LITMIR.BIZ

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glanced at her over his shoulder, perplexed. “To what?”

      “To my idea. About getting away this weekend,” she added when his expression still remained blank.

      For a moment, Brad had her going, had her hopeful that he might actually remember it was their anniversary.

      “Sounds good.” But then he halted at the door. “But I can’t,” he recalled. Was that disappointment in his voice, or was she just wishing it into existence? “I’ve got a conference to attend. A local one,” he added. They both knew how much she hated having him go away for a conference.

      “Can’t you—?”

      Stacey never got a chance to finish her question. His cell phone rang, interrupting her. Brad held up his hand to stop her in midsentence as he listened to whoever was on the other end.

      He mouthed “Goodbye” to her as he walked out.

      And left without kissing her.

      Again.

      CHAPTER 2

      That was happening more and more frequently these days, Stacey thought as she turned away from the closed door. She made her way back to the kitchen, trying to remember the last time Brad had kissed her goodbye without her first having to throw herself directly in the path of his outgoing lips.

      That long ago, huh?

      Once in the kitchen, which was sunnier than she felt at the moment, Stacey began to clear away Brad’s plate with its only half-eaten piece of French toast. She supposed, in her husband’s defense, for the most part she’d stopped waiting for him to make the first move, to lean forward and kiss her. Because, in her own defense, she didn’t want to take the chance on winding up staring at the back of a closed door, feeling as if she’d just been kicked by a mule.

      Feeling hollow. Just like this.

      Is that all there is?

      Damn it, why couldn’t she get that stupid song out of her head?

      Stacey felt a sudden, overwhelming urge just to cry.

      Hormones.

      They always picked the worst time to attack, she thought, fighting to reach equilibrium and some semblance of calm. Stacey looked down at the dog, who, with Brad gone, had shifted her allegiance as she did every morning and followed her back to the kitchen.

      Rosie was now wagging her tail, a hopeful look in her eyes.

      “You just want another treat, you furry hussy.” She stroked Rosie’s head and went to the cupboard where she kept the dog’s wide assortment of treats. After taking out something that resembled plastic bacon, she tossed it to the animal. With a semileap, Rosie caught the treat and devoured it in the time it took to close the cupboard doors. “At least he talks to you,” Stacey said wistfully. “Someday, you have to tell me your secret.”

      “Talking to the dog again, Mom?”

      Stacey turned, surprised to see Jim enter the kitchen. Now that college was over, unless something out of the ordinary happened or the house was on fire, Jim did not acknowledge that any hours before eleven-thirty even existed. As he stumbled barefoot into the kitchen, wearing the ancient torn gym shorts he slept in, his deep blue eyes were half closed.

      Six foot, one inch and still filling out his gangly torso, at twenty-two Jim looked exactly the way Brad had at that age. But carbon-copy looks were where the similarities between her two men ended.

      At that age, Brad had been driven to make something of himself and to provide not just for himself and the family they’d hope to have, but for his ailing mother as well. Back then, she’d thought of him as being almost a saint.

      Except for the sex.

      Her mouth curved as she remembered even despite her efforts not to at the moment. The sex had truly been without equal.

      And she missed it like hell.

      Their son, as Brad was wont to point out over and over again whenever they did have a conversation, was not driven. After much pleading, Jim had attended UCLA, emerging after four rather lackluster years with a degree in fine arts. He’d gotten the degree, they both knew, purely to drive his father crazy.

      “Damn it, he’s a smart kid, Stace,” Brad had complained loudly enough for her to close a window. “We all know that. His SAT scores were almost perfect. Why is he throwing his life away like this?”

      Arguments over Jim and the course of their second-born’s life were as regular as clockwork. And there was never a resolution. Her only answer to Brad’s question was that their son was striving to be the complete antithesis of everything that his father was. She kept it to herself.

      “I’m talking to Rosie because she doesn’t talk back or give me an argument,” Stacey told her son cheerfully. “That’s kind of refreshing.”

      Dragging a hand through his yet-to-be-combed, unruly hair, Jim shrugged off the answer. Taking the half-eaten French toast from her, he straddled the chair his father had vacated and put the plate down in front of him. He didn’t bother with a fork.

      Somewhere between the first and second bite, his lips dusted with a fine layer of powdered sugar, Jim nodded in the general direction from which he’d just come. “Upstairs sink is clogged again.”

      Stacey sighed as she placed a fresh piece of French toast on what was now her son’s plate. So what else was new? It seemed that something was always going wrong with the sinks and toilets in the house. There were four of the first and three of the second. And that didn’t take into account the house’s two showers and tub.

      And lately, the wiring was giving her trouble. The power would go out on certain lines. A month ago, half the house was down until the electrician came to the rescue. Brad had been furious over the bill. Rescues did not come cheaply.

      Stacey dearly loved the house they lived in. She’d fallen in love with it the very first time she saw it, over twenty years ago. But she was the first one to admit that it was at a point in its life where it needed loving care and renovating. A great deal of renovating.

      Her problem was, she couldn’t seem to convince Brad of that. Practical to a maddening fault, her husband would only nod in response to her entreaties, then, when pressed for a verbal answer, would point out that they could make do by calling in a plumber.

      “Which is a hell of a lot cheaper than getting renovations.” He’d give her that look that said he knew so much better than she did what was needed. And then he’d laugh, the sound calling an official halt to the discussion. “If I let you, you’d wind up spending your way into the poorhouse.”

      She knew as well as he did what they had in the bank. What they had in all the different IRA and Keogh funds Brad kept opening or feeding. There was no way renovating the house would send them packing and residing in debtors’ prison. Or even strolling by it. But telling him that she had no intentions of using solid-gold fixtures or going overboard made no impression on Brad. Neither did saying that most of their friends had already updated their homes and added on years ago. Some had done it twice.

      That kind of an argument held no meaning for Brad. He had no interest in keeping up with anything except for the latest advances in his field.

      The only other thing that meant anything to him was making sure his children had the best. He wanted them to have every opportunity to make something of themselves—he being the one who defined what “something” was.

      Julie had been canny enough to hit the target square on the head. Ever since she’d first opened her eyes to this world twenty-four years ago, Julie had been the apple of her father’s eye. Julie could do no wrong—and she didn’t. Their daughter was presently in medical school. Her goal was to become a pediatrician.

      Jim, who had taught himself how to read at four because he’d been too impatient to wait for anyone to read to him, had been Brad’s genius. He’d begun making

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