Romance on Mountain View Road (16 page)

“His wife left him,” Chelsea said.

“Well, that proves it. There must've been a reason.”

The words were barely out of his mouth when Adam realized he'd said the wrong thing. Next to him, Chelsea raised an eyebrow. “I know you had good reason to kick me out,” he said.

“I did.” She said it defensively, almost as if she was trying to convince both him and herself that she'd done the right thing.

Well, maybe she had. Maybe he'd needed a major wake-up call. “Thanks for going out with me tonight. I want to make this work.”

“So do I,” she said softly. “I've got an important reason.”

He got that. “We always said we'd never be like our parents, never split up.”

She bit her lip and nodded. “I know.”

At the restaurant the maître d' led them to a quiet corner table covered with a snowy linen cloth and gleaming silver and crystal. A little candle added a romantic glow and the flowers in the vase were fresh. Schwangau was the fanciest restaurant in town, and it was the place to go if you wanted to impress a woman. Tonight Adam needed to do some serious impressing.

Their waiter appeared and asked if they'd like to start with drinks.

“Yes,” Adam, said and proceeded to order Chelsea's favorite—champagne.

“No champagne for me,” she said.

Nothing to celebrate. This didn't bode well. “Okay,” Adam said. “What would you like?”

“Lemonade.”

“I'll take a Pilsner,” he told the waiter, who nodded and left. Now it was just the two of them and suddenly Adam didn't know what to say. He tried to remember something, anything, from one of those books he'd read and drew a blank. So, instead, he pulled her present out of his pocket and slid it across the table. “Happy anniversary. I promise I'll be on time next year.”
Please, God, let there be a next year.

She smiled. It was the first one he'd seen since she kicked him out of the house. There was hope!

He held his breath as she picked up the package and unwrapped it, opened the jewel case and gave a little gasp. It reminded him of when they made love. How he wanted to hear that little gasp again.

“It's beautiful,” she said. She took out the emerald necklace and held it up.

“I wanted to give you something special, to make up for...” Here he faltered.

Now the waiter was back with their drinks. Adam grabbed his and took a big gulp. After seven years of marriage he was back at square one, nervous and tongue-tied with a beautiful woman he wanted to impress.

She held the necklace out to him. “Help me put it on?”

He took it and came around to her side of the table. He pulled aside her hair, exposing her neck, and flashed on the image of doing the very same thing when they were in bed together, then kissing her neck. He wanted to do that now, but he clasped on the necklace and returned to his chair.

“Adam, did you mean all those things you said in that letter?” she asked.

“Of course I did.” He'd poured his heart into that letter. How could she even ask?

She lowered her head and studied the menu.

“I know I wasn't perfect, but was I really that bad a husband?”

She looked over the menu at him. “Sometimes, yes.”

“But not all the time.”

“Not all the time,” she conceded. “Not at first.”

Now the pesky waiter was back again, needing to know what they wanted to eat. A restaurant was not the place to be when you were trying to have a serious talk with your wife.

They placed their orders, the waiter left and Adam said, “Okay, finish what you were saying.” He wasn't sure he wanted to hear, but it was the only way they were going to settle this and get back to normal. The
new
normal, he reminded himself. The old normal hadn't worked so well.

“Remember when we were first dating?” she asked.

What did that have to do with anything? He
nodded.

“You called all the time. You drove across the mountains in a snowstorm to see me at Christmas.”

“Because I wanted you.” He still did.

“And then you got me. But after a couple of years...” She shrugged.

“What?”

“You started taking me for granted. Like that fish in the rec room.”

“What?”

“The fish you caught in Mexico.”

“The marlin.” He'd had that baby mounted.

“I was like that marlin. You got me, and then you didn't need to work anymore. I might as well have been hanging on the wall along with the fish.” In case he hadn't gotten the symbolism, she added, “You've been taking me for granted, practically ignoring me. I want to be with someone who wants me all the time, not just some of the time, like when he's after sex or needs something picked up from the cleaners.”

Ow. “Come on, Chels, I can't have been
that
bad.”

“Yeah, you could.”

“What do you want—I shouldn't work?”

Now she was beginning to look perturbed. “Of course not. You know that's not what I'm saying.”

All right, yeah. Deep down he did.

“You do a lot of things that don't include me.”

“So do you. You've got your book group....”

“That's only once a month. You, on the other hand, have softball, fishing, poker.”

Was she going to make him give up poker night? Fishing? Well, okay, if that was what it took. At this point he'd give up anything. Hell, he'd cut off a leg. “Chels,” he began.

She raised a hand to silence him. “I'm not saying you have to give all that up. I get that you want to be with your friends and do your guy things. But what about doing something with me once in a while? How about doing more things with other couples?”

Okay, he could do that. “Sure. Have your friend Juliet and her husband over. I like Neil.”

“We don't have to be together 24/7, but we could be a little more like when we were first married,” she added.

They used to do things all the time—going to dinner, to the movies, playing gin rummy on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

“You could take me fishing.”

“Fishing?”

“Yeah. Fishing. Why do you always have to go with men?”

“You wouldn't like it.” She'd be bored. She'd want to talk, and you didn't talk when you were fishing.

Now she looked like she was going to cry.

“Okay, we can go fishing. We can find all kinds of stuff to do.”

She'd complained before that they didn't spend enough time together. Whenever she did, he'd take her to a movie or out to dinner and then everything would be fine.

Until he relapsed. Somehow, he never noticed when he was slipping back into his bad habits. Not that he'd thought of his behavior as bad habits. Not that he'd really thought at all.

Now, taking a critical look at his life, he realized that when it came to his marriage, there was hardly anything he hadn't taken for granted. He'd assumed Chelsea would care for the house and cook the meals on top of working, and that all he'd have to do was bring in the big bucks, mow the lawn and wash the car once in a while. She even paid the bills. She'd taken on that chore when they were first married and he'd happily let her. He hadn't wanted to be bothered. He'd never thanked her for everything she did. Heck, he'd hardly noticed. And while she kept their household running smoothly, he played poker with the boys, fished and convinced clients to prescribe his company's medications. And all the while, his marriage kept getting sicker.

“Adam, I love you.”

Relief washed over him. They were going to be okay.

“But I can't go on like this. I won't.”

He felt his heart stop. “I'll change, I promise.”

“You need to, because I'm pregnant.”

“What?”

Great. Here was the damned waiter with their first course.

Adam felt like he was going to explode waiting for the man to go through the ritual of peppering their salads. Once he'd left, Adam asked the question that had been burning its way through his mind. “How can you be pregnant?”

Not the right words to say. Her eyes flashed. “How do you think?”

“I mean, but...” They'd been told they couldn't have kids. The doctor had said...

“It's a
miracle,
Adam, that's what it is. And look at you. Instead of being thrilled to hear this, you're acting like I just told you the world was coming to an end.” She threw down her napkin and stood.

“Where are you going?”

“Home.”

“Come on, Chels, don't do that. We haven't even eaten yet.”

“I'm not hungry anymore. You and your selfishness, you took away my appetite.”

With that, she ran from the restaurant.

How was she going to get home? He didn't want her walking, not when she was pregnant. He threw down some bills and tore off after her.

She was already halfway down the street when he caught up with her. “Chels, come back and get in the car. I'll take you home.”

“I don't want to get in the car. I don't want to be with you. Not after the way you just acted.” And to prove it, she kept walking.

“Cut me some slack. I was surprised, that's all.”

“I can see it in your face—you're not happy.”

“Of course I'm happy,” he insisted, walking along beside her. At least he would be once he'd adjusted to the idea. First he had to get past the panic. All this time, he'd thought they wouldn't—couldn't—have kids. He hadn't worried about the future or put much of anything in savings. Suddenly, they were about to have another mouth to feed, a college education to pay for, maybe a wedding. It was overwhelming. And, unlike him, Chelsea'd had time to get used to the idea. “How far along are you?”

“Two months.”

“You've known for two months?”

“No. I found out when you were in Alaska.” She stopped right there in the middle of the sidewalk so she could put all her energy into glaring at him. “I was going to tell you on our anniversary.”

And he hadn't come home. He'd not only forgotten their anniversary, he'd denied her the chance to share an important milestone in their lives. And now, his panicked surprise had been the final nail in his coffin.

“You are the most selfish man I know,” she said, and started walking again.

“Chels, come on. Let me drive you back to the house. You shouldn't be walking all the way home. It's not good for the baby.” Well, maybe it was. What did he know?

“The baby will be fine, and so will I. And we'll both be better off without you.”

Would they end up with Dennis the Menace? No, not that. “Let's talk about this.”

“I'm done talking and I'm done with you. And if you don't quit following me, I'm going to call the police and have you arrested.”

Her words stopped him in his tracks. At dinner she'd told him she still loved him. She couldn't mean what she'd just said. He started moving again. “You can't do this, Chels. It's not fair. You have to give me a chance.”

“I just did and you blew it.”

“Well, give me another.” He caught her arm, forcing her to stop.

She scowled at him.

“Let me take you home.”

“You're not staying.”

He nodded. “I know.”

The ride home was a silent one. Chelsea was still steaming and he didn't know what to say.

Back at the house she was out the car door before he could even come around and open it for her. He watched as she ran up the walk. There went the most important person in his life. How little he'd done to show her that she was. Why had he thought his marriage could run on autopilot? Hadn't he learned anything from his folks?

As a kid he'd felt both confusion and frustration over the disintegration of their marriage. He'd hated it when they fought, hated seeing his mom in tears. Now his wife was in tears. Oh, boy.

He drove slowly away. If there was a romance novel that told a man how to deal with this kind of mess, he sure needed it. He had to find his way to a happy ending—and soon.

Chapter Thirteen

T
he more people who posted on the website Jonathan had set up for the reunion, the more panicked he became. It was June. The reunion was ten weeks away. He had ten weeks left in which to get buff. He was going to have to double his efforts. Work less, work out more.

At least the dance lessons were going well, he thought as he used one of the instruments of torture at the gym. Lately he'd been meeting Neil after five a couple of days a week. Neil wasn't done with his shift at the Sweet Dreams warehouse and this wasn't one of their regular days, but Jonathan figured he knew what he was doing now. He didn't need babysitting. He increased the weights on the machine and got to it.

Did women have any idea how hard guys worked to get their attention? Almost everything a man did centered on winning a woman's approval. The jocks showed off their moves on the football field or the basketball court, while the brains tried to impress with their smarts. Brain or brawn, all guys spent a fortune on dinners out, concert tickets or jewelry, whatever it took to get the women of their dreams. They did things they would never even consider in their saner moments, like joining a gym.

Oh, man, this was a killer. Maybe he shouldn't have increased the weights so much. Push through, that was what Neil had said last time they were here. Okay, pushing through, pushing, pushing. Ow! What the heck? He stopped and rubbed his upper arm. Something had just gotten pushed too far. That couldn't be good. He decided he'd had enough for the day.

Anyway, he had to go home and get cleaned up. He was due for another dance lesson at his sister's that night. She'd offered dinner, as well, but he'd made an excuse to avoid that. She was trying to master the art of chili and he wasn't sure he'd survive it. He wasn't sure he'd survive the lesson, either. Tonight was East Coast swing, which Juliet had promised would make him look like a rock star on the dance floor. She and Neil had given him a demonstration after he'd passed nightclub two-step with flying colors and she'd declared him ready for something new. It looked like fun, except with all those spins and twists and flips, it also looked incredibly hard. But, hey, being a rock star wasn't all fun and games.

He played some Frisbee with Chica, ate a tuna sandwich and then showered and put on some cutoff jeans, along with his favorite T-shirt which said Real Men Play Chess.

Chica knew she was being abandoned and she wasn't happy about it. “Don't worry,” Jonathan told her. “Adam will be home pretty soon.”

Not that Adam was very good company these days. His date with Chelsea had been a disaster and, once more, she was refusing to take his calls, which made him sullen and antisocial. Actually, Jonathan didn't mind the fact that Adam had taken to hanging out in his makeshift bedroom, watching movies on his computer. It beat having him camped like a thundercloud on the living room couch, making snide remarks as Jonathan practiced his dance steps.

This sour-lemon version of Adam was someone Jonathan hadn't seen before. Normally the guy was fun to be with. He'd changed since Chelsea had kicked him out. Well, women did that to you. One minute you were happily boogying down the road of life. Then you met a girl, fell in love and you got detoured to Shit City where the sky was always gray.

Jonathan had visited there often enough, every time Lissa acquired a new boyfriend. Now he wanted to check out the real estate in someplace new. He hoped the dance lessons, among other things, would take him there.

A horrible smell greeted him as he walked into Juliet's house, along with the shriek of a smoke detector. He remembered a joke Neil had made once: “Dinner's ready when the smoke detector goes off.” Juliet hadn't been pleased, and Jonathan had told him that wasn't funny. Instead of apologizing, he'd gotten defensive. “Why don't
you
eat dinner here every day for a couple of years and see how you like it?” Of course, Juliet had started to cry. Neil had apologized, and they'd kissed and made up. At the time Jonathan had thought he was a shit. But smelling this burned...whatever, Jonathan had to admit he'd probably get a little tired of bad cooking, too. He wondered if Juliet ever got tired of trying. And if she ever got tired of Neil.

This called to mind something she'd said when he showed up for his first dance lesson.
In the end we don't need a man who's perfect.
Good thing, because Neil wasn't perfect.

Jonathan knew he had no room to talk; he wasn't perfect, either. Had Lissa reached a point in life where her opinion was the same as Juliet's when it came to men? If she'd stopped looking for Mr. Perfect, maybe he had a chance.

He went out to the kitchen and found Neil and Juliet in a cloud of smoke. The kitchen door was open and she was trying to fan it outside while Neil waved a broom in the general direction of the smoke detector. “Babe, I know you like to read,” he shouted over the noise, “but how about not doing it when there's something on the stove?”

“I'm sorry,” she shouted back. “It really was going to be good chili.”

“I know,” he shouted, then swore and fanned the broom harder.

At last the smoke detector, having done its job, settled back into vigilant silence.

“Uh, hi, guys,” Jonathan said.

“I hope you weren't invited for dinner,” Neil muttered.

Jonathan was glad he'd been wise enough to wiggle out of it. Her husband couldn't do that.

Juliet looked sadly into the pan. “This is ruined.”

“You think?” Neil said grumpily.

At that she burst into tears.

He was at her side in a shot, hugging her. “It's okay, babe. I felt like pizza tonight, anyway. How about I go over to Italian Alps and pick up a large mushroom and onion?”

She nodded and he left. “I suck at cooking,” she said miserably.

There was an understatement. “Maybe you need lessons.”

She frowned.

“Seriously, Jules. Maybe cooking is for you like dancing is for me. You just need some instruction. I bet if you took a class, you'd be great.”

Well, maybe. He remembered a few sessions in the kitchen with their mom. The time Juliet started a fire on the stovetop was about the last time Mom insisted she learn how to cook.

She considered this. “Maybe that's not a bad idea. I think Neil's getting tired of my cooking.”

Eating Juliet's cooking for four years—Neil wasn't a shit. He was a saint.

Jonathan watched as she tried to scrape the mess out of the pot. She'd have better luck finding the end of a black hole. She finally gave up and dumped the pot in the garbage. Now he knew what to get her for Christmas. Pots and pans and some cooking lessons. There was a present Neil would appreciate, too.

She looked like she was going to cry again, so to distract her, Jonathan said, “Hey, what about that dance lesson?”

She wandered out of the kitchen, looking like a mourner leaving a gravesite.

But once she started talking about dance steps, the sad face vanished. “This is such a fun dance. Women love it.”

Yeah, but did every woman know how to do it? “What if she doesn't know the steps?”

“It doesn't matter as long as you're a strong lead. Anyway, women pick up dance steps pretty quickly.”

By the time Neil had returned with the pizza, they'd mastered the basic step and were moving on to a variation. “Lookin' good,” he said.

But not feelin' good. Thanks to his workout at the gym, his arm was killing him. No pain, no gain, he reminded himself. Still, he was glad to take a break and join them.

After the pizza was consumed, Juliet was ready to teach Jonathan a new move. This proved to be more than his wounded muscle could take. He swore under his breath and dropped his arm.

“Are you okay?”

“Uh, yeah.” He rubbed the screaming muscle.

“Did you work out today?” Neil asked.

Jonathan nodded. “I think I pulled something.”

Neil disappeared into the kitchen, then came back a moment later with a bag of frozen peas and a tea towel. He wrapped the peas in the towel and pressed them to Jonathan's arm. “Ice, Advil and rest. And lay off the workouts for a couple of days.”

Lay off? Just when he needed to be working harder. Like Juliet's cooking, this sucked.

* * *

Ever since returning to work after his mistaken-identity weekend, Kyle's cubicle had felt more like a refrigerator than a work space because of the frosty atmosphere between him and his cubicle buddy.

Make that
former
cubicle buddy. Mindy was a walking ice sculpture. Her polite good-mornings were enough to give him frostbite and there was no banter anymore. He was in outer Siberia and suddenly he hated his job. He'd never realized how much more fun she'd made it.

“She gave up on Ted,” he heard Karen Carmichael saying to Sarah Schillman as he approached the water cooler. “Now she's on to someone new. She'd be perfect for a reality show. You could call it Gold Diggers of the Northwest.”

Ow.

Sarah giggled, but on seeing Kyle, she said a quick “Hi, Kyle” to alert her friend to shut up.

Karen turned and saw him, and her face flushed tomato red. “Oh, hi, Kyle.”

“Hi,” he said with a disapproving frown. The women left but the comments lingered. Kyle got his cup of water and returned to outer Siberia, where Mindy was typing away in frozen silence.

He hadn't meant to hurt her. If he'd known the dinner invitation was from her, he would've turned her down right away. But instead she had to leave that cutesy little note. Why had she done that? Why hadn't she just asked him if he wanted to come over for dinner? Maybe asking in writing had seemed safer than doing it face-to-face.

He could identify with that. Many a time he'd sweated bullets over how to ask a girl out. It looked like connecting with the opposite sex wasn't any easier for women than it was for men.

Although Jillian had no problem. Was she really on to someone new? And if so, who?

By the end of the day, Kyle knew exactly who. Si Klein, the company's top salesman, stopped by her desk and she lit up like Christmas in Icicle Falls' town square. Si said something, and she smiled and tossed her hair. She sure had recovered from her broken heart in a hurry.

Si was probably twenty years older than Jillian. His hair was thinning, he was getting a gut and he didn't drive a Jag. He drove a Mercedes convertible. And he had a condo in Vegas. The ugly truth walked up to Kyle and smacked him in the face.
She
is
a gold digger.

And he was a fool. Like countless other men, he'd been taken in by a pretty face. He'd overlaid the real Jillian with a fantasy Jillian who was sweet and adorable and clever. Well, she was clever, he'd give her that—clever at finding men who had what she wanted and making them want her.

But they didn't stick with her. Darrow hadn't.

A conversation he'd once had with Mindy came back to him.

“Sometimes I think I'd rather be pretty than smart.”

He hadn't known quite what to say. Mindy wasn't bad-looking. “Why's that?” he'd asked.

“Because men care more about pretty girls than they do smart ones.”

Well, she was right in a way. Nobody wanted to date a dog. Still, “I dunno. There's got to be more to a woman than her looks. Otherwise, a man would get bored.”

Now Kyle wondered why Darrow had dumped Jillian. It sure wasn't because the woman was unattractive. Something had turned him off. Was it because he'd looked behind the facade and saw there wasn't enough to hold his interest?

Kyle didn't want a facade, either. He wanted someone he could connect with. Now he realized it wasn't Jillian.

Following that hypothesis to its logical conclusion—if not Jillian then who? A vision of Mindy in shorts and a clingy top sneaked into the back of his mind. Too late. That Mindy was gone. She'd been replaced by the ice queen sitting next to him.

* * *

The atmosphere was far from festive when the guys sat down to play poker. Kyle was suffering from the pain of disillusionment and had concluded he was never going to find Ms. Right, let alone get laid anytime in the next century. Bernardo was grumpy because Anna was mad at him for cheating on his diet.

And Jonathan was frustrated, plagued by visions of buffness denied. On top of that setback, he'd gone to the eye doc and learned that yes, indeed, he still wasn't a candidate for Lasik surgery. He'd tried contacts and had no success, so that meant he was stuck with his glasses. Unbuff and bespectacled. How was he going to get Lissa's attention at this rate?

But everyone's problems paled compared to what Adam was going through. Chelsea still wanted nothing to do with him. “And we're gonna have a kid.”

Jonathan felt a stab of envy. A kid. He wished he had a wife and was expecting a kid. Then he remembered the mess Adam was in.

“Congratulations,” Bernardo said. “Now the fun really begins.”

“So do the bills,” added Vance.

“Is it a girl or a boy?” Kyle asked.

“How the hell should I know?” Adam growled. “I'm lucky I even know she's pregnant. I thought I was in trouble before, but now... Oh, man, I'm in deep shit.”

“Since you're having a kid, I'd think she'd be more open to taking you back,” Jonathan said. But what did he know?

“She would have. We were this close. Until I blew it. Damn. But it came at me out of nowhere.”

“What did you do?” Bernardo asked.

Adam gave them the lowdown on his meeting with his wife. “Now she's back to not talking to me,” he finished. “I should have said...something.”

“You did,” Vance pointed out. “You said the wrong thing.”

“What the hell am I going to do?”

No one answered him. Probably, Jonathan figured, because no one had any idea what he should do.

“You know,” Adam said, “it's funny how when you first meet a woman, all you see is a pretty face and a great body you want to get your hands on. Then you go out with her and things change. You can't get enough of seeing her, being with her. Before you know it, she's your best friend, your whole life. She gets to be like breathing, something you don't have to think about. You assume she'll always be there. You forget how much you need her, how much...”