FOUR

 

Paul needed more coffee.

He’d had four cups already this morning, but he’d gotten up just after four o'clock, run on the treadmill, showered, dressed, and had been working in his study for four hours.

His old friends wouldn’t recognize him. Sometimes, he couldn’t even recognize himself.

Not too long ago, he’d been in the habit of sleeping late, often until noon. Ever since his mother died, though, he’d been waking up earlier and earlier, compelled by some unstoppable need to move, to act, to do.

He’d only been at his job a week, but he’d already fallen behind because of the wedding and the deposition. He knew the board had him on a very short leash, and he was determined to prove himself, for once in his life.

So, after they’d wrapped up the deposition in the early afternoon yesterday, Paul spent several hours catching up while Emily rested, and then he’d woken up early today and had managed to get through all the tasks and messages that had piled up in his inbox.

Paul felt better without the weight of all that work pressing down on him. So far, the board could have no reason to complain about his performance.

As soon as he opened the door of his home office, he was greeted to a warm, familiar scent. He followed it down the hall toward the kitchen, sniffing the air like a rapt bloodhound.

He found Emily at the end of his search.

She sat on folded legs on a stool at the kitchen bar, leaning in a relaxed sprawl on the black granite countertop and focused intently on her smart phone. Her fingers curved loosely around a mug of coffee.

She was probably texting Chris again. She’d talked to him on the phone more than two hours the previous evening. Paul knew because he’d heard her talking to the boy in the media room when he passed by at eight in the evening, and she was still on the phone with him when Paul got up to stretch his legs again at ten o’clock.

Paul doubted Emily would have enough to say to him for that long.

“Hey,” she said, smiling brightly when she glanced up and saw him standing there. “I’m making cinnamon rolls!”

“I can smell them.” He wandered into the kitchen toward the coffee maker. “I’m very impressed by your culinary energies.”

“Don’t be too impressed. They’re just the pop-out-and-bake kind.”

“Ah,” he murmured, pouring fresh coffee into his mug. “Then I’m less impressed.”

“Well, they still taste good. And I went through the trouble of asking Ruth to buy them for me yesterday. Then I popped them out, put them on the tray, and stuck them in the oven—which is more culinary energy than you exerted this morning, Mr. Boring-Protein-Bar-with-his-Coffee.”

He chuckled at her choice of words and tried to peer into one of the ovens to see how far along the cinnamon rolls were.

“So you don’t have to pooh-pooh my efforts.” She’d gotten up and walked around the bar to pour herself more coffee too, but she gave him a decidedly peeved look over her shoulder.

“I wouldn’t dream of pooh-poohing your efforts.” He tried to suppress a smile as he reached into the refrigerator for the half-and-half and handed it to her. “I’ve never had the pop-out kind before, but they smell good.”

After doctoring her coffee, Emily leaned back against the counter, holding her mug with both hands. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, pleasure evident on her face. “I love that smell.”

He stared at her silently for a moment as he sipped his coffee, wondering how she managed to so genuinely enjoy herself—enjoy such little things—when tragedy had struck her so hard, when the shadows had closed in around her so ruthlessly.

He’d understood her the other night when they’d talked in the car after their trip to the lake. He’d known exactly what she was feeling, since he’d felt those shadows before too.

He knew he wouldn’t have been able to handle circumstances like Emily’s with such courage and resilience. If he’d been told he had so little time to live, he was pretty sure he would drink himself into a three-month-long stupor or maybe just shoot himself.

He understood Emily’s shadows, but he didn’t understand how she was managing to hold them back.

He had his own shadows. His father was waiting for trial, and Paul would have to testify against him. Even with his intense focus on his new job and his responsibilities with Emily, Paul could barely manage to hold those shadows back.

After a moment, Emily opened her eyes again and caught him staring at her. She gave him an impatient frown, the one he was starting to recognize as her thinking he was feeling sorry for her.

Her annoyance was fleeting, and she stepped over to check on the rolls, peeking into the oven after she’d opened the door an inch. “They’re starting to puff up,” she informed him, as if he’d been waiting for this update. “But they still have a few more minutes.”

Since he had time to kill, he went over to the entry table and got the three newspapers that were delivered to the apartment every morning. His mother had always had daily subscriptions, and Paul couldn’t bring himself to cancel them, even though he almost always read the news online.

Emily had sat down again, but as he returned he caught her scanning him from his head to bare feet with a little sneer.

“What?” he asked, genuinely baffled by her apparent disapproval of how he looked. Since he wasn’t going anywhere this morning, he hadn’t thought much about his appearance, but he seemed to be basically presentable in khakis and a black t-shirt.

She gave him a disdainful sniff. “Do you always have to look so nice and pulled together, even first thing in the morning?”

Paul’s eyes widened in surprise. He wasn’t dressed up. His trousers were slightly wrinkled and he wasn’t wearing shoes.

Evidently recognizing his astonishment, Emily explained, “I’ve never seen you sloppy. Don’t you ever just hang around in your pajamas?”

Sometimes he did, but Paul had made a point of not doing so when Emily was around. It didn’t seem quite right to lounge around half-dressed with a dying, seventeen-year-old girl in the house.

Emily evidently had no such qualms. This morning, she was wearing what she’d obviously slept in—a little black tank-top and gray, cotton pajama pants. She was barefoot, and her hair looked unbrushed, hanging around her shoulders in messy waves, almost red-gold in the morning light.

It made Paul a little uncomfortable to have Emily looking so much like she’d just rolled out of bed, but he didn’t have the heart to ask her to not go around so under-dressed. She should be able to feel at home here.

He just had to make sure not to look at her too closely.

When he saw her eyeing him strangely, he realized he’d never answered her question. “It’s not first thing in the morning for me,” he explained, shifting the conversation to something more impersonal. “I’ve been up since four.”

She shook her head. “That’s just wrong.”

He gave a huff of laughter, took the newspapers to the bar, and sat down on the stool next to her. “I haven’t been able to sleep in lately, for some reason, and I’ve found I can get a lot of work done in those early hours of the morning.”

“Did I make you really behind at your job?” she asked, a flicker of concern in her eyes.

“No. I’m all caught up now.”

“Are you sure? If you need to work, just tell me. I know you’re just starting out in this position, and they might be looking over your shoulder all the time. You really don’t have to do all the stuff on my list with me. It’s really okay if you—”

“Emily, stop,” he interrupted, a little sharply. “I’ll tell you if I’m too busy.”

She frowned at his tone. “Okay. I just worry. I don’t like to be a nuisance. Are they really dumping all their unwanted projects on you?”

“Yes. Some of this stuff has been sitting on other people’s desks for months, and now they have someone to give it to.” He heard an edge of bitterness in his tone, so he tried to temper it—not wanting to sound like he was whining.

“What kind of work is it? Just stupid, tedious stuff?”

“No. Well, yeah, there is some tedious stuff, but my position is too high on the food chain to waste on entry-level work. I’m getting all of these no-win projects—the stuff everyone knows is going nowhere good and so no one wants to take on. Like the reorganization of one of the departments.”

“What’s so hard about that?”

“I don’t see how it can be done without firing a third of the personnel. I’m sure no one else can figure out how either, which is why they stuck me with it.”

She made a face. “Oh. That’s awful.”

For some reason, her sympathy was comforting. “Yeah.”

“Well, I’m sure you can think of some creative way to do it and not fire all those people. They might think it’s a no-win project, but they don’t know how brilliant you are.”

He snorted, although he was rather pleased by the off-hand compliment. “You have no evidence of said brilliance.”

“Are you kidding me? You graduated from the Ivy Leagues and then got your MBA without ever slowing down your partying and crazy adventure sports. There’s no way you could have done that if you weren’t naturally brilliant. If you keep working as hard as you have this week, you’ll figure out all of those projects. They’ll see you aren’t the reckless kid they think. Everyone will be awed by you.” She patted his arm in a casually supportive gesture.

He felt strangely self-conscious and looked down at the front page of the newspaper. “You’re pretty good at the supportive-wife act for just being married a week.”

She giggled. “I must be naturally talented at it.”

They smiled at each other, and Paul had the oddest sensation of being heard.

Emily gasped and jerked upright. “The cinnamon rolls!” she squeaked, scrambling off the stool and running over to the oven. She grabbed a hot pad and pulled the tray out, dropping it on the counter.

“Are they all right?” he asked, leaning over to get a look at how well-done the rolls had ended up.

“Yeah,” she said, relief evident in her tone, “They’re not burned. Just a little browner than I usually make them.”

She already seemed to know her way around the kitchen, since she easily found a big plate and two knives. She grabbed each hot cinnamon roll between her finger and thumb and quickly dropped them over onto the plate.

“You should wait until they cool down a little,” he said, when she blew on her fingers.

She frowned. “They need to be iced while they’re hot.”

“Ah. I didn’t know there was icing.”

“Of course, there’s icing!” She brought the plate over to the bar and, after picking up a little tub of white icing, she handed him a knife.

Paul took the knife automatically and then stared at it in his hand blankly.

Emily climbed back onto her stool, grinning. “Now,” she said, as if she was making a great concession, “You can help, but you can’t hog the icing. They never give us enough in these little tubs.”

He watched as she scooped an enthusiastic amount of thick icing onto her knife.

As she slathered the icing onto the biggest of the five large cinnamon rolls, he dipped his own knife in the icing. He’d never iced cinnamon rolls before, but it seemed to be a fairly simple process, so he moved one of the rolls on the plate closer to him and coated the top smoothly.

Emily was already digging into the tub with her knife for more, but she paused to watch him. “You don’t have to be so neat,” she told him with another frown.

Paul blinked in surprise. He hadn’t been trying to make his icing neat, but a quick glance from his to Emily’s haphazardly iced roll made the difference clear.

“You have to go fast, or they’ll start to get cold,” Emily added, smearing the icing on a second roll.

Paul obediently sped up his icing process on the second of his cinnamon rolls. Then, while Emily iced the final one, he used the remainder of the icing to add to the rolls that had been cheated.

“Now, then,” Emily said, her eyes laughing as she put down her knife on the counter and picked up the roll with the most icing. “Finally.”

He watched in amusement as she took a big bite and closed her eyes with a little moan of pleasure.

When she opened her eyes, she gestured toward the plate. “Aren't you going to have one?”

Paul picked one up and took a bite. It was too sweet, of course, but the taste matched the warm, pleasant scent, and he realized he was hungry.

They each ate two of the cinnamon rolls. When Paul was returning to his stool after refilling both of their coffee mugs, he noticed Emily eyeing the last roll greedily.

“You can have it,” he told her, marveling that she could eat so much when she seemed so small to him. He wasn’t so foolish as to tell her that, of course.

She shook her head with a little smile and pulled the last one apart, offering him one very messy half.

Paul didn’t really want it, but he ate it anyway.

Emily gave a happy sigh as she finished, but then she put a hand on her stomach. “Oh, I feel sick. I ate too much.”

He couldn’t help but laugh.

“You shouldn’t mock me when you reaped the benefits of my culinary energies this morning.”

“I did,” he acknowledged, trying to suppress another ripple of laughter. “And I greatly appreciate it.”

Paul felt a little sticky from the icing, so he got up to wash his hands. When he returned to the bar, he saw that Emily had gone back to her smart phone.

“How’s Chris?” he asked casually.

“He’s fine. I talked to him last night.” Then she seemed to realize what had prompted the question. “Oh, I’m not texting Chris. I was just reading.”

“What are you reading?” Paul asked, leaning over from his stool to peer at the screen of her phone.

Emily looked a little sheepish, but she replied readily enough. “Shakespeare.” At his questioning look, she explained, “One of the things on my list is to read all of Shakespeare’s plays. I still have a ways to go.”

“Which one are you on?” he asked.

“Coriolanus,” she said with a curl of her mouth.

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

She shook with laughter at his dry tone. Then she explained, “I’ve read all the normal ones. Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Othello, King Lear, Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado about Nothing, The Tempest, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, Merchant of Venice.” She paused, evidently trying to think if she’d forgotten anything. “So now I’m stuck with the less appealing ones. I haven’t even started the history plays yet, since they scare me.”

“Actually, the two parts of Henry IV, Henry V, and Richard III are really good. You’ll probably like them. But I’m afraid you do still have some rough going. Wait until you get to Titus Andronicus.”

“Don’t scare me this early.” Emily made a face, but then she squared her shoulders. “But I can do it. I’m a pretty fast reader, although it’s harder to get through Shakespeare than it is a novel.”

“The more you read of him, the easier it gets. After a few more plays, you’ll probably be able to get through them pretty quickly.” He thought through the list she’d just rehearsed. “Wait, you haven’t read Hamlet?”

“Not yet. It was never assigned in school, and now I’m saving it until the end.” She glanced away, a flicker of emotion on her face. “I mean the end of the plays.”

“I know,” he said quietly, his relaxed mood subdued by this reminder of the shortness of her life. “It will be a great one to read last. If someone was only going to read one work from all of English literature, it should be Hamlet.”

He suddenly realized he sounded rather nerdy. He couldn’t remember ever feeling that way before.

He had no idea what had happened to him in the last six months.

She smiled, evidently not thinking there was anything unusual about his discoursing on literature. “Then I’ll have it to look forward to, since you like it so much.”

Paul cleared his throat and returned to a less emotionally-charged topic. “Why are you trying to read the plays on your phone? That can’t be easy.”

“It’s fine. I don’t have copies of most of them, but they're all available for free online. I use my computer too, when it’s convenient.”

“That’s ridiculous. I’ll buy you copies of them. You’ll strain your eyes trying to read that way, and it will take even longer to get through them.”

“I don’t like for you to have to buy me everything. It will be a waste of money, since I won’t be around for—”

“Paperbacks don’t cost that much,” he interrupted, feeling a familiar swell of frustration at her stubbornness. “Actually, I think I have something here…”

He got up before Emily could argue and walked back to his office, trying to force down his annoyance.

He’d meant what he told her in the car on Friday night about trying not to bulldoze her. He’d resolved to try to hear her side of things and make any compromises he could legitimately make.

But he’d never met anyone who could drive him so crazy with her stubborn unwillingness to accept help.

When he got to his office, he scanned the bookshelves for his Shakespeare. Not finding it, he went to search the bookshelves in his bedroom instead. There, he found the big Riverside Shakespeare he’d gotten in college and pulled it off the shelf.

As he carried it back into the kitchen, he saw that Emily was sprawled over the bar again. She’d confiscated his newspaper, but at the moment she was reaching over to get the last of the icing off the plate with her finger.

She was sitting on her folded legs again, which he couldn’t believe was very comfortable. She leaned forward, bracing her weight on her forearms on the counter with the newspaper spread out in front of her.

Her top was riding up on her back, and he could see a wide expanse of smooth, fair skin. Her position had caused the waistband of her pajama pants to dip low at the back, revealing the top of what looked like blue cotton underwear.

For a moment, he was startled by how lush the curve of her ass was, the rounded shape highlighted by her position and the thinness of the fabric stretched over it. A flash of physical interest surprised him as he stared at the deeply curved line from her slim waist to her full hips.

It only took a few seconds for him to realize what he was doing. He jerked his gaze away with a guilty cringe.

He was not—not—going to be that man. The man who leched after a vulnerable seventeen-year-old just because she happened to be available.

If only he hadn’t instinctively turned around when she'd squealed getting out of the water on Friday night. She’d ducked down immediately, but he’d still had time to see her. While he’d been too surprised to immediately register what he’d seen, it didn’t take long for his mind to catch up. After she’d hugged him and he’d noticed the way her dress clung to her breasts, he’d finally processed the memory of her walking out of the lake like a naked, sopping-wet Aphrodite.

Her skin was pale, and it had almost glowed in the moonlight. Her breasts were full and firm with peaked nipples, bouncing slightly with her motion in the hip-deep water.

And, damn it, his body was interested in that memory.

Paul's body clearly had none of the scruples that his mind had, but he refused to let it do what it wanted. This was too important. These were the last weeks of Emily’s life.

He was going to do right by her, no matter what it took. He was not at the mercy of his passing sexual interests, and so far he’d been fairly successful in not entertaining sexual thoughts about his wife.

But it would have been easier if he hadn’t seen her naked.

“What’s that?” Emily asked, looking back and catching him standing there like an idiot.

“Shakespeare.” He pulled himself together and walked over to place the book on the counter beside her. “It will be easier to read the plays this way.”

“Thanks,” she said with a smile. “Although the size of that book is a little intimidating.”

He returned her smile, relieved that he’d once again managed to lock away any inappropriate thoughts about her where they wouldn’t trouble him. “You’ll get through them all faster than you think.”

She murmured thanks and fanned through the pages of the large book, and the position of her arm suddenly highlighted something he hadn’t noticed before.

With a sharp inhalation, Paul grabbed her bare arm and pulled it into a position where he could see it better.

“Hey, what are you doing?” she demanded, trying to free her arm.

Paul stared down, horrified, at a line of faint bruises that were clearly made by someone’s fingers.

His fingers.

He let her arm drop loosely and stood frozen in place, slammed with waves of intense guilt and self-disgust. She was small and sick and vulnerable and young. And, in his anger, he had manhandled her violently enough to leave bruises.

Emily’s face reflected bewilderment, and she tried to look over her shoulder, down at whatever he’d seen on the back of her upper-arm.

She must have figured it out because she rolled her eyes. “Don’t be melodramatic. I just bruise easily.”

Paul didn’t respond. He’d made a lot of mistakes in his life. He’d done a lot of things he wished he hadn’t. But he’d never believed himself to be the kind of man who would hurt a woman.

“Paul, I mean it,” she snapped, “You didn’t hurt me. I didn’t even know the bruises were there.” When he still didn’t answer, she added, “I shouldn’t have been running away.”

“So that means you deserved to be…to be…”

“To be what?” she demanded, “What exactly do you think you did to me? You grabbed me to keep me from getting in the cab, and you squeezed harder than you meant to. You didn’t assault me or anything.”

He wasn’t sure if he could allow himself to take comfort in her words. He’d been so angry on Friday night. When Tim had told him that his wife had somehow managed to get into the main parking deck of the building, he’d been swallowed up in a kind of panic, afraid she would get away, get hurt, get killed—and he would have utterly failed in his commitment to take care of her.

She’d just been half a block away, hailing a cab, when he made it outside. The look on her face—a kind of secret exhilaration—had snapped his control. How dare she look like that, when he’d felt so worried and helpless.

“Paul!” Emily’s sharp words broke through his bleak reflections. “You’re being ridiculous. If you’re not going to let me be ridiculous, then I’m not going to let you be ridiculous either. Do you really think I’d trust you if you’d hurt me? I let you take me skinny-dipping right afterwards! Would I have trusted you like that if you’d been…been what you’re thinking?”

Paul blinked, something in her words getting through to him. He cleared his throat. “Emily, I didn’t mean to—”

“I know you didn’t mean to! What the hell do you think I’m trying to tell you, you big dumbass?”

Paul had never been called a dumbass before. Not to his face, at least. Despite his relief at her words, he didn't really appreciate the name-calling.

They glared at each other for a minute, and then he saw her mouth tighten with irrepressible irony. He couldn’t help but half-smile back. “Okay. The only other thing I'll say is that it won’t happen again.”

“Good. And I won’t run away again. So we’re even.”

She seemed to think that resolved matters, so Paul had no choice but to give the subject up.

They drank more coffee and read the newspapers in companionable silence, until Paul’s phone rang a half-hour later.

He walked out of the kitchen as he took it, but when he returned he was quite pleased with himself. “I got your skydiving scheduled for Tuesday,” he told Emily, who’d glanced up at his return.

Her eyes widened. “So soon? I thought it would have to be later in the week.”

“I can reschedule if you want. I just thought you’d want to do it as soon as possible.”

“I do.” She swallowed visibly. “Thank you. And maybe it’s just as well that I don’t have so much time before it happens, so I can't work myself into a panic about it.”

Paul sat down with his newspaper again. "You'll do fine. It won't be nearly as frightening as you think."

"You're coming with me, aren't you?"

For as long as he’d known her, she’d always tried to act invulnerable—like the only person she could rely on was herself.

He wondered what he'd done to deserve the trust in her eyes. All he said was, "Of course."

***

Paul had gone skydiving for the first time when he’d been eighteen, and since then he’d logged over a hundred and fifty jumps.

For a couple of years, he’d been obsessed with it. He’d tried a number of other extreme sports—bungee jumping, caving, cliff diving, extreme skiing—but nothing had attracted him like skydiving.

He understood what most people were looking for in such activities. He understood the compulsion of the challenge, the rush of adrenalin, the heady sense of defying limits.

Paul hadn’t taken up skydiving only for those reasons, though. He was sure a psychiatrist could analyze him and develop a complex theory about his adolescent rebellion against authority and his emotional insecurity—caused primarily by a tyrannical father who didn’t love him.

Looking back now, Paul could put it more simply. There was a moment, after the doors of the plane would opened, as he was poised above a blinding height and about to let go of anything secure, when he’d felt like he was going to die. That had been the point back then.

Paul had jumped out of a plane a hundred and fifty-two times in his life because he just hadn’t cared if he died.

His life had changed a lot since then, but as they took off for their jump on Tuesday, every detail of the experience was familiar. The vibrations of the plane, the loud roar of the engine, the throbbing pulse of his blood, the faint, bitter beginnings of adrenalin in his mouth, the weight of the gear on his back. It all felt the same as it used to.

Except now Paul had a wife who was sitting beside him.

And he didn’t really want to jump.

He was going to, of course. Jumping wasn’t that big a deal to him, and Emily was counting on him to be with her in this. Because of his training and experience, Paul was licensed to jump solo, although technically this was his recurrency jump and had to be done in the presence of an instructor.

There was absolutely nothing challenging to him about the jump today, but he wasn’t really having fun.

Emily was scared and trying not to show it. She was doing a pretty good job, but Paul could see her hands were trembling and her face was very pale.

She’d seemed excited this morning, and she’d enjoyed the instruction she’d gotten earlier, but, once they’d gotten into the plane, her very natural fear had caught up with her. Paul had been chatting with her casually in an attempt to distract her, telling her about some of the jumps he’d taken with Mike and Russ a few years back. She was trying to focus on what he told her and smiled or murmured at the right spots, but he could tell her nerves were making it hard for her to think about anything except the jump.

Paul had learned to skydive from Mike and Russ—the best instructors in the region. They worked out of a drop zone just outside of Philadelphia, and Paul had done most of his jumps with them. Naturally, he’d arranged to schedule Emily’s skydiving experience with them as well.

Russ was already hooked up to jump tandem with Emily. He was in his “zone,” as he called it—staring out at the sky and ignoring any and all attempts to talk to him. But Mike was making jokes, trying to help Emily relax, and he kept giving Paul amused, ironic glances.

Paul knew why.

Mike thought his old friend, who had once been as wild as they came, had gone soft and domestic, and he was getting a big kick out of that incongruity.

Paul was doing his best to ignore it.

“I couldn’t believe when I heard Paul was getting a job and settling down,” Mike said, grinning at Emily after a pause in conversation. “But, now that I see you, I finally understand his reasons.”

Paul rolled his eyes.

Mike was about thirty but still had a baby-face that he tried to hide with ever-present stubble. He slanted a taunting look at Paul. “Maybe if I settle down, I can find myself a pretty wife too.”

“Wouldn’t do any good,” Paul said. “None of the pretty girls would want you.”

Emily laughed at his comeback, but her laughter sounded a little forced. He scanned her face closely, noticing again how white she looked and hoping she was actually going to enjoy this.

When she saw him observing her, she murmured hoarsely, “I must have been insane to want to do this.”

“You’ll be fine. It’s just the first step off that seems so hard.”

She nodded a little jerkily. “Don’t let me chicken out at the last minute.”

“I won’t. I know you want to do this.” He didn’t say any more, since Mike and Russ were right there, but both he and Emily knew what he referred to.

When he saw her hands twisting restlessly together, the sight bothered him. Responding to an inexplicable compulsion, he reached over and covered them with one of his.

It was only intended to be a brief, supportive gesture—since he understood her nervousness and felt bad for her—but Emily clung to his hand with one of hers and wouldn’t let it go.

So, quite unintentionally, Paul ended up holding hands with her for the few minutes until the plane was in position.

Mike seemed to find the hand-holding hilarious, if his mocking looks were anything to go by. He no doubt believed that Paul was showing himself to be a clichéd, sentimental sap after all.

There was absolutely nothing Paul could do to clarify the matter. He couldn’t tell Mike the truth about his marriage, and he couldn’t even pull his hand away from Emily’s the way he wanted, since it seemed rather heartless to deny her the support she needed.

Paul, however, felt very awkward, sitting there and holding her hand as they waited to jump out of a plane. There was a strange clench in his chest that he didn’t like and didn't understand.

Fortunately, it wasn’t long before Mike went to open the door, letting in a familiar blast of wind. “Ready?” he asked with a broad grin.

Emily gave a little whimper, so soft Paul barely heard it, but she didn’t hesitate as she and Russ moved into position in their tandem gear. She gave Paul one last look over her shoulder.

He supposed he should have been able to think of something comforting and inspiring to say, but he couldn’t think of anything. So he just nodded and smiled. Said, “I’ll see you on the ground, and we can cross it off the list.”

She smiled back at him, and then she and Russ were jumping.

Paul stared at the open door of the plane where Emily had just disappeared. Now that he was no longer distracted by her, he felt the familiar, almost painful pounding of his blood.

Mike had been looking down at Russ and Emily and counting seconds since their jump, but now he looked up at Paul with a grin. “Still remember how to do this?”

Paul ignored that and moved into position.

“I’ll be right behind you. So, if you freak out, no worries. I’ll come and rescue you."

Paul gave that comment the sneer it deserved. Then he stared out into the vast emptiness of the sky, felt the blast of wind against his face, experienced the familiar dizzying sensation of being completely out of control, nothing to hold onto, on the edge of death.

He used to crave this feeling like a drug.

He jumped, realizing something had definitely changed. He had unfinished business in his life. He had real responsibilities. He had someone who depended only on him.

And he didn’t want to die anymore.

* * *

Paul stared at his computer screen and tried to focus on the email he was supposed to be writing. He was still experiencing the effects of the adrenalin rush from skydiving earlier in the day, however, and he just couldn’t seem to concentrate.

He was half-exhausted and half-wired, and neither feeling made it easy to work.

He was looking blankly at the screen, with unmoving hands poised over his keyboard, when he heard a tap on the door to his home office.

He spun the chair around and saw Emily peeking in. He couldn’t help but smile at how hesitant she looked, as if she were afraid he was hard at work instead of desperately trying to type out a single word. “What’s up?” he asked her, gesturing her to come in.

“Sorry to bother you,” she began, peering at his computer screen out of either curiosity or anxiety about disturbing his work.

“No bother. I was mostly just spinning my wheels. How are you feeling?”

“Great,” she said, beaming at him with that bright Emily-smile. She was wearing well-worn jeans and a casual, wine-red top that had a neckline a little too low for his liking. “I still feel kind of buzzed. How long does it take to come down from the adrenalin?”

“It depends. But I guarantee, when you drop, you’ll know it.”

She laughed, and he could still see the lingering thrill from the jump in her eyes.

Emily had been out of her mind with excitement after skydiving. When he’d first seen her after they’d both reached the ground, she’d launched herself at him in the fiercest hug he’d ever received. She’d sustained the exhilarated high all the way home, demanding that Paul drive faster and that he switch his boring music to something much wilder and louder.  Paul had run on the treadmill when they’d gotten home—since he knew exercise helped to even out his body chemistry—and Emily had taken his advice and gone for a swim, since she said rather heatedly that she hated running in place.

Since then, he didn’t know what she’d been doing.

“Anyway,” she continued, looking a little hesitant again, “I didn’t know if you were hungry or anything, but Ruth was nice enough to make me a lasagna to warm up, and it’s just about done. I didn’t know if you wanted to have dinner with me or just work or if you needed to go out or…whatever.”

Paul stared at Emily for a moment, wondering why she thought he might need to go out. It wasn’t like he was going to date other women while he was married to her, and there was little else that would pull him out on a random Tuesday night.

“You don’t have to,” she added hurriedly, when he didn’t immediately answer. “Ruth made it for me to be nice, since I was telling her it was my favorite when I was younger.”

“I’ll join you, if you don’t mind. I usually just lose track of time and end up grabbing something before bed.”

“That’s a terrible habit,” she chided, as they left the office and walked together toward the kitchen. “And how can you forget about dinner?”

The truth was Paul was usually alone, and so he’d gotten out of the habit of keeping a normal schedule. He would eat something at the computer or standing in the kitchen. Until he’d married Emily, he’d almost never sat down at home just to eat.

“Oh, God, it smells good,” she murmured throatily, closing her eyes as they entered the kitchen. “Ruth was so sweet to make it for me. Did you know that both of her sons are chefs?”

“No,” Paul admitted, wondering how Emily somehow knew more about the woman who cleaned his apartment and stocked his pantry than he did. “In Philadelphia?”

“Yeah. She told me where Johnny was, but I didn’t recognize the name of the restaurant. But Sammy’s at Gino’s. They have the best Chicken Marsala there. Apparently her sons want to open a restaurant together. They just don’t have the money yet to pull it off.” While she was talking, she puttered around the kitchen, pulling out a fresh baguette from the bread cubby and sorting through produce in the refrigerator. “Did you want a salad?”

Paul looked in the oven and saw the lasagna was hot and bubbly. He realized he was ravenous. “Sure.”

Emily handed him a bunch of romaine lettuce. “Here. Wash that and chop it up, and I’ll figure out what we have for toppings.”

While Paul worked on the lettuce, Emily diced tomatoes and cucumbers. Then she grated parmigiano reggiano as he made a simple vinaigrette. Their salad was done by the time Paul pulled the lasagna out of the oven.

When he saw Emily pull out two plates and set them out on the kitchen bar, he suggested, “We can eat on the terrace if you want. It’s a nice evening.”

Emily seemed delighted by this suggestion and immediately piled up the plates with forks, knives, napkins, and placemats to take outside. He grabbed the salad and bread and carried them out to the wrought-iron table on the large terrace. While Emily set the table, he went back to the kitchen. He’d been going to get the lasagna, but he made a detour into the wine closet. Without thinking, he grabbed a decent bottle of Chianti—not very expensive, maybe forty dollars—since that was what he normally paired with lasagna.

But when he walked out of the closet, he could see Emily on the terrace through the glass doors. She was lighting the candle in the glass hurricane and smiling as she admired the effect.

Paul went back into the closet and got a much better bottle of Chianti.

He’d grabbed two wine glasses in one hand when she came back in the kitchen. When she looked at him curiously, he showed her the bottle of wine. “Good?”

Her mouth twitched irrepressibly as she read the label. “Looks great.”

Drawing his brows together, he studied her face. He couldn’t tell if she was just brimming over with pleasure or if she was laughing at him for some reason. “You can choose something else if—”

“No,” she interrupted, her face transforming with a wide smile as she picked up the lasagna with two hot pads. “That looks perfect. Thank you. Now let’s eat. I’m starving.”

Pleased that she approved of his wine choice, he followed her out to the terrace.

Paul enjoyed dinner more than he could have expected. Ruth had outdone herself with the lasagna. Emily seemed particularly impressed with his vinaigrette, saying she was never using salad dressing out of a bottle again. The evening was crisp and pleasant, and the sun was setting in pinks and oranges behind the cityscape.

They talked about skydiving. Then about what Emily wanted to do next from her list. Then Emily gave him advice on how he could better decorate the terrace, including twinkly lights on the potted trees.

The only flaw in the dinner was that he kept noticing Emily’s cleavage in her too-low neckline. Maybe it was the wine, or maybe it was the aftermath of the adrenaline, but he was having much more trouble than normal keeping his eyes from lingering there.

When they finished eating, they sat in companionable silence for a few minutes, looking out at the view. Emily gave a long, pleased sigh, and something unusually husky in the sound made Paul’s body give a hard clench of interest, much stronger than any physical response to her he’d experienced before.

Startled and unnerved by his reaction, he picked up the wine to pour out the rest of it and hopefully distract himself from reactions he shouldn't be having. He’d had about three glasses of wine, so he knew Emily must have had much less, even though he’d topped off her glass several times.  He started to pour most of the rest of the Chianti into her glass.

Then he noticed her lips were twitching again as she watched him.

He finally realized what she found so funny.

“Damn it,” he choked, jerking the bottle back, “You shouldn’t be drinking this!”

Emily burst into a delicious ripple of uninhibited hilarity. “I was wondering when you’d notice,” she gasped after a minute, evidently trying to control her laughter but failing miserably.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he demanded, embarrassed and unsettled by such an obvious gaffe. What the hell had he been thinking?

“I wanted wine with the lasagna,” she explained, her lovely face glowing with her attempts to suppress her amusement.  “And you were so cute serving alcohol to a minor.”

Paul glared at her, deciding she was having far too much fun with his mistake. But his glare—which had intimidated many over the years—just made her laugh even harder.

He couldn’t hold onto his resentment for long, not in the face of her transparent amusement. He hadn’t heard her laugh so uninhibitedly since her father had died two years ago, not even when she’d been skinny-dipping in the lake.

She must have seen his face softening because she looked at him with something warm and almost fond in her eyes. “After all, I had champagne on our wedding day, so it’s not entirely unprecedented.”

“But that was in France,” he muttered. “Where it wasn’t illegal.”

He’d started drinking when he was fourteen, and it had been a lot more than a glass of wine with dinner.

Emily was different, though.

She burst into another ripple of laughter and reached over to pat his hand. “Seriously, Paul. How much chance do you think there is that I’ll take up binge-drinking or fall into a lifetime of alcoholism?”

Her voice was light, almost teasing, but her words reminded him of a reality that he’d let slip from his mind for the last hour. He felt a heavy sinking in his gut as he recalled that she would never reach legal drinking age at all.

Emily met his eyes, and her laughter transformed into something poignant and aching. “Thank you, Paul,” she murmured. “The wine, the whole meal was really…special to me.”

He nodded, not having any idea what he should say. He just picked up the Chianti bottle and split what remained between their two glasses.

Apparently, Emily didn’t need him to say anything. They sat in silence, looking at the sunset, until the wine was gone.

* * *

Paul tried to work again after dinner, but he kept getting distracted. Eventually, he gave up on work completely. At nine-thirty he left his office with several sheets of printed paper.

He wandered the apartment until he found Emily in the media room.

She was curled up in a corner of the sofa, covered with a cashmere throw, and she was wearing pale blue pajama pants and a little white camisole with lacy straps, one of which was slipping down her shoulder.

She smiled when she saw him. “I should be reading Shakespeare, but I gave up.”

Paul glanced at the television screen and recognized Casablanca. She was only a few minutes into it.

“I’ve never seen it,” she explained. “It’s not on my list, but it seems like something you should see.”

He sat down next to her on the couch. “I can’t believe you’ve never seen Casablanca.”

“So says the ultimate patrician. Clearly, I’ve lived a very plebian life.”

Her tone was wry, but he didn’t like the sentiment, and he shot her a disapproving look.

“What do you have there?” she asked, gesturing toward the papers in his hand.

“See for yourself." He handed them to her with a pleased smile, looking forward to her reaction.

He wasn’t disappointed. It took a minute for Emily to scan over them, but then she gave a little squeal of excitement. “We can go to Egypt to see the Pyramids? So soon?”

He nodded and was about to respond, but then Emily threw herself at him in a hug.

She was evidently quite a hugger, since, in their short time together, she’d hugged him more than anyone ever had except his mother. Paul wasn’t sure what to do with such open, unconstrained displays of affection, and her first hug had made him feel too awkward to enjoy. But the more she hugged him, the more he liked it.

He hugged her back, breathing in the herbal scent of her shampoo and the feeling of warmth, closeness, fondness that her simple embrace conveyed.

After a moment, however, he became aware of the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra. Her soft breasts were pressed up against his chest, and her camisole seemed to be tissue-thin.

Paul pulled away from her gently, making sure to keep his eyes from slipping down to see how much of her breasts were visible through the thin material.

She beamed at him, completely unaware of the inappropriate detour his mind had taken. “I didn’t think we’d be able to go so soon!”

He forced his brain back to the topic at hand. “There’s no reason why not. I’ve made all the arrangements.” He recovered the itinerary he’d put together and held it out for her see. “We can go to New York on Friday—it’s less than a two hour drive—and spend the day there on Saturday. We can do the Empire State Building, since that was on your list.”

She curled her lip. “Don’t scoff. I was twelve and that seemed exciting.”

He chuckled. “I’m sure it did. I did some research, and there’s a production of Henry V running that’s supposed to be excellent. It’s the entire play, so it’s long, but it might be more fun than reading—”

His explanation was interrupted with another hug.

Torn between amusement and concern over his body's responses, Paul was briefly paralyzed, not sure whether to hug her back or pull away.

She didn’t seem to notice. “I can’t believe you’re doing all this for me. Thank you so much.”

He shrugged off her gratitude and tried to refocus on the itinerary.

When they finished going over it, Emily set the movie to begin again and they watched Casablanca together, since Paul wasn’t getting any work done anyway.

After it was over, Emily turned on the news.

Paul glanced over at her a few minutes later and was surprised to find she was asleep, curled up in a little ball on the couch.

She looked young and incredibly innocent, with the intelligence, humor, and tenacity in her eyes concealed by her closed eyelids. Her lashes were long and thick, fanned out against her smooth skin. The outline and shading of her nipples was clearly visible through the thin, white cotton.

Her arms were bare, and it was cool in the room, so he pulled the cashmere throw farther up to cover her.

Paul had spent most of his life lashing out against everything he hated about the world, searching for anything that might numb him against wounds that wouldn’t heal.

He had no practice in focusing on someone else. And, despite his vast experience, he hadn’t really lived—anymore than Emily had.

She didn’t look sick, but she was. And two weeks of her last three months had already passed.

Sitting on the couch with a growing ache in his chest, Paul realized something he hadn’t consciously been aware of before.

He was going to miss her when she died.