She found out later that evening, when she finally had time to grab a bite to eat and put up her aching feet.
Her phone rang - not the BlackBerry in her pocket, which she had been too busy to check but now grabbed automatically - but the desk phone, the one that she'd just replaced after ordering room service. Thinking that there must be a problem with her order, she grumbled and stood, fishing it off the desk and lifting it to her ear with a practiced flick of her long hair. The voice that greeted her was unfamiliar, but that wasn't what made her heart go thump in her chest.
Evan! She could hear him!
"Miz Winslow?" the first voice queried. "This is the main desk. There's a man here? Says he's your husband and all."
"Evan?" she gasped.
"Evan Weber, miss, yes, I checked his ID. Should I -"
"Yes, send him up," she interrupted, impatiently. Her tired feet forgotten, she hopped in place as she replaced the handset, pacing anxiously while she awaited his arrival. Evan was in Seattle? What about his Maianbrenner account? Surely, he would remain on call during the most crucial phase of his project? He could hardly oversee that from Seattle. Guarding herself against the possibilities, she glanced through the fisheye lens in the door. In the distance, she could hear the elevator bell and the rumble of the soda machine down the hall: Evan? She peeked through again, but the man who passed by bore no resemblance to her husband. Glancing down at herself, she shook her head: she looked frightful after a day of tramping through downtown Seattle, gathering necessities to furnish her new apartment.
Her new apartment: that lease was solid, a fact of her life for the next year even if she left Seattle tonight. Her new things, those were solid, too: just as real as the new job she needed to begin in a little more than two weeks. No matter how persuasive Evan was, Seattle was where she belonged. She had an office to staff and new protocol to learn. And Evan was not free either: the next three to six months of his life belonged to the Maianbrenner account and the erection of condos in Allegheny Bay. Not for the first time, she wondered how success could be so painful as this: she had everything she wanted, but only in one portion of her life. Filling her heart with furious ambition couldn't leave room for anything else.
And loving Evan the way he wanted left her no room to advance in her career the way she had always planned to.
He knocked on the locked door as she traded her tunic and knit pants for a loose print dress she'd worn around their Village apartment. Brushing her hair back as she crossed the room to the door, she took a moment to collect her wits before the sight of him shattered them. Dislodging the chain lock, she twisted the knob and stood back to let him through, but he paused in the doorway as if he were unsure of his welcome, and while he swept her into a hug, it lacked the fierceness of his usual ardor. "I've fucking missed you," he said into her hair, and she closed her eyes as he crushed her against his pulsing heart. "Missed you too," she said, letting her hand curl around the back of his neck, prolonging the embrace.
"It was hard to figure out where you'd gotten to," Evan said, closing the door with the heel of his shoe and swinging the leather satchel off his shoulder. "I mean, from the airport. But when I saw this sign, I figured you'd come here, because of the corporate account and all."
"It was closest to the airport," she told him, a smile tugging at her lips. "I didn't register under the company account, actually."
"Well, I did when I rented the car," he told her, grinning insouciantly back. "It's got a weekly rate, if you want to keep it until you're settled in here. I wanted to ask you to come back with me, you know," he said. "But sweetheart, I don't know how we would manage. You worked for this promotion...and I won my account. Neither of us can leave, not and have everything back the way it was. What's fair now?" he asked her, his chocolate-brown eyes wide.
"I don't know," she admitted. "I just don't know. I wanted to have this discussion with you, but now it's here and there's a part of me that wants to go back to New York, but the rest of me has an apartment, and...you know...a, a shower curtain and utilities and stuff." Her hand got caught in a sudden snarl of her sandy hair, and she paused, working it free gently. Emotional pain was enough to suffer: yanking at her own hair wouldn't make this any easier. "It means a lot that you came to me," she said, softly. "I know you hate to fly."
"Jemima," he said, making her wince at the sound of her unfortunate first name. "Wynn. You can quit, you know. Come back to New York City. Quit Waters and Wheeling. Stay home, troll museums every day, do that art project you're always joking you will. We could..." He stopped, but she knew what he was going to say. We could have a baby.
"I'm not ready," she told him, her shoulders slumping in defeat. "I can't just leap in with both feet like you can. I still have everything to lose, Evan. You gain so much if I come back there, but we could be here again in another year." She meant facing divorce, but he glanced toward the curtained windows as if she were discussing a Seattle vacation. "Not Seattle, Evan. Facing reality, that's what I mean. The reality here," she began, warming into her topic only to be interrupted by a knock at the door.
"Room service," a voice called through the wood, and Wynn moved to the door, opening it with a smile and a tip extended in her fingers.
"Could I order the same again," she asked, with her best megawatt smile. "Unexpected company."
"Sure, miss, we'll have it up here in a few."
She balanced the tray on one hand as she headed for the table in the room's corner, sliding the tray down before Evan. "I know you," she said,"and you haven't eaten today, have you." Lifting the lid on a shrimp salad, she pushed it toward him. "There's bread, and the soup from the cafe is good. C'mon, let's not fight on an empty stomach, shall we?" It didn't take much to wheedle him into the first few bites, and as he demolished the tray, she slid into the seat across from his.
"Reality is, Evan, we promised each other things we just can't give," she said, softly, reaching for his hand to cushion the blow she didn't want to strike. "And maybe," she mused aloud,"we promised those things to people we just can't be."
"If this was a legal matter, I would call this a mutual breach of contract," she said, falling back on what she felt comfortable with, what she knew and understood. "And there are only so many manners that recourse for it could take. We could break this contract and enter into a new one; break this contract and sever ties with each other; or we could drive each other batty pushing for a solution that the other side finds untenable." Her fingers tightened on his, and he paused, warily, with his laden fork hovering between plate and mouth. She reached out with her free hand, removing a slice of hard-boiled egg from the side of his plate - he didn't eat them - and pressed it against her lips, trying to busy her mouth in the vain hopes that he wouldn't speak. Wouldn't decide.
And praying that he would be the one to land the killing blow.
His dark eyes were hard, guarded, as he shoved the forkful of salad into his mouth. Stubbornly, they glared at one another. She knew she'd have to shoulder the blade, but the angry stare she directed back at him told him she'd resent every moment of it.
The door, and three sharp raps, broke their impasse. "Room service," came the call, and Wynn shot to her feet. "I'm famished," she lied, bounding toward the door. Pressing another tip into the waiter's hand, she balanced the tray, but nearly lost it as she turned into Evan's broad chest. He took the tray, set it down on the table, and leaned over it. Her heart plummeted through the floor.
Here came the executioner, a love song on his lips.
He nudged the chair out, nodded her toward it, peeled the plastic dome off her dinner with a flourish. She felt her lips twitch into an involuntary smile, which died in its infancy as he retreated to his seat and opened his mouth at last. "I think I know what you want me to say. And I don't want to hear you say it. I don't want you to give up on me. On us," he said, grabbing her left hand, twisting it up to reveal the missing ring. Oh hell: she'd forgotten removing that. "But maybe," he said, bitterly, touching the pale band of skin it had left behind,"you already have."
"Evan," she protested, her voice husky from the tears lurking in her throat, stinging her filling eyes. "I was angry."
"Did leaving me behind make that any better?" he asked, the question burning in his eyes, in the sudden roughness of his hands.
“No,” she whispered, as much against his treatment of her as in answer to his query.
“Did leaving New York make it so a rich boy and a smart Southern belle never had a food fight in the Yale dining hall?”
She smiled involuntarily at the memory, so vivid, so like it had happened only the day before. “Did chasing me to Seattle,” she countered, “bring back those carefree and very expensive days for you? The Maianbrenners won’t vanish Monday, and you can’t afford to give up this chance to become a senior architect. Your hardest years are ahead of you and you’re begging me to give you even more problems? Evan, where’s the logic in that?”
“Love’s not logical,” he retorted, standing with her hand clenched in his. Her fork clattered to the floor, and when she bent down to retrieve it, he took advantage of her imbalance, sweeping her up into his arms. “I fucking hate this dress,” he muttered, yanking it up as he bore her down to the bed, “but I think it might be my favorite thing to see you in.”
She retaliated by unbuttoning his shirt in haste, sending a few of the plastic disks whirling into the shadows cast by the ugly bedside lamp. “You’re wrong,” she gasped at him as he wormed the dress off her and came at her for a burning kiss.
“You’re right,” he agreed, glancing down. “Oh, you are so right.”
She unbelted his slacks, he kicked them off: he unclasped her bra and she tossed it over the side of the bed.
“I don’t have,” he gasped into her ear as she pulled him down to her chest, and she responded, “Don’t.” He growled, a primal sound that made her shudder as his hands filled with the spill of her breasts. His mouth left its hot skirmish with hers and descended her neck in a fluttering glide that made her moan. Her hips moved against his, her thigh fanning out, wrapping around his slender hip as he ground his arousal against her. “You feel so good,” she whispered, and his mouth moved lower, over her breasts, underneath, lower still, over her belly, teasing under her navel, finally, into the warm core of her, making her arch against his tongue and his fingers as he invaded her skillfully.
He pulled back while she was still moaning and throbbing, and she felt/heard his sigh even as she wrapped her thighs around him. “Are you sure?” he asked, avoiding her ardent hands, and she mumbled. She wanted him, and he knew how to make her want him – he already knew the answer. “You know what I want,” she told him, winding herself around him, her fingers sure on his slick and engorged skin.
“Wish I did,” he whispered into her ear as he moved in her.
From the bed they moved into the shower, hands and fingers, tongues and the heated caverns of their mouths. Spent, they crawled back into the bed, supper forgotten, to spoon and be soothed by the television’s inane babble. She fell asleep in the safe harbor of his strong arms, wondering how she could give him up when she still wanted him this much and this many ways.
But she woke alone.
He emerged from the shower a few moments later, his hair dripping, a towel swathed around his muscular nudity. “Morning,” he greeted her, moving toward the bed. She sat up, kicking the blankets off, and glanced around herself. After the night before, she was even more confused about their future. Also, as she scrabbled in her purse, she realized that she’d forgotten a certain packet of pink pills. Well, hell: she’d have to add finding a doctor or clinic to prescribe those today to her list of things to do.
ns 15.158.61.20da2
