Nameless Series Boxed Set (65 page)

He was clearly
on a roll, but his voice trailed off when he saw that Erin had narrowed her
eyes suspiciously.

“You’d already
figured all of this out,” she accused him on a taken breath, something
thrilling in her heart despite her heated tone. “You didn’t just think of all
these details on the spur of the moment. You had it all worked out beforehand.”

Seth shifted
slightly, looking torn between amusement and embarrassment. “Of course. Do you
have any idea how much I’ve been thinking about this for the last week?
Naturally, we can work the details, but I thought a schedule might be a good
idea.” He gave her an adorable half-smile. “I told you I’m good at strategy.”

Erin collapsed
into happy, relieved giggles, and she leaned against him affectionately. “Thank
you, Seth. A schedule is an excellent idea.”

They were quiet
for a long time, and she could feel Seth relaxing beside her again. Then his
arm went around her, not so casually this time. He turned his head to press a
kiss onto her temple, his lips soft but more purposeful than before.

She knew what
he had in mind. She could feel how his body was beginning to tighten.

But she’d
resolved not to be distracted today by sex, so she pulled away and made herself
move into the rest of what they needed to discuss.

“So we’ve
talked some about my worries and needs. What about you? I know our problems
haven’t just been your fault.” She put her hand on his forearm. “Tell me what
you want, Seth.”

He shifted
uncomfortably, obviously not having expected this shift in dynamic. “I just
want you and the girls to come home.”

“No. Don’t do
that. Don’t act like you’re undeserving. You deserve just as much from this
family as me and the girls. For this to work, you need to tell me what you
want, what you need from me.”

Seth didn’t
answer immediately. In fact, he sat for a long minute, staring out at the lake,
his face occasionally working strangely, as if he were having a private
struggle with himself.

Erin let him
think, let him work through whatever he needed in order to open up enough to
share this with her.

She sat beside
him in silence, not even watching him, so he wouldn’t feel like she was
pressuring him or intruding on his privacy.

Finally, he
said, his voice a little stiff, “I need you to tell me what you want.”

Erin
experienced a surge of disappointment, since she’d really thought he was going
to be honest about his needs. “Seth,” she began.

“I’m not being
the victimized martyr. I mean, I need you to tell me.”

She didn’t
understand immediately. Just stared at him blankly.

With a
reluctant expression, he pressed on. “I know I should have known better than to
take you for granted. But, despite the fact that I’ve been clueless, I
basically came back one evening to find you packing your bags to leave.” He
cleared his throat. “You were going through so many things, you were having so
many fears and insecurities, and you never even told me.”

Erin felt
another stab in her heart—this one from knowledge and guilt.

“I guess I’d
known you weren’t happy with my being gone for so long,” he continued. “But I
had no idea it had gotten to this extent. And I had no idea that you were feeling
so lost and uncertain about all this other stuff. I’d thought you were happy
being a wife and mother.” When Erin opened her mouth to object and explain, he
spoke over her, “I know you still want to be a wife and mother, but since you
hadn’t done anything with your degree, I just figured those issues from before
were settled.”

Erin mumbled,
“They weren’t.”

“I know that
now, but I hadn’t known before everything completely blew up. If I’d known it
before—if you’d shared that with me before—then maybe we could have done
something about it sooner.”

Erin restlessly
rubbed her fingers against her scalp. “I know. You’re right. I should have told
you a long time ago. It just…I don’t know…it snuck up on me. I really thought I
was happy. I mean, I was happy. But just, little by little, it seemed like all
I was doing was being a mom. And then it was so hard to find a job. Then I had
less and less motivation to even look, since it felt like I was just doing it
as an empty gesture. And then, with you gone so much, it felt like I wasn’t
even a woman anymore. Just a mom. And not even a hardworking one, since I don’t
really have to clean and cook and everything. So it just built up until it felt
like I hardly even had a purpose.”

“So why didn’t
you say anything to me? Was it because I wasn’t around enough?”

“Maybe a
little. But it was my fault, not yours. I just have always felt so…petty,
complaining about my life. I’m the wife of a rich, successful man who loves me,
I don’t have to work, I have two incredible children—what the hell do I have to
complain about?”

Seth rolled his
eyes. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I know. But,
to begin with, everything was so minor that I really did feel ungrateful
whining about it. And then, once everything started to build up into real
issues, then I just didn’t want to admit it to myself.” She reached up and
stroked his face briefly. “But you’re right, Seth. I should have told you. It
wasn’t fair to keep you in the dark, and I know it made everything worse.”

She leaned over
and kissed his jaw softly. “I’m sorry.”

He gave her a
small, fond smile. “Thank you.”

For some
reason, Erin felt almost embarrassed. So she snuggled against him and hid her
face in his shirt.

“So what do you
think would make you feel more fulfilled?” he asked. “Do you want to try to
think of a different career path? Go back to school?”

Erin sighed.
Felt a faint twisting in her gut, a familiar loss that was years old now. “No.
I still want to be a lawyer, if I can.”

 “And yet you
stopped even looking for a job.”

“Yeah. That’s
my fault for getting discouraged. I’ve got to figure out something. I still
need to think about it some more.”

Seth was
watching her quietly. When she’d stopped talking, he asked in a low murmur, “Is
there anything else you’ve been worrying about?”

Closing her
eyes, Erin groaned. “Oh, everything. It seems like I’m worried about
everything. Last week, I got panicked that I was going to turn into one of
those bitter wives of wealthy men—lonely, jaded, and bored. I've always been so
determined not to be someone like that, but then I got afraid it was happening
anyway."

She paused and
took a deep breath before she went on. "I want so much to be a good mom,
and I want the girls to see me being strong—for them, for you, and for myself.
I want to show them that there’s joy and value in being a wife and mother, but
I also want them to know that’s not the only possibility for a woman. I want to
show them real love always means committing and working through problems, but I
also want them to see that they—and I—don’t need to settle for less than we
deserve, just so we can keep a man happy. I want to be a good example for them,
but I just don’t know if I can.”

Erin was
tearing up again, but this time she didn’t dissolve into sobs. “I just don’t know
how to do all of that. But I want them to see me be…strong.”

Seth made a
guttural noise in his throat. “You are strong, Erin, and the girls have already
seen that. They’re always going to know that.”

She gazed up at
him through blurry eyes. “Do you think so? I don’t think I’ve done a very good
job lately, but I want to. I’m going to keep working on it. I want our girls to
be strong too.”

“They will be.
If we have anything to do about it, they will be.”

Erin wiped her
eyes on his shirt. She felt a lot better. Felt like she’d said everything she
needed to.

Almost.

Seth led into
the last little thing, as intuitive as ever. “So, do you need to spend a few
more days here, figuring the rest of this out?” His face was stiff, almost
diffident.

She swallowed
over a new lump in her throat. “I’m so sorry, Seth. I think I need at least one
more day.” When he glanced away, she hurried on, “It’s not about you, anymore,
though. You know that, right? I want to be home with you, but I’m so scared
that, when I get there, I’ll just let everything slide back to the way it was,
unless I have a plan in place. I just need to figure out how exactly I’m going
to make myself commit to having a life of my own—one that’s not wholly defined
by you and the girls.”

 “I understand.
Take all the time you need.”

She knew it
wasn’t what he wanted, and she loved him even more for saying it anyway. “But I
don’t want you to have to suffer because of me. You should take the girls home
with you. I’ll just be another day or two.”

Her voice
cracked on the last word.

Seth seemed to
be thinking hard, but finally he shook his head. “No. They should stay here.”
Before she could argue, he went on. “I have to work late tomorrow anyway.
They’ll be happier with you than spending most of the day with Sarah.”

Sarah was the
nanny they’d hired after Stella quit and moved out here with Erin’s father.
Lately, however, Sarah had only worked part time, since Erin was home so often.

“Are you sure?”
Erin replied, studying his face to see if there were any sign of his hiding his
real feelings. “Because I don’t want to keep the girls away from you.”

“I’m sure. And
it will only be another day or two. Right?”

“Right,” she
assured him, leaning over to kiss the side of his mouth. “We’ll be home on
Tuesday, at the latest.”

Seth relaxed
for real and smiled at her. The sweet, intimate smile she usually only saw in
the bedroom. “Good.”

They sat
together, as close as they could get, for several more minutes. While there was
still too much uncertainty for Erin to feel perfectly happy, she actually felt
peaceful for the first time in a really long while.

When she
noticed that the sun was getting lower, she finally pulled away and stood up.
“We should get back. It must be almost three already. Who knows what kind of
trouble the girls are getting into?”

Seth agreed,
and they started back toward the spot where they’d been picnicking.

Before the
girls were even in sight, Erin and Seth heard what kind of trouble they’d been
getting into.

To be more
exact, they heard loud, piercing screams.

After meeting
each other’s eyes, Erin and Seth hurried the rest of the way there.

When they
arrived, she saw their daughters at what was clearly the height of a fight. A
real fight. A loud, angry, intense, dramatic, violent fight.

Both girls were
screaming furiously at each other—the words lost in the torrent of extreme
emotion. Stella was actually having to hold Anna back, as the little girl
seemed to be trying to free herself to launch an attack on her older sister.

Mackenzie had
never been as physical in her anger. Instead, she stood stiffly beside Erin’s
father, hurling insults at her sister, which were obviously intended to rile
Anna up even further.

Erin blinked,
momentarily stunned by the passionate altercation. The girls had occasionally
been reduced to this kind of intensity before, but usually Erin was able to
curb the conflict before it got to this point.

Now that it
had, Erin couldn’t immediately think of what to do.

Seth, however,
experienced no such lapse. He took three steps forward and roared, “Enough!”

His voice
wasn’t angry, but it was very, very loud.

The girls, who
hadn’t even seen their parents approaching, immediately froze in shock at the
bellow of their father’s unexpected voice.

Their screams
catching in their throats, Anna and Mackenzie jerked toward Seth, their red
faces momentarily uncomprehending.

Erin took a
breath of relief at the sudden silence, although she wasn’t foolish enough to
think it was over quite yet.

It wasn’t. As
Erin moved over to stand beside Seth, Anna burst into hysterical tears and sat
down with a thump on the grass. She was trying to gasp out words through her
sobs, but all Erin could pick out was, “Mac…Mac…sit…mean!”

Mackenzie could
evidently understand these anguished wails better than Erin. Her face was red
and scowling and obstinate, and she glared at her sobbing sister without pity.
“I was not mean! I was sitting there first. Anna pushed me! Daddy, she started
it—”

While Mackenzie
spoke, Anna’s wails had gotten louder. Her little face was just as red as Mackenzie’s
was, and her hair, which had been pulled into a neat ponytail, had gotten
snarled into an off-center mess.

“Quiet,” Seth
commanded.

Immediately,
both girls broke their words off again, clearly intimidated by their father’s
authoritative voice.

“I didn’t ask
for explanations yet.”

Despite her
sincere explanations to Seth about wanting to be strong earlier, Erin was
secretly glad that he was here to take care of this. She’d handled many fights
before, but she was so drained and emotional at the moment that she wasn’t sure
she would have done a good job of it this time.

Besides, a
tiny, girlish part of herself—the part that still couldn’t believe she was
married to Seth Thomas—still loved to watch him being a daddy.

Seth glanced
over questioningly to Erin’s father, who had stepped away from Mackenzie at the
approach of her parents. When they’d arrived, his face had looked stressed, but
now he seemed to be slightly amused. He explained, “I believe it started over a
dispute about who would sit on the best rock, as a chair for the tree stump
table. I’m not sure how it got so out of control. We should have—”

“Dad,” Erin
interrupted. “Please. This obviously wasn’t your fault. The girls know better
than to fight like this.” She gave Mackenzie, who was stewing, and Anna, who
was whimpering, disappointed looks.