Always (Spiral of Bliss #5)
ALWAYS
Copyright © 2016 by Nina Lane.
All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.
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Published by Snow Queen Publishing
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Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
: Copyright © J.K. Rowling 1999
ISBN: 978-0-9905324-4-6
TABLE OF CONTENTS
“Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”
—Emily Brontë
CHAPTER ONE
OLIVIA
October 22
“OH MY GOD.” I STARE AT
my husband in disbelief. “Are you freaking kidding me?”
Dean looks as if he doesn’t know whether to be embarrassed or defensive.
“No, I’m not
kidding
you,” he says.
“How is that even possible?”
He shrugs. “I just never got around to it.”
“You’re a
professor,
” I say. “A PhD summa cum laude. A graduate of Yale and Princeton. You’ve taken a million honors classes in your lifetime. You’ve read the Magna Carta in the original Latin, for crying out loud.”
“I know.” He’s starting to look faintly irritated. “That doesn’t mean I’ve read every book ever written.”
“But how could you miss
this
?” I wave the paperback in the air. “In all your years of history and literature classes, you’ve never read
Pride and Prejudice
?”
“That’s what I’m telling you.”
“I want a divorce.”
Dean laughs, pushing to his feet and crossing the sunroom to where I’m almost vibrating with righteous indignation over the fact that the man I love and adore beyond all reason has been—this whole time—ignorant of the restrained passion of Lizzy and Mr. Darcy.
Dean settles his hands on my hips and pulls me against him in that effortless way that fits our bodies together like puzzle pieces locking into place.
“If you tried to divorce me, Mrs. West,” he says, his gaze warm as he looks down at me, “I would spend the rest of my life fighting to get you back. I’d scale the tallest buildings, climb the highest mountains, cross the most treacherous rivers and deserts, all just to prove how wildly and passionately I love you and to bring you back home to me.”
Okay, so that wasn’t bad.
“But…” I narrow my eyes and tap his chest with the book. “Would you go to great lengths to make a rogue marry my sister to preserve my family’s honor?”
“Uh…” Dean scratches his head. “Yes?”
“You’d better.” I give a little sniff of disdain. “And just so you know, Mr. Darcy is my top romantic hero. Fictional, I mean,” I add hastily, when Dean’s expression starts to darken.
He takes the book from me and looks at the synopsis on the back. “Isn’t Darcy a girl’s name?”
“His first name is Fitzwilliam.”
“Does everyone call him Fitzy Darcy?”
I give him yet another look of disapproval. “Mr. Darcy is extremely handsome, masculine, and noble. He’s also uncompromising and overly proud, but he casts that aside to confess his ardent love for Lizzy.”
“I’m sure he’s rich too,” Dean remarks.
“Well, yes, but that’s not why she falls in love with him.”
He rolls his eyes ever so slightly.
I tweak his nose. “That’s not why I fell in love with
you.
”
“Ah, now this conversation is getting interesting.” Dean slides his other hand around to my ass. “Let’s talk more about why you fell in love with
me
.”
“Hah. I’m not about to stroke the ego of a man who’s never read
Pride and Prejudice
.”
“Want to stroke something else?” he asks with a suggestive lift of his eyebrows.
I’m not so offended that the thought of getting sexy with my husband is unappealing—I’m quite certain nothing could provoke such blasphemy—but I’m also not about to let him off the hook that easily.
“That is so not something Mr. Darcy would say.” I press my breasts against his chest to tease him, then wiggle out of his grip and go into the kitchen. “However, maybe we should dress up as Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet for Halloween.”
“Yeah… no.” Dean returns to his sprawled position on the sofa with his tablet.
I let my gaze travel surreptitiously over his long, muscular body, imagining him dressed in well-fitting breeches, a snowy white linen shirt with a double-breasted silk waistcoat hugging his lean torso beneath a navy, superfine coat…
“You’d be very sexy in a Regency gentleman’s clothing,” I say. “And besides, you haven’t come up with a single other idea for a couple’s costume.”
“I’m the one who suggested Olga Danilova and Vasili Buslai.”
“Dean, I don’t even know who they are.” I return my attention to the white shirt spread out on the central island. “
No one
knows who they are.”
“They’re characters from one of the greatest Russian films of all time—
Alexander Nevsky.
It’s a historical drama that I can’t believe I haven’t shown you before. I’ll order a DVD.”
“No hurry,” I reply dryly. “And it can’t be that great because I’ve never heard of it. Besides, not a single person will get the reference.” I check the seams of the shirt I sewed. “We could just be Arthur and Guinevere.”
“Isn’t that a little obvious?”
“That’s the point of a couple’s costume. It’s not supposed to be totally obscure.”
“We could go as Odysseus and Penelope,” Dean suggests.
I snort. “You are such a nerd.”
Dean winks at me. “Bet you can’t say the same thing about old Mr. Darcy, can you?”
There are actually a lot of things I can say about Professor West that I can’t say about Mr. Darcy, and all the descriptions are both flattering and very well deserved. Not that I’ll tell Dean that right now.
“Hey, where’s Nicholas?” I hold up the pirate shirt. “I need him to try this on.”
Dean picks up a walkie-talkie from the coffee table and speaks into it. “Ahoy, Dread Pirate West, the pirate queen requires your presence on deck immediately. Savvy?”
He releases the button, and a crackly static comes from the speaker before Nicholas replies, “Aye, bucko. I’m on me way.”
There’s a thumping noise from upstairs before our six-year-old son comes barreling down the stairs and into the kitchen, pirate sword in hand.
“Ahoy, me hearties!” He stops beside me, pushing his eye patch up to his forehead. “You know, I really need a good ship, like a brigantine.”
Dean and I exchange amused looks over the reminder that our son has a far more extensive knowledge of pirate ships, crews, and weapons than either of us do. Not that Nicholas’s fascination with history surprises me, given his paternal lineage.
“Or even a fort,” Nicholas adds, adjusting his hat. “Pirates don’t hide out in closets. They just
don’t
.”
“We’ll come up with something,” Dean promises. “Maybe in the basement, so you can pillage and plunder during winter.”
“Come here and try these on, captain.” I hold out the knee-length pants and buccaneer shirt with billowed sleeves.
Nicholas strips out of his sweatpants and T-shirt and then lets me help him put on the pirate shirt and pants. I fuss with the fit and pin the hem on the pants, then have him try on the red sash.
“Okay, scallywag, get your regular clothes back on.” I ease the pirate shirt over his head and spread it out again on the central island.
“Where’s Bella?” Nicholas asks, pulling on his sweatpants. “I need her to be my prisoner.”
“Still napping.” I glance at the clock. “If she’s not up by two, I’ll wake her.”
“Dad, will you be my prisoner?” Nicholas goes into the sunroom.
“Well…” Dean sighs gustily and puts his tablet aside before slowly straightening. “I guess I could be a prisoner… but you’ll have to capture me first, ye lily-livered swine.”
He leaps up, shoving his feet into a pair of shoes by the sliding glass door before escaping into the garden. Nicholas grabs his sword and hurries to put his shoes on.
“Ye scurvy dog,” he shouts. “Yer doom be at hand!”
He rushes into the garden after Dean, and they start racing around the house and into the wooded lot beyond the garden, hurling pirate insults at each other and laughing.
As I return my attention to Nicholas’s costume, I have a moment of pure gratitude that feels as beautiful and perfect as a soap bubble. Since returning to Mirror Lake from Paris over a year ago, our family has lived a life of happy chaos filled with scrambles to “get ready,” bustling shifts at the café, lectures about World Heritage sites, first-grade music performances, picture books, finger paints, snow days, and long weekends running errands and playing at Wizard’s Park.
A life filled with both change and lovely sameness. I’ve finally learned that life is all about those things existing side by side, like a pathway curving alongside an ever-moving river. Sometimes you take one route, sometimes the other, but both will move you forward.
I finish getting Nicholas’s costume put together—I only have the vest left to make—and go upstairs to wake our three-year-old daughter, who zonked out after our morning trip to a pumpkin farm, which included a hayride, apple cider, and a great deal of traipsing around the pumpkin patch.
As it turns out, Bella is already awake, lounging in bed with her stuffed animals. Brown-eyed with wavy brown hair, my daughter has a touch of wildness in her. She climbs trees, catches bugs, paints pictures of stick-figure dragons, and makes entire buffets out of mud. She likes cowgirls rather than princesses, stuffed tigers instead of dolls, and if there is dirt somewhere to be found, it will invariably end up on her rosy cheeks.
I love her madly.
“Hey sweetie.” I lift her into my arms, breathing in her scent of strawberry shampoo. “Want to come try on your Halloween costume?”
“Okay.” She holds up her stuffed owl. “Cupcake for Hoot too?”
“I can try,” I say, suspecting I’ll be up most of the night measuring an owl-sized cupcake costume.
Bella and I head downstairs, and I help her try on her costume. Shaped by a plastic frame, the costume consists of a purple muffin cup topped with billowy pink-and-white netting and embellished with multi-colored sugar sprinkles. So we can see the full effect, I smooth her hair away from her face and fasten on the sparkly pink hat topped with a bright red cherry.
“A perfect dessert,” Dean says, when he and Nicholas come in from their brawl. He lifts Bella into his arms and nuzzles her nose with his. “What kind of cupcake are you? An angel food cake?”
“More like a devil’s food cake,” Nicholas remarks, doing a couple of parrying moves with his sword.
“Devil’s food, huh?” Dean asks, turning a giggling Bella upside down. “My favorite.”
I smile, feeling myself get all warm and fuzzy at the sight of him with our children. Over the years, Dean and I have learned a great deal about what the other person needs. But my realization that Dean
needed
to be a father has changed both us and our marriage in unforeseen ways—and all for the better.
At least, once we figured out that it’s critical to focus on us every now and then. Our return to the place of Liv and Dean is like watering a plant, keeping the leaves fresh and alive, watching the blossoms open in the sun.
And because we’ve learned the importance of focusing on our marriage, our love, we’ve created a comforting, happy home for both our children and ourselves. It feels right, too, knowing that the Liv and Dean we were at the beginning will still be there after Nicholas and Bella branch off into their own lives.
Of course, that doesn’t mean Dean and I have buckets of time to get very sexually creative… or edgy, though I often remember the excitement of the night when Dean
tied me up
and had his way with me. That night led to a wealth of hot personal fantasies—and scenarios—in which Professor West has gotten some serious domination on.
Though come to think of it, I haven’t seen him wickedly dominating in a while. I’ve seen him in many other different guises—professor, athlete, scholar, diplomat, archeologist, lecturer, tour guide, international traveler. And of course I wildly love every facet of my husband, but I also revel in the times when he sheds those roles to focus only on our erotic pleasure in that sinful, delicious way of his.
Ooo.
Sinful.
Now that’s an idea I can get behind. Or better yet,
under
. Or on top of…
