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Do you want me to contact Fournier and tell him we won’t be available tonight?

He zipped her off a one-word reply. Yes.

She didn’t email back to update him on her conversation with Fournier. Just as well. He didn’t really care if the architect was annoyed with them for backing out on him.

What he cared about was making things right with his wife. Unfortunately, he had no idea how to do that.

Or if he did have an idea, he had altogether too much pride to go through with it.

That evening, she surprised him.

She came and hovered in the doorway to his little room. Hope flared in him yet again, that this might mean she was ready to forgive him. But her face gave him nothing. She seemed a little nervous, maybe. But not like a woman on the verge of offering to mend a serious breach.

“I called Fournier,” she said.

He set the book he’d been trying to read aside. “Thank you,” he said stiffly.

“Fournier said it was fine, to call and reschedule when we were … ready.” Her sweet mouth trembled.

He wanted to kiss the trembling away. But he stayed in the room’s single chair, by the window. “All right.”

“I’m sure he must know about that awful article …”

He shrugged. “He might.”

“Not that it matters what the architect knows.” She looked tired, he thought. There were dark smudges beneath her eyes. Was she having as much trouble sleeping as he was? “I … Oh, Rule …” She looked at him sadly. And pleadingly, too.

His heart beat faster. Hope, that thing that refused to die, rose up more strongly, tightening his throat, bringing him to his feet. “Sydney …”

And then she was flying at him and he was opening his arms. She landed against his chest with a soft cry and he gathered her into him.

He held on tight.

And she was holding him, too, burying her face against his chest, sighing, whispering, “Rule. Oh, Rule …”

He lowered his lips to her fragrant hair, breathed in the longed-for scent of her. “Sydney. I’m so sorry. I can’t tell you …”

“I know.” She tipped her head back, met his waiting gaze.

Crying. She was crying, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes, leaving shining trails along her flushed cheeks.

“Don’t cry.” He caught her face between his hands, kissed the tear trails, tasted their salty wetness. “Don’t cry …”

“I want … to make it right with us. But I don’t know how to make it right.”

He dared to kiss her lips—a quick kiss, and chaste. It felt wrong to do more. “You can’t make it right. I have to do that.”

She searched his face. “Please believe me. I didn’t suggest that press conference to shame you. I swear that I didn’t.”

“I know. I see that now. Don’t worry on that account. I understand.”

“I’m … too proud, Rule. I know that I am. Too proud and too difficult. Too demanding.”

He almost laughed. “Too prickly.”

“Yes, that, too. A kinder, gentler woman would be over this by now.”

He kissed the tip of her nose. “I have no interest in a kinder, gentler woman. And you are not too anything. You are just right. I wouldn’t want you to change. I wouldn’t want you to be anyone other than exactly who you are, any way other than as you are.”

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
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