Chapter 14

Monday wasn’t exactly James’s favorite day of the week. Rush hour was a disaster, the mood in the office was terrible, and the prospect of a crazy-busy workweek was a horror when you knew there was no end in sight. Plus, there was never anything good on TV on Mondays, which amounted to the ultimate worst-case scenario for a single man.

To make matters worse, his current Monday was a whole lot more terrible than an ordinary Monday. He hadn’t really slept for two nights straight, so he was feeling irritable and so distracted that he was causing chaos in the office instead of containing and dismantling it.

He couldn’t think straight and hadn’t been able to ever since he’d stormed from Barbara’s bedroom on Saturday evening. Even the basic act of reversing his car out of the driveway had proven too complex a task for him this morning, and he managed to take out his mailbox while his mind replayed the conversation he’d had with Barbara in their—her—bed.

Then, on the way to work, he’d been pulled over for speeding, almost rear-ended another car once he was released by the cop, and when he’d finally pulled into the underground parking garage of the office complex, he’d opened his car door with a little too much verve, hitting it on a concrete column.

And that wasn’t the end of his unlucky streak.

So far, the tally of the morning was: one destroyed mailbox, one dented car, a coffee-stained shirt, a permanently deleted email—which he was supposed to have forwarded to Singapore—and the promise of a stomach ulcer.

He was almost ready to throw his computer out the window, gather his things, and never return again. If this went on much longer, his car would be totaled, and he’d be ready for electric shock therapy. In the midst of the chaos he’d produced, the intercom that connected him with his assistant started buzzing.

At the end of his rope, he pressed the speaker button and heaved a sigh. “What is it, Mrs. Buchanan?”

“Uh …” She sounded rather perplexed. “There’s a lady here to speak with you, Mr. Campbell.”

James squinted and massaged the bridge of his nose. “I’m busy at the moment.”

“I know, but …” The older woman cleared her throat. “I was told it was urgent.”

He ground his teeth. “Who is it?”

His assistant’s nervous giggle grated on his nerves. “I think it’s your ex-wife.”

Confused, he squinted at the double doors to the outer office and repeated: “You think it’s her?”

Before Mrs. Buchanan could continue to stammer and giggle, he rose from his chair and marched for the door, pulling it open without warning. He scanned the room for his ex-wife, and then his jaw dropped, for what he saw wasn’t Barbara … or rather, it was Barbara, but she was barely recognizable.

The first thing James took in was the luridly ugly wig that reminded him of the one Ronald McDonald wore, and then his gaze snagged on what must have been the biggest red clown nose he had ever encountered. And instead of her usual dress, or elegant skirt, she was wearing a basic pair of jeans, a white T-shirt, and casual sandals.

“Barbara?” he croaked out.

She grabbed him by the hand, dragged him back into his office, and called over her shoulder to the speechless Mrs. Buchanan: “Please don’t put any calls through, Mrs. Buchanan. Your boss and I want to be alone!”

James could hear his assistant gasp just before Barbara shut the door with a bang and turned to him with an excited smile.

“Turn off your computer. We’re eloping.”

Surely he’d misheard her. “What?”

The curly redhead nodded fervently. “You and I are running away to clown college,” she said, her voice a little more nasally than usual. “Don’t you remember?”

All James knew was that he must be having a stroke. He was hallucinating. Or had his ex-wife actually burst into his office in a clown wig and giant red nose to ask him to run away to clown college with her?

All he could do was repeat, “What?”

“We’re running away to clown college,” Barbara explained simply, taking a step closer. “Don’t you remember that was our backup plan in college?”

“We were in our early twenties,” he reminded her gently, unable to take his eyes off the humongous red plastic ball on the center of her face. “We’re grown up now.”

“That doesn’t matter,” she objected softly, taking his hand in hers and interlacing her fingers with his. Her sigh went straight to his heart. “We need to elope and leave everything behind so things between us can be as they used to be—before we stopped talking to each other, before everything went down the drain.”

His lips twisted into a smile that felt almost painful. “And the boys?”

“They’d feel right at home in a circus,” she replied with conviction. “I’m sure Scott would be an amazing acrobat, and I can see Hamilton as an animal tamer.”

James laughed briefly and looked into her green eyes. “My heart would burst with fatherly pride,” he said.

“There we go!” She smiled big. “The boys will be thrilled.”

“I feel a little too old to go back to school, though,” he pointed out calmly.

“I’m sure there are a lot of career-changers in this profession.”

He rolled his eyes and then looked her up and down once more. “Were you walking around on the street dressed like that?”

Her answer was a playful smirk. “You should’ve seen the concierge’s face downstairs. The poor man’s jaw dropped so far, he lost a few bites of his tuna sandwich!”

“Oh, Jesus!” James couldn’t suppress the bubbling laughter that escaped his throat, and seeing Barbara this relaxed gave him a warm, fuzzy feeling. This was the charming, funny, merry Barbara he’d met in college, the woman he’d fallen in love with. She’d always been that charming, funny, and merry, until Elizabeth died.

Apparently, he wasn’t the only one thinking about what had happened three years ago, because the tone of her voice changed.

“Come home to me, James,” she whispered seriously. “I want my husband back, and I want to lie in bed with my best friend again, while he tells me jokes only the two of us understand. And I never want you to fear that I don’t care about your feelings again.” Barbara took his other hand and held it in hers. “Come home to me. I can’t live without you.”

His throat constricted as he looked into Barbara’s hopeful face. “Darling …”

“Pushing you away was so wrong of me,” she interrupted him in a faltering voice. Before going on, she took a few shaky breaths. “And focusing only on my own pain was selfish. But if you let me, I’ll spend the rest of our lives proving to you that you’re the love of my life.”

He lowered his head and rested his forehead against hers.

There were so many things he wanted to say, so many unsorted thoughts running through his head, and so many hurts and mistakes to work through, but the only thing he managed to say was: “Please take off your nose.”

“Pardon me?” Barbara murmured, confused and insecure.

“Please take off the clown nose.” He let go of her hands, gently pulled the wig from her head, and cupped her face in order to tenderly confess, “I can’t kiss someone who looks like Ronald McDonald.”

“But I can,” she countered softly. She pulled the nose from her face and put it on his before wrapping her arms around his neck and giving him the sweetest kiss of his life.