Page 102 of Made in Love and Blood

She brought him back. From a lot.

“I made an appointment.”

Stella had been perched on one of four large posts that made up Salvatore’s king-sized bed when Carina woke him up the day before with those words. She’d stood at the entry of her stairs that led to his private quarters, and she hammered nails with words into the coffin between them. Then promptly left after explaining when the appointment would be, as if she had been offering him wine and cheese.

Today, apparently. The appointment was for today.

The cat had been following him ever since.

“I’m going,” he told Stella, “okay? I’m asking. I’m doing it.”

Stella continued her stroll behind him.

He came upon the opened doors of Carina’s master suite but a cursory glance inside gave him no clue to her whereabouts.

Her white mountain of a bed made up from a dozen pillows and three different blankets sat unmade. This place meant more to her than all the magazine covers featuring her face that she’d hung along her reading nook wall. He built this for her, two years into their marriage. A spot where she could just be, and it didn’t hold memories of a time before her in that house.

He wanted it for her. To have that.

He’d known it back then. He’d known he loved her then.

And it just killed him.

“Rina?” Sal called in, using a nickname he rarely did anymore. It had been popular in her youth, but it stemmed from the lights and glamor of her survival. He still held it inside, fondly, only bringing it out when the two needed to meld what used to be and what was now together. It always hurt doing it.

She’d been a different woman back then. Not even she knew how much but so had he. He’d been so different, too, and neither of them could be a fraction of who they were now without the other. A far harder truth to settle the score between them when it also meant facing a much bigger picture they’d been painting together for years.

He called again to nothing, but Salvatore headed deeper into the room. Sissy said Carina had been here not long ago, readying for tomorrow’s events.

Stella didn’t cross the threshold.

“Now you stop,” he muttered back at the cat.

She yawned, canines showing prominently, and totally unbothered. Damn thing.

He eventually found Carina in the bottom floor of her closet; low jazz curled around the room from the many built-in speakers overhead. As she laid a second silk gown onto the Calcutta marble island, pink in color, next to the soft blue one, both with matching capes, he didn’t wonder anymore why she hadn’t heard him.

Carina stood back, surveying the two and the coordinating accessories, including shoes and jewelry.

Salvatore tried to make his steps heard as he walked in as not to startle her, saying, “Hey, could we talk?”

“Music off,” she ordered the smart system.

The jazz stopped.

She didn’t even flinch at his unexpected arrival. In fact, she tossed him a small shrug over her shoulder before going right back to her previous task as if he hadn’t bothered her in the first place. “Do you think gold or white gold jewelry for both, or do you think she can have the gold, and I’ll take the white? I mean, with the blue for me...”

“I guess I didn’t have to worry about scaring you, huh?”

Her brow dipped as she faced him again. “What?”

“Your mind is elsewhere, that’s all.”

Carina shook her head. “You were trying not to scare me by what, walking up behind me like an elephant?”

“You didn’t know I was there; it’s nothing.”

Her face said it was something.