Chapter Two
Megan leaned against the closed door of her youngest son’s room and sighed, the long day catching up with her. Her morning had been filled with her oldest son’s soccer game, then after a quick lunch they’d bundled everyone into the car again to head off for a visit with Jason’s parents where she’d eaten more of his mother’s good southern cooking than she should have.
Now, after helping both kids with their homework, she should be heading to the living room to watch some TV with Jason. Instead she had to go check her email and see what emergencies and disasters had cropped up during her time away from her computer. Ember had insisted today be a work-free day and Megan had managed to do it, barely. She’d almost cracked during the soccer game and checked her email from her smartphone but Jason had given her a pointed look and she put her phone away with a grimace.
There had been moments when she’d actually forgotten about work all together and had enjoyed being with her family. When was the last time that had happened? Ember said she used work as a barrier between herself and the rest of the world and she had to admit that was probably true. After the death of her father last year she’d thrown herself into her job and her family had suffered because of it. A jolt of guilt raced through her blood and settled in an unpleasant lump in her stomach.
A soft, furry warmth twined about her bare legs and she bent down and picked up their ‘husky’ marmalade cat, Pickles. Ugly, overweight and battle scarred from his life as a stray before they adopted him, Pickles nonetheless had perfected the mysterious cat aura of superiority. Jason liked to joke they weren’t Pickles’ owners, they were his support staff.
With an armful of purring cat she made her way to her office at the other side of the house, dreading what lay inside her email. All manner of horrible things could have happened while she was in her self-imposed work seclusion. Mainframes hacked, bank accounts stolen, identity thieves charging up millions of dollars to old ladies who only had cat food to live on. Right now some third world country could be on the edge of a civil war all because she wasn’t there to stop the cyber attack on their government’s mainframe. Well, that last one was probably a bit of an exaggeration, but she still felt as if she’d let people down and she hated it.
Pickles meowed in protest as she put him down onto his memory-foam-lined cat bed on the corner of her desk, but he stopped his complaints when she took a small bag of catnip and sprinkled some for him. Not even bothering to turn on her desk lamp, she sat in her black leather computer chair and opened her email, her heart pounding and her brain conjuring up disaster after disaster.
Sure enough, there were at least a dozen emails from her work. Cursing Ember and her husband for making her agree to taking the day completely off, she opened the first email and frowned. There had been an issue with the Hong Kong office, but one of her staff had taken care of it. The next email came from her recently hired assistant, Eric, an intense young man who’d just graduated MIT. He detailed the problem in Hong Kong and his fix. To her surprise it was exactly what she would have done.
Email after email showed the same thing, a problem and Eric’s quick response to it. As she worked her way through the email list she began to feel an uncomfortable tightness in her stomach, a small kernel of worry that the company might not need her as much as she thought they did. She liked being needed, thrived on it even, and had busted her ass to make sure she was their ‘go-to’ person for problems no one else could solve… Well, no one else but Eric.
The last email in her folder was from her boss and in her glum mood she imagined it would say she’d been demoted and Eric would be taking over her job. After all, Eric was a man and in the highly chauvinistic world of computer security having a cock and balls gave you extra points. Add to that the fact she was pretty and most men in the field looked at her as a piece of eye candy. How she loved making their jaws drop when they realized she was the one keeping all their precious data safe, that she was her company’s big gun.
Opening the email from her boss she mentally prepared herself for a scolding for being unavailable all day.
Megan,
Congratulations on actually managing to take a whole day off. I didn’t know if you’d be able to do it. It’s nice to see you taking care of things besides work, and more importantly it’s nice to see you giving Eric a bit of room to grow. He is trying hard to impress you and you did the right thing by giving him a chance to prove himself. I’ll see you in a few days at the management retreat.
Murray
Pickles’ throaty purr mixed with the low hum coming from the computer. She leaned back, the chair tilting beneath her weight as she stared at the screen. It had never occurred to her she was holding Eric back and guilt tightened her stomach again. When she looked at her work relationship with Eric from the perspective of him being an employee trying to please her instead of competition she felt like a real schlub. No, more than a schlub, she felt like the kind of self-centered bitch she’d always hated. Had she really become the kind of woman who would unconsciously sabotage a fellow employee over some imagined threat?
Sounds like something my father would do. As soon as she had that thought she berated herself for even saying such a thing, even if she only said it inside of her head. Her father had sacrificed everything so she and her mother could live a life of luxury. Whenever she complained about his absence her mother told her she should be grateful and should thank God in her prayers every night for having a father who took such good care of her. He didn’t drink to excess, didn’t abuse them, and he made sure that she could go to all the best boarding schools and that her mother never had to worry about anything more than her prescription for Valium running out.
A new email popped up on her screen and at the sight of Ember’s name she groaned. Right now she’d had all the personal revelations she could deal with and really wasn’t interested in whatever her therapist had concocted for her. Still, she wouldn’t leave an email sitting unopened any more than she would leave the house without wearing clothes so she clicked the link and tried to focus on the message.
Dearest Megan,
Your take home quiz is to do whatever your husband says. Before you go into a full-scale panic, I’m only talking about for this particular exercise, not your entire life.
Give yourself the gift of letting go and enjoying his love. Try to see the world through his eyes.
Ember
She stared at the screen, barely noticing Pickles when he rubbed himself against her forearms. Her mind was strangely still, and she read and reread the email at least a dozen times before Pickles got tired of her failure to worship him and blocked the screen with his bulk. With a tired sigh she picked him up and cuddled him to her chest, rubbing beneath his chin as she stood and went to the dark window looking over the backyard.
What had started out as a pristine and expertly landscaped garden had slowly become a playground any child would love to have. Bright-yellow toy trucks gleamed in the faint moonlight and the boys’ jungle gym, built to look like a pirate ship, loomed over her husband’s herb garden and work shed.
When they’d first moved into their new home five years ago they’d been overwhelmed by its size and wondered how they would ever fill up the four thousand feet of living space and the gigantic two-acre yard. Now every inch of the house and property bore the stamp of their lives and while it was no longer show-room perfect, she liked how it felt like a home, their home. At first it had been hard for her to leave for any amount of time for work and she’d spent her first night away shedding a few tears over missing putting her children to bed and cuddling with Jason. Over the years it had gotten easier and right now she didn’t know if that was a good or a bad thing.
The last line of Ember’s message kept floating through her thoughts and seemed to echo her earlier email from her boss. She’d always been good on mentally landscaping the vast network of computer systems, but that same intuition didn’t seem to extend to her personal life. Jason had always been the charming one, the guy who made a room light up when he entered. He kept the conversations going when her social awkwardness left her stumbling over small talk and always seemed to know the right things to say to complete strangers.
She was so very lucky to have him as her husband.
Humming low in her throat, she placed Pickles back on the desk and briefly considered changing into something more revealing than her current comfy buttercup-yellow jammies. Maybe that racy red number she’d picked up in Madrid, or the black bit of lace she hadn’t worn in years. But she walked past the double doors of her bedroom, knowing if she stopped to change, she’d also stop to shower, do her hair and redo her makeup. By the time she finished Jason would be asleep and she’d be asleep face first on the bathroom floor. Already her bed beckoned and a wave of exhaustion washed through her but she pushed it back. She had a job to do. No, wait, not a job, a treat. Ember said she needed to change her view of sex from a chore to a treat. So she had a yummy treat waiting for her downstairs.
The cool cherry wood floor turned into a thick cream carpet when she reached the archway to the living room and she paused for a moment, amusement bubbling through her as she spied Pickles draped over Jason’s shoulders like a fuzzy afghan. For being overweight that cat moved like a pumpkin shaped ninja when he wanted to.
She took a moment to watch her husband smiling as he laughed at something going on in the movie playing on the giant flat screen. The French doors were open, letting the warm spring air into the room and his discarded t-shirt lay on the back of the wraparound couch. Keeping in mind the exercise from earlier today with Ember, she really tried to look at her husband, to see him without the constant chatter of her mind interrupting. Broad shoulders with a scattering of freckles from the sun, strong hands and a flat stomach most twenty-year-olds would kill for. He was handsome, he was delicious, and he was all hers. The tiredness she’d felt before entering the room disappeared.
His laptop lay open on the mahogany coffee table and she wondered if he’d read his email from Ember yet. In a perfect world she would sweep into the room, make some sultry quip, and they’d be on the floor having hot, sweaty sex. In the real world her mind locked up. She’d always been terrible at flirting, her overactive brain tripping over itself as she struggled to put her emotions into words. But cripes, if she couldn’t talk to her husband who the hell could she talk to? Screwing up her courage, she rapped softly on the archway.
“Hey, stranger, mind if I join you?”
He turned at the sound of her voice and smiled, his happiness lighting up his face. “Sure.” He glanced at the screen then back at her. “Do you want to watch something else? I know you’re not a big fan of slapstick.”
She walked over to the couch and shooed Pickles away, earning a look that assured her the cat would find someplace to throw up a hairball where she would step in it. “Well, I was actually hoping we could…that is Ember…” Embarrassment filled her with a hot flush as she struggled to form some kind of flirty yet sophisticated and seductive sentence. Instead she blurted, “So, you wanna make out or something?”
He turned fully on the couch and started to laugh, but he must have seen something in her expression because the laughter faded away, replaced by a smile filled with such gentleness she felt like a dumbass for being afraid of making the first move. “Come here.”
He pulled her over the couch and she giggled as he hauled her into his arms and gave her a sound kiss on the forehead. “Did Ember tell you to come down here?”
She stiffened and avoided looking at him. “Is that the only reason you think I’d want to spend time with you? Because our therapist told me to?”
He took a deep breath and she got ready to argue with him, cutting remarks and comebacks filling her thoughts, her verbal armor to protect her fragile heart. She started to sit up and but he wouldn’t let her go and instead pulled her closer. “Megan, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. I’ll wait until you’re ready. I’ll wait for the rest of my life if I have to.”
“Yeah, well I think it’s pretty insulting…wait, what did you say?”
He cupped her cheek, his work-rough fingers stroking her skin. “I said we don’t have to rush things. While there is nothing more I’d love in the world right now than to have you purring beneath me as I take you, I don’t want you to be doing this because you feel like you have to, and not because you want me.”
She studied his face, noting the tension in the lines around his mouth, the flash of hurt in his dark eyes. “I do want to be here. I do.” Words failed her so she turned to action, cupping his face in return. She held his gaze, trying to put everything she was feeling into her eyes as she leaned closer and swept her lips over his.
His mouth stroked against hers, a warm and lingering touch that drew her closer to him. He felt so hard, so male against her and she traced the seam of his lips with her tongue. With a low groan he opened for her and the delicious slide of his tongue against hers reminded her of how talented he was at using his mouth on other places. Her body clenched and real desire began to grow, awakening the soft flesh between her legs. A warm tingle radiated through her as he repositioned them without breaking their kiss so she straddled his hips, the iron-hard nudge of his erection settling between her thighs and pulling an answering pulse of need from deep inside.
When he pulled back she tried to chase his mouth, to keep kissing him but he shook his head. “I’m in charge of giving you pleasure right now, Megan.” He cupped her left breast in his palm, his thumb drawing lazy circles beneath her nipple, which tightened and ached for his touch.
She clenched her jaw and swallowed back the urge to try to take control of the situation. In theory Ember’s orders of letting Jason take the lead had seemed an easy thing, but in reality the giving up of control was akin to cutting off her arm. Her desire cooled and she nodded, trying to force a smile on her face. “Sure.”
He snorted and brushed his thumb lightly over her nipple, stirring it back to life. “Will you stand up and take off your clothes for me? Show me that beautiful body that I love so much?”
She glanced at the open French doors, then at the archway leading to the rest of the house. “What about the neighbors and the kids?”
He grinned at her and gave her nipple a pinch that sent a zing of warmth through her body. “Our neighbors are far enough away that they can’t see us, and even if they did we have a forest between our house and theirs.” He released her breast and pointed to the end table where two of their old baby monitors sat. “And I have a monitor set up in each of the boys’ rooms so we’ll hear them if they open their door.”
She eyed those monitors he must have dug up out of the basement storage and gave him a suspicious look. “Did you know I’d be coming down here?”
He smoothed away her frown with his thumbs. “No, but I was hoping. That kiss we shared this afternoon, I haven’t kissed you like that in a long time, too long.” He ran his hands through her hair, playing with a stray curl. “The only thing I want you to do is enjoy. Now stop stalling and take off your clothes.”
She stood from his lap, fumbling with the first button on her shirt. He grabbed the master remote control from the coffee table and turned the movie off, putting on a soft jazz station and lowering the lights in the room until they glowed with a soft golden hue like candlelight.