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“For what?”
“For the things I said. Ignore me.”
“I’m not going to do that, but the rest of the conversation will have to be postponed because Rosie texted to say she’s on her way.”
She’d already said more than she wanted to. She took a mouthful of food. “This bacon tastes so good.”
“Maple cured locally according to the packaging.”
She cleared her plate and realized he was looking at her. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m thinking you look twenty in that robe with wet hair.” He drank his coffee. “Where did the years go, Mags?” Was that a literal question? How was she supposed to answer?
“Don’t get sentimental. I can’t handle it with a hangover. Is there any more toast?” She hadn’t eaten carbs for three weeks and she was so hungry she was willing to eat anything that wasn’t nailed down.
He sliced the loaf. “Next time we’re on our own and not about to be disturbed, I also want to talk about what happened in the car yesterday—”
“We agreed we were going to pretend to be in love. Don’t panic, I wasn’t trying to seduce you.” Was it possible to seduce someone you’d been married to for three decades?
“I wasn’t talking about the flirting.” He put the toast in front of her, along with a slab of creamy butter and a pot of homemade plum jam. “I was talking about the fact that you don’t like your job.”
Maggie stuck the spoon in the jam. Had she said that? Her feelings about her job weren’t something she usually voiced aloud.
“You should know better than to believe the ranting of an inebriated woman.”
“That’s what I said to myself, until you said all those things this morning.”
“You shouldn’t believe the ranting of a woman with a hangover, either.”
He topped up his coffee. “So you don’t hate your job?”
She took a bite of toast. Chewed. “It’s fine.”
“That doesn’t sound like a ringing endorsement. If you don’t like it, why haven’t you moved on?”
She put her toast down. “Because it suited our lifestyle. One of us had to be there for the girls. Your job involved so much traveling. You weren’t always there for the school run, parent-teacher meetings and those middle-of-the-night emergency runs.”
“But Rosie left home four years ago. If you wanted to do something different, you could have done it.”
She pressed at the toast crumbs with her forefinger. Should she tell him? “I applied for a job a month before she left. I thought it would do me good to be occupied with something.”
He stared at her. “You applied for a job? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Maggie shrugged. “Because I was afraid I wouldn’t get it. And I didn’t.”
“But you didn’t even tell me you were going for it. Why?”
“Why do you think?” She fiddled with the crust of her toast. “I was protecting myself from humiliation.”
“We’re married, Mags. I love you. Why would it be humiliating to tell me about it?”
She decided not to point out that he’d said I love you, when what he’d meant to say was I used to love you.
“Because you always succeed at everything. You get every promotion and every job you apply for.”
“But—” He looked flummoxed. “What was the job? Was it another publishing role?”
