“How could I not love you?” He searched her face as if he couldn’t get enough of it. “You’re everything. Smart and beautiful and funny and gifted. Sexy. God, are you sexy. When I couldn’t find you in the water, I wanted to die myself.” She’d worked so hard not to cry, and now he was the one with tears in his eyes. “I love you, Liv. I love you in more ways than I can count.”
She’d always known he had a sensitive heart, no matter how hard he tried to hide it. She lifted her hand and gently brushed her thumb along his cheekbone, catching a tear, not saying anything, listening.
He searched her face, taking in every detail. “I need to know I’ll always come first. And you need to know I’d never make you choose between me and your career.”
Anyone else might have been confused by this statement, but she understood, and it made her dizzy with love.
He took her hand and gently kissed the pulse point on the inside of her wrist. “No more deadlines, Liv, okay?”
“No more deadlines,” she whispered. “Ever.”
They kissed. A kiss she would remember forever. Deep and sweet and yearning. Everything a woman could want. The kind of kiss dreams were built on, that lives were built on. A kiss that was a forever pledge.
The sweetness of that kiss changed its timbre, becoming hot and fierce. They dragged each other into the bedroom, pulling at their clothes, at the bedcovers, desperate to seal the words they’d spoken with their bodies.
They came together ferociously—two athletes, champions in their own worlds, their bodies moving together, soaring together, hitting that perfect crescendo, that perfect rush. The perfect joining of body and soul.
*
Later, sated in each other’s arms, he brushed his lips across her hair. “We have a busy couple of years ahead of us.”
She ran her fingers across the delicious cording of his abdomen. “Yes, we do.”
“You’ve already signed contracts for the next two years, and I have two more years left on my own contract.” He stroked the curve of her hip. “I know what I’m going to do after that. I never thought I’d say this, but I can’t wait. Still, nothing is for sure. These next couple of years are going to be important ones for us. They’ll be our training camp.”
It was a perfect analogy. “The time when we work out the logistics. Find out how to make our lives fit together,” she said.
“We’ll make mistakes.” He took her hand and kissed her earlobe. “It’ll be trial and error.”
“It’ll be a mess.” She gave him a watery smile, not caring if he saw her tears, because they were happy ones. “We’ll need lots of open communication.”
“Something we’ve been good at up until these last few days.” He rose onto one elbow, gazing down at her. “Fortunately, we’re both disciplined. We know how to set goals and work toward meeting them.”
“We do,” she agreed, nuzzling his shoulder.
“You have Wednesday and Thursday off between performances next week. Does Thursday work for you?”
She lost herself admiring the dark arch of his eyebrows. “Thursday?”
“Or Wednesday if you’d rather. For us to get married.”
His words finally registered, and she shot up in bed, clutching the sheet to her chest. “You want to get married next week?”
He tugged the sheet from her hands. “Isn’t that what I said?”
“No, it’s not what you said! We were just talking about taking the next two years to figure things out.”
“Right.” He kissed the top of her breast. “After we get married, we’ll definitely need to figure things out.”
She grabbed for the sheet, launching into their first postcoital argument. “We’re not reckless people! We don’t just jump into something this big. We’re systematic. We take our time. Prepare.”
He laughed and pulled her back down beside him. “Liv, sweetheart, we’re already prepared. We know exactly what kind of mess we’re jumping into, and we also know that—with our work ethic and big egos—we’ll have to make it work because neither of us can handle failure.”
That was true, but . . .
He stroked her temple. “You’re slippery, honey, and I’m not taking any more chances of losing you. I need a commitment. A real commitment. Enough of a commitment so I know you won’t go crazy again and tell me that you’ve decided you can’t sing Figaro or whoever else you’ve taken a fancy to sing while I’m in your life.”
Figaro was a man, but she understood his point. She tunneled her hands through his hair. “I’d never do that to you. I promise.”
“Good. Next week then.”
*
And next week it was. On a Thursday night when the Muni had no performances scheduled, the two of them stood onstage with their friends and family seated around them. The bride was deliriously beautiful in a long, Egyptian-style gown that was an updated copy of Aida’s costume. The groom was resplendent in a perfectly cut tuxedo with a square pocket handkerchief made from his beloved’s favorite flamenco shawl.
Thad’s parents had raced up from Kentucky. Coop was best man. Clint walked the bride down the makeshift aisle as Rachel sang, and neither the bride nor groom—both of whom were used to working under pressure—could make it through their vows without choking up.
It was a beautiful ceremony. The flowers, the guests, the music. As Thad and Olivia exchanged the kiss that sealed their union, Cooper Graham leaned over to the man sitting next to him and whispered, “One marriage. Two divas. This is going to work out just fine.”
Clint Garrett couldn’t have agreed more.
Epilogue
Thad stood in the wings of the Lyric Opera of Chicago, his arms crossed over his chest to keep his heart from spilling out as he watched Liv deliver the best “Habanera” of her life. Her Carmen was a headstrong rebel—sultry, sexy, foolhardy, and answerable only to herself—everything Liv wasn’t, except for the sultry, sexy part.
After three years, she still took his breath away.
He liked helping people be their best, whether it was motivating Liv to reach new heights in her career or cheering on the idiot through every game. Damn, but he loved that guy.
Onstage, Carmen had caught ol’ Don José’s eye. Liv did way too great a job of dying, and Thad made it a policy never to watch the last act. Plus, he’d been forbidden to stick around backstage that long because he made the tenor singing Don José nervous.
Their first year of marriage had been just as messy and hectic as they’d anticipated. He’d started training camp on the exact day Liv had to be in Munich. When the Stars played their first game, she was in Tokyo and after that Moscow. They talked all the time and competed with each other to come up with the most innovative way of keeping their sex life interesting, although it meant installing lots of extra software to guard against hackers.
After Moscow, Liv was back in Chicago sitting in Phoebe Calebow’s skybox watching Thad win two games back to back when Clint was out with an ankle sprain. One of the Calebow kids had sneaked photos of Liv screaming her head off every time Thad completed a pass. Embarrassing, but Mrs. Calebow was a big opera fan, and she didn’t seem to mind.
The second year of marriage grew more complicated as he finished his contract and moved ahead with his retirement plan. He’d become a certified financial planner so he could play a more active role in keeping stupid, young rookies from blowing all their money, satisfying work but a sideline to his real job. He was Piper’s full-time partner in her volunteer crusade to put an end to child sex trafficking. Follow the money. He’d gotten very good at exactly that, and whenever he helped put another of those bastards behind bars, he felt better than he’d ever felt winning a football game.
He was a little busier than he wanted to be, but as a bonus, his work was portable so he could travel with Olivia as much as either of them wanted, which was most of the time.
“I entertain people,” The Diva was fond of saying. “You save lives.”
Then, just when things were running smoothly, The Diva decided she wanted a baby.
*