“Great,” I said. “I’m sure it’ll be fun.”
Babette grabbed him by the arm. “Come on, Thornton. The children are waiting.” She gave me a fake smile. “Daisy.”
“Babette,” I said, returning the fake smile.
Thornton gave me the same half-wave he’d given me when he walked in and pulled the door behind him as they left.
I walked to the window and exhaled. Babette was already giving him an earful as they walked to the car, her head bobbing and her gloved hands gesticulating wildly. Thornton just shrugged as he untangled himself from her and made his way to the driver’s side.
I genuinely hoped they would keep their ridiculous opinions to themselves.
Because if they didn’t, I would show them both what dangerous looked like. In the form of one really ticked off mom.
EIGHTEEN
It was date night.
With all of the kids gone for the night, I’d considered numerous options for the evening.
Dinner down in St. Paul.
A movie.
A museum.
But what I really wanted was just time with Jake.
We so rarely got time to just ourselves, where we didn’t have to worry about doors opening, or being home at a certain time, or coordinating schedules to pick up kids from various activities. Time for just the two of us felt like something we had to be careful with and not waste. I’d lost count of how many times we’d turned down opportunities to go out and do something without the kids when they were home with us. The guilt of divorce weighed on each of us, and while we were both happy with what our family had become, we also knew that the kids hadn’t asked for divorce and multiple families and splitting time. We were hyper-aware of this.
And we’d chosen to have them live with us. We wanted to be parents. So we never wanted them to think that we needed to get away from them or that we were sorry we’d made that choice. We always tried to be available to them and to do things as a family when they were around.
When we finally did get some time just to ourselves, I always came up with a million things to do. But I really just wanted to spend an evening with my husband.
So I nixed all of the ideas that involved leaving the house and planned for a night in.
I did a quick cleanup of the house and then hopped in the shower. I dried my hair and reapplied makeup. I went upstairs and found some lacy lingerie that I kept shoved in the back of my dresser drawer, right behind all of the wool socks. It was a red satin camisole with a matching bikini bottom. I couldn’t recall if I’d ever worn and it vaguely remembered buying it for a date night that never happened. I pulled everything on and then assessed myself in the mirror.
I immediately focused on all of the things I didn’t like about myself. My stomach wasn’t tight enough. My thighs and rear end were bigger than they’d been twenty years earlier. More wrinkles and bumps than I’d ever hoped I’d have, a product of having kids and simple aging. I absolutely did not look like the model wearing the lingerie in the catalog I’d purchased it from.
But Jake made me feel better about myself than I’d ever felt. He’d given me about a million things and one of them was confidence in my appearance. He told me I was pretty. He grabbed me when no one was looking. He kissed me. He touched me. Most of the time, he made me feel like the model in the magazine.
So instead of frowning at all of the imperfections I saw in the mirror, I took a deep breath and reminded myself that my husband loved me. And he was a man. And lingerie was like catnip for a man.
I pulled on my robe and went back downstairs. I dug candles out of the cupboard and strategically set them around the main floor and then hurried back upstairs to put some in the bedroom, too.
My phone dinged and it was Jake texting me. He’d dropped Sophie at her sleepover and was fifteen minutes from home. And he was going to pick up Chinese food if that was okay with me.
Perfect, I told him.
I went back into the bathroom and teased my hair a little more. There were a couple of wiry gray hairs at my temple and I debated yanking them out. I decided against it; at the rate they were sprouting, I’d be bald in no time if I decided on that method of controlling them. I sighed at my reflection and the stubborn gray hairs and then returned to the living room. I lit the candles there and then went upstairs to light the ones I’d set up in our bedroom.
I heard the kitchen door open and the aroma of orange chicken drifted up the stairs. I untied the robe, thought about taking it off, then decided to keep it on, just untied. A little dramatic and a little sexy. I took another look in the mirror, squinting my eyes to soften my reflection.
Not bad for a harried mom and wife in her forties.
Then I went downstairs.
He was already sitting at the table, his back to the stairs, the food spread out in front of him.
And his laptop was open next to the food.
“Did the breakers trip?” he asked, without turning around. “I saw the candles. I’ll go check the box in a minute.”
“The breakers are fine,” I said, standing on the bottom step, waiting for him to turn around.
“Oh, okay,” he said. “Alright, you have to make a decision tonight.”
“A decision?”
“Do you know how easy it is to become an investigator in this state?” he asked, reaching for one of the white takeout cartons. “It’s really simple.”
“What?”
“I ran into Officer Ted at the Chinese place,” he said. “He told me you were asking about Amanda Pendleton when you ran into him today. So you need to make a decision.”
“Um, Jake?”
“Either get your license or leave it all alone,” he said, sticking a fork into a carton of rice. “And we’re going to make that decision tonight.”
“Jake?”
“I’m gonna hold you to it.”
“Jake?”
“What? And where are you?” He turned around. “The food is...whoa.”
I perched my hands on my hips. “Yeah. Whoa. While you’ve been ranting about my getting an investigator’s license, I’ve been standing here nearly naked waiting for you to turn around so I could seduce you. Because there are no kids here in this house tonight.”
“Wow,” he said, his eyes big. He swallowed hard. “Wow.”
“Yeah, wow,” I said, walking slowly toward him.
His eyes swept over me. “But...but...I’m serious. You have to make a decision. Tonight.”
“Sure,” I said, reaching his chair. “I can make a decision tonight.”
He looked me up and down again. “Where did you...get that?”
“I thought you wanted to talk about the license?” I said, pulling the robe tight around me. There wasn’t a hint of the lacy lingerie to be seen.
“Well, I didn’t know—”
“It’s fine.” I smiled at him. “We can sit down and work on this. I can read through whatever you found. It’ll probably take several hours.”
“Um...maybe...uh...I mean, we can do it later,” he stammered.
Jake was always calm and collected. Occasionally his temper flared, but most of the time, he was even-keel. Cool under pressure. I took great pride in creating a disturbance in his force.
“No, no,” I said, shaking my head. “You seem so intent on getting this done. We can just eat dinner…and read.”
He frowned, but seemed unsure as to how to handle this now. He’d clearly come home with a particular plan in mind and I’d thrown a big fat wrench in his plans. He was now caught between wanting to force me to do what he’d been on my back about and…the lingerie.
“Daisy,” he began.
“Jake,” I said, grinning at him, enjoying watching him squirm.
He frowned again, then stepped toward me. In one smooth motion, he wrapped an arm around my waist and hoisted me over his shoulder.
“Hey!” I said. I squirmed against him. “I thought we were going to do some research.”