Sage kissed her again and then started once more on her neck. “I'm not sure I have the wherewithal to make it back to my place or yours.”
Deborah chuckled, surprised by how seductive it sounded. She rose from his lap and extended her hand.
“Did I mention that one of the guest rooms is empty tonight?”
Maxwell called his assistant to tell her that he was going to be an hour-and-a-half or so late and then stopped at Piece of Cake for two of their signature sticky buns. He knew Tyler would never accept any kind of cash payment from him, but Maxwell could compensate him with a different kind of dough.
He hadn't called his brother ahead of time, so there was always the possibility that Tyler wouldn't be around. Maxwell hadn't planned on doing this today, but the morning had started in such an off-kilter way that he figured a change in routine might be useful. Annie, who had been unpredictable for weeks, was flat-out confounding as he prepared to go to the office. He'd made a simple request that she call the cable guy to come check why the ESPN2 signal was breaking up, and she responded by doing three minutes on how much she had going on today and how her purpose in life could not be to make sure he always had six channels of twenty-four hour sports. Taken aback, Maxwell said he'd make the call himself, at which point Annie much more calmly told him that she'd call the cable people before she got started on her day. Exchanges of this sort had become more frequent between them lately, but they still left Maxwell feeling as though he'd dropped into an alternate reality.
Maxwell pulled into Tyler's driveway, glad to see his brother's car sitting there. Grabbing the bag of sticky buns, he went up to the door and rang the bell. It took more than a minute for Tyler to answer.
“Hey,” Tyler said, as he opened the door. “What are you doing here?”
Maxwell held up the bag. “I have a bribe for you.”
Tyler opened the screen door and looked at Maxwell suspiciously. “Why do you have a bribe for me?”
Maxwell entered the house. “Because it's always good to have a bribe for someone when you need them to do you a favor.”
“This favor wouldn't have anything to do with babysitting Joey, would it? I swear I thought I was going to pass out from exhaustion the last time.”
“No babysitting. This is a photography favor. I need new headshots.”
Maxwell wasn't planning to tell Tyler that the headshots were for a PR kit that would be used to get donors on board for his gestating mayoral run. Maxwell hadn't fully committed to making the run yet, but Mike had convinced him to put the kit together. Telling Tyler would make the entire thing seem as though it were genuinely in motion, and Maxwell wasn't ready for that, especially since Annie had been less than thrilled when he broached the topic with her.
“Headshots aren't exactly my thing,” Tyler said.
“To tell you the truth, I'm not entire clear on what your thing is.”
“Really? I've given you three framed pictures. I've seen them hanging in your house.”
Maxwell flashed on the photographs Tyler had presented him with over the years. “You only do leaves?”
“Not only leaves. Sometimes other plants.”
“No people?”
“No people, just natural images.”
Maxwell grinned. “I've been told I'm a complete natural.”
Tyler rolled his eyes. “Yes, people who make awful puns are such naturals.” He grabbed for the bag. “What did you bring me from Piece of Cake?”
“Sticky buns.”
“Nice.”
“Does that mean you'll do the headshots?”
Tyler opened the bag and took a sniff. “These need coffee,” he said, turning toward the kitchen. “I'll do the headshots if you want. I'm just not making any promises. You might come out looking like a shrub.”
“Hey, that would be an improvement over the shot of me that's on the Chamber website.”
“Yeah, I've been meaning to talk to you about that. Did you use a disposable camera to take that one?”
“I know it's awful. I need something better now.”
Maxwell had followed Tyler into the kitchen and watched as his brother ground coffee and boiled water for the French press.
“How artsy can we be?” Tyler said when the grinder stopped.
“Completely not artsy.”
“Okay. How casual can we be?”
“Completely not casual.”
“This is sounding like more and more fun by the second. Are you sure you don't want the disposable camera guy to do this?”
“I brought sticky buns.”
Tyler took an exaggerated deep breath. “You did. You did bring sticky buns. Okay, I'll do the shots. No tripod, though.”
“I have no idea what that means.”
“It means that I'm going to keep the camera moving. I don't know much about taking pictures of people, but we're not gonna do this stiff.”
“I'm in your hands.”
Tyler poured the boiling water into the French press and set a timer. “Can we lose the tie?”
“We really can't.”
“Ugh. This is why I don't shoot things that wear clothes.”
An hour later, Maxwell was in his car on the way to his office. Despite his protestations, the shots Tyler took looked good, at least through the little screen on his camera. Tyler promised he'd work on the images and e-mail something later. Maybe this would convince him to consider doing more headshots in the future. There had to be more money in that than there was in photographs of plants.
By the time he got to work, Maxwell felt as though his equilibrium had been restored. He'd call Annie later to tell her that he appreciated everything she did to keep the house running. Maybe she and Joey would even meet him for a quick lunch.
It took Annie fifteen minutes to relax into the day. The babysitter was late, which meant that the woman had arrived only minutes before Marty did at eleven thirty. This caused a bit of confusion in getting Joey settled, but Annie managed to do all of that in the den while Marty waited in the foyer. Still, she felt thrown off for a while, as she usually did when she needed her son to conform and he wanted only to do things his way.
By the time they'd gotten onto the exit out of Oldham onto I-95, though, Annie was thinking less about Joey and the babysitter and more about the darkly enchanting music Marty had on the stereo and the easy cool that her one-time lover exuded from the driver's seat. It didn't hurt that it was a magnificent Indian Summer day, easily the warmest in two weeks.
Marty had decided they were going to a beach up the coast about a half-hour, where they would picnic on a blanket on the sand. He told her he'd gotten their food from a gourmet shop in town, but Annie would have been happy with a bag of chips and a Coke. Just being out like this was enough for her.
“You still haven't told me where you got your fortune from,” Annie said as she ran her hand across the buttery leather of Marty's BMW roadster. “I'm starting to think it's drugs or guns.”
Marty smiled slyly. “I can promise you it's not drugs, guns, or anything else illegal.”
“Then why doesn't Google have anything about you? It's like you're off the grid.”
“You Googled me?”
Annie felt momentarily embarrassed. “You have me intrigued.”
Without taking his eyes off the road, Marty reached over and patted Annie's leg. “Everything is set up behind holding companies. To tell you the truth, it's all pretty boring.”
“But you're still not going to tell me about it.”
Marty gave her leg a little squeeze before downshifting to change lanes. “Whatever you're imagining is way better than the reality.”
Annie laughed and shook her head. The old Marty was never mysterious. One of the reasons they'd split was that he felt the need to say everything on his mind, including some things about her that she would have preferred not to hear. While she found his teasing a little frustrating, Annie thought this was another indication that this Marty was a considerable upgrade over the old one.
Annie was feeling completely relaxed by the time they got to the beach. The water from the Long Island Sound lapped softly onto the shore as Marty spread out their blanket and pulled food from a bag. They'd settled at a spot secluded by brush that kept them protected from the mild breeze. Other than a couple of seagulls, they had this part of the beach completely to themselves.
Marty touched her on the shoulder and handed her some red wine in a crystal glass.
“Pretty fancy for a picnic,” she said.
He gestured her toward the blanket. “Wine doesn't taste right in anything else.”
Annie sat down and took a look at the spread â pâté, three cheeses, some cured meats, and a jar of truffle honey. “We used to drink the cheapest wine we could find out of plastic cups.”
Marty tore off a hunk of bread and handed it to her. “Times have changed.”
They ate quietly for a few minutes, the wine warming Annie even more than the unseasonable sun.
“So we've discussed my mysteries, but we haven't discussed any of yours,” Marty said as he drizzled some honey over a piece of cheese.
Annie looked out toward the Sound. “I have no mysteries.”
“Impossible.”
Annie turned toward Marty and held his eyes for several long seconds. “If I have any, they're buried under laundry and toys.”
Marty smiled at her crookedly. “See? That sounds mysterious to me.”
“Not mysterious. Just achingly normal.”
“And you don't want that?”
“Sometimes I do. Sometimes it's even fun, like when Joey figures something out for the first time or settles enough to just cuddle with me.”
“Isn't that what you signed up for?”
Annie took another sip of wine, watching the legs trail back to the bottom of the glass. “I guess I didn't realize I was signing up for this to the exclusion of everything else.”
“Every gig has its downsides.”
Annie tipped her head toward him. “Even running a drug cartel like you?”
Marty smiled at her again, his eyes glittering in the autumn sun. “You have no idea how tedious being an outlaw can be.”
Annie put down her wineglass and leaned toward Marty. “We were never tedious, Marty.”
“That was definitely true.”
She turned to face him directly. “I can't even remember what tore us apart.”
“Time and circumstance.”
“Is that what it was?”
“That's all I remember.”
Annie rose up on her knees, and before she could think about it, she moved toward Marty and kissed him, softly at first and then with increasing passion. There were several things about Marty that couldn't be improved upon, and his kisses were among the greatest. The instant their lips touched, Annie remembered how hungrily she craved his kisses, how she desired them before, during, and long after their lovemaking.
Marty's hand found the small of her back and then slid under her waistband, and she abandoned all caution. Within minutes, they were lying naked in the sand and Annie was feeling a fire she'd long believed was extinguished.
Afterward, they lay entwined while Marty tenderly massaged Annie's scalp. Only the encroaching chill and the approaching evening raised them out of their secluded cove.
They didn't speak much on the way back. Maxwell had a dinner tonight, which was good, because Annie knew she wasn't going to be ready to face him for hours. She couldn't think about the implications now, though she knew she would have to face them soon enough. All she knew was that she needed what happened this afternoon, and that she was going to need it again soon. Annie had found something inside of herself that she thought was gone; she couldn't allow herself to lose it again, regardless of the consequences.
The sun was starting to go down by the time they pulled in front of the house. The dusky light made it harder to see Marty's face, but Annie's vivid memory filled in the details.
“This was great,” he said, reaching a hand out to her.
She took his hand and brought it to her lips. “Thank you.”
“I wish I didn't need to be on the road again tomorrow.”
“You'll be back soon, right?”
“I don't think so.”
Marty's words braced her. “You don't?”
“We've gotten an amazing offer from Tampa. We're going to move the offices there.”
“When did you find out?”
“We closed the deal about an hour before I picked you up.”
The icy grip around her heart was the coldest Annie had ever felt in her life. She suddenly felt a desperate need to get out of the car, to shower off the smell of the beach, the smell of Marty.
“I'll keep this day with me forever, Annie.”
Annie couldn't respond. She couldn't even look at the man who less than an hour before was running his fingers through her hair and reminding her of everything she'd been missing.
Instead, she opened the car door and made her way into the house quickly, not looking back once.
Tyler had spent most of the afternoon applying filters to the same image, trying to make it come alive. That he was having trouble with this surprised him. It was one of the shots he'd taken on the Rhode Island coast on Sunday, and everything about it had seemed right at the time.
He saved a seventh version of the file to his desktop and decided to stop noodling with it for now. Maybe simply coming back to it tomorrow or a few days after that would show him what he was missing.
As he stood up from his workspace, the doorbell rang. He glanced out his studio window to see Patrice's car in his driveway. This was the first time she'd come to visit. All the time they'd spent together since they'd reconciled had been at her place or somewhere else.
“Hey,” he said, opening the door and kissing her quickly on the lips. “Didn't we decide we were meeting at the restaurant at eight?”
Patrice walked in and glanced around the living room. “We did, but I thought I'd come by if that's okay with you.”
“Yeah, of course.”
“I like the way the place looks. You always had a great head for composition.”