Afternoon Delight (16 page)

But it wasn't just about the present. Cooking was a bet on the future, on shared moments with family, friends, a lover. Sarah cooked to carve out time now, and in the future, to make sacred shared moments. It was different from bringing over takeout, too. Cooking meant you thought about the food and the person more than dialing a phone number and handing over a credit card. Takeout had its place, but cooking . . . cooking built a future, one meal at a time.

He could do that, use the present to build a future. He might be slow off the mark, but once he made up his mind, he could hold his own in the kitchen. It was surprisingly calming, slicing vegetables, adding spices, watching the slow boil. This might be exactly what he needed to ease the strain of the job.

He wasn't asking for forever, although if he wanted forever with anyone, Sarah and her skirts and clogs and wild hair fit the bill pretty damned well. He wasn't really asking for anything. He just wanted to show her he wasn't a lost cause. Even superheroes had a right to hang up the cape every once in a while, to live in the moment, leave the city in capable hands.

Anyway, he was no superhero.

He took the stairs two at a time and borrowed a paper box from his upstairs writer neighbor. Back in his apartment, he lined the box with a towel to absorb spills and retain heat, then slid the fresh bread into paper towels and wedged it on one side of the stock pot. The salad ingredients went into the other side. He tucked the box against his hip and went downstairs to hail a cab.

***

Mimosas and brunch extended into the early afternoon. After cleaning up, Brandon and Trish decided to burn off the calories with a walk in Prospect Park, an early movie, then dinner, so Sarah wasn't expecting the buzz on the intercom in the early evening.

“Did you forget your keys?” Sarah asked when she answered the intercom's buzz.

“It's Tim.”

She stared at the speaker as if she could see him through the vent. “Tim?”

“Tim Cannon,” he said uncertainly, as if there were any other Tim in her life. “Can I come up?”

She pressed the buzzer and opened the door to the landing. Tim came up the stairs carrying a box, but the smell preceded him. Fresh bread and . . . split pea soup?

“Hi,” Sarah said.

“Hi,” he said back.

“What's all that?” she asked, because her nose must be misleading her.

“Homemade soup.”

“Homemade soup,” she repeated.

“Split pea soup, to be specific,” he said.

“It smells like my soup.”

“It is your soup. I got the recipe off your blog. Can I come in?”

She stepped back and let him into the apartment. He set the box on the counter and felt the towel, probably checking for spills, not quite meeting her eye.

“It's not your bread, though,” he said. “I made Mrs. Cohen's recipe. Brown bread. It's pretty dense. I'm not sure if I did it right.”

“It smells fantastic,” she said, almost daring to hope. Almost. “Um . . . why are you here?”

He turned to face her, leaned against the counter, legs crossed at the ankle. “I'm sorry. I was a total jerk when I told Jonesy I didn't care if he asked you out. Watching your face when you realized what I'd done . . . after what we'd just done . . .” He swallowed hard, his throat working, and looked away, then looked back at her. “I'm sorry,” he repeated, the words spoken with an intensity she'd never seen before. “I didn't mean it. I care. I really, really care, and I really don't want you to go out with him. Not that I have any right to tell you what to do, after what I did, but . . . don't. Please don't.”

“If you do care, why didn't you say that?”

He took a deep breath. “Because you scare me.”

Her brows drew down. “I scare you.”

“I can't point to one terrible thing that happened to make me start speeding through life. It just accumulated. The job. Taking care of my grandparents. Suddenly it was easier to get really fast, really good at my job, and ignore everything else, until you slowed me down. In a really good way,” he added hastily.

“Tim, I didn't think you were lying when you said you had a difficult day at work. Your best day on the job is still someone's worst day of their lives. Moving too fast to feel the pain is one way of coping with that kind of constant stress. It worked,” she said gently.

“But there's a price to that kind of coping,” he said. “Relationships need time and attention. They need the opposite of speed. When I was with you, it didn't feel so hard. I thought it was the challenges. The sex. It wasn't. It was you. Us. When I'm with you, life doesn't feel so heavy.” He blew out his breath and looked at her. “I need to find a new way of coping. I love my job. I don't want to get callous about it. I really don't want to lose you. I hope I can make your burdens a little lighter, too,” he said, as if he wasn't sure the soup and bread made that clear.

She smiled at him. “You're not going to lose me.” She stepped forward, put her hand on his hip, and tipped her face up to his. He bent his head and kissed her, slow and sweet, taking his time, letting it linger until the reality of the promise seeped through her veins, into her bones.

She lit the burner and lifted the pot from the box. “It smells really good,” she said.

“I hope it is.”

“Can we eat in the squashy chairs, like heathens? The sunset is really beautiful behind the Manhattan skyline.”

“Sure,” he said.

Sarah ladled out bowls of soup and put together an assortment of fresh fruit while Tim sliced and buttered the bread. They turned the chairs to face the big windows, pulled a table between them to hold the food and glasses of wine, then sat down to eat just as the sun was setting.

“It's perfect,” she said after a couple of spoonfuls of soup.

“Not bad. Needs less salt. I'll keep that in mind for next time.” He nodded at the skyline, burnished in shades of orange and sunset-red. “How do you feel about the city now?”

She smiled at the view, then at him. The setting sun gilded his beard to gold. The strands glinted as he smiled back at her, soft and easy, full of hope. Hope for a future together, in the city he loved. She set her soup on the table between them, then leaned across the chair's arm and kissed him. “You know, I really think I'm going to like it here.”

Many thanks to Megan Mulry for brainstorming and beta reading, Robin L. Rotham for the beta reading, and my constant companions in the #1k1hr Twitter hashtag for company as I wrote. The editorial team at Berkley/InterMix always does a wonderful job, but with this particular book the development and copy edits were especially helpful. Many, many thanks to Leis Pederson, Kate Hurley, and the rest the book-loving professionals behind the scenes who always improve my work.

Keep reading for a preview of THE LIST, the next novel in the Irresistible Series from Anne Calhoun, available March 2015.

Summer Solstice—10:50 am

The window air conditioning unit clicked twice, then whirred to life. The building on Washington Square was too old to have central air. The cold air drifted through the swath of sunshine that faded the ancient Oriental rug's reds to a brick shade. Special Agent Daniel Logan took up position at the left end of the love seat and braced his elbow on the arm as he noted the way light fell on the monument in Washington Square Park. When he was a rookie officer with the FBI he'd trained himself to note not just date and time but the weather, moon and astronomical events in his reports to anchor things in his memory. It was useful when he testified in court.

At this very moment the sun was at its highest point in the sky, and the summer would only get hotter.

Today he noted the solstice not because he'd been called to testify, but because he'd met Tilda the preceding summer solstice. One year had passed, the year of Tilda. They'd met, started dating or whatever Tilda called it, gotten married, and were now sitting in front of a marriage counselor, because Tilda thought they needed to divorce.

She folded herself into the opposite end of the love seat like complicated origami in a sleeveless black sheath, her bare legs crossed. No wedding ring. No birthday bracelet. The therapist, a tall, thin man with dark brown eyes and a turban covering his hair, shook both their hands as he introduced himself as Dr. Bhowmick, then settled himself across from them.

“Daniel,” he said in a lightly accented voice. “Do you prefer Daniel, or Dan?”

“Daniel.”

“The interpreter of dreams,” Dr. Bhowmick said. “Word origins are a hobby of mine. What do you do?”

“I'm with the FBI.” It wasn't all that different from interpreting dreams. As an agent assigned to investigate white collar crime, he reconstructed people's dreams after they'd been stolen.

Dr. Bhowmick transferred his gaze to Tilda. “And Tilda. An unusual name.”

“It's short for Matilda,” she said, but she lacked her usual smile.

“Ah,” the therapist said genially. “Do you know the origin of your name?”

“I do,” she said. “It's German and a combination of two words meaning strength and battle.”

Her face wore her most pleasant expression, as if she bat away idle observations and trivial facts all day, deflecting the conversation down shallow gullies until everything they had left dissipated into the air.

“What brings you here today?”

“I think we need to divorce,” Tilda said.

“I think we don't,” Daniel replied.

She smiled at Dr. Bhowmick. “And there you have it.” Crisp, clean, precise, the upperclass British accent the same temperature as the room. She must be freezing in her sleeveless sheath. Daniel was comfortable in his suit, and he ran much hotter than Tilda, who lived like she could spontaneously combust at any moment but was always cold.

Dr. Bhowmick turned to a clean page in his legal pad and wrote something at the top. Daniel's gaze flicked to the words. He could read most handwriting upside down, but Dr. Bhowmick appeared to be taking notes in some form of shorthand. Tilda was also studying the pen and paper, but Daniel doubted she was trying to read the handwriting. Cheap legal pad and a ball point pen that came in packs of ten at the Duane Reade is what Tilda, who owned an upscale stationery store, would see.

“How long have you been married?”

This information was on the intake assessment Daniel filled out before the appointment. He'd do the same thing to a suspect or witness—take information, ask again from a slightly different angle, then ask again from another. It's how he pieced together the stories that solved crimes. Simple or complex, financial or physical, a crime was always about a story. People had goals, motivations, conflicts that escalated into theft and violence. Stories and numbers were his specialty. “Six months,” he said.

Dr. Bhowmick halted mid-scrawl. “You've been married six months? How long have you known each other?”

“A year.”

“Eleven months,” Tilda clarified.

Daniel slid her a look. “It's the solstice. We met a year ago today,” he said, standing on the only solid ground in his earthquake-rattled world. That day was written on his bones, as real and solid as the love seat under him, the light on his skin, Tilda's even breathing beside him.

“So you've been together for almost a year, and married for most of that time. Why don't you want to be married to Daniel any longer?”

She looked away, out the large rectangular window in the living room. The therapist worked from his home, and had a nice view of Washington Square. NYU students crossing the square, pausing by the chess games going on at the south end of the park. Daniel remembered his student days, the freedom to explore everything body and mind had to offer. Tilda, four years younger, hadn't crossed his path.

“Tilda,” Dr. Bhowmick prompted gently.

“I'm not comfortable opening our marriage to a stranger.”

“Neither am I,” Daniel pointed out.

The look she shot him was swift and fierce, like a silver blade. When she returned her gaze to Dr. Bhowmick, he straightened almost imperceptibly. “We married in haste. It was an impulsive decision that, in hindsight, was the wrong one. It would be foolish to repent at leisure, when both of us could be free.”

Words mattered to Tilda; she chose them carefully. She didn't say to meet other people. She didn't say she didn't love him. She didn't say it was a mistake. She didn't even say she wanted a divorce.
We need to divorce.

“Daniel?”

“I love her. I want to be married to her for the rest of my life.”

Tilda's unreadable gray gaze never left Washington Square. Her slender, pale fingers, bare of any rings at all, sat unmoving in her lap while the rest of the session passed in silence. Daniel was comfortable with silence, knew how to use it during an interrogation, so he sat and watched the sun shift on the rug as the seconds crawled by. When their time was up, Tilda collected her purse as she stood. “I have an appointment. Thank you, Dr. Bhowmick,” and walked out the door.

“Tilda,” Dr. Bhowmick mused. Reflecting on her name, Daniel thought, not pining for her. He said it that way often enough. “These things take time, Daniel. Would you like to schedule a recurring session?”

“I need to talk to Tilda first. She travels for work.”

When he reached the street, Tilda was standing by the curb, her tote slung over her shoulder, one slender arm outstretched to hail a cab. Without looking at him, she asked, “Do you want to share a taxi to Midtown?”

Startled, he laughed. This is why he loved her, why he wanted to marry her, because he never, ever knew what was coming. He loved surprises, loved pitting himself against the unexpected, loved even more his unpredictable wife. To get a better angle on oncoming traffic she stepped off the curb between two parked cars. He took a moment, just a moment, to admire the taut swell of her calf in four-inch heels, the way her dress hugged her hips, the play of her shoulder blades, the seemingly vulnerable nape of her neck, exposed by the riotous tumble of chin-length black curls.

“I assume you're still having lunch with the runners club?” she said over her shoulder. “I'm meeting Colin at Barney's before we leave for London. Do you want to share a cab?”

A cab slowed for her, the availability light flicking off as it braked. It was a challenge, a dare, a gauntlet thrown down onto the steaming city pavement. She was exactly the same as the day he'd met her, except she thought they needed to divorce. “Yeah,” he said, and slid into the back seat next to her.

“Fifty-Seventh and Madison,” she said, then sat back and tucked her purse in her lap.

The cab crawled through midday traffic. Daniel stared out the window and thought. Tilda didn't talk about things to strangers, some vestigial remnant of her English upbringing. In an era of constant oversharing on social media, it took months for Tilda to give him even the thinnest slivers of her story. When she did tell him something, she was ruthlessly honest.

“An impulsive decision to marry isn't a solid foundation for a marriage,” she said, as if she could read his mind. Maybe she could. “We never really meshed as a couple. Your work and family. The deal is about to close, the situation with Sheba snowballed out of control, and I'm worried about Nan.”

Her grandmother lived in the fishing village in Cornwall, England where Tilda had lived until she was nine. Two weeks earlier Nan had stumbled off the ramp leading to the hen house and broken her ankle. If Tilda hadn't been in the middle of a business opportunity that could make or break her, she would have been in Cornwall already.

None of this was like Tilda, except it was. She was perfectly capable of walking right up to a ledge, a cliff, and peering over the edge to assess the landing. He knew that—loved that—about her.

The cab pulled to a stop on the east side of the street. She handed a twenty through the sliding window, while Daniel, seated on the sidewalk side, got out of the cab so she wouldn't exit into the traffic rushing up Madison. Without thinking about it, he held out his hand; he suspected her taking it was equally a matter of habit. He stayed where he was, trapping her between his body and the cab door, and let her forward momentum bring her right up against his body.

It was far too blatant and possessive for an on-duty FBI agent wearing his gun and his badge and standing on one of the busiest street corners in Midtown Manhattan. He was working the case of the decade; even a verbal reprimand could get him yanked back to investigative support. But this was Tilda, his wife, who said there was nothing between them worth building a marriage on.

Then he kissed her.

His mouth landed a little off center, her lips parting in surprise and then softening, heating under his. Her fingers spasmed as if she would pull away. He neither tightened nor relaxed his grip on her hand, but rather slipped his tongue between her lips to touch hers. Then it happened, a hint of flint and tinder, sparks flaring, the hitch in her breathing as she tilted her head just enough to align their mouths.

With one quick jerk she freed her hand and stepped back, her eyes dark with an anguish that triggered a sense of deja vu. “Don't, Daniel. If you really knew me, if you really
knew me
, the last thing you would have done is schedule an appointment with a
therapist
.”

She pushed past him onto the sidewalk, and disappeared around the corner. Shaken, Daniel held onto her wrist, until she gave him an anguished glare and tugged free. Daniel closed the cab's door and tapped the roof twice with his fist. As the cab pulled out into traffic, Daniel withdrew his notebook and pen, and took refuge in what he knew how to do: make lists.

***

Solstice—12:47 pm

Risks Tilda Takes

1. Sitting on ledges

2. Sliding over cliffs

3. Going after the deal that will make her a global brand

4. Asking for a divorce

He walked the few blocks to meet the ultramarathon runners for lunch, his mind only half on the discussion about training schedules, nutrition, hydration, and war stories. Instead he thought about the divorce rate for law enforcement officers, which was well above the national average. Just about every cop or agent he knew well enough to swap stories fell somewhere on the spectrum from marriage counseling, separate rooms, separations, filing for divorce, to actually divorcing. Then, just out of curiosity, he walked back to Barney's, got an iced coffee from the coffee shop across the street, and stood in the shade under the awning of the coffee shop next to Judith Ripka, just in time to watch his wife get into another man's car.