Honor

out. She should have stayed and talked, held her temper and listened to his explanation. That was the only way this was going to work.
They needed so desperately to talk. She needed to comprehend why he’d been so quick to condemn her attitude. He needed to understand exactly what she was trying to recapture. They both needed to discover if there was any common ground left at all. They couldn’t do that without putting all their cards on the table, even the ones most likely to hurt.
She was too tired now to get into it again, but asking Kevin to join her in the living room had been an overture, at least. It had been impossible to miss the longing in his eyes when he’d come upon her in the middle of the kitchen with nothing but bra and panties keeping her decent. That longing had turned to desire as he’d stood beside the tub watching her lower herself into the foam of lilac-scented bubbles. Lacey knew exactly what Kevin was feeling, because it had taken every ounce of willpower she possessed to refrain from inviting him to share the bath with her.
All the talking and listening would have to wait, though. Now she wanted nothing more than to curl up on the sofa and stare at the mesmerizing flames. She wanted only to let the fire’s heat soak into her bones.
As it did, she could feel herself relaxing, feel her eyes drifting shut. She blinked and forced herself awake. She wanted to stay awake until Kevin was by her side, but tension, exercise and fear had exhausted her. Her eyes closed again.
She had only the vaguest sense when Kevin joined her on the sofa. When he whispered her name, she thought she responded, but couldn’t be sure. Then she felt herself being resettled in his arms, and it was as if she’d come home at last. A sigh trembled on her lips, and then she slept as she hadn’t slept in all the lonely months they’d been apart.

Chapter Eight
Kevin stood in the doorway of the kitchen watching the play of sunlight on Lacey’s hair. She’d left it loose, not bothering to tame the haphazard curls that framed her face. It shimmered with silver and gold highlights, reminding him of the way it had looked on their wedding day.
There was something radiant and serene about her today, just as there had been then. However she felt about yesterday’s disagreements, she had obviously pushed them out of her mind. She looked beautiful, despite the fact that she was elbow-deep in dirt that was still damp from the previous day’s rain.
“What on earth are you doing?” he inquired as she scowled fiercely at something she saw.
In response, a clump of weeds flew over her shoulder and landed at his feet.
“I’m trying to make some order out of this mess. The weeds have taken over,” she muttered without turning to look at him.
“Why don’t you call Rick Renfield and have him do it? Isn’t that what we pay him for?”
“We pay him to keep an eye on the house, to make sure the pipes don’t freeze, to see that the grass is cut. I doubt he knows the first thing about gardening.”
“And you do?”
Lacey turned, then, and swiped a strand of hair out of her face with the back of her wrist. The impatient gesture left a beguiling streak of dirt across her cheek. The curly wisp promptly blew forward again.
Unable to resist, Kevin walked closer and knelt down. His fingers brushed the silken strand back, then lingered against her sun-kissed skin. With the pad of his thumb, he wiped away the smudge of dirt. He could almost swear he felt her tremble at the innocent caress.
She gazed up at him and his heart stilled.
“You’ve forgotten that I was the one who put in all the flower beds at our first house,” she said. “I landscaped that entire yard.”
He regarded her with a faint sense of puzzlement. “I thought you just did that because we didn’t have the money back then to hire somebody.”
“I did it because I enjoyed it,” she said almost angrily, backing away from his touch. “When we moved, you hired a gardener and I never had the chance again. Tomas wouldn’t even let me near the rose bushes to clip them for the house, much less indulge me by letting me plant something.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“To him?”
“No. To me.”
“I did,” she said. “You never listened.”
He heard the weary resignation in her tone and winced. “I’m sorry. I guess I thought you’d prefer to spend your time on all those committees you were forever joining.”
“And you were wrong,” she said curtly. “I joined those committees because you wanted me to and because there was nothing left for me to do at home. We had a gardener and a housekeeper. If Jason had been younger, you probably would have insisted on a nanny.”
Kevin stood up and shoved his hands into his pockets. “Most women would kill to have full-time household help, especially with a house as large as ours and with all the entertaining we needed to do.”
“I am not most women.”
For emphasis she jammed a trowel into the rain-softened earth and muttered something more, something he couldn’t quite make out. He decided it was just as well. He doubted it was complimentary.
Again Kevin wished that their first tentative steps toward a reconciliation weren’t so incredibly awkward. So many things seemed to be blurted out in anger, complaints long buried. Once minor, now they seemed almost insurmountable.
He wondered if Lacey was right. Had she told him all this before? Had he failed to listen, sure that he was giving her what she wanted, rather than what he thought she deserved?
There were times he felt as if he were learning about this woman all over again, rather than simply picking up the threads of a relationship that had weathered more than a quarter of a century. He tried