LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER EIGHT

      “I LIKE THE CAST, THOUGH,” Kade told Jessica.

      And he did. He liked it that she had a bigger world again. All the scribbling on the cast was evidence of friends and coworkers and a life beyond the house. Okay, it grated a bit that she had managed to make a bigger world without him, and somehow it was still about babies.

      “The dress is what I could get on by myself. See? Buttons down the front.”

      “About the dress,” he said, deadpan. “Are they all that color? What would you call that color?”

      “Pink?” she suggested.

      “Nausea, heartburn, indigestion...” It was the slogan of a famously pink stomach-relief medication.

      “The other ones are worse—”

      “No, no, they can’t be.”

      “Spiced pumpkin and real-woods camo.”

      “A camo maternity dress? I guess my next question would be, how are sales?”

      “They are very, very popular.”

      “Tell me it ain’t so,” he groaned.

      “They are part of an extraoversize line.”

      “Look, you are scaring me with the visual.”

      “Well, your visual is a little scary, too,” she said, standing back from the door to let him by her. “A tool belt? And what is that you’re driving?”

      “I borrowed a truck.”

      “A truck worthy of a camo-wearing pregnant lady, too.”

      “I needed it for the vibrating floor sander I rented to refinish the floors.”

      “A floor sander. The scariness increases. You always thought we should just replace the floors,” she reminded him.

      “You always thought we should refinish them.”

      “But it doesn’t matter now!” she said, but it felt as if it did. It felt as if it was part of all that was unfinished. In the house, and between them. But Kade did not tell her that.

      “What do you know about refinishing a floor?” she asked, looking at her watch.

      “Oh, ye of little faith,” he said. “I went on the internet. It’s easier than you think.”

      Jessica looked insultingly doubtful.

      “I think that refinishing will be less time-consuming than ripping out the old floor and putting down a new one,” he told her. He didn’t add it might be more in keeping with his skill set.

      “Why are you tackling it? Why didn’t you just hire someone? That guy you hired to install my door was excellent. By the way, I owe you some money for that.”

      “Yeah, whatever.”

      She looked as if she was going to argue, but then remembered she already was in the middle of one argument with him and decided to stick to that one. “I mean this is not exactly your line of work, Kade. It’s certainly not in keeping with your current lifestyle.”

      “What lifestyle is that?” he asked her.

      “You know.”

      “I don’t.”

      “CEO—chief everything officer—at a prestigious company, resident of River’s Edge.”

      “I already told you I work all the time.”

      “That’s exactly what I’m trying to say. You work all the time, and not at renovations. You have a very sophisticated lifestyle. You move in very high-powered circles. I don’t understand why you want to do this.”

      “I started it,” he said grimly. “And I’m going to finish it.”

      She looked at him, and he knew she got it. She got it at every level that he had meant it at.

      “Well, I’d love to stay and help—”

      He could tell she meant it to sound sarcastic, but instead they both heard the wistfulness there, and Jessica blushed.

      “—but I have to go to work. It already took me nearly forty-five minutes longer to get ready than I thought it would, and my part-time staffer can only stay until noon today.”

      “You slept in,” he guessed.

      Jessica looked as if she was going to protest, but then didn’t. She sighed. “I had trouble sleeping.”

      “I thought you would.”

      “What? Why?”

      “There aren’t very many people who could walk away from being assaulted without being affected by it. And you’ve always been more sensitive than the average person anyway.”

      She smiled wanly and gave in, just a little bit, to the fact that he was her husband. He knew her. “I’m okay till I lie down, then I feel as if I hear glass breaking. I jump at the sound of the furnace turning on, and that tree branch outside the bedroom scraping the window. Then, since I’m awake anyway, I contemplate how to protect my shop, and hate how helpless I feel.”

      He drew in a deep breath. The warrior in him wanted to devote his life to protecting her.

      But she looked as abashed at her confessions as he was at his reaction to them. Jessica glanced again at her watch. “Yikes! Would you look at the time! Sorry, again. I can’t help.”

      “It doesn’t matter. There is a lot of legwork before I actually do anything. I have to move furniture before I get started on the floors.”

      She cast a look at Behemoth. She was obviously thinking moving furniture was a two-person job, but he had also rented a dolly this morning with that recliner specifically in mind.

      But Jessica surprised him. The practicalities of moving furniture were not what was on her mind.

      “Remember the day we brought that home?” she asked softly.

      These were the conversations he didn’t want to have. Because the truth was that he remembered everything.

      “You protesting the whole way home how ugly it was,” Kade reminded her. He thought her exact words had been that it didn’t fit with her vision for their house. He hadn’t become totally jaded with the vision yet. Or maybe he had started to, because he had brought home the chair over her strenuous protests.

      “And then we couldn’t get it in the door. It weighs

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