I leaned back and pecked him on the lips. “What are you going to do today?” I asked with a hint of trepidation, though I tried to mask it behind a shy smile.
He shrugged, spread his hands out wide, and let them slap against his thighs. “I think I’m going to surf, maybe hit the home gym.” He rubbed his hands up and down his chest. “Work on getting back in shape physically.”
Placing a hand on his cheek, I brushed back an unruly lock of hair. “You need a haircut,” I teased, twirling a lock of hair around my index finger.
“Then I’ll get a haircut,” he said flatly.
“Hey.” I wrapped my arms around his waist and pressed my cheek to his chest. “It was just a suggestion.” With my chin still on his chest, I looked up into his eyes. They were a bright green like normal, only the exhaustion weighed heavily at the edges.
He rubbed up and down my back, curled a hand around the nape of my neck, and tugged me close, until our lips were a hair’s breadth away. “Don’t worry about me. Worry about you and Dr. Love.”
I rolled my eyes. “The guy is married to a supermodel.”
“Yeah, a young supermodel. Stick thin. Believe me.” He thrust his hips, ran his hands up my sides, and cupped my breasts. “When he gets a load of these curves, he’s going to wish he hadn’t settled for a popsicle when he could have had the double decker sundae.”
I snorted into his neck. “Did you just compare me to a dessert?”
He laughed and growled. “You taste like the richest delicacy. Not a far reach, sweetheart.”
I shook my head and backed away, grabbing my purse. “Be good today. I’ll miss you.” Turning, I blew him a kiss.
“Baby, I’ll miss you more than you know.” He waved, and I stepped out into the brisk sunshine of a California morning.
The limo was waiting. Normally, I would have preferred to drive Suzi since I hadn’t had much time with her, but Wes insisted. Plus, I was wearing a sexy pencil skirt, making it impossible to ride a motorcycle.
Once I got settled into the black plush leather interior of the limo, I exhaled the breath I felt like I’d been holding for months. Wes’s parting statement clung to me like a bad scent you walked past at the perfume aisle in the mall.
“Baby, I’ll miss you more than you know.”
Part of me wanted to stay home with him, wallow in his essence day and night. Only that wasn’t going to get either of us on the path to healing. As much as Wes was hurting, I had my own issues to deal with. When he had night terrors and took his comfort in my body, and then rolled over and went to sleep, that’s when my worry struck. I’d stay awake, watching him sleep soundly for as long as possible, reveling in the fact that he was home, whole, and mine. Which wasn’t exactly true. Wes was alive and whole physically. His mind was like Swiss cheese.
After a week together, I knew he needed help, and it was up to me as his life mate to get him what he needed. Later on that evening, I’d research some therapists. Maybe call his sister, Jeananna, and get her opinion. Wes wouldn’t want me telling his mother about the night terrors or the lack of desire to return to work. He was devoid of emotion when conversations veered remotely to his life’s passions, movie-making and screenwriting. Claire would worry too much and turn into a helicopter mom hovering over her five-year-old. Only Wes was thirty and didn’t need that kind of attention right now. What he needed was to find himself in all this, realize what he still had, mourn what he’d lost, and find a way to live his life again.
I figured, with time, he’d get past the ambivalence for his job and come to terms with losing so many of his team—some killed right in front of him. I couldn’t imagine what that had done to his psyche. Wes needed to take a few months off. He had more money than he knew what to do with, so it wasn’t out of the scope of reality. Perhaps a sabbatical from the field after the trauma he experienced would be wise and good for the soul.
* * *
A smartly dressed blonde in her twenties, obviously strung tight as a drum, led me through the halls of Century Productions. “You’ll need to be here every weekday promptly at nine.” She looked down at her watch and cringed.
Okay, so I was a few minutes late. The man at the gate had told me the wrong studio. So even though I’d left a half hour earlier than I needed, I still ended up a few minutes late.
“Sure thing. Now that I know where to go, I’ll be here earlier.”