Red Hot Reunion

The easiest explanation was the one she grabbed hold of. All of her uncertainty, all of her fear about moving forward in this new life with Jason, must have come from her upbringing. From the way her parents had coddled her and then planned every last second of her future.

Moving in with Jason was the first time she had ever done something entirely on her own. Something that wasn’t in her parents’ plan or her ex-husband’s plan.

That had to be the reason she was so frightened, why she wasn’t jumping out of bed to embrace the day, to head to Palo Alto with Jason and pack up her things. Certainly he hadn’t given her any cause to doubt his motives.

But questions jiggled away inside her nonetheless. As she kicked the sheets off her legs and headed for the shower, she wondered if he had really been asleep when she’d professed her love. Or had he just been pretending? And if so, why would he do that?

Not that she was going to ask him any of the above, of course. She didn’t want to rock the boat. Not now that they were both finally on it.

A knock sounded on the bathroom door. “Five minutes to hot waffles.”

Jason’s cheerful voice worked like magic and her doubts vanished. The man she loved wanted to be with her. She couldn’t possibly ask for more.

Jason whistled as they stood on Emma’s doorstep two hours later. “Big house.”

She bit her lip. “Too big. I guess I always thought I’d have kids to fill it, but…” She waited for Jason to reassure her, to tell her that they’d have plenty of kids together, but he didn’t.

Shaking off her unreasonable disappointment, she unlocked the door. “It’s nothing like your house,” she started to explain, wanting him to be prepared for the beige-and-white world that she’d inhabited for so long, so different from his colorful, interesting home.

“I didn’t think it would be,” was all he said, and she couldn’t decide if she was imagining the hard edge to his voice. But then he turned and smiled at her and she knew that she was doing just that.

Why did that little voice inside insist on being such a killjoy, she wondered helplessly? Any other woman would have been over the moon about moving in with Jason. No second thoughts, no wondering if it was the right step. No worrying if he really loved her as much as she loved him. No tormenting herself over whether they could really make things work, if they’d actually managed to resolve their past or if they were simply going to pretend nothing bad had ever happened?

Not having been inside her house in nearly a week, Emma was shocked by the sight before her. How had she never noticed how utterly lifeless it was? There wasn’t a shred of personality on the walls, in the bookshelves, or in the furnishings.

“A decorator help you with this?” he asked. His words didn’t hold any judgment, merely curiosity. Still, she felt frozen by his question, didn’t know how to respond, how to admit that she hadn’t even been in control of this one little aspect of her life, until he grinned and added, “Because I’m thinking you should ask for your money back, if that’s the case.”

She giggled then, glad that he’d broken the ice on this very strange trip to her house, the house she’d shared with Steven.

“She might have been color-blind,” she managed to joke and was thrilled to see his eyes light up in appreciation.

“No shit. What, did she think the color police were going to come in here and arrest you if she used anything other than beige, gray, and white?”

Emma nodded, her giggles turning into full-on laughter. “My mother loved it,” she finally managed.

Jason shook his head. “Of course she did. And that’s why I’m about to institute a new rule.”

Emma raised her eyebrow. She was impressed—and somewhat disappointed, to tell the total truth—that he hadn’t taken a potshot at her mother again, especially when she’d given him the perfect opening.

“We’re not taking one single thing out of here thatyou don’t love.”

She shook her head. “Then we can pretty much get back in the car right now.”

He frowned. “You’re kidding, right? You don’t own anything that’s really you? That you can’t live without?”

Emma had to think about that. “No, wait. I do. It’s in the garage.”

Five years ago she and Kate had been to lunch in San Francisco when they’d walked past a gallery whose paintings had absolutely called out to Emma. Bright showy flowers, thick acrylic paint, chunky enough to dip your finger into. She hadn’t bought one then, but she couldn’t get the images out of her head. A week later, after a gala lunch, she’d gone back to the gallery, pulled out her business checkbook, and with shaky hands had paid for the painting.

But she’d never had the guts to actually put it up. Steven would have hated it. The saddest thing, Emma now realized as she pulled the large canvas out from behind boxes of old tax records, was that she hadn’t bothered to hang it up even when Steven moved out last year.

“That’s a Sam Marshall, isn’t it?”

She looked up in surprise from the painting that evoked such a mixture of memories. “Yes, it is. You recognize his work?”

Jason nodded. “He’s good friend of mine, actually. Lives and works just up the road. That was some of his earlier work, I believe. You’ve had it stashed in the garage all this time?”

Emma grimaced. “It never seemed to fit in with the rest of the house.”

“No kidding.”

She didn’t bother taking offense to his blunt statement. Not when it was so true. Frankly, she didn’t want to be in her house anymore. Not with Jason.

“I can come back and pack by myself another day.”

But she could see the determination in his eyes. “Nope. I want to help you pack up everything you need today, even if we need to rent a U-Haul truck to drive it all back up to my house. That way you can put your house on the market right away.”

She spun around, nearly dropping the painting. Jason reached out and grabbed it before the heavy gold frame clattered to the floor.

“Sell my house?” She barely left off the words,Are you crazy?

Jason’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “I thought that’s what we’d agreed on.”

“We did. I mean, I’m going to move in with you, but I hadn’t though about—”

“What do you need the house for? You’re not planning on coming back here, so…”