Page 58 of Back in the Saddle

I needed a second.

Actually, I needed to get off the phone so I could deal.

Before I could do that, Eric said, “Two questions.”

“What?” I whispered.

“Two questions. You start. Whatever you ask, I have to answer, no bullshit, no evading. Then I get two, and the same.”

Oh God.

I really wanted my two questions.

And I was terrified of his.

“Deal?” he pressed.

“Okay,” I said.

See?

Ireallywanted my two questions.

“Hit me,” he invited.

“Why didn’t you ever get married?” I asked something, in all his hotness, and coolness, that had been bugging me since I met him.

“Who told you I’ve never been married?” he answered.

Uh…

“No one,” I said. “I just assumed.”

“I was married for six years to a woman I met in LA. Her name’s Savannah. She was the executive chef at a hot-shit restaurant. She wanted to start her own, and I backed that play. She loved what she did and she was really good at it. I just had no idea what kind of time it would require of her, which was pretty much every hour she was awake.”

“I know something about this,” I said carefully. “Lucia, our chef at SC, used to be like that. I wasn’t there when it happened, but I’ve heard she and her husband Mario had some issues and it got rocky there for a while.”

“Yeah,” Eric confirmed, his tone weighty. “Rocky.”

Cripes.

When he didn’t keep talking, I did.

“Lucia and Mario made a deal. She comes in at six to do the prep work and start cooking, but she leaves at three. Period, dot. Though, as a family, she and Mario and their kids tend her herb garden.”

“Well, Savannah wasn’t into making a deal like that. I understood in the beginning it was going to take some concentration, commitment and a lot of work. But four years into it, and her restaurant was a commercial and critical success, I wasn’t feeling her being dead to the world when I got up and took off for work, and having her wake me up at two so I could fuck her before she passed out when she got home.”

Well, that was honest.

“Yeah, that doesn’t sound like a fulfilling relationship,” I muttered.

“It wasn’t.”

“She wasn’t willing to compromise?”

“When I broached it, she told me that I was trying to force a double standard on her. I didn’t have a nine to five job, why did I expect that of her? She’s right. I didn’t have a nine to five job. But I also didn’t work sixteen-hour days, not pick up calls and completely ignore texts.”

“Yikes.”

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