“Because Mike and I just weren’t meant to be. It’s been obvious this entire time. All we do is fight about the wedding. This time it was over my hair and how I was going to wear it, and finally I said, I’m done. Who wants to spend their life in that kind of situation?”
Eleanor nodded, which really wasn’t what Allie expected.
“You fought over your hair?” Eleanor said as she sipped her cocoa. “I didn’t imagine Mike would be the kind of guy who had such a strong opinion about hair. Did he want you to wear it up? Or did you?”
Allie scowled at her sister. “You know that’s not what it was about.”
“I do, I’m just waiting for you to get there.”
“Yes. Mom had an opinion. She has those. Lots of those. That’s never going to stop. She thought I should wear it up, and I was considering her advice. That’s all.”
“And Mike was upset by that because...”
“I said I was going to wear it down, and he was glad because...because he said when I walked down the aisle he wanted to see me. Not someone who looked like me who he didn’t know.”
“Enter mother...and he’s upset you’re listening to her instead of doing what you want.”
“I’m trying to make both of them happy!” Allie wailed. Why couldn’t anyone understand that? It wasn’t a bad thing. To make sure her mother, who loved her, was part of the experience. Taking advice when she offered it. Making her part of the process. Something she didn’t get to have with Eleanor’s wedding.
“Honey, that’s the problem. You’re trying to make them happy. Where do you fit in this? It’s your wedding. Your day. You should be trying to make you happy.”
Allie snorted. “That’s my point. Any fun in this went out the window. It’s all stress and work and compromise and fighting. There’s no way this could actually work out between us.”
“Sounds a lot like marriage,” Max said, coming into the living room.
“No help from the peanut gallery, please,” Eleanor said, glaring at him.
“Got it. Clearly, this is meant to be a man-free zone right now. I’ll just head to bed.”
“Good night.”
Allie watched Max head upstairs. “Okay, can we pivot back to you now? How did you go from divorcing Max to living with him again? But wait a minute, I saw stuff in the guest bedroom. That doesn’t make any sense.”
“We’re not living living together. We’re...he’s...well, don’t be mad. I was going to tell you and Mom. I’ve just been... I don’t know, maybe part of me still can’t believe it...”
“Eleanor! Spit it out. You’re scaring me here.”
“I’m pregnant.”
Allie’s eyes grew wide as the word penetrated her brain. “A baby?”
Eleanor’s small, quiet smile said exactly how she felt about that, too. She nodded.
“And Max...”
“Is the father.”
Allie laughed, which felt good actually, because while leaving home to come here, she never thought she would be happy again. “He didn’t waste any time in that cabin.”
Eleanor blushed, but didn’t speak about it. “Anyway, when I told him, he offered to stay with me and help out.”
“So tonight outside your front door...that was him helping you?”
“Don’t be dense, Allie. Obviously, there are feelings there, but I’m still...well, I don’t know what I am. Not ready to be Max Harper’s wife as if the past hadn’t happened. That’s all I know right now. It’s all I can handle.”
“The past is always going to be there, Eleanor. You can’t undo what happened. You just have to figure out if you can move forward despite it.”
Eleanor raised her eyebrow in that way she did when she was trying to be superior. Allie wanted to tell her how much she looked like Mom when she did that, but Eleanor always freaked out when anyone told her how much like their mother she was.
“I thought you came here to get advice, not to give it.”
“I came here to run away like you did. I thought it would feel better.”
Eleanor shook her head. “It doesn’t. It just feels a lot like running away. You know you can’t break up with Mike. You two love each other too much. You call things off and you’re both bound to roam the earth as these sad, pathetic, lonely creatures silently longing for each other until your ultimate deaths.”
“That’s swell advice.”
Eleanor shrugged and sipped her hot chocolate. “You know I’m right. This isn’t about hair or stupid wedding stuff or even Mom. This is about Mike wanting you to stick up for yourself. And if you really are just taking Mom’s opinions to heart because you know it makes her happy and not because you feel you have to, then Mike needs to understand that, too. It’s okay to be the good daughter. Marilyn should at least have one.”
Allie smirked. “Please, you are about to give Marilyn a grandchild. You’re so going to be the number-one daughter. Now she might put a preference in for the sex of that child...”
Eleanor rubbed her belly. “Sorry. No requests.”
“Mike will be worried about me,” Allie sighed. “He won’t like that I was driving while crying my eyes out.”
“Then you better call him and tell him you made it here safely. Then you can tell him you don’t want to be a sad zombie roaming the earth pining for him.”
Allie nodded. “Yeah.”
Max came down the stairs. “Not interrupting, but, Allie, I wanted to let you know I changed the sheets on the guest bed. The room is yours for the night.”
“Thanks, Max.”
“Uh, where are you going to sleep?” Eleanor asked him.
“With you,” he said, smiling. “Surely, you can handle sleeping beside me for one night, can’t you?”
Allie snorted. “Looks like you just went from living together to living living together.”
“As my younger sister I still have the right to hit you,” Eleanor muttered.
“You can’t tussle with me,” Allie reminded her. “Not in your fragile condition.”
Then she watched as Eleanor rubbed her hand over her belly as if she still couldn’t believe something was in there.
“You’re going to be a great mom.”
“A mom,” Eleanor whispered reverently. “It’s crazy. I went from being a widow and a boss to a wife again and a soon-to-be mother in a very short amount of time.”
Allie nudged her sister’s shoulder. “I’m so happy for you. It’s nice to see you smile again and know that you’re really feeling it.”
Eleanor nodded.
“Of course, you know you need to tell Mom.”
“Yep.”
Allie laughed. “You’ll see. You’ll like being the one making her happy.”
Chapter Eighteen
MAX WATCHED HIS wife as she puttered about her bedroom. She was rubbing lotion up and down her arms, and he was trying not to get turned on by it and failing. She was stalling, he knew, and he thought it was rather adorable. She was skittish about sleeping with him again.
The last time they did this, they woke up kissing, which would have led to more if she hadn’t panicked. After a week of living together, a week of being there for her, he could sense he was wearing her down.
Not the most romantic of thoughts for a man to have about wooing his wife, but Max was desperate.
Eventually, she pulled down the covers and crawled into bed. She smelled of lavender and Nor, and Max thought he’d never been so happy.
“You know, Nor, I never thought you were the kind of girl who slept with a guy on the first date.”
For that, he was awarded a small decorative pillow to the face.
He laughed, tucked the pillow behind his head, then reached over to turn off the light.
Turning on his side, facing her back, he bent down and asked, “Can I hold yo
u? Just hold you. I promise. No funny business.”
He waited a beat, then the subtle nod of her head gave him all the encouragement he needed. He pressed himself against her and brought his hand around her waist.
“Can I hold the baby, too?”
Again, another nod. Max rested his hand over her lower belly. He told himself he could feel the smallest change in her body, but he knew he was reaching. Looking for something that wasn’t visible yet. He just wanted it to be.
“I thought about this...on the life raft.”
Her body stiffened, but he immediately started making soothing sweeps over her belly.
“I thought about how you wanted to talk about getting pregnant, and I said we could put it off. Like life is infinite. Like it’s all under our control and we can have anything we want, whenever we want it. All of it on our time lines. I was such a cocky asshole.”
“You were passionate. You thought you could change the world. You wanted to do that first.”
He had thought he could change the world. He could fix the planet and change people’s minds and their habits.
When the whole time this world, the one in his arms, was right there in front of him. He pulled her against him, tighter. “I’m never going to leave you, Nor. You might decide to kick me out and divorce my ass, but if you have the smallest doubt that I might go back to how it was, know this... I get it now. I had everything. I have another chance at everything and more, and I’m never going to blow that chance again.”
She didn’t say anything, and, for a moment, he wondered if she’d fallen asleep.
“I’m trying, Max,” she whispered.
Trying, he thought, was a million miles from divorce papers. Trying was hope.
The words were on his tongue. He wanted to tell her he loved her again. That he’d never stopped, not for one day, even when he’d come back from his assignment to find that she’d left him.
But if he was coming to understand something about this new version of his wife, it was that she was cautious and thoughtful. The last time he’d said it, he’d spooked her.
He needed to recognize what he’d done to her, the pain he’d caused her, and live with the consequences. Even as he worked on overcoming it. After all, he was trying, too.
Trying. He couldn’t remember a time when a single word had made him so happy.
* * *
THE FIRST THING he thought about when he woke up the next morning was Nor. In some ways it felt like the dreams he used to have when he was stuck on the island in pain. Always in pain.
He would go to that place in his head where it was just them, nuzzled in their bed, neither one ready to start the day. A sense of contentment that he’d had the first time he’d slept with her overnight when they had been dating.
This was like that. He was on his side, she was wrapped around his back, her thigh on top of his and her hand was moving around his waist, dipping into the elastic on his pajama bottoms...as if she was going to...going to...
“Oh, yes,” he hissed as her hand found his hard, aching cock. She stroked him with long, slow tugs and groaned.
“They say that pregnant women can be hormonal, which can result in...” She trailed off because he knew she wasn’t willing to admit that she was horny as hell.
“Needing my dick?”
“Something like that.”
Max rolled over, her hand leaving his erection which made him sad. “I would hate to leave you in such a frustrated state.” Even as he said it, he pressed his cock against her center, and she tilted her head back and moaned.
“Shhhh, we have to be quiet,” he reminded her. “Allie’s just across the hall.”
“Nope. She left about an hour ago. I heard her leave.”
“Oh. Then we can be as loud as we want because I think I would like to make you scream my name.”
She shook her head against the pillow. “I do have neighbors.”
“Don’t care,” Max said even as he slithered his way down her body. He stopped and pulled the straps of her tank top down her arms, freeing her breasts from their confines.
Her nipples were already hard, and, as he took them into his mouth, Max enjoyed the feel of her squirming beneath him. He used to have fantasies about tying her arms behind her back and teasing and playing with her nipples for hours until she was a writhing case of need. However, this morning didn’t feel like the time for teasing. This was about satisfaction.
Max moved down a little farther and pulled her bottoms down over her hips.
“Max,” she said. For whatever reason, Nor had always been shy about oral sex. Like she was asking too much from him. Receiving too much pleasure without having to do enough of the work.
It always used to take some coaxing with her, just as it did this morning.
“Please, Nor. It’s been so long. I need this. I need to taste you again.”
And he did need it. The taste of her, the smell of her, the sounds he knew he could wring from her.
Max was fighting for their marriage, and each and every day with her was its own battle. Whether he could help her get through an awkward night with a business foe, or rub her feet or give her intense pleasure, all of that was going to make a case. For a future for them.
A family.
He ran his fingers through her slick heat and slowly and carefully opened her up to his touch. Then he pulled the pajamas off her and tossed them out of his way, sinking down between her legs. Her eyes were closed. Her arm, thrown over them as if she needed the extra protection of not watching.
Which was the polar opposite of him. There was nothing he loved more than watching Nor go down on him. Seeing his cock in her mouth and feeling it at the same time was nothing short of spectacular.
Except he needed to remove that mental image if he was going to focus on her and not his raging need to be inside of her. He rubbed his tongue along her clit and listened as she sighed. Like she couldn’t help but make the breathy sounds. He tormented her and teased her. Coming close but never doing enough to get her where she needed because when that happened he wanted to be inside her.
He wanted to be inside his wife.
“Max!”
Max lifted his head and pushed his own bottoms down over his ass. He didn’t hesitate, but instead thrust deep inside her slick heat. He could feel her go over the edge.
Home. Home. Home. The word just kept running over and over again.
Then he was exploding with her, and his world became the sound of his name on his wife’s lips.
* * *
ALLIE PARKED THE car behind the house and noticed that Mike’s truck was there. She cringed. She’d been hoping for a little bit of a reprieve, but it didn’t look like she would get it.
She got out of the car and made her way through the back door of the house, which opened into the kitchen. Mike was sitting at the kitchen table with a newspaper—because he still liked the feel of an actual newspaper—and a cup of coffee.
He turned to her as the door opened but didn’t say anything.
“Coffee still warm?” she asked as a way of a greeting.
“Should be,” he said in a way of an answer.
Allie decided fighting sucked. Especially when she was the person in the wrong. She poured herself a cup and made her way to sit at the table with him.
“I’m sorry,” she said. It helped that there were words a person could immediately go to in this situation.
“Sorry for what?” Mike asked her.
“For all of it. For getting all worked up and breaking things off. For running to Eleanor.”
“I was worried,” he grunted still reading his newspaper. “You were crying pretty hard when you left.”
“I’m sorry for that, too,” Allie said. “You know I don’t want that. For us to be over.”
“Do I?”
/>
“Mike,” Allie sighed sadly. “Please don’t make this any harder on me. I said I was sorry.”
He shook his head. “I’m not trying to make this hard on you, Allie. I love you. I just don’t want to keep doing this.”
“I agree with that. I hate fighting with you over every little thing.”
“We’re not fighting over every little thing. We’re fighting about one thing, and we’re not going to stop until you figure your shit out. This is bigger than your mother being pushy.”
That hurt. As if she alone was the cause of all their problems lately. “I don’t consider my mother shit,” she grumbled.
He growled. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
He ran his hand through his hair in frustration, and Allie had this sudden urge to run her own fingers through it. Straighten it out. She hated that she was making him feel this way.
“Marilyn is Marilyn,” Mike said. “I get that. I have told you that before. Hell, I even like the woman despite how pushy she can be. However, what I’m not going to do is spend my life watching you fall over yourself to please that woman at the expense of your happiness. Because that’s the thing, Allie. It doesn’t end there. The next thing I know, you’ll be doing the same with me. Every decision we make will be about what I want. And the whole time I’ll be wondering are you doing what you’re doing because you want it, too, or just because I want it. I want a woman who is stronger than that.”
That hurt, too.
“I’m not Eleanor!” Allie screeched. “Okay? I didn’t go off to college and pay for it on my own. I didn’t elope with the guy I wanted to marry because I didn’t want to listen to my mother. I didn’t start my own zillion-dollar company. I’m not strong like her. I thought you knew that.”
Mike was staring at her hard. “You think this is about Eleanor?”
No. It wasn’t as if she thought for a minute Mike had a thing for her sister. She just felt like he was asking her to be someone she wasn’t. When all this time she thought he loved her for who she was.
“What if I can’t be that woman you say you want?”
“Allie, you are the woman I want. All I’m asking you to do is to be you. Because I know it’s how you are. I know you like to make people happy. Hell, it’s the first thing I fell in love with...your generosity. But I told you before, I know how this works. If you’re doing everything you can to make me happy, without thinking about yourself, you’ll come to resent me, too. Knowing you might feel that way about me would break me.”
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