Back To Mr & Mrs

He blinked. “I never said you had to be some Stepford wife, Mellie. I’ve always wanted you to have your own life.”

“As long as it wasn’t at the expense of yours.” Melanie took in a breath, erasing the quick flash of hurt in her eyes. “Cade, you just don’t understand how important it is for me to have something of my own. To do this myself.”

“I’m trying, Melanie.” He paused, waiting until she sank back onto the seat beside him. “I promise not to do anything more than let you have my credit score,” Cade continued. “We have a lot of assets together, Melanie, a financial record, a damned nice nest egg of Matthews money. The bank will look more favorably on your loan if—”

“If I pretend I’m still married to you.”

“It’s not pretending. We are married.”

“Only because you won’t sign the divorce papers.”

“I’ve been busy.”

She gave him the eye roll Emmie had inherited. She sighed, considering him for a long moment.

“I’m not agreeing to anything. Not until I know what you want in exchange.”

“Nothing.”

She shook her head. “I know you, Cade. You don’t make a deal without both sides gaining something. You help me get my loan, but what do you get?”

“Nothing, except—” he drew in a breath “—a date to the reunion.”

In her green eyes, the thoughts connected. “As your wife, you mean.”

Cade had brokered enough deals to know when he’d reached the crux, the point where the agreement could be broken by one party leaning too far or pushing too hard.

Melanie would eventually be awarded the divorce with or without his signature. He glanced at her left hand, at the circle of gold on her ring finger.

He weighed his next words, trying to figure out what wouldn’t make Melanie bolt, or worse, encourage her to throw the countertop Capresso machine at his head. “Not as my wife,” he lied, “more as a…fellow reunion attendee. Let people assume what they want.” He voiced the idea as calmly as he would the terms of a corporate merger. Start with business-only, and pray like hell it turned into something more personal later.

Her gaze narrowed. “Why are you suddenly so interested in going to the class reunion? If I remember right, you skipped the fifth and the tenth. What’s so big about the twentieth?”

Cade didn’t miss a beat. “Bill Hendrickson.”

“The kid who carried a briefcase to school every day?”

He nodded. “He’s now the owner of one of the largest law firms in the Midwest and he’s looking for a new partner.”

That much was true. For a month or so, Bill had been trying to meet with Cade, but their respective schedules had kept them from finding a common time. Bill suggested a quick meeting at the reunion. “Bring your wife,” Bill had said, unaware of the rift in the Matthews marriage. “I’d love to introduce her to my Shelley.”

Bill had made it clear he liked to employ family men because he thought they were more committed, more honorable. Cade wasn’t so sure he agreed with Bill’s logic, but he did know one thing for sure—he’d love to work for the massive, national firm that Bill headed. They’d handled clients Cade could only dream of working for; the kind with names that everyone in America knew.

It was what he’d worked for, toiling away under his father’s thumb, hoping to prove himself and then break into the big leagues.

“What’s wrong with staying at Fitzsimmons, Matthews and Lloyd?” Melanie asked.

Cade’s gaze swept over the hourglass shape of his wife, down the dusting of freckles that trailed a pattern from her shoulder to her wrist, a path he’d kissed more than once. The ache that had become his constant companion in the last year tightened its grip. “Because I need a change of pace.”

If this divorce happened—and as more time went by with Melanie remaining resolute in her plans, he knew it would—then he knew he’d have to leave. He couldn’t stand living twenty minutes from Melanie, knowing she was moving on with her life.

And worst of all—dating other men.

He tore his gaze away from her. A woman as gorgeous and vivacious as Melanie wouldn’t be going to bed alone for very long. “Bill’s firm is in Chicago and—”

“You’re moving to Chicago?” she said, her voice soft, surprised.

“I’m considering it, if everything goes well with Bill. Chicago is only a few hours away, which means I can still see Emmie.” He grinned. “Half the time she’s here or out with friends. I’m more of a laundry dump than a dad.”

Melanie echoed his smile. “I know the feeling. She does the same thing to me. If I hadn’t hired her, I don’t think I’d see her for more than a five-minute conversation a month.”

“Our little girl has grown up, hasn’t she?” Cade’s memory ran through a quick tape of Emmie’s first steps, first day of school, first bike. The years had rocketed by too fast. Hindsight berated him for missing far too many of those firsts.

“Yeah,” Melanie said, and the bittersweet expression on her face told him she was watching the same mental movie. “If you get the job, are you selling the house?”

Back to the logistics of divvying up a marriage. “I’ll keep it for a while,” Cade said. If there was a chance Melanie would ever live there again, would ever sit at the oak dining room table they’d bought for their fifth anniversary and share a dinner with him, he wanted to have that familiar three-bedroom in Indianapolis waiting.

He shook off the thought. Cade had to be pragmatic instead of getting caught up in the green of her eyes, the scent of her skin. The sheer magic of being so close to her again, separated only by a few inches of love seat.

This reunion idea was a last-ditch effort, brought about because he’d thought he’d read some meaning in the gold band on her left hand. Assuming, that was, that she’d ever loved him at all. That she hadn’t married him just because she’d been pregnant with Emmie. In the still, dark night, that was the possibility that haunted Cade. Had he been so clueless, he’d imagined a love that had never existed?

“I had no idea you were considering a move,” Melanie said.

“I haven’t broken it to Emmie yet, so please don’t tell her. I want to have something definite in hand first.”

More, Cade needed to know for sure there was zero chance with his wife. All year, he’d kept telling himself that given a little time, Melanie would be back. She hadn’t.

With all the signs she’d been sending him, he could have taken out a billboard: Your Marriage Is Over. And yet, the glutton in him continued to hope that the past nineteen years had formed a foundation they could come back to, build a new beginning on, after they moved the last few years of wreckage out of the way.

The realist in him whispered their foundation was made of sand, not stone.

“Oh.” Melanie’s mouth formed the vowel, held it for a minute, as if it was taking her a moment to get used to the idea of him moving away. “Okay.”

“Anyway, you know how I hate to go to those things, especially alone,” Cade said, putting on a smile, making his case, treading carefully. “I can never remember anyone’s name. I need a wingman.”

I need you.

It wasn’t until Melanie responded with a smile of her own that Cade found himself able to breathe again. “You are pretty bad at that. Remember when you kept calling Jim Sacco ‘Stan’?”

Cade laughed. “He was a former partner at Fitzsimmons, Matthews and Lloyd, too. We even worked together a couple times. I’ve never lived that one down.”

Melanie joined his laughter. Cade wished he could reach out, capture that sound in a jar and bring it home with him. The walls in the house had grown as silent as tombs without Melanie.

“Oh, and what about the time you forgot the name of the governor?” She chuckled softly. “So much for any political ambitions you might have had.”

“That’s when my wingman came in mighty handy,” he said, thinking of that nightmare dinner party seven years ago, of Melanie slipping in with her easy touch and smoothing everything over. With them so close together on the love seat, it was almost like before. Cade and Melanie, staying up late, finishing off the appetizers while they rehashed the night. “You told him some story about me getting the flu or something—”

Another smile from her, the kind that could disrupt a man’s best intentions. “And I told him the medicine had some kind of mental side effects.”