tore his mouth away and gasped as he stared down at her.
She was panting too and flushed deeply red. Her eyes lowered. Her hands were still fisted in his shirt.
Paul had no idea what to say. He wanted to apologize, but he wasn’t sorry at all. He wanted to kiss her again. Right now. And he was afraid if he spoke, he would say something utterly stupid, prompted only by this surge of feeling—something like declaring his undying adoration or begging her to have sex with him.
“We should probably go,” he murmured thickly, since one of them had to say something.
She nodded, still not quite meeting his eyes. “Yeah. I’m going to fall down again in about two more seconds.”
They slid to the exit of the rink and then took their skates off and got ready to go. They didn’t say much as they did so. Emily kept slanting him questioning glances, as if she wanted to ask him what was going on. He would have been happy to tell her, but he didn’t know himself.
Emily had stopped in the bathroom before they left when a man came over to Paul. “Excuse me," the man said. "I think your girlfriend might have dropped this.” He extended a little pink glove to Paul. Paul recognized it as Emily's. It must have fallen out of the pocket of her sweater when they’d gotten off the rink.
Paul thanked him and accepted the glove. Then he heard him saying something else. Something foolish. And irrelevant. And entirely unnecessary. And certainly not anything a stranger needed to know.
But he said it anyway. “She’s not my girlfriend. She’s my wife.”
***
Paul leaned back in the desk chair in the library of his mother’s old house and stared as the light shine through the windows onto the parquet floor.
Emily had decided she didn’t want a big party for her birthday the following day, but she reluctantly admitted that she did want to see some of her old friends. So they’d driven out to the house that afternoon after Paul had gotten back from a few meetings in the office, and Emily was having dinner with Chris and his family right now.
Chris’s mother had made a point of inviting Paul to dinner tonight too, but he hadn’t accepted the invitation. He wasn’t too excited about seeing Laura, who might be joining her family tonight, and he didn’t want Emily to feel awkward with her old friend, since Paul knew Chris hadn’t wanted her to marry him.
So Emily was having dinner with them, and Paul was in the library trying to work.
He’d just hit send on his fourteen-trillionth email that day when someone knocked on the library door.
“Hi, Tim,” Paul said when he saw one of his bodyguard. “Everything all right?”
“Yes, sir,” Tim said. “Ruth just arrived, and she wanted to unpack your luggage. She was wondering where to put everything.”
“The master bedroom.” Paul raised his eyebrows as he spoke, since his staff didn’t usually trouble him with unnecessary inquiries like this.
Tim shifted from foot to foot, looking strangely awkward for such a stoic, beefy man. “And Mrs. Marino’s luggage?” he prompted.
Enlightenment dawned as Paul realized what they needed to know. In the apartment, he and Emily had separate rooms, although she’d been sleeping in his bed every night for more than a week. Ruth obviously wasn’t sure whether her stuff should go in the master bedroom with Paul's or in one of the guest rooms.
Paul thought quickly. It would make the most sense to keep their normal arrangement, but the master bedroom in this house was in a wing of its own. The guestrooms were all on the opposite side of the big, sprawling house, which would mean Emily would have to traipse through long stretches of hallway to get to his room to sleep at night. Or she would have to just sleep in her own bed.
“You can put her stuff in my room too. Thanks.”
Tim nodded, not conveying any reaction on his impassive countenance. “Thank you, sir.” He left Paul alone in the library.
Paul told himself it was silly to go through the pretense of separate rooms if Emily continued wanting to sleep with him every night. They might as well just share the room here.
If, for some reason, she didn’t like that arrangement, they could move her stuff to one of the guest rooms before she went to bed tonight.
With that issue resolved in his mind, he tried to focus on work again. He’d managed to reply to and delete the last of his emails when he saw a new one come in. It was a daily update from one of the public relations people at Simone’s on what was being said online about the Marinos or the company.
This update was longer than normal, with half of the news stories and blog posts being about the conviction of Vincent Marino and the other half being about Paul’s marriage to a dying teenage girl.
Most of the stories about his marriage in the last few days had run a now notorious photograph of him nearly kissing Emily in the ice skating rink.
They hadn’t known anyone had recognized them and snapped the picture that afternoon until it appeared in the local paper the following day.
In the photograph, Paul’s arms were wrapped around Emily with a kind of intimate entitlement, and she was pressing herself against him, her face turned up for his kiss. His head was tilted down toward her, an expression on his face that had encouraged the stories of tragic romance that were going around the gossip circuits. An expression that made Paul extremely uncomfortable.
He wasn’t embarrassed exactly, but that expression seemed to reveal certain things about him that he’d prefer to not be shared with the world at large.
The photographer had caught him in the moment before the kiss, but he would rather the picture have been his kissing Emily for real. At least that would be physical. The photo as it was conveyed something more emotional than physical.
It made him cringe every time he looked at it, overwhelmed with an appalling feeling of being completely exposed.
Emily had taken the picture in stride, quipping that her only problem with it was that her ass looked way too big.
Her ass hadn’t looked too big. She’d looked curvy, feminine, and vulnerable somehow with her blonde ponytail and hands clutching at his shirt as she waited for his kiss.
If Emily wasn’t worried by the photo, then Paul shouldn’t be either. But it seemed ridiculous and offensive that so many people thought they had a right to know and discuss what he did with his own wife on a random Saturday afternoon.
He stopped scanning through the links in the email since they only served to annoy him more.
It took a while, but he managed to focus on his work again, and he was surprised by Emily’s voice from the doorway sometime later.
“You’re back early,” he said, smiling in response to her friendly greeting.
She frowned. “It’s almost ten.”
“Is it?” He glanced over at the panel of windows and was surprised to see that they were no longer lit by the sun. “Did you have a good time?”
“Yeah. It was pretty good.” She’d walked into the library. She was dressed casually in jeans and a black top and she looked a li
ttle tired, a little pale.
“Are you sure? They treated you well, didn’t they?”
She smiled at him, almost fondly. “Of course, they did. They’re good people. It was nice. It was really nice to see them again.” She paused and slanted him a diffident look. “You could have come too, you know.”
“I know. I had a lot of work to do.”
“Okay. But…”
“But what?”
“I just wanted to make sure you know that I would have been happy if you’d come with me.”
Paul wasn’t sure what to say in response, so he just said, “Thank you.”
“Did you get a lot of work done?”
“Yes. I’m mostly caught up now.”
She peered around, evidently taking note of the empty coffee cup on the desk. “Did you eat anything for dinner besides coffee?”
Paul rubbed a hand through his hair and tried to remember. “I guess so. I must have had something.”
Emily rolled her eyes but didn’t pursue the matter. “Well, I’m kind of tired. I’m going to take a bath and go to bed.”
“Okay.” Then realizing he’d better explain their sleeping situation, he added casually, “I had them put your stuff in the master bedroom, if that’s okay.”
“That’s fine.” She exhaled visibly. “It’s kind of strange to be back in the neighborhood, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” he agreed, gazing around the familiar room and trying to feel like he was at home here again. He’d been raised in this house.
“It seems like ages ago now,” she added.
It did seem like ages ago—endless, aching miles. “It hasn’t really been that long.”
“Yeah. I guess.” She gave him a tired smile and turned to leave. “Don’t work too late.”
Paul wasn’t planning to work very late, and he hurried through the rest of the things he needed to finish this evening.
About ten minutes later, someone brought up a sandwich for him, explaining that Mrs. Marino had made it clear that he was supposed to eat it since he hadn’t had dinner.
So he ate the sandwich as he finished up.
* * *
Emily was still in the bath when he came into the bedroom almost an hour later. She’d either taken a particularly long soak, or she hadn’t started immediately after she’d left him.
