Page 8 of Embracing the Change

I wanted adventure. I wanted passion. I wanted my lipstick smudging my husband’s collar, telling anyone who would see it I couldn’t keep my mouth off him. I wanted heated glances across the table that informed everyone around us they were gratuitous to our world, and we couldn’t wait to be free of them so we could go at each other.

What I didn’t want was every day to be the same. I didn’t want the love I had with the man I decided to spend the rest of my life with only to be expressed behind closed doors.

And with the single-minded determination I began to show around the age of two (if the stories about myself I was told were true), I found that.

However, I was also finding there were downsides to getting what you wanted.

Taking in a steadying breath, I followed Roland to our living room.

I barely made it over the threshold before he hurled a large, exquisite crystal vase filled with glorious, long-stemmed yellow roses across the room. The vase hit the wall. The crystal shattered. The water splashed. The roses scattered.

“What the devil?” I demanded.

Roland whirled on me. “Explain to me…precisely…why Jamie Oakley is sending you roses?”

My stomach dropped, and it was far from an unpleasant sensation. Sadly, as a married woman—a married woman, I reminded myself, who was in love with her husband, no matter how exasperating he could be—the kind of sensation it was, was not one I should be experiencing.

“And thanking you,” Roland continued. “Thanking you for what, Nora?” he asked. “Sucking his hillbilly Texas dick?”

Oh no.

Automatically, my chin lifted.

“You did not just speak those words to me,” I declared, each syllable frosted with a layer of chill.

“Why is that man sending my wife flowers?” he bellowed.

“Calm yourself,” I snapped.

“How would you feel if a woman sent me a gift?” he asked acidly.

“Exactly how I feel when you force me to watch you flirt with every blonde with fake breasts in your vicinity,” I retorted.

“And what?” He threw out his hands. “This is some kind of revenge for my harmless flirting, you fucking Jamie Oakley?”

I’d argue the “harmless” part of that, but I decided to do that later.

“I do not know Jamie Oakley,” I sniffed. “There was a situation with his wife having food poisoning at the leukemia gala that Mother and I dealt with, so I met him, of a sort. However, he was so busy seeing to his wife, he barely knew we were there.”

Yes, I was lying to my husband, but you see, when Eleanor Ellington demanded you keep a secret, you did. Even from your husband.

Regardless that Mother demanded it, Roland had a big mouth and a competitive streak. If he held the knowledge that Belinda Oakley had a rather alarming drinking problem, he would find a way to use it.

So…yes.

To wit, I was protecting Jamie, not to mention Belinda, from my husband.

“He knew you were there enough to send you flowers,” Roland pointed out.

“It was an unpleasant situation, and by the way, obviously Belinda also was there, and I’m assuming they speak to each other, so even if he was seeing to her, she could have told him we were the ones who helped her.”

“Belinda Oakley’s name isn’t on the card,” Roland noted.

Oh dear.

That was quite the oversight on Jamie’s part.

And…

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