Making It Last (Camelot 4)

“Can we go to sleep now?” she asked.

“Fuck, yeah. Please. Let’s.”

When he reached over to get the light, her fingers snuck beneath his waistband and stroked over his ass.

It was going to be a while yet before they went to sleep. But once they did, he planned to sleep like the dead.

Tomorrow, he would see what he could do about what happened next.

He liked the sound of fifty-hour weeks and dinner with the kids. Amber running marathons and working at a job that got her out among people, feeling good about herself.

He liked the sound of his wife, happy.

Tony turned out the light and made her as happy as he could in the meantime.

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

Dear Readers,

There is romance in marriage.

This is why it’s so often the happy endpoint of romance novels, right? Because marriage contains within it all the best stuff: joy, understanding, comfort, mutual appreciation, companionship, lovemaking, and baked goods. Not necessarily in that order.

But marriage contains all the worst stuff, too—sorrow, alienation, incomprehension, discomfort, misunderstanding, loneliness, dry spells, burned roasts.

Marriage is an agreement two people make to move through life together. On the plus side, this means they’ll always have each other. On the minus side, it also means that life will keep happening to them, and they will keep having to cope with it.

The hope in any marriage—and the promise inherent in most romance novels’ happy endings—is that the couple in question will be better off coping with life together than they would have been alone.

When I wrote How to Misbehave, I left Amber Clark and Tony Mazzara a few days into their fledgling relationship. They’d found each other and taken halting but important steps toward intimacy and trust, yet on the last page of that book, Amber and Tony’s story was just beginning.

I knew how they ended up, of course. I gave you glimpses of them together in Along Came Trouble and Flirting with Disaster—married, with three rambunctious boys and a dog, still living near family in Camelot, with Tony continuing to run his father’s construction business.

But there was more. I knew there was more. And even though it didn’t fit in my plans, I didn’t have time to write it, and no one particularly wanted me to write it, I had to tell this other piece of Amber and Tony’s story. Because I couldn’t stop thinking about them.

I couldn’t stop thinking about marriage—the best and the worst of it.

Making It Last takes place almost fourteen years after How to Misbehave. I wrote it because I wanted to tell a story about how life happens to love. About how hard it is for men who are working at supporting their families and women who are working at raising their children to keep track of who they are and what matters most to them.

I wanted to write about how, in many marriages, there are these pausing points—ten, twenty, thirty years in—when two people who have committed to each other are forced to stop and think. To decide. Would they choose each other again? Will they?

And I wanted to show how this choice—if made correctly, with awareness and love and open communication—can give two people the courage to reframe their notions of themselves, so they can face the next stretch of road in front of them stronger, better, and more capable of handling whatever challenges come their way.

I believe that the romance of marriage is about these moments of choosing—these anniversary affirmations that, yes, you’re the one I want. Still. Even now. Especially now.

Only you.

Thank you, as ever, for reading.

All best wishes,

Ruthie

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Without the support of Emily Sylvan Kim, Mary Ann Rivers, and Serena Bell, I might not have written this story. Thank you, you lovely, wonderful, brilliant women, for understanding what I was trying to do and encouraging me to carry on, even through the tough parts.

Thanks to my editor, Sue Grimshaw, for humoring me, and for the astute revision ideas.