LITMIR.BIZ

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on. Sit on the front of it.”

      “Have you lost your mind?”

      “You wanted to help. You can’t do much with your arm like that. Come sit on the sander.”

      Why hadn’t she just gone and ordered a pizza? Against her better judgment, she moved a little closer. “Sit on it?” She tapped it. “Here?”

      He nodded eagerly.

      Oh, jeez, it had always been hard not to get caught up in his enthusiasm.

      She kicked off her shoes, gathered her skirt underneath her and sat down regally on the sander. She planted her feet firmly on a part of it that looked like a front fender. “Do not do anything that will jeopardize my other arm,” she warned him.

      “Don’t worry.” Grinning happily, he started the sander. A quiver ran through her. And then a tremble.

      “Oh, my God.” Her voice came out shaking, as if she was trying to talk from under water. In the midst of an earthquake. With her good hand, she clutched wildly at the side of the sander. She braced her front feet.

      “Ready?”

      Ready? Sheesh, Jessica, run for your life! Instead, she clung like a bronc rider waiting for the gate to open. She nodded her head.

      The machine lurched across the floor.

      “That’s better,” Kade called. “It’s working!” He swung the huge machine slowly back and forth over the floor.

      “I feel like I’m on one of those machines from a seventies gym,” she yelled. Her voice sounded as if she was a cartoon character. Her whole body was vibrating crazily. She could see the flesh on her arms and legs jiggling rapidly.

      She started to laugh. Even her laughter was shaking. Kade also gave a shout of pure glee.

      He abandoned the slow sweeping motions in the corner and swiveled the machine outward. He raced across the living room, pushing the machine in front of him. Jessica glanced over her shoulder. A wide swath of sanded wood showed behind them, like the wake behind a boat.

      They rocketed toward the front door.

      An older woman put her head in. Her glasses slipped down her face and her mouth fell open. She was followed by her husband. His mouth fell open, and he grabbed her arm and tried to push her back out the door, as if protecting her from a sight unsuitable for a lady.

      She was having none of it, though. She stood her ground, taking in the sight, wide-eyed.

      Kade jerked the machine to a halt so quickly Jessica was nearly launched. He turned off the machine. Jessica pulled her skirt down—the vibrating had made it ride dangerously up her thigh—and tried to quit laughing. An undignified snort, caused by the suppressed laughter, came out of her mouth.

      “Yes?” Kade asked their visitors, his voice dignified, as if not a thing was amiss.

      “Uh, we were wondering if there’s a yard sale,” the man said when it was evident his wife was still shocked speechless. “We wondered about the bench.”

      “Not for sale,” Kade said, and then Jessica heard a familiar wickedness enter his tone. “However, I’ll give you a good deal on the world’s best vibrator.”

      The woman staggered backward out the door. The man’s mouth fell open so hard, his chin hit his chest.

      “Sorry to disturb you,” he cried as he backed out the door after his wife.

      Jessica waited until they were gone. She glared up at the man who was her husband, but she could not stir any genuine annoyance with him. Instead, she remembered how funny and spontaneous he was, she remembered that irreverent edge to his humor.

      A smile was tickling his lips. And then she remembered that oh-so-familiar grin. And realized she had never really forgotten that.

      Kade gave a shout of pure delight and devilment. And then the laughter spilled out of Jessica, too, and they were both laughing. Hard. Until they were doubled over with it, until the walls of their little house rang with it.

      Until the laughter flowed between them like a river that connected them to everything they had once been.

       CHAPTER TEN

      KADE LOOKED AT Jessica and realized how much he loved to make her laugh. He always had. That was what he had missed most when their relationship had begun to go sideways. Her laughter.

      “Goodness,” Jessica said a little breathlessly. “I have not laughed like that in a very long time.”

      “Me, either,” he admitted.

      “It reminds me of when we were younger,” she said.

      “Me, too.”

      “Before...” Her voice faded away. But he knew what she meant. Before the loss of the first baby. And then the second one. Her laughter had leached out of her like bloodred wine leaking from a wineskin with a small puncture in it.

      And when she had stopped laughing, and when he had realized how powerless he was to fix that, nothing had seemed worth laughing about to him anymore, either.

      Now he watched as she scrambled off the sander, brushing at that ugly skirt with her good arm. The laughter had lightened the strained look around her eyes and mouth.

      But when she faced him, a different kind of strain was there. And it wasn’t, for once, the strain of remembering everything that had transpired between them.

      This had been lost, too, this deep and delicious sense of awareness of each other. Or maybe not lost. Maybe it had gone underground, like a creek that ran below the surface. It didn’t matter that right now, Jessica’s surface was encased in that thoroughly revolting dress. Kade could see, with utter ease, to what was underneath. And not her underwear. Her spirit. He could sense that beautiful, sensual awareness of each other, a longing to touch and explore.

      In their marriage, it felt as if that had gone, too. It had gone the same place the laughter had gone—into that lonely abyss. It was as if the raft of life that they had shared had snapped in two, and they had stood by helplessly, with no paddles, drifting farther and farther away, not able to stop it.

      “Why babies?” he asked softly.

      “What?”

      She actually looked frightened by the question.

      “Why Baby Boomer? Why is your business about all things baby when that caused us so much heartache?”

      “Oh.” She relaxed visibly. “I’m not sure it was even intentional. You know some of my friends had seen the nursery you and I—” Her voice drifted away and she squinted, as if looking at something in the distance. Then she cleared her throat. “Nicole Reynolds asked me if I could do something for her. A mural on the wall of her nursery. It was a forest scene, with rabbits and birds and a deer. It was an immersion and it kind of snatched me back from the brink. Gave me purpose and a reason to get up in the morning. I liked being part of what was happening in their family, that circle of joy and expectation. It just kind of snowballed.”

      He was so aware he had caused her that pain. Well, not all of it. The miscarriages had put her in a space he couldn’t reach. And then she’d wanted to try again. To plunge herself into that pool of misery he could not rescue her from again. He’d thought it was his job to make her happy. To make her world perfect. At some point, to his grave detriment, he had given up trying.

      “I’m sorry, Jessie. I’m sorry it wasn’t me who snatched you back from the brink.”

      Her eyes skittered to him and then away. For a moment it looked as if she would cross that abyss between them, throw herself into his embrace, come home.

      But that moment passed even before he recognized completely what was blooming

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