Butterflies in Honey (Growing Pains #3)(107)

He leaned back to welcome her choice of seat. As soon as her butt hit his legs Sean leaned into her and put his weary head to her chest. There was nothing remotely sexual about it. He wrapped her in his arms like he might a teddy bear, and sighed contentedly when she answered by putting her arms around him. He truly did love her, which made it all seem unrealistically unfair.

“You saw me for a good chunk of the day. You remember—first you gave the happy news of Bob moving on, then you told us you weren’t planning to replace him, then you gave us a bunch more work to do.”

“Oh yeah. That’s right. You are all doing so well. Things are really coming along.”

“Sean, speaking of, I want us to go away. Take a Friday off and spend the weekend away in San Diego. We’ll surf, check out the zoo, and just hang out together. I need more of your time. And our company needs less. Far less. You are working way too hard. No one else in the company works this hard; the whole company—Tory included.”

Sean leaned back and looked at her with bleary eyes. She got the feeling she just turned from a good guy to a bad guy. She wanted something and he didn’t have anything left to give.

“When?”

“Well, you have a choice between the next four weekends. Any one of them.”

Sean closed his eyes and shook his head. “I can’t, Krissy. I have so much to do.”

“This isn’t a race, Sean. You need to live your life. Work to live, you know? Not live to work. You have someone that wants to spend time with you. That loves you. Work doesn’t love you. You are already kicking so much ass in so short a time—you don’t need to over-do it, you know?”

“I know, Krista. I just hoped to get a little farther toward my goal before I slacked off.”

“It isn’t slacking off Sean, it is being normal.”

Sean sighed again. “Okay. Send me the dates and I’ll pick one. Will that make you happy?”

“Not only will it make me happy, it will make you happy. Now, I’ll cook you something better to eat.”

“The critic making the cook something to eat,” Sean said as he pushed away his half eaten frozen dinner.

“I have a feeling that anything I make will taste better than what you have there.”

“True words.”

Sean fell asleep as Krista whipped up some baked chicken and a steamer bag of rice. It wasn’t much, but when she woke him up to eat it, he raved about how good it tasted. She wondered when about the last time he ate a real meal.

That night, she pleasured him as he lay back on the bed with his hands behind his head. She started with a little tease, but when she saw his eyes start to droop, she sped things up.

As soon as he finished, he had time to smile in relaxation before he drifted off to sleep. Krista turned off all the lights and curled up next to him. It was sad when your best efforts were nothing more than the effect of a glass of wine. This was no life they were living. This was a bookmark in the life they wished they had.

It was three days until Sean and Krista left for their trip. She was beyond excited. Sean had kept up his long hours and was letting things slip. They went from ha**ng s*x once or twice daily to a few times a week, to a quick once a week. He was skipping surfing and getting home in time to eat a quick meal and fall asleep with his clothes on as soon as he hit the mattress. Krista wanted some time alone with him without the pressing demands of work.

From what Marcus said, Sean was well beyond Tory’s wildest expectations, and still reaching for more. It was at a steep price, though. It broke Krista’s heart to see Sean wasting away. He wasn’t eating well, he wasn’t working out any more, he wasn’t sleeping as much as he should, and his stress level was through the roof. Nothing anyone said got through to him. Nothing would make him slow down.

The final straw would be if he flaked on Krista that weekend. If he did, she would cut him off. She would walk away. She was dating a shell of a man and it wasn’t fair to either of them.

As she always did, she made her way into the kitchen. And as he had every other day, he was sitting at the small round table in the corner, in the dark, eating a tub of heated-up freezer food that looked terrible, and tasted worse. He was staring straight ahead, not noticing anything around him. If he was a robot, he would be in sleep mode. When he wasn’t at work, this was his default setting, even when making love. The man was continually shut off.

Krista sighed before she summoned up her happy face. Marcus told her she had to always present a happy, upbeat self around him these days, so he’d know what he was missing. It seemed like Marcus was trying to mend the relationship through his advice—he strangely wanted them to succeed as much as she did. Every time she reported back that Sean didn’t miss her any more with an upbeat self as with a mad, cranky self, Marcus sighed and came up with another tactic. So far, no luck.

“Hey you,” Krista said, slinging her hand bag over the opposite chair.

Sean glanced up and his brow furrowed. Lately he didn’t smile all that much, not even when he hadn’t seen her all day. He wasn’t even as popular among the girls at the office anymore. They weren’t chasing him all that hard, or gossiping about him hardly at all. And that was saying something.

“Hey baby,” he said, his brow still furrowed. “Look, I’ll just come out with it. I won’t be able to go this weekend after all.”