She’d paid extra attention to her makeup and hair and had donned a sexy, slinky dress she knew would get a rise out of Tate. With any luck he wouldn’t be able to take his eyes off her during the entire meal and his gaze would smolder with all the things he’d do to her once they arrived home.
She shivered in delight as she retouched her lip gloss and patted her upswept hair. Little curly tendrils floated carelessly down her neck and against her cheek. She knew without false modesty that she looked her absolute best.
Hoping that Tate would be at the table when she returned, she closed her clutch and rushed back, her heart sinking when she saw his chair still unoccupied. She slowly retook her seat, scanning the interior to see if he was arriving.
She’d just let out a heavy sigh when her cell phone vibrated. Hoping it was Tate, she opened her clutch and lunged for it. As she glanced at the incoming name she saw it was indeed Tate.
“Tate? Where are you?” she asked breathlessly, trying to keep an accusing note from her voice.
“I’m sorry, my girl.” His deep-timbered voice slid like silk over her ears and she got a delicious thrill every time he called her “my girl.” “I just got caught up in a last-minute client call but I’m on my way out the door. Give me twenty depending on traffic and I’ll meet you there. If you like go ahead and order for us. You know my preference. By the time the food is served, I’ll be there.”
Chessy couldn’t help the frown that curved her lips downward. That wasn’t the way things worked in their relationship. Not at all. Tate was her Dominant. Not just her Dominant but her lover, her husband, the man she adored—and trusted—with all her heart.
He always made the decisions. He always ordered her food. Her heart gave a guilty twinge. She was acting like a petulant, pouty two-year-old. He merely didn’t want to hold up their dinner, but still, there was a small part of her that registered that lately, with recurring frequency, he’d drifted away from the dominance he’d always held over her. More and more she was forced to act on her own. Make the decisions that Tate always made.
It sounded silly to anyone looking in from the outside. Like she wasn’t capable of making her own decisions and was some helpless twit, lost without her husband. But shewillinglyceded power to Tate in their relationship. He made her feel safe. Cherished. Utterly adored because he took care of her every need. Or at least he used to.
Their relationship—their lifestyle—was her choice. Perhaps the biggest choice of her life. She was an intelligent, smart woman. She had no reservations when it came to knowing what she was capable of. But she chose to give up power to her Dominant, and submissiveness wasn’t for the weak. Not at all. She knew she wielded every bit as much power in her marriage to Tate as he did. Just in a different way.
“I’ll take care of it,” she said softly. “Drive safe. I can’t wait to see you so we can kick off our anniversary and have an entire weekend to ourselves. It’s been so long, Tate. I can’t tell you how much I need this. How much I needyou.”
There was a lengthy pause and she cursed herself for already putting a damper on the evening before it ever began. It was as if he had no idea what to say in response to what amounted to aplea.
“I love you. See you in a minute,” she said brightly, to cover up the awkwardness caused by her passionate, needy sounding outburst. And, well, the words were truth. Shedidneed him. She needed her husband back, even if it was only for one weekend before things went back to the same day-to-day routine.
“I love my girl too,” he said gruffly. “Be there as quick as I can.”
When she ended the call, her stomach felt as though it had lead in it. And she didn’t understand why. He was only going to be twenty minutes late. Thank God he was making it at all. When the phone had vibrated, she’d fully expected him to tell her he couldn’t make it. That something had come up and he was cancelling. On their anniversary of all nights.
Was this what their marriage had come to? Her always expecting the worst? But in her defense, that’s precisely what she’d gotten over the last two years. Ever since his partner had bowed out and Tate had to take over the entire client load, Tate had been determined to step up and not lose a single client.
To date, he’d only lost one and he wanted to keep it that way. Which meant being called out at all hours of the day. Clients wanting to meet with him. Or calling him in panic after a bad day in the stock market. It seemed to never end.
In the beginning, Tate had wanted Chessy to accompany him to his dinners with his clients. Had wanted her to play the consummate hostess. They’d even had small dinner parties at their house that Chessy had arranged with Joss’s help since Joss was such an amazing cook.
But lately? He hadn’t asked her to accompany him for anything. He’d made an offhand remark that it was becoming too much for her and that he didn’t want his job to consume themboth. At the time Chessy had taken it as a sign of his caring. That he wanted to take care of her and not put her in high-pressure situations. But marriage was all about partnership, wasn’t it?
She didn’t think she’d ever failed Tate or embarrassed him, but now that paranoid side of her wondered just that. If he was somehow ashamed of her, that she wastoooutgoing,toobubbly for the staid, moneyed clients he catered to. His not wanting her to be a part of him courting and wining and dining his clients had ended up being yet another rejection, one that at the time hadn’t bothered her, but in retrospect made her heart clench. Was Tate growing tired of their marriage? Did she no longer satisfy him? Had she done something to cause him to lose faith in her? Their relationship? The not knowing was eating her up on the inside and it was growing harder and harder to cover up her growing unhappiness with a bright smile and words of understanding. She was lying to her friends, even though she knew they saw right through her façade. But the simple fact that shewaslying, keeping so much locked inside her, made her feel like the ultimate fraud.
She swallowed the quick knot in her throat, determined she would not cry tonight and ruin her carefully applied makeup. Joss and Kylie had both come over to lend advice and help her prepare for her anniversary night. She’d needed their support because she was starting to doubt herself and she hated that.
Just because she chose to surrender her submission to Tate didn’t make her a brainless twit unable to perform the simplest task unless he was there to direct her. But him always being there, taking care of her, cherishing her, had become her safety net. She knew she’d never fall without him there to catch her. There was comfort in that knowledge. It gave her a sense of security that she’d come to rely on. And lately? She felt like she was operating without that safety net. It was a sad testament of her marriage that she saw more of Kylie and Joss and was more in tune withtheirrelationships than she was with her own!
She motioned for the waiter after studying the menu. The truth was she wasn’t that hungry and her nerves were on edge because she absolutely planned to address her growing unhappiness with Tate this weekend and she hadnoidea how that would go over.
One part of her thought he’d be horrified that he wasn’t providing what she needed. Another part of her feared he’d be angry with her for not “understanding” the sacrifices he was making in order to make them financially secure. It was a coin flip and it saddened her that she was so out of touch with Tate’s thought processes that she had no idea which way he’d go. She liked to think that he would be understanding and make the effort to spend more time with her. But the not knowing was killing her.
The waiter promptly appeared at her table, and in a low voice barely above cracking, she placed hers and Tate’s orders and asked for a bottle of their favorite wine. A sparkling white they drank every year on their anniversary. They’d discovered it on their honeymoon and had vowed to commemorate each year by toasting to an even better next year.
So why did she feel the weight of the world on her shoulders and feel so fatalistic? Why did the last two years of toasting to a “better year to come” make her feel like it had been a dismal failure, because the ensuing year wasn’t better. It had only grown progressively worse.
She’d never be so stupid as to say it couldn’t get any worse, because it could. What if Tate reacted to her addressing her own unhappiness by saying he was equally unhappy and that he wanted out of their marriage? That was the ultimate worst that could happen, so things could most certainly get worse, though at this point she wondered if they were even truly married in their hearts anymore.
Married people didn’t operate like they did. At least not the marriages she was acquainted with. Or rather the relationships. Were Joss and Dash and Kylie and Jensen the exceptions to the rule? Or were they the norm? Because Chessy’s marriage didn’t even come close to resembling the adoring, tight-knit couples she was friends with. And she’d never really looked beyond them because … well … she was afraid to. Because she was afraid of what she might discover. So she’d adopted a head-in-the-sand approach and that wasn’t getting her anywhere at all. It was only making her more miserable.
She refused to look at her watch. Instead she drank in the occupants of the room and played her favorite people-watching game, trying to guess the status of the people enjoying their meals.
She picked out one argument that appeared to be in full swing. Their voices rose before the woman loudly shushed her significant other and then looked around in embarrassment to make sure they weren’t being observed. Chessy quickly averted her gaze, not wanting to add to the poor woman’s obvious discomfort.
