Page 86 of Carver’s Craving

Tears fell silently down his face.

My heart seized. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I started to rise.

He held out his hand.

I sat back.

He stirred the pasta, obviously taking a moment to compose himself. Then he grabbed a piece of paper towel and wiped his cheeks. Finally, he inelegantly blew his nose.

Still, I waited.

“I—” He swallowed. “I don’t know what to say. Well, I should start with that was beautiful, and the world needs your talent now more than ever.” He smiled. “But I think you know that.”

Slowly, I shook my head. “Not enough that hearing it again doesn’t lift my spirits. It’s been a long time since I sang—for anyone. I look back on many of our songs and see they were superficial. Flippant, even—”

“Not all.” Said sternly. “Not the ones where you sang solo with your acoustic. Like you just did.”

“Okay.” Maybe he was right? Maybe I wasn’t giving myself enough credit? Wouldn’t be the first time, that was for certain. “What did you think? Honestly?”

“That I can’t believe you could take my mother’s words and compose something so beautiful. She was such—” He sniffed. “A tortured soul.”

Exactly what I’d thought. He looked wrecked. I tried to distract him with the mundane. “How’s the pasta?”

“Oh.” He looked back at the pot. “Ready to eat. You want to grab drinks and the parmesan while I dish? I can’t express how much I appreciate this.”

I rose, headed over to him, and placed a kiss on his lips. “You just did.” I reveled in his smile as I gathered the music and moved to the great room where I put the guitar in the case and stacked the papers.

Poppin eyed me.

“No. You’ve eaten and had your peanut butter. You are not hard done by. And I’m not dropping anything on the floor for you.”

She pouted. Then she turned three times and settled against Walter. Who snuffled and went right back to sleep.

By the time I returned to the table, Carver had two heaping plates of pasta placed.

I nabbed glasses of water, the parmesan, and the garlic bread from the warmer.

“Yum.” Carver grinned.

“I added cheese.”

He pressed a hand over his heart. “Even better.”

We sat and dug into our food. When we finally slowed, I filled him in on all the exciting things I’d done with the dogs. That took less than a minute.

“Well, things were pretty dull for me as well.” He sipped his water. “We’ve made real progress on finishing the outside work on the building, and Foster’s confident we can all take the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day off.”

“Really? That’s amazing.”

“He’s going to pay us as well. Not our normal salary, but a nice bonus. Unless we choose to use our paid vacation time.”

“Which are you going to do?” I bit into my cheesy garlic bread and moaned.

Carver chuckled. “Since he’s paying us, I’ll take that cash and bank my vacation for another time. We might, I don’t know, decide to go somewhere.”

I stilled. “Like…?”

He shrugged. “Somewhere warm? Or an Alaskan cruise? Somewhere around the globe? It’ll be expensive, but you’re worth it.”