She chuckled. "I wouldn't have thought so."

"That's a lot of work. Who'd have thought it would take so long to make something so little?"

"But they're pretty." She'd finished off his earring and was looking with genuine pleasure down at the matching pair. "It's worth the work to end up with something so pretty."

"It's not worth it to me."

Her expression changed slightly as she raised her eyes to meet his, but he didn't know what she was thinking.

"Did you ever help your mom cook when you were a kid?" she asked.

She'd changed the subject so quickly he thought he might have missed something. "Yeah. Sometimes."

"Cooking is similar. It's sometimes tedious and a lot of work, but it's worth it after it's done. What did you make with your mom besides pancakes?"

He'd already told her about the nights his mom had come home from work late and they'd make pancakes, and it was nice that she'd remembered it. "Cookies and cake. I mostly helped so I could lick the bowls. I never cared much about helping with the bigger meals." He thought back to himself as a kid. "I guess, even then, I didn't want to work too hard."

The last words were soft, spoken almost to himself. It was like he'd suddenly seen himself from a distance and didn't really like what he saw.

"Is that why you're not into serious relationships?" She'd cut a new piece of wire and was staring down at it, the question asked almost diffidently.

"Yeah. I guess. I don't know."

Her eyes lifted. "You don't know, or you don't want to tell me?"

He wasn't even sure of the answer to that question.

"When was the last time you really tried to have a serious relationship with a woman?"

He thought back. He'd had nothing but one-night-stands and temporary flings for years. Years. "In grad school, I guess."

Deanna looked genuinely interested, even though her hands never stopped working. "Who was that?"

"Her name was Heather. She was in one of my cla.s.ses. I was totally hung up on her." He hadn't thought about the woman for ages, and the memory was almost surprising.

"Did you ask her out?"

"Yeah. We went out a few times, since we both believed in just having a good time. But then my cousin was getting married, and I invited her to the wedding."

"She said no?"

Mitch.e.l.l's chest felt unusually tight, more from admitting this to Deanna than the memory itself. "Yeah. She just wanted to have a good time, and she was mad at me for changing terms."

"Were you heartbroken?" Deanna asked, almost breathlessly.

He was afraid she might be blowing the story out of proportion. It wasn't some sort of deep secret to his soul. It was just a random thing that happened. "I don't know. I was disappointed and then I was angry. I was..." He cleared his throat. "I was mean to her."

Deanna's brow lowered. "Why were you mean to her?"

He gave a little shrug. "That's just what I do, when I put myself out there and am rejected." He sighed. "It's a way of dealing with it. I guess I've always been like that."

"That's not unusual. If you feel like you're being attacked, it's human nature to strike back. Not that poor Heather deserved it." Deanna's eyes were searching his face. "What's the matter? What are you thinking about now?"

He had absolutely no reason to answer her, but he found himself doing it anyway. "I was just thinking back to when I was eight. I wanted to meet my father."

Her expression changed. "I thought you said he was a salesman pa.s.sing through town."

"He was. I never got to meet him. I wanted my mom to tell me his name so I could contact him. I pestered my poor mom for weeks about it, and she kept putting me off. Finally, she admitted that she'd contacted him several times over the years, to see if he'd changed his mind, but he still didn't want to know me."

His voice cracked slightly on the last words, and for the first time in a really long time he once again felt the wave of crushing rejection he'd felt as a boy, when he'd wanted so much to be loved by a father, only to hear that he wasn't wanted at all.

Deanna was silent for several moments. "I'm sorry," she murmured at last. "That's...that must have really hurt."

"It did." He shook his head to dispel the mood. "Not now, but it was hard to take when I was eight. I was so angry. I wrote my dad a searing letter of contempt and outrage, and I put it in an envelope for my mom to mail to him."

"Did she do it?"

"I doubt it, but it made me feel better to think she did." He let out his breath, wishing he hadn't admitted something so vulnerable to Deanna. He wanted her to think he was impressive, not some silly, spiteful, lazy boy.

Her expression didn't look surprised or disappointed in him. In fact, she still looked rather soft. "It's nice that you're close to your mom."

He should have kept his mouth shut, but instead he admitted, "I wasn't always."

"Really?"

"Yeah. In college and then through my twenties I was...I don't know, I was kind of distant. She always called me, but I never made much effort toward her. Same with Brie, to tell you the truth."

Deanna believed in family. She was really close to her own. She wasn't going to like knowing that he'd been such a bad son and brother.

"Well," she said softly, "at least you're close to both of them now. Does Brie have a different father?"

"Yeah. Another loser. My mom always had bad taste in men. But at least Brie knows who he is, and she occasionally gets to see him. He lives in Savannah too."

"Oh. I guess maybe that's why you don't believe in marriage, since you never saw a good one."

He was starting to feel a little uncomfortable, so he turned the conversation intentionally. "Did you?"

"Yeah. My parents had a good marriage, and I was eleven when they died, so I was old enough to really see their marriage."

"They were in a car accident?"

"Yeah."

"Eleven is pretty young to lose both of your parents." He could just picture her as a girl, with her long hair and big eyes, trying desperately to be grown-up enough to take care of her family.

She was staring down at her beadwork. "Our grandmother stepped up to take care of us. She's...she's eccentric, but she loves us."

"She doesn't act like she loves you." He said the words before he could think through whether they were wise.

Deanna didn't look offended. "I know, but she does. She's still trapped in the past in a lot of ways, and what she thinks is best for us, isn't always the best. But she tries. She might not be warm and fuzzy, but people love in different ways."

"Still, it seems like you've had to sacrifice a lot to help take care of your family. Did you never want to go to college? Surely you could have gotten grants or scholarships or something, if you couldn't afford it."

She put down her beads. "Yeah. I could have. But I never really felt the strong desire to go to college-not like Kelly has. It seemed more important for me to work full-time so I could make a real salary as soon as possible. Maybe it was stupid." She closed her eyes. "Maybe I've made nothing but stupid decisions."

"I didn't mean to imply that," he said quickly, worried because she looked suddenly glum. "I was just asking."

She opened her eyes to meet his squarely. "But you think I've been kind of weak, don't you?"

He didn't think she was weak anymore. Not even close. But there was something serious to what she was asking, so he answered her carefully. "I don't think you're weak. I think maybe you've poured yourself so much into doing what you think is good for your family that you don't always think about what's really good for you."

She broke their gaze and looked at a spot in the air just past his shoulder. After a minute, she gave a little nod, as if she might have admitted to herself that he was right. She finally said, "You know, Harrison Damon said something similar-about making sure family loyalty doesn't lead you into something that's wrong. It's...interesting to think about."

Mitch.e.l.l didn't think what Damon had said was the same thing he was trying to say.

And he didn't appreciate having Damon dragged into a private conversation between him and his wife.

All he said, however, was, "Hmm."

A few weeks later, Mitch.e.l.l was actually looking forward to getting home after work.

He'd never been someone like that-someone who longed for the end of the day so he could leave work-but the feeling had gradually been developing over the last weeks.

He and Deanna had started having dinner together most nights. Sometimes she would have been fixing it as he got home and sometimes they'd fix it together. And then they'd hang out and watch movies or work out or she'd tease him into helping with her beads.

He was still almost crippled by l.u.s.t sometimes and usually went to bed physically frustrated-unless he gave in and took a shower to take care of it-but his evenings were becoming very enjoyable nonetheless.

It was an entirely new feeling-to look forward to, something so...quiet.

But he was eager to get home as he left the Claremont just before six on a Thursday evening. He wondered if Deanna had any plans for dinner tonight. He wondered what she was doing. What kind of mood she was in.

He wondered if there was a way he could convince her that s.e.x wasn't as off the table between them as she seemed to think.

He was generally in a good mood as he entered the house. He paused, glancing around, looking for a sign as to where Deanna might be. She was usually in the library or outside on the patio at this time of day or in the kitchen working on dinner, but she wasn't any of those places.

He wandered around until her suite was the only remaining place in the house for her to be. He tapped on the door, since it was closed.

"Yeah," she called out, her voice sounding rather distracted.

He walked in and found her on the floor, leaning against the big chair instead of sitting on it. In her lap was the laptop he'd bought her last week when her old one had died.

"What's the matter?" he asked, immediately concerned by her expression. She was staring at the screen.

She glanced up at him and then back at the screen, her features twisting. "What? Oh, it's nothing."

He walked over and lowered himself to sit beside her. "Well, it's obviously something. You're upset."

"It's just..." She cleared her throat. "A friend sent me this link to a blog. It's some sort of local news blog for Savannah, although it looks like mostly gossip to me. Anyway, there's a story about us. I mean, about you. And me."

His forehead wrinkled, and he took the laptop from her hands so he could read the screen. The story was indeed about them-about their marriage-including a lot of speculation about how he seemed to have "bought" her as a bride.

"s.h.i.t," he muttered. "What the h.e.l.l?"

"I guess it's because we started working on the house, and they must know the Beauforts wouldn't have money to fund it unless you were giving us the money. I don't understand why anyone cares about our marriage, though."

"They'll care about anything that's not their business." He was angry-surprisingly angry, since it was just silly gossip on a not very popular blog-but he didn't like the way the article was talking about Deanna as bought and paid for, implying she was some sort of prost.i.tute.

He didn't like it at all.

He grew even angrier when he looked at her again and saw the tension of emotion on her face.

"I'm sorry," he murmured, lifting a hand to cup her face without thinking. "Are you really upset?"

"A little. The insinuations are insulting." She looked slightly surprised. "Mostly I thought you'd be upset."

He lifted his eyebrows. "I don't give a d.a.m.n. People have always said anything they want about me. It doesn't bother me at all. I don't care about that kind of thing, remember?" He gave a half-smile that he hoped would make her smile too.

It did. Her face relaxed for a moment as she smiled back. But then she said, "But what about Gina? The Darlington Cafe deal hasn't gone through yet, has it?"

He bit back a curse, suddenly remembering that not unimportant detail. "No. Not until next month. It probably won't be an issue, though. I doubt she reads that blog, and we can always shrug it off as malicious gossip."

She was frowning again as she scanned over the story. "Do you think we should act more like a normal couple? No one knows we don't share a bedroom, but out in public, I mean."

"I think we act mostly like a normal couple when we go out. Most couples aren't all over each other in public, so it's not like we're totally unusual."

"I know. But we just go to public functions. Most couples go out to eat or on outings just the two of them. The article says we're never seen on dates."

He made an impatient noise in his throat and reached over to close out the browser. "Just forget about that stupid story. It's not important enough for us to worry about."

"Okay." She stared at her laptop screen, even though the story was no longer visible.

He sighed. "You're still upset."

"I'm not. I just want to make sure we do everything we need to do-I mean, for the marriage to be convincing. We're getting our whole house rebuilt, so I want to make sure you're...you're..."

"I'm what?" For some reason, his breath caught in his throat and his pulse sped up.

"You're getting everything you need from this marriage, that I'm holding up my side of the bargain."

She was serious. She genuinely had no idea how much he was enjoying being married to her, spending time with her, even though it wasn't involving s.e.x.

She had absolutely no idea.

He felt a little awkward about telling her, since the feeling was so new and uncomfortable, and he was pretty sure he'd end up sounding stupid and trite.

"It's fine," he ended up saying gruffly. "Everything is fine."