LITMIR.BIZ

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going fine.” She sighed. “It’s an adjustment,” she said. “Gran wants to dance polkas. She has no patience. But she’s making progress.”

      “Is she all right alone?”

      “Yes. And I’ll come back and stay with her for a while in a month or two. But right now I need to get back to my life and she needs to adjust here.”

      “Sounds good.”

      “It will be a good time,” Laura said, “with Christo leaving, I’ll have a chance to catch up on office paperwork without him underfoot.”

      “Leaving?” Natalie dropped the spoon in the pot of oatmeal she was stirring for their breakfast. “Christo?”

      “He didn’t tell you? Well, no, I suppose he wouldn’t since you’re not working with him now.” Laura sounded completely unconcerned. She, of course, was also unaware that Natalie was at that moment in Christo’s kitchen.

      No, I’m not working with him. I’m sleeping with him, Natalie thought with just a hint of hysteria. Why should he tell her? She was the woman in his bed for the moment. Nothing more. Nothing less.

      “He’s delivering a paper at a conference in Sacramento,” Laura told her. “The conference runs over the weekend. So it will be perfect. Provided I survive the next few days.” Laura laughed.

      Natalie did, too, albeit a bit hollowly. “Shall I pick you up at the airport then?”

      “That would be fantastic.” Her mother rattled off the details of the flight and Natalie wrote them down with one hand and kept stirring with the other. She had just hung up the phone when Christo appeared in the doorway.

      “Morning.” He poured himself a cup of coffee and flashed her a smile.

      It was friendly but, looking closely, she could see that there was nothing particularly personal about it. It was almost as if he had built a wall between them.

      There was certainly nothing to indicate they had just spent hours in each other’s arms, that they had touched and tasted and known each other in the most intimate of ways.

      “Good morning,” she said evenly. “My mother just rang. She’s coming home on Friday.”

      He nodded, then paused reflectively, as if something had occurred to him, but he didn’t say anything, just sat down in front the bowl of oatmeal she put at his place on the table and began to eat.

      “She and Grandma are ready to be done with each other for the time being,” she went on. “And she said it was a good time to come because you’d be away.” She looked at him expectantly.

      He nodded. Didn’t say a word.

      “In Sacramento delivering a paper,” she said casually, pleased with how disinterested she sounded as she wiped down the countertop and turned to run water in the empty oatmeal pot.

      It wasn’t even as if she cared that he was going. It was that he hadn’t thought enough of their relationship to bother telling her.

      Christo nodded. “That’s right.” But he offered no further comment, no explanation, made no attempt to engage her interest.

      Because he obviously didn’t want her interest, Natalie thought.

      She heard him set down the coffee mug and turned to see him steeple his fingers in front of his face. He stared at them wordlessly, as if she weren’t even in the room.

      Natalie turned back to the pot and began scrubbing it with a vengeance under the running water. “So I’ll be going home then, too, obviously,” she said, barely glancing over her shoulder, focusing instead on the pot.

      There was a long silence. The only sound was the running water and the furious action of the scouring pad in Natalie’s hand.

      Then Christo said, “So it would probably be a good time for us to end things, too.”

      Natalie didn’t even look around. She kept right on scrubbing the pot until it shone. Then she rinsed it and shut off the water before she finally turned around to face him as she picked up a dish towel and began to dry the pot.

      Only then, when she could say it with equanimity and just the faintest tightness in her throat, did she speak. “If that’s what you want.”

      For an instant he hesitated. Then he nodded almost curtly and stood up. “I think that would be best.”

      That afternoon there was no message on her voice mail saying, “I’ll see you tonight.” There was no brisk single knock on the door.

      Natalie was home in Laura’s apartment all evening. She read a book. She washed her hair. She watched TV. She didn’t know if Christo was home or not.

      She tried to pretend she didn’t care.

      She didn’t see him. Not that she’d expected to. Not after this morning’s flat dispassionate, it would probably be a good time for us to end things, too.

      A part of her had spent the day hoping he’d realize that there was more than nights in bed between them, more than sex, more than whatever physical desire might roar through their veins.

      But as she sat in the living room in silence, she knew it wasn’t going to happen.

      His lights were on across the garden. He was home. No doubt about that. Just as there was no doubt he was going to stay there by himself.

      At first Natalie tried consoling herself with the knowledge that at least she hadn’t humiliated herself this time. But the longer she sat there, the more she knew that wasn’t enough.

      They had played this game his way, by his rules. As far as he knew she’d obeyed them all. And, heaven help her, she would live by the consequences of her actions, however painful those consequences were.

      But if she was going to have to live on this for the rest of her life she wanted more.

      “More,” she told Herbie firmly aloud, as much to hear herself say it as to convince the cat.

      He was sprawled on the rocking chair sound asleep, anyway. He didn’t move. Or care. Not even when she got up, brushed her teeth, combed her hair, put on a bit of lip gloss, went out and locked the door behind her.

      She didn’t let herself stop to think. She knew what would happen if she did.

      Instead she walked briskly down the stairs and rapped sharply on Christo’s back door. It took a minute, maybe longer, for the door to open and Christo to stand there, looking at her.

      Something unreadable flickered in his gaze. Mostly he looked surprised and maybe a little confused. He straightened at the sight of her and raised his brows. “What’s wrong?”

      “Nothing’s wrong,” Natalie said. “I just got to thinking, if we’re ending it, let’s do it right. Let’s know it’s over.”

      “What?”

      She held out a hand to him and gave him her brightest bravura smile and said recklessly, “I think we should have one for the road.”

      Was he supposed to say no?

      Maybe he should have.

      He’d spent far too much time thinking about Natalie over the past couple of weeks. She was always on his mind in ways no other woman ever had been. She got under his skin and he couldn’t compartmentalize her the way he had with the others.

      He wanted to be with her, talk to her, laugh with her, walk on the beach with her. He wanted to build sand castles with her, watch videos with her, do a hundred other things besides just make love to her.

      It was getting to be an obsession, he told himself.

      Last weekend, when he’d first felt a prickling fear of his lack of control of the situation, he’d decided that his trip to Sacramento would provide a natural breathing space. Even then, for a split second, he’d entertained

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