In This Life (5 page)

“Nat, don’t listen to him,” I said. “Of course we’re going out tonight. We wouldn’t have it any other way. This is a big night for Lori and we want to be a part of it.”

David watched me from the sofa and didn’t say a word. Didn’t matter. He could fight me all he wanted after I hung up, but we were going out to celebrate.

“When are the reservations?” I asked.

Nat laughed, a deep hearty sound that was always infectious and playful. “Nice to see you’re still the boss in that house, Lottie. Reservations are for six-thirty at Dolce’s.”

“Dolce’s! I’ve never been there but I’ve heard it’s terrific.”

“Lori picked it out. The woman’s got taste, which is why she picked me.”

“Who’s watching the kids?”

“Her mom. It’s her birthday gift. We’re gonna make it a late night, so catch up on your Zs and get into your sexiest. You got that?”

“I got that.”

One of Nat’s boys screeched in the background. “Gotta go. Now you keep that tough guy in line so I don’t have to come over there and kick his ass.”

“You bet, Nat. See you later.”

I ended the call with a smile on my face. It was something I couldn’t help. Nat always had a way of bringing out the happy in me.

“That was sneaky and underhanded,” David said, coming to stand by my side.

“I know.” I handed him back his phone. “And you deserved it for being so pushy.”

David toyed with the phone but seemed preoccupied.

“What is it?” I asked.

He clipped the phone to his jeans and watched me for a long while. “I’d like to say it’s nothing but I know you well enough to know you’re not going to let it go.”

“And?”

He took a few more seconds to finally admit what he’d been thinking. “I’m worried.” His voice cracked with the admission and my heart wrenched hearing it. “Worry” wasn’t a word often found in his vocabulary. “Still, we can’t let that worry get the better of us.”

“Which is why we’re going out tonight, even though you’d prefer to cancel?”

He nodded.

I slipped my arms around him and rested my head on his chest, wanting comfort and needing reassurance, and not knowing how to find either. If I could forget all of this or make it go away for a little while, I would do it. Then I had an idea.

I looked up at him and the heat in his intense, green eyes made me realize he had the very same idea.

David pulled me to him. His body felt hot, and hard, and I closed my eyes, imagining the wicked, wonderful things we were going to do. “We have an entire afternoon to forget,” he said, and his warm breath swept down my neck and over my shoulder, and I shuddered in anticipation.

Then he led me upstairs to our bedroom and made good on his promise.

By six-thirty, David and I were sliding out of his black SUV and making our way into Dolce’s for dinner. We made small talk on the way over, mostly because of an unspoken agreement between us. This night was going to be for us and, more importantly, for Lori. Regardless of the day’s events, we didn’t intend to spoil a good time.

But that didn’t switch David completely into off mode. He watched the valet with wary eyes as he handed over his keys, and he held me close as we walked through the restaurant’s front door. By the time we reached the maître d’, I wondered if he was going to relax at all during the evening. He looked as tightly wound as an alpha lion ready for the hunt.

Under the guidance of the maître d’, we wove through the small restaurant to a quiet table for four in the corner, and I noticed that the darker David’s mood, the more attention he received from women. They watched him as he strode through the crowded room, brazen in their admiration of his confidence and looks but cautious of his don’t-screw-with-me attitude. One that was well-tailored to his dark suit and Italian loafers.

The maître d’ held out a chair for me and David took the one to my right. As soon as I settled in, I noticed he’d picked the one seat that had a perfect and complete view of the entire restaurant. Nothing was going to get past him.

“Something wrong?”

David’s voice jarred me out of my thoughts.

“No,” I said with a smile.

“That doesn’t look like a ‘no’ to me.” He smiled, too, but I could tell that it was to coax out the truth rather than to share a comfortable moment.

I weighed what I should say to him and went for, “I want you to relax and have a good time. That’s all.”

He looked ready to say something then thought better of it, and immediately his strained smile turned into a genuine grin. “Am I that transparent?” Then he quickly added, “Forget I even asked. Stupid question.”

I returned the grin.

“Did anyone ever tell you that you’re bad for a man’s ego?”

“You,” I said. “Many times.”

He shook his head, picked up the menu and pretended to study it. “There’s nothing sacred between us anymore. You’re inside my head more than I am.”

“Speak for yourself,” I said, throwing in just enough suggestiveness to catch his attention.

David’s eyes never came up from the menu. “You could have said no this afternoon. I would have found something else to do.”

“Yeah. Right.” I pretended to study the menu, too.

“Check it out,” he said. “They have
seafood fra diavolo.
I haven’t had that in ages.”

“Are you aiming for humility or discretion? Because neither one suits you.”

“And they have king crab, too. Very nice.”

“You really want me to believe you’d have tinkered around the house instead of taking me to our bedroom?”

David peered over the top of his menu, his eyes playful but with a hint of devil lurking just behind. “Yes.”

“Liar.”

“That’s only because you’ve never said no to me.” He placed the menu on his lap and leaned in close enough for me to feel his body heat and smell his rich, inviting cologne. “We can make this a short evening, you know. Go back home and do what we do best.”

He trailed his fingers down the zipper of my black dress and heat blazed over my skin and downward. He knew very well how to play me — he always had — and I broke out into a swift, delicious sweat.

David took notice of my flushed skin. “Think Nat and Lori will be upset if we try to rush dinner?”

The urgency in his voice and in his eyes intensified the heat between us. I straightened in my seat, trying for cool and calm and failing horribly.

David kissed my neck, his mouth hot, skilled, and full of passion. He moved to my shoulder, tugged the dress just enough to show bare skin and froze. Just like that, the intimate moment was gone and he pulled away, distracted.

I turned to see what caught his attention and saw a man leaving the restaurant with a woman on his arm, and my breath caught in my throat. “Oh my God! He looks just like Eddie Spellman!”

When I turned back to David, his jaw was clenched and his eyes were narrowed. He was fighting back strong emotion and looking like he might not succeed.

I rested a hand on his thigh. “It’s okay, David. What you’re feeling is completely normal, and it’s — ”

“Please stop psychoanalyzing me,” he snapped.

I pulled my hand from him and eased away. “Okay.”

He caught the waiter’s attention and ordered a bottle of Amarone, trying to pretend nothing was wrong. I’d been expecting a breaking point for more than three weeks already, ever since David and his friends buried Eddie, but David kept fighting the loss just as he was fighting it now. And there was nothing I could do for him.

The waiter returned with the wine, presented it to David, and poured some to sample. David nodded and the waiter filled two glasses and disappeared. Without waiting to toast, David took a long swallow and made short work of the glass.

I studied him and the emotional wall he’d erected between us, wondering if we should leave Dolce’s now before Nat and Lori arrived, and before the evening turned into something we might regret later. This was no way for Lori to celebrate her thirtieth and no way for David to grieve over the loss of one of his best friends. I’d been gauging different scenarios and excuses, wondering how we could pull it off without hurting our friends, when David’s voice interrupted me.

“We had it all planned out, Lottie. Right down to the smallest detail.”

I searched his expression to gauge his mood but his eyes were clouded over by a place far beyond our table and the restaurant. He shook his head over a memory he refused to share and refilled his glass, emptying half of it in two sips. If he realized how quickly and easily the wine went down, he didn’t show it. And maybe he didn’t care.

I started planning how to get his SUV keys from his pocket so he couldn’t drive home.

He finished the wine, his nostrils flared and his breathing turned shallow and swift.

“Want to leave?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I know what you’re thinking. I’ll be fine.”

But he didn’t look fine, and he kept staring out into the distance.

I asked the waiter for a glass of ginger ale, and when he left to get it, the silence between David and me felt as wide and deep as the Sahara where Eddie had died.

David toyed with his glass but didn’t pour another refill. “We planned and trained for the Sahara op for months, Lottie.” He reached for the bottle of Pellegrino on the table instead. “Did you know temperatures in the Sahara can reach up to one hundred seventy-two degrees?”

“No.”

He poured the Pellegrino and I watched the bubbles fizz and burst like tiny exploding stars in his glass. “It didn’t get that hot for us, though,” he said, “but it was well over one hundred. It was so hot that no matter how much water we drank, it was never enough. We were as dry and dehydrated as the goddamned sand we slogged over.”

I pictured David commanding his men on the dunes, ordering them into position for enemy attack. I saw them sweating in desert camouflage, baking under the high desert sun, desperate for cool water. For the sensation of a refreshing spray, sharp and chilling against overheated skin.

In that moment, my skin felt overheated, too. I felt the sun beating down on my body and the sweat rolling down my back. I imagined how that refreshing water would feel on me. Water that was cool and smelled like clean, crisp linen. The scent of something sweet passed by and I recognized the aroma right away. Honeyed figs and roasted lamb. And fragrant, freshly bloomed flowers. Sand was burning at the soles of my feet and I felt immediate regret over taking off my leather sandals and leaving them further down the banks of the river. I heard someone laugh then, just as a sharp spray of water pelted my body. It was a teenage boy, and he stood waist deep in the river, splashing me and teasing me into joining him for a swim.

The image faded and David’s voice eased back in, and I realized I’d missed almost everything he said. But the feeling behind the image remained, like a memory from when David and I were children.

Only it was one that we hadn’t experienced.

“I hate that desert, Lottie.” David closed his eyes, battling deep emotion and pain that he refused to release. “Eddie was supposed to be on leave, and I was short a man and I ordered him back to serve. If it wasn’t for me, he’d still be alive today.”

David opened his eyes and cursed under his breath, and I felt the first hot tears roll down my cheeks. I took his hand to comfort him and a sensation jolted through me, hard and swift. I saw the same teenage boy but now as a man. A man who loved me and wanted to marry me, and who took me to the river at night where we drank stolen wine and made love until morning.

A man who wore a linen military kilt and carried a heavy, jeweled sword.

When I released David’s hand, the image disappeared and the sound of a deep bass voice along with a distinctive, bubbly laugh moved in.

Nat and Lori had finally arrived.

Professional wrestler came to mind every time I saw Nat Hutchins. At six-feet-four and two hundred forty pounds with buzz-cut, almost white hair, Nat’s muscle-bound body stood out from the crowd. Nature determined his physical characteristics and he looked awkward using them. Sitting, walking, even wearing clothes seemed to come at great expense.

He squeezed himself into the seat next to David, leaving Lori the chair next to mine, and she settled in with uncertainty. Nat may not have noticed they had interrupted something important but she did. She looked at me with questioning eyes and I shook my head, telling her not to ask.

“Hey, man,” Nat said, slamming a meaty hand into David’s.

David shook it and then kissed Lori on the cheek. “Happy birthday.”

“And how does it feel to be thirty?” I asked her.

“Thirty’s dirty,” she said with a laugh. “So I’ve decided to stick with twenty-nine.”

“If I’d have known she’d do that,” Nat said, draping the napkin across his lap, “I’d have treated this year’s birthday just like last year’s and given Lori another designer handbag. Would have been easier on the wallet.”

“Don’t even think about it,” Lori teased, and her hand lifted to the fine, gold chain and huge diamond that sparkled on her neck.

“Wow.” David leaned in to get a closer look. “I’m impressed.”

“That’s beautiful, Lori,” I told her. “Absolutely exquisite.”

“I know.” Her face beamed with pride. “Nat picked it out all on his own, too. Can you believe it?”

David’s eyebrows rose in surprise. Nat was good at many things but choosing jewelry that Lori liked wasn’t one of them, mostly because his taste ran on the bulky side. It wasn’t that he wanted to be gaudy or show off. It was just that he never seemed to be able to comprehend that Lori stood a good foot shorter than he did and that her petite frame defined her china doll looks. Even now, with her wispy, blonde hair and floral sundress, she looked breakable, and that made the diamond stand out all the more. But this time Nat’s choice worked, and very well.

“You have excellent taste,” I told him.

“Of course he does,” David said. “He married Lori. Best thing he ever did in his life.”

David’s voice died and he pursed his lips, as if he’d said the right thing but at the wrong time. He flicked an unsettled glance in my direction that he quickly averted.