Her Favorite Husband

Another flicker, suppressed again.

“Anyway, I have enough diamonds.”

“Three, I hear,” Ian said. “If you count the first.”

“Of course I count the first.”

“You’re not wearing one now.”

“The stone was a hazard,” she said lightly. She wished he hadn’t noticed. “They made me put it in my checked baggage.”

“Was your wedding band a hazard, too?”

This wasn’t a discussion Sarah wanted to have. After ignoring her for the better part of an hour, did he have to study her so closely now? What did he think he’d see? Pain? Shame? She wouldn’t show him either.

“I’m between wedding bands at the moment.”

“Between the second and the third?”

“Post-third.”

He looked at his beer bottle, long enough, she thought, to read the label five times in both official languages. “That’s too bad. You’re all right?”

“Of course.” At least he didn’t seem shocked or titillated by the news, the way some people did. “Puzzled, though. Because here I am, so glad to see you and there you are, so…skeptical.”

“You surprised me.”

“Which I should never, never do.”

At last he smiled, and unexpectedly, it was his old smile—the one she’d wanted to see—warm, kind, much better than the bartender’s.

“One second I’m watching a football game and the next you’re standing in the doorway. You, of all people…”

“Here, of all places. A ghost. A bad dream. Indigestion.”

His chuckle, brief as it was, instantly made her happy.

“None of the above. More of a fold in time.”

“Like being catapulted back ten years…”

He’d stopped leaning away from her. Stopped playing with his beer bottle. “Exactly. You came through the door and for a weird millisecond it was like we were back in that dark little apartment on Corydon.”

Basement apartment, all they could afford, but handy to the university. “I wish we were.” She let her knee bump his in case he missed her point.

“Sarah.”

“Don’t you wish we were?”

“It was damp, remember? And sometimes we had crickets.”

His eyes weren’t closing her out anymore. They were drawing her in. It struck Sarah that his coolness until now might not have been disapproval, after all. Not completely, anyway. It might have been an attempt at self-control.

If so, it seemed to be slipping.

She swung the bar stool around, bringing their knees into contact again. Heat flowed right up her leg. She saw when his thoughts went in the same direction as hers—the one place where nothing had ever gone wrong. She laid her hand on his cheek. She didn’t know she was doing it until she felt the sharpness of his whiskers.

He stiffened, and for a moment a wall went up. She thought he was going to tell her to take herself, her favorite skirt and her beautiful high heeled shoes all the way back to Vancouver in one giant leap, but he didn’t. He didn’t say anything.

His hand covered hers. His fingers moved, gentle, exploratory, as if the skin he touched was something unusual, something that needed his full attention. Slowly, down to her wrist, then up again. That was all, but she felt it everywhere, in every cell, and from the intensity of his expression, she guessed so did he.

She gave herself a second or two to consider doing the sensible thing. “My hotel is across town. Fortunately, it’s a skinny town.”

He took more than a second or two, so many seconds she thought he would turn her down. Then he said, “My room’s upstairs.”

“Even better.” She found a ten dollar bill in her purse and put it on the bar. “Unless there’s someone who’d rather you didn’t?”

“Not lately.”

The phrase simmered before her while they walked out of the room, not touching, trying to keep their intentions to themselves. “How lately?”

“Does it matter?”

“No, of course not.” They went through the lobby, still tamping down a sense of urgency, nodding to the desk clerk and wishing him a good night. “But is it not lately in the sense of a month or in the sense of a year? Ballpark.”

They stepped into the elevator and the doors closed.

“I’m responsible and healthy, if that’s what you mean.”

It wasn’t. Maybe it should have been, but something else was bothering her. As he pressed the button for the third floor she leaned close and spoke against his lips. “I mean, is there anyone else on your mind?” She didn’t want there to be, not at the front of it, not at the back, not deep down and half-forgotten.

“You kidding? Sarah’s here. All things bright and beautiful.”

It took her back, miles and years back, to the week they’d met, to the first time they’d made love. They were dazzled by each other and that was what he’d said to her afterward. Sarah, all things bright and beautiful. It was the most poetic thing she’d ever heard, better than in a movie, better than in a book. She’d thought what an angel of a boyfriend she’d found.

But he wasn’t an angel at all.

She was standing right against him and each breath brought her chest into contact with his. The tingling made it hard to concentrate. If she took one step away, got just a few inches of air between them, she could think more clearly.

Instead, she moved closer. His arms came around her and they kissed, tentatively at first, feeling their way between past and present.

When the elevator opened they hurried to his room. Door locked, clothes off, skin that was familiar and different at the same time.

She broke away, put her palms on his chest, pushed him onto the bed. She needed that, after all his…skepticism. She needed to be in charge. She liked the way he looked up at her, heated, waiting, visibly struggling to remain passive.

“Anticipation is half the pleasure,” she told him.

“Half? Are you sure?”