IT WAS THE FIRST TIME in too many years that Reg had not dreaded the coming of April 1. He was looking forward to it with anticipation, excitement. Triumph.
Finally, he’d beaten the curse.
The alarm in his watch beeped, signaling midnight. The start of a new era, the start of the rest of their lives. They were so lucky. Really.
From outside the bedroom window of the Dawes ancestral home, the gas lamps of New Orleans glowed warm and familiar. Inside, candles flickered, shadows dancing on the high ceilings and the velvet-covered walls. Reg looked over at his wife with loving eyes, knowing he’d found something better, as well.
Anne.
The bedroom was cluttered with boxes still waiting to be unpacked, but there had been other things, more important things to take care of when they arrived yesterday. Namely, making love to his wife. A man had to have his priorities.
Her lashes fluttered open, and he felt the familiar tightening in his heart. One year they’d been together as a couple, and the reaction never changed. She smiled and reached out a hand to stroke his cheek, and Reg felt another tightening. Lower, but no less important, and once again, Reg reordered his priorities.
Before he could react as biology dictated he should, his phone vibrated, and he read the text message. Frowned.
“What’s wrong?” Anne asked.
“Nothing,” he reassured her, still sounding confident because this wasn’t a big deal. An annoyance, a mere neurological gnat.
The phone vibrated again. Another incoming message, this one from Darcy.
Impossible. Anne looked at him, worry in her face. “Is everything all right?”
“Everything’s fine,” he said with a laugh, a little less confident. A sinking pit low in his stomach replaced the very nice and completely ignorant bliss that had been there earlier.
The phone vibrated again, and as Reg read Devon’s words, the full impact sunk in. They hadn’t broken the curse.
Oops.
“I might have miscalculated,” he began.
“You don’t miscalculate,” she cut in, still defending him. Still completely sure of him.
“This time, I might have,” he stated, to keep the record straight.
“How so?”
“I should have made sure. I should have tested this out. But I didn’t. It’s not over. And now you’re stuck.”
She arched a graceful, yet militant brow. “Stuck?”
Not surprisingly, she didn’t look unhappy, nor comfortable nor, as he’d so cleverly put it, “stuck.” But Anne had never been the one with doubts. That’d been Reg. “Not stuck. If you want to leave, I’ll understand.”
That was a complete lie, but Reg chose not to muddy the waters with pesky things such as emotion and panic and the complete destruction of all happiness as he’d come to know it.
“What if I don’t want to leave? What if I’m happy right where I am?”
And once again, his lungs began to function as before. “Certainly that’s what you’ve always told me. But things aren’t quite as easy as before. You had expectations of calm. Of goodness.”
“Reg,” she started, in a bossy voice that got him hard all over again.
“What?”
Her hands twined around his neck, into his hair, tangling there as if she meant to keep him. “I loved you before the calm, before the goodness. It doesn’t matter to me. I love you.”
“I know that,” he insisted.
“For better, for worse,” she insisted, right back at him. Stubborn as always, which was one of the main reasons he loved her.
“Jenna’s having her baby in a cab somewhere on the George Washington Bridge,” he said, trying to make her understand what “worse” actually entailed.
“She’s a doctor. I’m sure she’ll know what to do.”
“Devon’s house got destroyed once again.”
“That’s why she works for an insurance company.”
“And Darcy’s stranded on Cape Cod with Evan.”
“And I’m sure she’s happy as a clam because of it.”
“It doesn’t bother you?”
“I’ve got you. Nothing’s going to bother me.”
And finally, his heart began to ease. Not that he’d doubted her at all.
Reg leaned down, and as his mouth covered hers, a cold breeze blew through the house, overturning the candle and setting the chenille blanket on fire.
Calmly, Anne beat out the flame, one-handed, not even pausing in mid-kiss.
Cursed? Not a chance, Reg scoffed. Not a chance.