Hmm. Now I know what she's baking for me this weekend.

"And what were you imagining?" I ask.

"What?"

"What would I do with the cherry pie filling?"

"You'd spread it over my nipples and lick it off," Liv says breathlessly. "And you'd feed me the gooey cherries with your fingers and make me suck them clean. And you'd scoop up spoonfuls and eat them, then kiss me all sticky and hot while you pushed your c.o.c.k into my p.u.s.s.y... oh..."

I give a m.u.f.fled laugh, rubbing the front of my pants. Doesn't take much from my wife to get me hard. Just picturing her with pie filling smeared over her round t.i.ts, her lips glossy with cherry juice...

Ah, f.u.c.k. My d.i.c.k is starting to throb.

"Take off your panties," I tell Liv.

"What?"

"Reach under your skirt and strip off your panties. Now."

Her breath catches. There's a rustling noise on the other end of the phone before Liv's voice comes through again.

"Okay," she says. "They're off."

"Now go back to work."

"Without any underwear?" She sounds faintly shocked, as if her customers will somehow know she's naked under her skirt.

"Without any underwear." I lower my voice. "I want you to feel your wet p.u.s.s.y rubbing together with every step. I want you to think about spreading your legs for me, taking my c.o.c.k in, bending over to show me your pretty, naked a.s.s. I want your nipples to be hard for the rest of the day, so you can imagine me sucking them after I rip your clothes off. I want you to think about how f.u.c.king good it's going to feel when I plunge inside you deep enough to make you scream."

No response, aside from her heavy, panting breaths. Finally she whispers, "Okay."

Despite my throbbing c.o.c.k, I can't help grinning. "Okay."

"I love you."

"I love you, beauty. Don't you dare put your panties back on."

I end the call and spend the next few minutes thinking about medieval arms and armor to get my mind off all the dirty things I want to do to my wife right this second.

When I have myself under control again, I pull out my cell phone and send Liv a text: Be good, and I'll f.u.c.k you again tonight.

A response comes a few seconds later: That would be lovely, dear, but I don't think your wife would approve.

What the...?

I check the number and groan. I push the call b.u.t.ton, a burn of embarra.s.sment crawling up my chest. "Florence, I'm so sorry."

She laughs. "Don't be. You gave me something to... think about."

"This is why I hate texting."

"I believe that was called s.e.xting," she replies. "Not that I know anything about that, although Mr. Jenkins did send me a message about engine drivers the other day."

"If he's. .h.i.tting on you, let me know and I'll set him straight."

"Actually, if you could give him some pointers, I'd be most grateful," Florence replies rather wistfully. "I asked him to come over one evening to discuss tie plates, but he refused because he didn't want to miss the early bird special at the World Buffet."

"Does he already have a girlfriend?"

"Seriously, Dean? You think a man that clueless has a girlfriend? He clearly lost his game along with most of his hair."

"So why do you want to go out with him?"

"He's a widower who was married for forty-three years," she replies. "He likes to garden, doesn't talk too much, and has a hobby to occupy his time so he won't get on my nerves. Speaking of which, have you contacted engineers about the train restoration yet? Or gotten blueprints?"

I curse inwardly and scribble a reminder to myself on a notepad.

"Not yet," I tell Florence. "I'll get to it soon."

"Let me know as soon as you do," she replies. "I'll speak with you later, Dean. Tell Liv she's a lucky girl, though I'm sure she already knows that."

After we say goodbye and end the call, I turn to my computer and hammer out a few emails to railroad a.s.sociations. I should be working on a paper about feudal social relationships, but I spend two hours looking for information about engine restoration, the details of which I don't understand anyway.

By late afternoon, I'm ready to get away from my desk. I grab my duffle bag with the intention of going to the gym. Instead I find myself driving to Archer's garage.

He's crouched beside a Harley, checking the tires. He glances up when my shadow falls over him.

"Hey, man." He stands and reaches for a greasy rag. "What're you doing here?"

"You want to go out for a beer?"

"With you?"

"Yeah, with me." Discomfort flickers in my chest. "Who else?"

"Uh, sure." Archer tosses the rag aside and jerks his thumb toward the office. "Just gotta finish a few things."

I follow him into the office and sit on the worn sofa, noticing the half-eaten sub sandwich on the desk.

"You remember those weird sandwiches you used to like?" I ask. "Swiss cheese and ketchup. Peanut b.u.t.ter and mayo."

Archer chuckles, his attention on the computer. "I was a weird kid."

"I was a ten-year-old expert on the Crusades and King Arthur," I remind him. "That didn't make for great small talk with other kids on the soccer field."

"You never had a problem with anyone."

Except me.

The unspoken words hang in the air. Though Archer and I have patched things up, we've never talked much about the old slings and arrows that broke apart our relationship in the first place-the fight when I told him our father wasn't Archer's real father.

It's a memory still corroded with regret. I'll never know how different things would have been if I hadn't revealed the secret my mother wanted desperately to keep. If Archer hadn't discovered he wasn't a true West.

Or if he'd known how often I'd wished I was the one with a different father-not because I was ungrateful for what Richard West had done for me, but because I'd never been able to deviate from my set path. Archer had spent his life veering off paths. Making his own.

"Hey, I was doing some research on the steam locomotive." Archer pulls a stack of papers out of a drawer. "Looks like I can order the parts from a dealer in Tennessee. He also put me in touch with an engineer who built one of the engines."

Relief rises in me as I take the papers. "That's great, man, thanks. I didn't know where to start with the engine stuff."

I look through the papers as Archer finishes his work, then goes into the other room to change.

Again, not for the first time, I wonder if things would have been different if my brother had followed his mechanical inclinations toward engineering or a white-collar job that would have made our father proud. Then I think there was probably little Archer could have done to make our father proud-through no fault of his own.

"Where should we go?" Archer comes out of the backroom, pulling a T-shirt over his head. "I could go for some food too."

"Pizza?"

"Always."

We head out to my car, and I drive to a combination pizza parlor and arcade that has both cla.s.sic and new video games. Wooden tables line the place, filled with teens and older, beer-drinking guys.

I get us a table, and Archer goes to the counter to order. He returns with two beers and a bag full of tokens.

"Challenge," he says, sliding into the booth across from me. "Lowest overall score buys the tokens, pizza, and beer."

"Challenge accepted." I click my bottle against his.

When the pizza arrives, we divide it up and eat. Thankfully, our conversation isn't as strained as I'd thought it would be. Archer and I can still talk about sports, cars, politics, and music, even if we have different opinions.

"Hey, I'm taking Nicholas to the downtown fire truck parade next weekend," I tell him, reaching for another slice of pizza. "They let the kids sit in the trucks at the end of the parade. You want to go with us?"

"Sure, but only if I get to turn on the siren."

I grin. "I'll make arrangements."

He grabs the jar of pepper flakes and shakes some onto his pizza. "Liv hear anything about the loan for the party truck?"

I shake my head, still not liking the idea of her tackling a new venture right now-and not liking that I don't like it. Much as I want to support everything Liv wants to do, I'll be d.a.m.ned if our marriage is going to get derailed because she can't keep her mind off one project or another.

"I have a lead on another pickup they could use," Archer says. "I'll check it out before Kelsey and I go to Texas."

"Thanks. When do you leave?"

"After the festival. Liv asked me to help out at the children's stage, and Kelsey is organizing the art booths. What did you get roped into?"

"Nothing yet. I'll probably hang out with Nicholas." I take another swallow of beer. Don't know if it's the alcohol or what, but I say, "So Kelsey said you want to marry her."

Archer's jaw tightens. "Yeah."

"She's independent," I say. "Likes to run her own show."

"You don't need to tell me anything about my girl," Archer says. "I know her."

"She tell you why she doesn't want to get married?"

"Just that everything's so great... which it is... that she doesn't want it to change." Archer shrugs. "Makes no sense. She drives into storms, man. She travels all over the country. h.e.l.l, all over the world. She studies tornados, which are always changing."

"Maybe that's it," I suggest. "When everything else changes, her relationship with you doesn't. Security, you know?"

Archer doesn't respond. A shadow crosses his face, one I recognize all too well. The lingering sense that he's still not good enough for a woman like Kelsey March.

"Let's do it." Archer pushes his bottle away and grabs the bag of game tokens. "Pac-Man first. You're going down."

We spend the next couple of hours moving from one video game to the next, breaking only for more beer before firing at asteroids, speeding down a NASCAR track, battling street fighters, and dodging Donkey Kong. I keep track of our scores in my notebook, which makes Archer laugh.

We return to our table to finish the cold pizza. After I tally our scores, I push the notebook across to Archer with a grimace.

"You win by eight hundred points," I say. "Centipede put you over the top. I never did like that game."

"Excuses, excuses." Archer tears the page out of the notebook and puts it in his pocket. "Souvenir. I can't remember the last time I beat you at a game, so I'll take what I can get."

We clink our bottles. I glance at my watch.

"I should go in about half an hour," I say. "I told Liv I'd be home by nine. She took Nicholas to a kids' concert at the museum."

"So how's it been?" Archer asks, chewing on a stale crust of pizza. "Parenting."

I wonder if he wants me to tell him it's incredible, phenomenal, all that I dreamed it would be. In some ways, it is. In other ways, not so much.

I pick at the label on my beer bottle and don't answer.

"Dean?"

"Sometimes it's great," I finally admit. "Other times it's tough. Or it's even great and tough at the same time."

Archer remains silent, like he's waiting for me to continue.

"I mean, Nicholas is amazing," I say. "And Liv is an incredible mother. It's f.u.c.king insane how much I love them. There's stuff that's beyond anything, like Nicholas saying Daddy for the first time or taking his first steps, or watching him laugh. Times like that I feel like even if I had a million hearts, it still wouldn't be enough."

I continue picking at the label. The noise of the video games drifts from the arcade.

"But?" Archer asks.

"Man, it's rough sometimes." I shake my head. "When he's tired or cranky and can't tell you what he wants. Or when Liv and I can't do things the way we used to. Or when Nicholas won't sleep. One time last year he got sick overnight, like burning up with a fever and having trouble breathing, and he ended up in ICU.

"Longest night of my life. I started imagining what might happen to him, and I wouldn't be able to do anything about it. It was so f.u.c.king terrifying. Then when we knew he'd be okay, I almost hit the floor with relief."

I concentrate on peeling the label off the bottle, not sure where this is all coming from, but not regretting that I'm telling my brother.