The Real Thing

by Linda Rettstatt

  Jane nodded. “I am, too.”

  At the door, Charlotte turned to Jane before heading toward Louise’s room. “Oh, and I need six signed copies of your new book. It’s my book club’s selection for next month.”

  Jane stood rooted to the spot, stunned. Charlotte, who was critical of Jane’s decision to write and took every opportunity to downplay her success wanted copies of her book. For her book club? Had the earth tilted completely on its axis?

  ~ * ~

  Jane stood in the elevator when a hand clamped on the door and stopped it from closing. Mitch walked toward her. She smiled and he grinned.

  “What’s our game plan?” he asked.

  “Game plan? I’m not sure….”

  “How do we want to handle this session? Just blurt out the sad truth that we can’t keep our hands off one another? Or take the more genteel approach and say we’ve been talking.”

  “We do talk—after.”

  Mitch reached for her hand. “I want us back together before our anniversary. It’s our twentieth and I have something special planned.”

  “You planned our anniversary?”

  “Let’s just say I have a surprise that you’re going to love.”

  She eyed him warily. “Okay.”

  “Trust me.”

  The elevator doors whooshed open and Mitch held her hand until they reached the outer door to the therapist’s office.

  Once inside, they sat together in silence. A thousand questions pinged around in Jane’s head. What if they’d moved too fast? What if this was a mistake? What if everything had been a mistake? What if….?

  The inner door opened. “Mitch. Jane. Come in.” Rose smiled warmly. “How are you both?”

  “Good. We’re good,” Mitch said.

  “Yes, fine,” Jane added.

  This was followed by more silence. Rose looked expectantly from one to the other. “How did things get to be good?”

  Mitch picked at a spot on his khakis.

  Jane focused on the painting behind Rose.

  “What is better for you now?” the therapist prodded.

  Jane felt the pressure building. Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t say it. “Okay, fine. We had our date and we ended up at Mitch’s place. We slept together and it was amazing and now we can barely stand to be apart. We want to get back together and we’re asking your permission…er…blessing…er…whatever it is you do.”

  Rose’s mouth contorted as she seemed to hold back a laugh. “I see. You do realize you don’t need my permission. I’d be happy to give you my blessing. What changed?”

  Mitch straightened in his chair and reached for Jane’s hand, his eyes fixed on hers. “We remembered who we were.”

  His words reverberated in Jane and she began to cry. He’d nailed it so succinctly.

  “Did I say something wrong?” he asked.

  Jane shook her head. “You couldn’t have said it any better.” She snatched up tissues and dabbed at her eyes. “We found one another again—without all the window dressing I’d invented for us. Without all the assumptions we’d both formed about one another. It was just us—Mitch and Jane.”

  “Janie,” Mitch corrected, squeezing her hand.

  She smiled and squeezed back.

  “What’s the next step?” Rose asked.

  “Mitch is coming home.”

  “Just in time, too. We have a twentieth wedding anniversary coming up. We’re going on a second honeymoon to Mackinac Island.”

  Jane’s head whipped around. “We’re going where?”

  Mitch seemed confused by the tone of her response. “You always said you wanted to go back there some day. I made all the arrangements.”

  “You did?”

  He nodded. “Did I do something wrong?”

  Her face broke into a broad smile. “That is just about the sweetest surprise ever.” She took his face in her hands and kissed him.

  When Rose cleared her throat, they both looked at her. “Will you come back once more after your trip, just to touch base? Besides, I want to see pictures of the island.”

  “If we get out to take any pictures,” Mitch said.

  Jane smacked his arm, her face flushing. “Mitch!” She turned to Rose. “We’ll call once we’re back and set up one last appointment.”

  When they left the counseling office, they drove to Mitch’s apartment to supposedly begin to pack his things. Two hours later, Jane yawned and stretched. “I’m going to miss this place. Maybe we should keep it as our secret rendezvous.”

  “I like the way you think.” He nibbled at her ear lobe.

  “How much is it a month?”

  “Eight fifty.”

  “Forget it. I think our bedroom will be just fine.”

  “We’re going to be the only two people there, right?”

  “I swear on the soul of Janelle DuMonde.”

  Epilogue

  Jane stumbled as they descended the ramp from the ferry. Mitch caught her and pulled her to his side. “Careful.”

  “Thanks.”

  When they reached the bottom of the ramp, he waved to a young man standing next to a cart. “Can you help us with our bags, please?”

  Mitch gave the name of the B&B and a generous tip. “We’ll take our time.”

  “Shouldn’t we go with him?” Jane asked.

  “Nah. He can handle it.” Mitch took her hand in his. “Let’s take a stroll.”

  She snorted out a laugh. “A stroll?”

  He squeezed her hand and grinned. “A step back in time. Come on.”

  They emerged from the ferry entry onto Main Street where Mitch guided her into the flow of foot traffic. They stopped near the marina.

  Jane drew in a deep breath and closed her eyes. “Do you smell that?”

  “What?”

  “Fresh air and lilacs.” She opened her eyes half way and gazed at him. “Thank you for bringing me here.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  They walked to the western end of the island. Mitch stood behind her, his arms around her, his chin resting on her shoulder. “I want you to know I meant every word I scribbled on that cocktail napkin.”

  She placed a hand over his. “I know.”

  “And it’s not just about sex.”

  She laughed. “Could have fooled me.” She turned in his arms. “Let’s promise to have a date night at least twice a month. Maybe even once a week.”

  He grinned. “Are you suggesting we go somewhere and get a room?”

  “No. We have a perfectly good room at home. I’m suggesting we not lose sight of what we’ve gained. You were right that it’s not just about sex. That was never an issue. We need to stay focused on us—what we value, what we share. The whole package.”

  “I agree.” He bent his head and kissed her, then gave her hand a tug. “Let’s see if our room’s ready. We can unpack, then browse the shops and find a place for a nice dinner.”

  ~ * ~

  Later that night, Mitch rolled onto his side, pulling her with him. “That was….” His breath came in shallow gasps.

  “Yeah,” she rasped. “It was.” Her heart still thudded in her chest and her damp hair clung to her cheeks.

  As the rhythm of their breathing slowed, Jane curled against Mitch, her cheek resting in the crook of his shoulder. When she sighed, he asked, “What are you thinking?”

  She hesitated. “I was thinking that this is like old times, when we were first married. What are you thinking?”

  “That coming here is the best idea I’ve ever had.”

  She lifted her face to his. A narrow beam of moonlight gave his features a more chiseled look. “I would have to agree.”

  He laughed, pulling her closer. “Wouldn’t Doctor Llewellyn be pleased that we agree on something?”

  Laughing with him, she let her fingers trail along his rib cage. He’d lost weight in the months they’d been separated. She wondered if he’d been working out because his abs were flatter, tighter. She let the
flat of her palm rest there, feeling the heat between them. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I changed and nearly destroyed us.”

  His hand tightened on the curve of her hip. “It takes two. I should have stayed and fought. Instead, I took the easy way out and left. Then I didn’t know how to come back.”

  “I was so scared when you walked out. I thought…I thought I’d lost you.”

  He kissed the top of her head. “But we’re here now. I don’t want to keep talking about what went wrong. I want to talk about now and where we go from here. Together.”

  She wriggled free of his embrace and propped on her elbow to look at him. “I think we need to find a way to understand what happened so we don’t make the same mistakes again. I’ve revisited that night over and over. You were right. I treated you like an actor in my play. But I want to tell you why.” She sat up, tugging the sheet into place over her breasts. “When I wrote my first book, I knew nothing about the business of writing. Then it became a huge success so fast and I got scared. I worried that I could never write another one. My agent was pressing me for the next book, and then the next. My editor kept insisting I turn up the heat, make things hotter and sexier and still make every story, every scene fresh and new.” She paused and ran her fingers through his hair, noticing again the graying at his temples. “You’re the only man I’ve ever been with. Don’t take this the wrong way, because our sex life has always been incredible.”

  He grinned up at her. “Given that you have nothing to compare me to?”

  “You know what I mean. I needed to find a way to write scenes I wasn’t even comfortable writing. That wasn’t me. That was Janelle DuMonde, trying to please everyone including her readers. I panicked that I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t write more of the books they wanted.”

  Mitch pushed himself up and rolled a pillow behind him. He gazed at her. “What about what you wanted?”

  “I wanted to write about romance, love, stories that entertained people, took them away from their lives for a while. Sure, some of it is fantasy, but I learned at all those workshops I attended that even fiction has to ring true and seem real. Things just got out of hand. I could feel myself getting pulled deeper into the persona of Janelle.”

  He wrapped his hand around hers. “And I got scared because my Janie was slipping away from me and I didn’t know how to get her back. So I did the one thing I thought would get her attention. I walked away. I never should have done that. I realize it now. I should have told you what I was feeling, but I didn’t trust Janelle to listen or understand.”

  Tears crested her eyelids and spilled down her face. “We almost lost everything.”

  Mitch released her hand and put an arm around her, kissing her cheek. “But we didn’t.”

  She sniffled. “I’ll quit.”

  He drew back and stared hard at her. “You will not quit. Do you have any idea how unusual it is for a writer to hit the bullseye with her first book? Janie, they made it into a movie. That’s major. You’re talented and you can’t just turn that off.”

  Reaching to the nightstand for a tissue, she blew her nose. “Thank you, but I think I’d rather have my marriage than my career.”

  “You don’t have to choose. We can make this work.” He reached for her. “Come here.”

  She settled into his arms, relishing the familiarity of him. “I love you.”

  “And I love you. You’re not the same woman I married or the same woman I walked away from. I’m not the same man. We’ve changed and, hopefully, learned some things along the way. We have the potential to be better than ever.”

  Jane narrowed her eyes and stared at him. “Who are you and what have you done with Mitch?”

  “I may have acted like an ass when we were together in counseling, but when I thought it was too late, I sat down and listened. You know, Rose is a smart woman—for a shrink.”

  “You went to see Rose on your own?”

  “For some reason, counseling turned me into a teenager again. I’ve never told you this. But when I was fourteen, my mother dragged to me a family counselor because she and I had been fighting a lot. The truth was, I was just being a teenager and she was losing her little boy.”

  “You and Charlotte in counseling? How could you not have told me this?”

  “I’ve spent a lot of years trying to forget it. We only had three sessions before the counselor told her I was ‘exercising my impending manhood’ by standing up to her.”

  “I’ll bet she took that well.”

  “Not really. I think she was hoping he’d medicate me or something. I knew I was having no further discussion of my manhood with the two of them, so I refused to pay attention to anything either my mother or the therapist said. Mom finally gave up, not wanting to spend good money for me to ‘sit there and sulk.’” He sighed. “When we walked into that counseling office, it took me right back to that experience. So I became fourteen-year-old Mitch, determined not to take the whole thing seriously and to get out of there as fast as I could.”

  “But you went back.”

  He nodded. “The look on your face at that session we had together when I behaved like a jerk…. I knew I’d gone too far. I knew I’d hurt you and I never wanted to do that. When you said you were done, I knew you meant it. And that’s when it hit me.”

  “What?”

  “That sometimes I push you away emotionally because I don’t know what you see in me. I don’t think I deserve you and I’m sure that at any moment you’re going to look at me and wonder how the hell you ended up with this guy. And then what?”

  She bit her lower lip. “Oh, Mitch.”

  “I swear, Janie, sometimes you scare the hell out of me. But you’re the only woman I’ve ever wanted.”

  “You’re the only man I’ve ever wanted. I can see how my drawing you into role playing might have made you feel like you weren’t enough, that I wanted you to be different. It wasn’t that at all. I am so sorry.”

  “It’s all right. We should have talked like this a long time ago.”

  She chuckled. “Yeah, that would have worked.”

  “You’re probably right. I’d have run screaming from the room. But I won’t, not ever again.”

  “And I’ll find another way to write without being swallowed up by Janelle DuMonde. Look at us here. This is pretty wonderful.”

  “You better believe it, Babe.”

  She looked up at him sharply. “Did you just call me Babe?”

  His old grin was back. “I did. I kind of like it, do you?”

  “I do,” she admitted with a laugh. “I’ll have to think of a nickname for you.”

  He kissed her, his fingers tracing lightly over her now-exposed breasts. “How about—Stud Muffin?”

  She laughed into his next kiss.

  “I don’t think it’s that funny. And I can prove it.” He pulled her back down into the bed and smiled.

  Jane locked eyes with him. “Okay, Stud Muffin. Earn your title.”

  “Babe and Stud Muffin. I like this game.”

  “No, not a game. Janie and Mitch. The real thing.”

  ~ The End ~

  About the Author

  Linda Rettstatt is an award-winning and best selling author of Women’s Fiction and Contemporary Romance. She likes to know what makes people tick and she loves a good story. This combination fuels her passion for creating stories that capture your mind and touch your heart. Linda grew up in Southwest Pennsylvania and suffers a bout of homesickness every October when she thinks of the fall leaves and trails at her beloved Ohiopyle State Park. She now lives in Northwest Mississippi with her cat, Binky, who only allows her to share the apartment because she brings home the Fancy Feast.

  If you enjoyed THE REAL THING,

  you might also enjoy:

  RESCUED

  FLIGHT OF FANCIE

  LADIES IN WAITING

  RENTING TO OWN

  Visit Linda’s website

  http://www.lindarettstatt.com

  w
here you can find more of her books.