Page 16 of Coming Home

At dinner, David watched her carefully. She still seemed melancholy. Had he really been neglecting her that badly these last few months? Did she have seasonal depression? He just wanted to take care of her.

When the server came to take their order, he ordered them each a steak, getting Emily’s cooked medium instead of the rare that he preferred. He also ordered appetizers and a dessert for after the meal.

Emily shook her head. “I thought you ate dinner with a client.”

David grinned. “Nope. I canceled, hoping to catch you in the bathtub. That decision paid off nicely I would say.”

His bride blushed as she sipped her wine and tried to stifle a grin of her own. “I suppose it did”

“So. What are you wearing to your party on Thursday?”

Emily lifted an eyebrow. “You’ve never cared about what I wear before.”

David shook his head. “That’s where you’re wrong, dear Emily. I care about everything where you’re concerned.”

Emily gave a little shrug. “Tristan’s favorite color was red. So I thought I would wear the red dress you bought me for my birthday.”

David smiled. “Excellent.”

Her eyes narrowed, and he knew she was on to him.

“What are you up to?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

She pursed her lips and shook her head. “You’re ridiculous.”

He shrugged. “Maybe. But you love me.”

“I really do. I’m sorry if I’ve been difficult recently.”

He leaned over and picked up her hands. “Stop. You’re fine. We’re both figuring things out. Our lives have never been calm. Especially not mine. We have to figure out what normal looks like for us since we’ve never had that. I don’t mind telling you I hope it involves a lot of family Christmases and trips to Solitaire to be with our friends on the weekends.”

Emily nodded. “That sounds perfect. I’ll get used to doing Christmas your way, I promise.”

“And I will tone down some of my holiday cheer if it makes things easier on you.”

She shook her head. “No. Please. It really makes me happy to see you enjoying yourself. I think I’ll just always be a little bluesy this time of year. Your joy might rub off and make it easier.”

David understood her sadness around the holidays. Growing up in the foster care system, there had been several holidays that were spent traveling from one house to another. He’d never been abused in the foster care system the way some of his friends and the people he’d helped over the years had, but Christmas usually wasn’t an overly joyous time in his life.

And now, he made the holiday as extravagant as he could, much the way he made the rest of his life. Emily had grown up solidly middle class with a lot of medical bills to pay on behalf of her brother. Her parents died when she was eighteen and left her to care for her brother for another decade before he passed away of the disease they always knew would kill him.

How he’d gotten lucky enough to meet her he would never know. But he would always be grateful to God, the universe, or whatever made it happen. She’d come along just before one of the darkest moments in his adult life and been a solid rock. He wanted to be the same for her.

They just had to figure out their new normal.

“I think we should get dinner to go, and finish decorating the tree,” Emily was saying with a smile. “And maybe finish what we started when you came home.”

His eyes grew hooded with lust as he watched his wife. “I thought we finished that just fine. Are you saying you didn’t get enough?”

Emily grinned. “I can never get enough of you, Sir.”

Clever girl.

9

How do I look?

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