Double the Love

by Taggart, Molly

  Aaron’s determined to make up for the supply closet mishap. He'll surprise Janice, but romantically, and then when the courtship finally culminates in sex, he'll "mix it up."

  "Tomorrow Friday?" Daniel asks.

  "Yeah."

  "Nothing like 24-hour notice. But we can wing it."

  Something on the TV catches Aaron’s coach’s eye. He pauses the game film. "Listen, I really appreciate it, because I have got to make up for that supply closet thing." Aaron shuts his eyes suddenly. He didn’t mean to let that slip out. Maybe, if he’s lucky, Daniel won’t pick up on it.

  There’s a long pause at the other end of the line and then Daniel's voice, raised with a note of merriment, "Supply closet?"

  "Uh…."

  "Casanova, did you take your wife into a supply closet? To make out?"

  "It was your idea."

  "The supply closet? I said a romantic alcove. You cannot blame that on me. I never suggested any such thing."

  “Yeah, but this whole thing only came up in the first place because you and Eden like to lock each other up in handcuffs and do it on the kitchen counter.”

  “Say what now?”

  Aaron reminded him of the clues that had elicited such quick responses in the Taboo game. Daniel laughed loudly. “Eden would never let me put her in handcuffs. I asked once and she said it was too kinky. That’s how I knew she’d give me the answer I wanted when I gave her that clue. And the thing we were doing on the kitchen counter while the boys watched a show? That was a jigsaw puzzle. I just couldn’t remember the word for it when I was giving the clues.”

  “Seriously?” Aaron takes his feet off his desk and leans an arm on the surface. "Well, Janice was talking about something completely different too when she said she wanted to mix it up. I way overthought it, and I shouldn't have, because she's my wife. But the way she said it…what she said…what was I supposed to think?"

  "Well at least you got it sorted out. Listen, Saturday morning I was going to take the boys out to a farm of a friend of mine and let them do some BB gun shooting with cans and such. How do you feel about that? If we took Sophie?"

  "Uh…well, I mean…she's a little young."

  "Only a couple months younger than O and Cory."

  "Yeah, but she hasn't ever…well, okay. It'd be good for Sophie to learn gun safety anyway and I know you'd make a point of that.”

  After saying goodbye, Aaron returns the phone to its cradle. He leans forward and looks more closely at the paused image on the TV. "Can't believe I didn't see that before," he mutters. He makes a note and then turns off the TV. It’s been a useful free period. He's discovered a little something that will serve him well in the first game next season, and his plan to seduce his wife is in motion.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The alarm hasn’t gone off, but Janice is awake. She hates to think she’s wasting even a moment of potential slumber, but it’s as if her internal alarm has gone off. She hopes it isn’t too early. She glances at the clock, bolts upright, and turns to wake Aaron, but the bed beside her is empty. There’s the sound of water in the master bathroom switching off, and then he steps out, fully dressed and cleanly shaven.

  "Why didn't you wake me?" she asks. "I overslept fifteen minutes. Why didn't the alarm go off?"

  "Because I turned it off. I thought you could use your rest."

  "But I have to make breakfast and pack Sophie’s lunch and make sure she's dressed and– "

  "– I've taken care of all of it. Sophie’s completely ready for school, and Emily already left. Their older daughter’s school starts early. “Why don't you take your shower? Breakfast'll be on the table when you get out."

  She looks at him suspiciously. "Who are you?" she asks.

  "Your loving and devoted husband."

  As he walks through the doorframe, she calls after him, "Well if that's the case, my blouse needs ironing too." She crawls out of bed and starts for the bathroom. "The white one I left hanging above the ironing board."

  His voice drifts back from the hallway: "I'm on it."

  She shakes her head as she closes the bathroom door and thinks, Best not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

  *

  Janice is tense and frustrated when she pulls into the driveway. She had a new server working for her today, and the girl toppled an entire tray of leftovers on the kitchen floor during clean up. Janice was hoping to donate those mushroom puffs to a local shelter instead of spending an extra hour cleaning them off the floor. Then another one of her employees kept her late to discuss some scheduling issue she didn’t even think was an issue. She tried to cut Mark off and get home, but he just kept going on and on about the catering shifts. She finally told him she really needed to get home and start dinner.

  Her late start means traffic is worse than usual. She fills her car up with a litany of muttering during the drive home. When she arrives in the driveway, she switches off the engine and takes a minute to calm herself in the still quiet of the car. She knows that Emily is spending the night at a friend’s house, but Sophie will want her attention as soon as she walks through the door, so she needs this moment to herself.

  Later, as she shuts the door of her car, Janice hopes Aaron has managed to get dinner started and that he has at least made Sophie unpack and put away her backpack. He’s gotten better about helping around the house, though she knows both the move from Georgia and her sudden assumption of a catering career has been an adjustment for him. She used to make a little extra cash decorating cakes for special occasions when they lived in Georgia, but not until her sister told her she was giving up her own catering business in Pennsylvania did Janice begin to think about putting her talents to wider use.

  When she opens the front door of the house, the first thing she sees beyond the foyer and in the breakfast nook are the lit candles on the table. It isn’t until she’s stepped into the house that she notices the rose petals scattered in a trail on the floor, and the little note that says, "Follow me."

  She sets the empty trays she’s carried in on the tile floor of the foyer, slides out of her high heels, and then walks in her stocking feet along the trail of petals, which lead to their bedroom and then ultimately into their master bathroom. Her husband is leaning against the bathroom door frame. He’s wearing those well-fitting, bluish black jeans she once said flattered him, and he has on a red, button-down shirt. She told him once that red emphasized the blue hue in his eyes.

  "Where's Sophie?" she asked.

  "Daniel and Eden have her. We don't have to pick her up until Saturday evening. You deserve a relaxing weekend."

  "I do," she agrees.

  "I've drawn you a bath."

  So he’s expecting bathtub sex, is he?

  "Don't worry," he assures her. "I won't try to join you. Just relax. I'm finishing up fixin' dinner." He walks over and lowers his lips to hers. He smells like soap and roses and his kiss is somehow soft and possessive all at once.

  "What's the occasion?" she asks.

  "The occasion is you. Enjoy." He pulls away and heads back to the kitchen.

  She follows the remainder of the trail, which leads all the way to the tub. He's lit and placed tea candles all over the vanity of the sink and the back of the toilet as well as the two back corners of the tub, and on the floor rests a wine glass filled with Chardonnay. She leaves the bathroom to slide out of her clothes and returns to ease into the warm, bubbly water. She reaches down, grabs her wine glass, lays her head back, and smiles.

  "Somebody apparently thinks he's getting laid sometime tonight," she says to her wine glass as she raises it to her lips. "And somebody's absolutely right."

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  "We've captured the princess!" Othello grabs Sophie by the arm and struts her into the kitchen, Nerf gun turned inward towards her. Daniel and Eden sit at the kitchen table enjoying a post-dinner glass of wine. Daniel has already cleaned the dishes the kids have cleared to the sink.

  "Buy my true love will resc
ue me!" Sophie insists with dramatic flair. "He will never let you get away with it!"

  "I'm not your true love!" Cory shouts from the hallway just outside the kitchen. "I'll rescue you because I'm a superhero, but I'm NOT your true love!"

  Daniel chuckles.

  "Fine!" Sophie retorts. "Then I'll just rescue myself!" She begins to tug away from Othello’s grip. When she's yanked herself free, she groans, makes a face, and says, "Owwww!"

  "Othello!" Eden scolds her son. "You shouldn't be so rough – "

  "No," Sophie says, "It's my stomach." She puts a hand over tummy, groans again, and promptly begins vomiting on the kitchen floor.

  *

  Janice has just finished her last sip of wine when she notices Aaron peering around the corner of the bathroom door. "Dinner's ready," he says. "But if you want to keep relaxin' for a while— "

  "No, I've had enough relaxing. The water's getting cool."

  "A'ight. I'll be waiting for you. I left your robe on the back of the door."

  The long, plush terry cloth robe falls below her knees. That will do nicely. When does she ever get to eat dinner in her robe? As she walks to the dining room she glances at the rose petals still scattered in the hallway and in the foyer and hopes they’re fake, because real ones might stain the new off-white carpet, not that she’s going to mention that to Aaron, because he’s clearly trying hard, and that’s the sort of effort she does not want to discourage with suggestions for improvement.

  Janice slides into the chair Aaron has pulled out for her at the table and waits to be served. When he puts the bacon-wrapped scallops and hollandaise-dribbled asparagus in front of her, she raises an eyebrow. "You cooked this?"

  "Well," he says as he sits down across from her, "I picked it up at the gourmet counter at that insane grocery store you like to go to, and I heated it up all by myself." He smiles. "Only the best for you."

  She laughs as she picked up her fork. "Well I appreciate it. It looks like you put a lot of thought into tonight. So much that I even forgive you for getting my employees to make me work late." She looks across the table at him. "You did get them to do that, didn't you?"

  "I needed more time to set up," he confesses. "Try the scallops."

  *

  As Sophie heaves, Othello steps backward with a look of alarm, and Daniel and Eden stand up from the table. When Sophie begins to turn, Daniel insists, calmly, "No, just finish up on the floor. We'll clean it up. Just get it all out."

  When she’s done, he says, just as calmly, "Now let's get you cleaned up." Sophie starts to step forward to go to the bathroom. "No!" Daniel shouts. "Don't walk through it! Come back this way and around." He nods to Eden, who leads Sophie back around the table on a clean path toward the bathroom.

  Later, Eden re-enters the kitchen as Daniel is finishing up the final mopping of the floor. He cleaned with towels first, then Clorox, then water. "She's lying down," Eden tells him. "I better call Janice."

  "No!"

  Eden’s taken aback by his sudden firmness. "Daniel, she's going to want to know that Sophie—"

  "—No! We can't call, because then Janice will just want to run and pick her up."

  "Isn't that the point?" Eden asks.

  "It's not like we haven't dealt with a little vomit before. Listen, my love, this wasn't just a take the kid off our hands so we can get some projects done around the house thing. Aaron is planning something really big."

  "A big house project?"

  "No." Daniel laughs. "Something…" he wiggles his eyebrows "…romantic."

  "Oh, see, it didn't occur to me because I'm not accustomed to my husband planning big romantic surprises for me." Her lips curve into a sarcastic smile.

  Daniel sighs and swishes the mop forward. "That's because your husband's too busy cooking you dinner and washing your dishes and doing your laundry and homeschooling your kids. Maybe you should plan a big romantic surprise for me."

  She shakes her head. "No, that's always the man's job." She steps forward, smiles, and puts a hand in Daniel's hair, what’s left of it. "You're a good friend, darling. I hope Aaron appreciates that. And when he appreciates it so much that he takes Cory and O for a weekend, I just might give you a very nice surprise indeed. Even if it's not a particularly romantic one."

  He draws her close with one arm. "Yeah?"

  They’re about to kiss when Cory levels a Nerf machine gun at them and orders, "Halt! No romance on the deck of the starship by order of the emperor! It's fucking forbidden!"

  Eden slides away from her husband and eyes him accusingly.

  As Cory disappears from the kitchen, Daniel says, "I admit I've been working on annunciation with the boys, but you can discuss the vocabulary with Aaron."

  "I seriously, seriously doubt Cory learned that word from Coach Aaron Mitchell. I've never heard that man say anything more severe than damn or hell. Ever."

  "Well you're a lady, darling. And he's a southern gentleman. So you wouldn't have. But boys will be boys."

  She turns from him and begins to walk out of the kitchen. "Nice try, framing another man for your crimes."

  *

  Janice waits for Aaron to finish up whatever he’s doing in the basement and return to retrieve her. When he said he was going down there to put on some "finishing touches," she didn’t question him. He’s already put so much effort into this evening that no matter what he does at this point, she’s going to tell him she appreciates it.

  But the basement? Really? The basement? What was he thinking? It’s like an episode of Hoarders down there. They should have gotten rid of more in the move from Georgia, but she wasn’t able to part with all the memories. They’ve boxed up outgrown toys and albums, Aaron's old soccer trophies, and Janice's pre-Sophie clothes, which she was sure she would get back into within a year of the birth, but still hadn't quite managed to fit into comfortably six years later.

  Maybe Aaron has managed to clear a space, somehow. After all, he's been down there three nights this week, pounding away at those metal shelves he said he was going to assemble six months ago and shuffling stuff around. But even if he has cleared a large enough area for relaxing and making love, there’s no carpet down there. It’s nothing but a cement floor, and it’s bound to be frigid, especially considering it’s still technically winter. The basement typically feels fifteen degrees colder than the rest of the house.

  Alone at the table, she shakes her head and laughs. God, how she loves him. She does. She truly does. But the basement?

  *

  "Can I have dessert now?" Sophie asks. She's just wandered out of the room where Eden laid her down earlier and is back in the now clean kitchen.

  "Sorry, princess," Daniel says as he leans back against the kitchen counter, "but you really shouldn't eat anything ten minutes after you threw up."

  "Please? You said we'd have dessert after dinner."

  Daniel chuckles. "Glad you're feeling better already, but you have to wait half an hour. Then you can try some water."

  "Cory and O are eating dessert!" She points to the boys, who are shoveling ice cream into their mouths from where they sit at the kitchen table.

  "Cory and O didn't just paint my kitchen floor from the inside out. Sorry, Sophie."

  The little girl frowns and crosses her arms over her chest.

  *

  "Oh my God, Aaron!" Janice gasps.

  "You like this? Tell me you like it."

  He's just lead her downstairs and she's seen what he's done with the basement. He's put up three sets of metal shelves against the far wall and organized everything, absolutely everything. The basement looks like a neat, orderly storage room now instead of a junk pile. The floor is entirely clear, except for some folding chairs and a folding table in front of the shelves.

  The small, extra fireplace they have never once used since moving here has been cleaned and lit. On the floor in front of it lies an oriental rug that was previously rolled up and poised against a corner wall, and on top of that Aaro
n has placed the mattress from the futon in the office. That he has made up with soft, warm blankets and multiple pillows. In addition to the fire place, light flows from a black metal candelabra filled with votive candles, a candelabra Janice completely forgot they had, and which he must have found while cleaning up.

  "I love it," she says as she walks to the mattress.

  "I thought about the office. Maybe the chair or desk or something like that, but I figured…with Sophie gone …I figured you'd want us to take our time. And we just did the living room at New Year's. You wanted to mix it up, so…"

  He looks at her, seeking approval.

  "It's a beautiful surprise," she says, and means it. Her feet bare feet are at the mattress now, and they’re a little chilly, so she climbs in under the covers.

  "Since you've just got the robe, mind if I?" He points to his shirt. She shakes her head and he slides off his shirt and jeans and, wearing only his black silk boxers, crawls under the blankets next to her.

  "What's this?" Janice draws out a book he’s left under the covers.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  "It's like it never happened at all," says Eden, shaking her head from where she sits on the living room sofa. She watches Sophie run after Cory and O. This time little Ms. Mitchell is the one wielding a Nerf gun. Sophie shoots a volley of soft, orange bullets over the banister of the staircase as the boys slide on their butts with a thud-thud-thud down the stairs.

  "Kids are like that sometimes," Daniel replies. "Maybe it was a fifteen-minute bug. Or maybe she'll vomit again in the middle of the night. Let's just go with the flow."

  Eden scoots close to her husband, and he wraps an arm around her shoulders. "Shouldn't we be getting them ready for bed at some point?" she asks.