Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six(8)

“Who were you talking to so late?” she asked lightly. “You sounded angry.”

He rolled his eyes. “Difficult client.”

She searched his face for signs of deception, but there was nothing—just fatigue.

“Want to talk about it?”

“I’d rather talk about anything else, to be honest,” he said, putting down his glass on the coffee table.

She put a hand on the back of his neck and rubbed; it was where he held all his tension.

“Do you really think you’re going to be able to unplug this weekend?” she asked.

She highly doubted it. Even in Hawaii last year he hadn’t been able to fully disconnect from his company, working most mornings while she and infant Gigi played in the kiddie pool. She never complained or gave him a hard time. She knew who he was when she married him.

“I’m going to try,” he said, slipping his phone from his pocket and taking a quick glance. “What about you?”

Anxiety bubbled. “It’s our first time away from her.”

“My mom’s good with her.” He put a comforting hand on her leg.

“She is,” said Hannah. Gigi absolutely adored her Lulu. “And that’s the only reason I even considered it.”

“The only reason?”

He moved in, took her glass and placed it on the distressed wood. She slid into his heat.

Truthfully, she didn’t feel like fooling around, but she made a point not to push him away. They needed the connection, the closeness. His lips on her neck. The strength of his arms. The light scent of his cologne.

Hmm. Maybe she did feel like fooling around. And there was that new Brazilian to show off. They’d had the lights out last time. She met his mouth with hers, let the moment, his desire, take her.

Gigi issued a little cry. They both froze, staring at the monitor on the counter. Hannah made a move to get up. Bruce gently held her back. “Give it a moment, see if she settles.”

Silence. Outside the distant rumble of thunder, a flash of lightning. Then, the soft hiss of Gigi’s sleeping breath. Hannah’s shoulders, which had hiked up high, melted.

“I swear she knows when I’m about to get lucky,” he said, picking up his glass, giving her a wry grin.

The kid was a cock-blocker, no doubt. Any stirrings of desire dissipated. No wonder Bruce was fooling around with the hot woman from his client’s office. He wasn’t. Of course, he wasn’t. She knew her husband. Didn’t she?

Hannah grabbed her glass and slid into the crook of his arm, stared at the dancing orange faux flames, took a long swallow. He placed a tender kiss on the top of her head.

“There will be plenty of time and space for us at the cabin,” she said, comforting him as well as herself.

“Sure about that?”

“We’ll make time.”

“The agenda your brother sent looks pretty packed. Hiking, zip-lining, yoga, massage, facial.”

“He’s not the boss of us.” Actually, Mako could be enthusiastic to the point of overbearing. And it was true, that she did sometimes feel powerless against his will. But he was essentially sweet, most of the time; though he had his moments. He just had a big personality and he wasn’t for everyone.

“Technically,” said Bruce. He drew his hand through his curls. “He is my boss. At the moment anyway.”

Bruce was a wizard coder with his own freelance company. Mako owned a growing game software franchise Red World. Her husband had established a niche for himself in the tech industry. He was a fixer. He found bugs, security breaches, errant code that caused glitches eluding even the original developers. He was like that at home, too. Always inspecting, repairing, cleaning up—the running toilet, or the chip on the baseboard, the light out in the shower. She never had to ask him to do any of it. He always saw what was wrong and fixed it.

He’s kind of a whisperer, Mako told her. He lives inside the code; it speaks to him.

Bruce had worked for Mako a handful of times over Hannah and Bruce’s five-year marriage, and had recently saved her brother from a major error right before a big launch. Mako wanted Bruce at Red World full-time; it had come up a couple of times since Christmas. There was even a formal offer, a big one, to be his CTO. But Bruce liked to do his own thing, had built his company, and wasn’t looking to sell it and go to work for Mako. Maybe there was a little tension about it. Because Mako usually got what he wanted. But it was a friendly tension. They were friends, had been for years. So, Hannah stayed out of it.

“You are the boss,” she reminded him.

“Actually, you are,” he said, kissing her on the head.

A chirp from Gigi crackled out of the monitor. They looked at each other and laughed. Everyone knew who the boss around here was.

“Anyway,” she went on. “The weather is supposed to be bad. A big storm in the Atlantic, supposed to come ashore on Friday. By the time it gets to us up there inland, it will be mostly dissipated. But still, not hiking weather. So, lots of time to laze around, right?”

Bruce picked up his phone and opened the weather app. “Weather looks fine here. Gigi and Lou will be all right.”

“Other coast. Looks like it will hit land around St. Simons Island as a tropical storm.”

Many miles away from their Sleepy Ridge destination.

Her phone pinged. Mako.