And now with Amy hating Doug, she couldn’t help feeling she’d put her own heart in peril for nothing.
“I should be able to get away by six,” she told him, disturbed by the fluttering excitement in her stomach at the thought of going home to him. “Did you want something in particular?”
“My sister, Carla, had her baby this morning,” he said, his voice warm with relief. “A girl. Now Macy will have a cousin to compete with.”
“Macy will be thrilled,” Kelsey said with a laugh, remembering his niece’s playful ways. “Is Carla okay?”
“Mom tells me it was such a fast, easy delivery that they didn’t get a chance to call me till it was over.”
“What a relief.” She knew he’d been concerned about his sister’s health. With her due date having come and gone a week ago, Jared had taken to calling Carla every morning to offer her encouragement.
“So if you’ll be through by six, I thought I’d pick you up and we’d go see them at the hospital.”
“Tonight? Will she feel up to visitors so soon?” Kelsey protested, dragging herself out of her worry about Amy.
“We’re not visitors,” he chided. “We’re family. Mom says Carla’s been resting this afternoon and she’s looking forward to introducing us all to her daughter.”
Kelsey smiled. “Okay, then. Pick me up at the curb at six.”
Three hours later, she gathered up her brief case and purse, locked her office and went to the elevator, more excited to see him than she should be. Every day that she lived with Jared, he seemed to draw her further into his life, his concerns. They slept in the same bed, their bodies cuddled in the dark and she’d grown so fond of their rhythm she sometimes woke forgetting that it wouldn’t be like that always.
Those moments left her frightened for the future, but she wasn’t sure what to do about the growing sense of intimacy between them. They couldn’t spend a year fighting, she’d decided.
She’d agreed to live with him for a year. Why hadn’t they foreseen that Doug and Amy might not make it? Why hadn’t she left herself an escape route?
All day she’d been thinking about her sister’s sad, miserable face, thinking about how happy Doug had seemed these past few weeks. Despite her own wariness of the emotion, she couldn’t reconcile herself to Amy’s love for Doug coming to nothing.
Riding down the elevator with seven or eight other people, she mused silently about the state of her strange marriage and all the issues between she and Jared.
No further mention had been made between them of the union contract and she had no idea if or how it had been resolved. She didn’t want to ask him and spark that dark, withdrawn look in his eyes. Almost as if she’d hurt him somehow, although she couldn’t imagine why he should be upset by her questions.
His integrity was his own business. She reminded herself of that at the same time she acknowledged that there were other men who looked after their wives when they were sick. Other men who smiled like he did. Who cared about their sisters?
None of Jared’s good qualities changed the essential complication of the modern relationship. Men and women met and connected. Loved and lived together. And in ninety percent of those relationships, love changed or died. Love always died, from her observation. She had so many examples to contradict the idea of love lasting a lifetime.
Except for Jared’s parents, apparently. They seemed to have found the Shangra La of marital connections.
Exiting the elevator car behind a woman in a startling yellow pantsuit, Kelsey turned toward the door and spotted Jared’s gleaming Jaguar at the curb. The driver’s door was open and Jared leaned forward over the roof of the car, laughing and chatting with the doorman.
Threading her way through the crowd of exiting employees, she went through the heavy glass doors at last, her heart beating hard in her chest. When would she get over this? When would coming home to him be just another part of an ordinary day?
He turned then, his gaze connecting with hers and she felt a ripple of reaction through her body, as if he had that private, welcoming smile just for her.
“All done?” he asked as she approached.
“Yes.” She found herself smiling back at him as the doorman opened the car door for her.
“Did you have a good day?” she asked him when she was settled into the luxurious leather seat, her seatbelt snug around her.
Jared moved into the sluggish city traffic before saying, “Yes. Just hearing that Carla and the baby are all right made my day very good.”
They got to the hospital fairly quickly despite the snarled traffic. Walking into the building, Jared reached out, catching her hand in his. Her fingers curved around his, an echoing warmth curling around her heart. Except for she and Amy, when had she ever been part of a family? One in which the roles were played by the same people year after year?