Page 72 of Wife Unwanted
"Darcy!" Carey smiled conspiratorially.
I turned to see Darcy come out of our back office.
"Can you give my wife an off day? There's somewhere I want to take her."
Darcy beamed. "She can take the rest of the day off, maybe even three."
"You know Darcy is not my boss. She's my partner."
"And your partner is fine with you taking some time off," Darcy said.
Carey looked at me as if to say, see? I glanced around the shop. We weren't busy at the moment. The store didn't even have customers. It was two against one, and Darcy had become Carey's champion in the last few days.Fuck it. It was only an afternoon off.
I nodded. Carey beamed. "You're not going to regret it. And don't worry about clothes. I've already packed everything for us."
"Uh Carey? Where are we going?"
He placed another small kiss on my lips. "It's a surprise."
Chapter 37
Thalia
WE ARRIVED ATa log cabin as dusk settled. It was situated in a small town in upstate New York. The plot of land it was on had nothing else but the cabin and tall pine trees. "Have you brought me here to kill me?" I said.
Carey chuckled as he drove the car down a pathway. "Yeah, arriving in the afternoon would have been better, but I miscalculated the time. I haven't been here ever since I was a kid."
"Ah."
"It's a family estate," he clarified.
"How many of those do you have?"
"Too many for our own good," he muttered under his breath as he pulled into the parking space in front of the cabin.
The cabin wasn't shabby. I could tell from the thick logs that this was a fancy, well-built cabin with a state-of-the-art interior. And when Carey opened the door with his shoulder, arms full of his bag and mine, I was right. He turned on the light and it bathed the living room. It looked like a rich person's idea of slumming it in the woods. For a place he hadn't visited in years, it was clean.
"Are you sure no one's been here in a while?"
He reddened. "I had the caretaker clean the place up before we arrived." He marched to the kitchen, and I marched in tow and watched as he opened the kitchen drawers. "He even stocked the place." I wandered around. The caretaker had even chopped firewood and placed it neatly next to the fireplace in the living room. Even the sheets in the single bedroom looked fresh and the bath towels in the bathroom smelled of newness.
"Like it?" Carey said, leaning against the doorframe of the entrance to the bathroom?
"It's cute," I said, my eyes taking in the gorgeous free standing white tub in the center and the large shower in the corner.
"I thought we do something different for your birthday."
"You say that as though we've celebrated my birthday before."He flushed, and I felt a little guilty for putting him on the spot.
"I have been an awful husband, haven't I?"
I marched past him getting out of the bathroom. The space was feeling cramped with him looking at me like that. "I was an awful wife too, so it all checks out."
The stay at the cabin ended up being a lot more tranquil than I expected. Because it was my 'birthday weekend' Carey did everything from cooking, cleaning and even chopping firewood. While it was still summer, the weather around this specific part of the country was more chilly than I expected. Carey said it was because of all the pine trees. Whatever the case, it gave me sight to something I never thought I would see, the beauty of Carey Hawthorne chopping wood. He was the last person I would have guessed to be good with an axe but he was not only proficient with it, and I sat on the steps of the porch watching him, he looked like chopping wood is something that was second nature to him. He was like a rugged mountain man, shirtless and in his jeans.
After seeing the amount of wood the caretaker had left beside the fireplace, Carey decided we were going to need more, and that is how I ended up gawking at him, mesmerized. Satisfied with whatever amount he chopped, he collected a bunch and marched up to me. "Excuse me."
I was in his way, I belatedly realized. I stood up and opened my arms wide, offering to help him carry the logs. He put half of what he was carrying in my arms. "I thought your only outdoor skill was sailing. Turns out you're a mountain man as well. Where did you learn to do…that?"
