Days Like This

PREVIOUS BOOKS BY LAURIE BRETON

Coming Home
: Jackson
Falls Book 1

Sleeping With the
Enemy
: Jackson Falls Book 2

Black Widow
(Ellora’s
Cave)

Final Exit
(MIRA)

Mortal Sin
(MIRA)

Lethal Lies
(MIRA)

Criminal Intent
(MIRA)

Point of Departure
(MIRA)

Die Before I Wake
(MIRA)

PRAISE FOR LAURIE BRETON’S

COMING HOME
:

"Lyrical
and gorgeous...just beautiful in its portrayal of the

devastating
changes of love over time."
-- Judith,
I Love Romantic Fiction

“a
beautifully told, beautifully written story of love and loss”

--
Jessica Van Den,
Experiment:  Life

“wonderfully
written”

--
Shelly,
{Dive} Under the Cover

August 1991

Jackson Falls, Maine

Becoming a member of the Jackson
Falls Public Library Committee had, quite possibly, been the worst decision Casey
Fiore MacKenzie had made in her entire thirty-five years.  The six of them had
spent the last two hours embroiled in a heated debate about book censorship
that had ended in a stalemate.  Now she had the beginnings of a headache and
was seriously rethinking this whole community service gig.  It was all part of
the
What-is-Casey-Going-to-do-With-the-Rest-of-Her-Life
self-actualization program that she’d recently embarked on.  Not that it had
been her idea.  As far as she was concerned, at thirty-five, she had plenty of
time to figure out the next sixty years. 

But Rob had been prodding her,
and when he got like that, it was usually easier to just give in.  The man
could be relentless, and the fact that he was nearly always right didn’t make
it any easier to take.

She’d stopped writing after Danny
died.  It wasn’t that the well had dried up; she’d simply turned off the spigot
and hadn’t bothered to turn it back on.  Without him, without that golden voice
to bring her music to life, there no longer seemed to be any point to it.  Rob
had remained uncharacteristically silent on the issue, although she knew it
bothered him more than he wanted to admit.  They’d worked together as partners
since they were little more than kids.  But aside from a couple of half-hearted
attempts at persuasion that had fallen flat in the early days following Danny’s
death, he’d avoided bringing it up.  It was probably better for both of them if
he stayed away from that particular can of worms.

But he’d been working without
her.  He hadn’t said so, but she recognized the signs.  All those hours he’d
been spending out in the zillion-dollar studio they’d built in the barn.  She
knew damn well he was out there working on new material, which meant that she
needed to start pushing harder with the self-actualization thing.  New material
meant a new album, and a new album meant he would be going back out on the
road.  She’d seen the restlessness in him for a while, knew him well enough to
recognize the signs. 

He was a musician; performing was
programmed into his DNA.  He would almost certainly ask her to come with him,
but they both knew she’d rather have bamboo shoots shoved under her
fingernails.  Been there, done that, bought the tour shirt.  He would leave,
and she would be left alone for three months while he was out there playing
rock god with his Fender Strat.  She’d better find something constructive to do
with her time, because Rob MacKenzie was a strong proponent of tough love, and
he was apt to plant one of his size-eleven Reeboks up her backside if he
thought she was going to spend those three months sitting in her rocking chair,
waiting for him to come home.

She’d fully expected that by this
time, there would be some indication that they were percolating the newest
little Fiore-MacKenzie collaboration.  But so far, nothing.  Even though
thirty-five was still young, she knew that once a woman passed thirty, her
chances of conceiving decreased with each passing year.  She was nowhere near
ready to accept defeat, but sometimes, lying awake in the wee hours, her
thoughts danced all around the dark possibility that it might not ever happen. 
If it didn’t, they would deal with it.  There were always other options.  She
would love any child, no matter the age or race, that was placed in her arms. 
They both would.  But she so wanted that child to be a part of both of them.

She turned the car into the
driveway and parked under the giant elm tree that shaded the old Gothic revival
farmhouse.  When she and Danny had bought the place four years ago, she’d
privately dubbed it Fiore’s Folly.  The house had been his baby from day one,
and they’d spent months pouring money and sweat equity into it.  With the
clarity of hindsight, she suspected that for Danny, the home rehab had been an
external symbol of the very personal rehab he’d been doing on the inside. 
Somehow, they’d managed to turn the place into a real home. 

And then he’d died.  Sometimes it
was hard to believe she’d lived here with Rob longer than she had with Danny.

As soon as she stepped into the
shed, she heard the music, Steely Dan’s
Dirty Work
from
Can’t Buy a
Thrill
.  He’d been playing that damned album for two decades.  Something
about the cool, sophisticated, jazzy flavor of Becker and Fagen’s compositions
had grabbed Rob MacKenzie the first time he’d heard one, and in the intervening
years, it had never let go of him. 

She opened the door to the
kitchen and it hit her smack in the face, the mouth-watering aroma of something
spicy and pungent and swimming in garlic.  Her husband stood at the stove,
poking at the old steel wok.  Whenever Rob cooked, the kitchen ended up looking
as though a series of small explosions had just been detonated, but the end
result usually made up for the disaster, so she tried to turn off the
compulsive housekeeper inside her and just roll with it. 

He turned, saw the expression on
her face, and said, “Bad one?”

“
Au contraire, mon ami
. 
Bad would be a vast improvement.”  She dropped her purse on a chair, hoisted herself
up onto the wooden tabletop, and demurely crossed one leg over the other. 
Reaching up to sweep her dark hair back over her shoulder, she said in
disbelief, “My god, Flash, those people are lunatics.”

He picked up the glass of white
wine he’d already poured and had waiting for her, crossed the room and handed
it to her.  “I figured you’d be needing this.”  Both palms braced against the
edge of the table, he leaned into her.  She reached her free hand up to cup his
cheek and they kissed, his mouth soft against hers.  He moved back a few
inches, and those warm green eyes studied hers.  “Hey,” he said.

Casey brushed a wispy blond curl
away from his face and said, “Hey.”

She’d never been much of a
drinker, but drastic times called for drastic measures, and he’d been plying
her with wine since she was eighteen.  She raised the glass and said, “I
realize you probably think it’s all that hot jungle sex, but the real truth is
that this—”  She twirled the wine glass by its stem.  “This is why I keep you
around.”  She took a sip of wine, rolled it around inside her mouth, and
swallowed.  Sighing, she stretched her shoulders to release the tension and
said glumly, “The Brochu sisters.  Somebody needs to point out to those two
darling ladies that this isn’t the nineteenth century.  And Al Frechette.  The
man is a Neanderthal.  Please remind me why I’m doing this.”

“Because you’re an incredible
human being.  And because it gives you a chance to show the world how hot you
look in that red suit.”

She rolled her eyes.  “Easy for
you to say, MacKenzie.  You’re not the one being tortured.  And stop staring at
my legs.”  She reached down and tugged at her skirt in an attempt to make it
cover a little more thigh.  The suit she wore was a screaming shade of scarlet,
light years outside her comfort zone, which ran more to neutrals like navy or
gray.  He had, of course, picked it out.  He had, of course, been right.  With
her olive complexion and the straight, dark hair that fell to midway down her
back, the color looked stunning on her.

“Don’t be such a prude, Fiore. 
You’ll spoil all my fun.  It’s been so long since I saw my wife wearing
anything besides jeans, I forgot she had legs.”

Since the legs in question had
been wrapped around his waist less than twelve hours ago, it seemed doubtful he’d
really forgotten.  Instead of responding, she reached down and peeled off the
high-heel torture devices she wore on her feet and dropped them on the floor.  
And wiggled her toes.  “Cook,” she ordered, pointing with her wine glass.

Aided by the wine, the music, the
wonderful garlicky aroma, and the sight of him working, her stress began to
dissipate.  She loved to watch him, six feet of long, loose, rangy man in
faded, snug-fitting jeans, loved watching the way he moved as he chopped vegetables
and dropped them into the sizzling wok.  All of it intimately familiar and yet
at the same time new and exciting.  He needed a haircut; the tangled mess of
golden curls that fell to his shoulders was getting out of control again.  But
then, when hadn’t he needed one?  He’d been her best friend, the one solid,
stable thing in her life, since she was eighteen years old.  And sometimes,
even after a year of marriage, it still didn’t feel real, the two of them
together like this. 

They’d taken a long and
circuitous route to get here.  She’d seen him through two failed marriages and
a half-dozen years as a card-carrying member of the girl-of-the-month club. 
Every time Danny had broken her heart—and she’d lost count of the number of
times—Rob had been the one to pick her up, dust her off, and glue the pieces
back together.  There was an intimacy to their bond that couldn’t be easily
explained.  It hadn’t been about sex, not back in the days when she’d been
blind to every other man but Danny Fiore.  Their relationship had been based on
brutal honesty, blended creativity, and a willingness on each of their parts to
open up a vein and bleed for the other. 

Rob MacKenzie had seen her
through the darkest times in her life, and some of those times had been very,
very dark.  She’d loved him forever, and although neither of them could
pinpoint a precise moment when their feelings for each other had turned into
something that went light years beyond platonic, somewhere along the way, with
a fatal inevitability, they had.  After Danny died—a long time after Danny
died—they’d finally decided to stop running from the way they felt about each
other and do something about it instead.

She clasped the stem of her wine
glass in both hands and said to his back, “So, hot stuff, what did you do all
afternoon while I was out battling the dragons of small-town narrow-mindedness?”

“Oh,” he said, focusing his
attention on his cooking, “this and that.”

Evasiveness was so unlike him
that Casey narrowed her eyes and took a closer look.  There was something in
the set of his shoulders that hadn’t been there fifteen seconds ago.  With the
better part of two decades of history between them, she was intimately
acquainted with his body language, and red flags were flying everywhere.  He
was getting ready to dump something on her.  And she wasn’t going to like it.  “What’s
wrong?” she said.

“Nothing’s wrong.  But we have to
talk.”

She’d been about to take another
sip of wine, but she stopped dead with the glass an inch from her mouth.  “That
sounds serious.”

Rob picked up a fistful of shrimp
and tossed them into the wok.  “It is serious.”

“Now you’re scaring me.”

“Don’t be scared.  Everything’s
fine.  But something happened this afternoon and I’ve spent the last two hours
trying to wrap my head around it.  I’m not sure I’m there yet.”