Spiral of Bliss: The Complete Boxed Set

by Nina Lane

  I reach across the counter and put my hand on the side of Dean’s neck. The sensation of his heart beating strong and steady against my palm is beautifully reassuring, one of the few things—it seems—that hasn’t changed.

  “Dean.” Saying his name, too, eases my apprehension. It still tastes smooth and richly sweet, like cherry brandy or butter pecan. “Congratulations. I knew they’d offer you the job. They courted you so hard because they wanted you so badly.”

  A smile tugs at his mouth. “Like the way I did with you, huh?”

  I return his smile. “But I didn’t turn you down.”

  “You didn’t say yes right away either.”

  Silence fills the air between us. My heart thumps.

  “So what did you say to the WHC?” I ask.

  “I said thank you,” Dean replies. “But that I couldn’t leave King’s or Mirror Lake. They told me to look over the employment package and benefits before they accepted my answer. Hans is calling me next week.”

  “Have you read the package yet?”

  “Yeah. It’s pretty incredible. Even included an au pair option, if we want one for Nicholas. Rent, expenses, travel. Everything.”

  I’m not sure what to say to that revelation, much less how to feel. I’ve spent the past few weeks knowing what an extraordinary opportunity this would be for Dean, yet fighting the very idea of changing our lives so drastically.

  What about him?

  I look at him, the shadows carving over his face, his thick eyelashes and dark eyes I’ve lost myself in more times than I can count.

  I wonder about the numbers of us—how many times we’ve kissed, how many times I’ve pressed my hand against his chest, how many times Dean has touched my face or tugged gently at a lock of my hair. How many times he’s called me beauty.

  “Do you know one of the things I loved about you from the start?” I ask. “One of the things I still love most about you?”

  “The professor thing.”

  “Well, that too,” I admit. “But I also love how you want to know everything. How curious you are… not just about history, but about people, places, and things. And you don’t need to travel the world to learn. You were like that before we got married. You read books about religion, art, and politics, you wanted to go to museums and gardens.

  “When we were living in Madison, you got involved with the Wisconsin River conservation, and when we were in LA, we ended up in the weirdest places. That mosaic tile house in Venice. The original Bob’s Big Boy. The velvet painting museum. No matter where we were, you found something fascinating to learn about.”

  Dean keeps watching me, his eyes almost glittering.

  “I remember one weekend in Madison when we were hanging out in your apartment,” I continue. “You were reading a book about the history of cryptography. You were telling me about it, and I totally wasn’t getting the point, so you sat down and taught me some nineteenth-century code. Then you wrote me a note in the code and told me to decipher it while you went to make dinner.”

  “What did I write?”

  “You wrote…” My heart gives a happy little knock of reminiscence. “Come here, beauty. I need to kiss you.”

  He smiles, his eyes creasing at the corners. “And did you obey?”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “I remember.” His voice deepens. He crooks his finger at me. “Come here, beauty. I need to kiss you.”

  I go around the counter to where he’s sitting. He grips my waist and pulls me into the V of his legs, bringing one hand up to the nape of my neck. With intense pleasure and relief, I let myself fall into the warm pressure of his mouth, edged with the crystalline memory of our past.

  “I’ve always sought knowledge,” Dean says, lifting his head. “That’s why I was so into the King Arthur stories when I was a kid—I wanted to know more about the knights, the Crusades, the castles. I guess that expanded into other areas as I got older. But of all there is to learn in the world, there’s only one subject I’ve ever wanted to know everything about.”

  I wait, my heart pounding, my gaze locked on his. His expression is warm and tender, a look reserved only for me.

  “You, of course,” he says. “You’re the book I want to open. The story I want to read. The lesson I want to learn, the music I want to hear, the painting I want to study for eternity. If I know nothing else in life except the truth and heart of Olivia West, I’m the luckiest man alive.”

  “Well, that’s just great,” I mutter, pressing my face against his shoulder. “Now I’m crying.”

  A chuckle rumbles through his chest as he spreads his hand over the side of my neck and presses his lips to my forehead.

  “I love you, Liv. If you’re happy, I’m happy.”

  “I’ve always been happy with you.”

  So why have I been so knotted up at the idea of us ever leaving Mirror Lake?

  Dean and I lived in a few other cities before we settled in Mirror Lake. Even though they were unknown to me, I was happy to be wherever we needed to be.

  Granted, we didn’t have children then, and I didn’t own a café or have a strong circle of friends and community, but the idea of change wasn’t that scary since I knew I’d always have my husband. And now the two of us have our son.

  I take his hand and rub it slowly between my palms. “You know my Pinterest boards?”

  “Your what?”

  “Pinterest boards. It’s that site where you make these bulletin boards with different themes. Crafts, recipes, books, fashion, whatever. I have about a dozen of them. One with sexy pictures, but the rest are recipes and stuff about motherhood and raising children.”

  “What’s the point of them?”

  “Inspiration. Planning. Ideas. Ever since Nicholas was born, I’ve had all these intentions of making homemade baby food and gourmet dinners. I have a board of pictures from other cafés and bistros that I thought we could adapt for Wonderland. I was going to spend weekends with Nicholas making sponge towers and spaghetti paintings and walnut-shell boats…”

  My voice trails off. An image of Nicholas and I snuggled under a blanket in the living room appears in my head.

  “But do you know what, Dean?” I pull myself onto the stool beside him and rest my elbows on the counter. “We haven’t yet made spaghetti paintings or walnut-shell boats. And I don’t know when we will.”

  “Ah, well.” Dean tightens his arm around me. “Sounds like a waste of good food anyway.”

  “I just wanted everything to be perfect, you know? I wanted Nicholas to have all the things I never did. I wanted the café to be this warm, fuzzy place where parents and children can be transported to the land of make-believe. I wanted feather-light lemon cakes and rainbow parfaits. I wanted the festival to be fun and heart-warming, where we all joined together as a community. I wanted you and me to have our hot, explosive sex life back. But not only did everything turn out so not perfect, I somehow managed to screw it all up.”

  I shake my head. “But I think I might have realized that as imperfect as it is, everything is the way I wanted it to be, just not exactly how I envisioned. And what kind of an ass would I be to complain about anything when I have all this?”

  I wave my hand in a gesture that encompasses Dean and me, Nicholas, the café, our friends, and all the rest of Mirror Lake.

  Dean slides his hand over my back, rubbing the ridges of my spine.

  “A very sexy ass,” he remarks, moving his hand down to pat my rear end. “And it’s okay, Liv. You don’t need to feel guilty for wanting things to be perfect. You don’t need to feel guilty at all. I get where it comes from.”

  “I guess I totally overcompensated.”

  “Yeah, you did. I get that too.”

  I turn to look at him. It’s the same reason he spent his life working so hard to be the perfect son—to compensa
te for the dysfunction of his family and his own guilt over ruining his relationship with Archer.

  I straighten, cupping my hand around the back of his neck. A drop of water runs from his damp hair over my fingers.

  Our marriage is everything.

  “I love you, Dean. And I don’t want you to have any regrets.”

  “As long as I have you, I never will,” he says. “I wouldn’t change what we have for the world.”

  “But maybe we should change it for the world,” I reply. “You were always meant for more, Dean. I know you love working at King’s, but I also know there’s a reason you’ve been doing so much internationally over the past few years. And I know this position with the World Heritage Center has sparked something inside you. All those dreams of crusades and adventures you had when you were a boy… well, maybe this is your chance to make them come true.”

  “Ah, Liv.” He shakes his head. “I don’t need the job.”

  “You don’t need it, but you might want it.”

  A sudden gust of wind bangs the screen on the front door. Dean and I both climb off our stools but instead of closing the door, we walk out to the covered front porch and sit on the white porch swing, which is sheltered near the building.

  “Moving to Paris isn’t like going to the moon,” I remark, even though it’s certainly felt that way to me.

  Damp air brushes against my face. Beside me, Dean is a solid wall of security and strength. He settles his hand on my thigh.

  “Paris is one thing, Liv. But already neither of us likes the fact that I have to travel so much. I’d have to travel even more as the assistant director. And you coming along to Malaysia or Cambodia with a toddler… no.”

  Allie’s voice echoes in my head.

  “People move all over the world with young children all the time,” I say.

  “We’re not people. We’re us.”

  Silence falls, broken only by the sound of rain pattering on the porch roof. The streetlights along Emerald Street create golden circles glowing wetly on the sidewalks. The town is alive around us—the lake rippling in the wind, the metallic-gray storm clouds gathered overhead, the windows of downtown shops blazing with light.

  I once couldn’t imagine leaving Mirror Lake. But now, knowing the world wants and needs my brilliant husband, knowing I’m strong enough to share him, that he will always walk a path that leads straight back to me… now I’m starting to believe I can find a home anywhere.

  “Do you remember I once told you about Dorothy discovering she always had the power to leave Oz?” I say. “She’d been wearing the ruby slippers the whole time.”

  “I remember.”

  “I’ve done that a lot too,” I admit. “I’ve spent all this time looking for something I already have.”

  “Ruby slippers?”

  “No, professor.” I lean my head against his shoulder and close my eyes, breathing in the scents of rain and Dean and our future. “Perfection.”

  “You had it all along?”

  “Of course.” I rub my cheek against his shoulder. “It’s you. You’re my perfection.”

  “Ah.” He pats my hip, his voice warm with tenderness. “Good one, beauty.”

  I smile, snuggling closer to him. We sit together for a long time, as the rain begins to lessen and the clouds slide away from the sky, revealing a sprinkle of stars and a perfect, spiral moon that will follow us wherever we go or wherever we stay.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  DEAN

  ARCHER’S MOTORCYCLE IS PARKED OUTSIDE THE railroad depot. The doors to the train shed are open, work lights glowing from inside, a radio playing the Stones’ “All Down the Line.” Archer is crouched by the side of the engine, working something with a wrench.

  “Hey.” I stop near him, shoving my hands into my pockets.

  “Hey.” He glances at my suit. “Guess you’re not here to work.”

  “No. You got a minute?”

  He nods and pushes to his feet. I sit on the steps of a cargo car, while Archer reaches into a nearby cooler and produces two cartons of chocolate milk. He offers me one. I take it, remembering how chocolate milk was a staple in our Castle tree house. Archer has never lost his love for it.

  He sits beside me. I take a drink of the sugary milk, admitting it tastes pretty good. I set the carton down and rest my elbows on my knees, linking my hands together.

  “You know that job I told you about?” I ask.

  “The fancy European thing.” Archer tilts his head back to take a drink. “Yeah.”

  “When I was in Geneva,” I say, “they offered me the job.”

  Archer is silent for a minute before he says, “So what did you tell them?”

  “They want an answer next week. I have to turn them down.”

  “You have to,” Archer repeats, looking at the engine on the opposite side of the shed. “That’s different from you want to.”

  Silence falls. I don’t contradict him because he’s right.

  “When I was a kid, I dreamed of something like this,” I admit. “Traveling the world. Going to unknown places, having adventures. But when I met Liv, I thought she was all the adventure I’d ever need.”

  “Now you think differently?”

  “No, that’s not it. I could live in a cave with her and be happy. It’s more that… she had a shitty childhood and hated moving from place to place, being dragged around by her mother. She’s never seen the appeal of traveling, seeing new things, meeting new people. So part of me wants her to know what that’s like, and to have more adventures with her. With Nicholas. I’ve always wanted to give them everything, including the world.”

  “But?” Archer asks.

  “But not like this,” I say. “If I took this job, I’d have to be away from them more than I already am. And Liv and I have both been spending too much time at work for too long. Something has to give for both of us. So I need to step down as project director of the train restoration.”

  Archer is quiet for a minute.

  “Well, damn,” he finally mutters.

  “I don’t want to entirely quit,” I continue. “It’s a great project, and I still want to help out. I just can’t direct it anymore. I was hoping you would.”

  Archer blinks. “You want me to lead the project?”

  “You’re way more qualified than I am,” I say. “And Mr. Jenkins respects you a hell of a lot more too. Now that the project is funded, you could hire a few more guys, get the work done faster and better than I ever could. It’d be like running your garage, only with historic trains.”

  Archer looks somewhat baffled, like he’d never have expected me to ask him something like this. “You’re serious?”

  “Sure. I can still help out with the research and stuff, but you need to be in charge.”

  He doesn’t respond for a minute.

  “If it means I get to tell your sorry ass what to do, I’m on board,” he finally says. “Thanks, man.”

  “Yeah, well, keep in mind you also have to let Florence Wickham squeeze your biceps at least once a week.”

  He grins. I push to my feet. We hold out our hands at the same time and shake. When I leave the train shed, I feel lighter, like something heavy has been lifted off my shoulders. Something to do with my brother.

  I head back to campus and call Florence to tell her Archer is taking over as project director.

  “Oh, Dean, what a wonderful idea!” she says, with so much delighted enthusiasm my ego takes a hit. “He’s perfect for the job.”

  “I thought you said I was perfect for the job,” I mutter.

  “Oh, you’re perfect for many jobs, my dear,” she assures me. “But perhaps not this one.”

  I grudgingly agree. After ending the call, I spend the rest of the afternoon working on a paper about castle architecture, which is much more fa
miliar territory than old trains. I glance up when Frances Hunter knocks on the open door.

  “This just came in for you,” she says, handing me a padded envelope.

  The stamps are postmarked from Paris, and the World Heritage return address is in the corner. I peel off the packing tape and remove several folders containing reports from the UN Assembly.

  “As young people say today,” Frances remarks, “they think you’re the boss.”

  “I told Hans I can’t consider taking the job.” I leaf through a report about how to engage local communities in heritage preservation. “I won’t.”

  “Clearly he thinks you can be persuaded otherwise,” Frances says.

  “You know I have a life here.” I drop the report on top of the other documents and push the whole pile to the side. “Liv owns a business. We have a son, a house, a lawnmower. And no way do I want some other medievalist coming to King’s and taking over the program I started. I still can’t believe you think I’d consider saying yes.”

  Before Frances can respond, there’s another knock on the door. Jessica Burke comes in with a worn paperback.

  “Sorry for interrupting, but I wanted to return this,” she says, handing me the book. “I found a copy online. I have some good ideas based on Chaucer’s portraits of knights and merchants.”

  “Great. I’ll look through my bibliography and see if there’s anything else I can find for you.”

  Jessica glances from Frances back to me. “So can I ask what’s going on with the World Heritage position?”

  “They made an offer.” I drag a hand down my face. “But I’m not actively pursuing it, Jessica. I can’t leave King’s or Mirror Lake.”

  A flash of disappointment crosses her face. “I figured you’d say that. Did you and Hans talk about the Youth Experts program?”

  “I told him the WHC should get it up and running again,” I say. “And, Jessica, if you want to spearhead the organization of the program, I’d be more than happy to put in a good word for you.”